College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
MFA Creative Writing

Writers-in-Residence

Every year, the MFA-Creative Writing program hosts several writers for extended visits: these writers meet with the MFA students in social settings, lead classroom discussions, read manuscripts and provide mentoring and inspiration throughout their stays. Recently, writers-in-residence have included: Jonathan Lethem, National Book Critic's Circle Award winner in 2000 for Motherless Brooklyn; Alicia Erian, author of the acclaimed coming-of-age novel, Towelhead;  Jean Valentine, National Book Award-winning poet; celebrated European poet Tomaz Salamun; bestselling young adult author and YouTube star John Green (Paper Towns, Looking for Alaska); and Lenore Marshall Award-winning poet Linda Gregg (In the Middle Distance, All of It Singing).Writers-in-Residence for 2012-2013 include: Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and journalist Jennifer Egan; poet and prose writer Laura Kasischke; poet Eduardo Corral; and prose writer Yiyun Li. 

Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence

The Booth Tarkington Writer-in-Residence is designed to bring exciting, emerging writers to the MFA program as guest faculty. Our first Tarkington Writer-in-Residence, Michael Dahlie, author of A Gentleman's Guide to Graceful Living, and winner of a Whiting Prize and the 2009 PEN/Hemingway Award for best first novel joined our faculty full-time as of August 2012. Our next Tarkington Writer-in-Residence will be announced February, 2013.

Who is Booth Tarkington?

Booth Tarkington (1869-1946) was one of the most popular American novelists of his time, best known for Pulitzer Prize-winning books The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams, making him one of only three novelists to win the Pulitzer prize more than once. In addition to writing several novels, Tarkington was a dramatist and illustrator; he illustrated his own works and the works of others, most notably the 1933 reprint of Huckleberry Finn. A true Midwesterner, Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, and as an adult kept a home on Meridian Street until the time of his death. Among other legacies throughout the state of Indiana, the historic Butler-Tarkington neighborhood is named in his honor. Booth Tarkington is buried on "the hill" at Crown Hill Cemetery.