Purdue University College of Liberal Arts
Information for
Creative Writing Program
Alumni Spotlight
FRED ARROYO ('97) published The Region of Lost Names: A Novel with the University of Arizona Press as a part of its Camino del Sol Series in 2008. A recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission, Fred has published fiction, poetry, and essays in Washington Square, Pinyon, Writing on the Edge, and Crab Orchard Review. Fred is currently an Assistant Professor of English, Fiction Writing, at Drake University.
MAIREAD BYRNE earned her Masters in Poetry from Purdue in 1996. Her poetry collections include Nelson & The Huruburu Bird, SOS POETRY, and TALK POETRY. Recent essays include "Avant-Garde Pronouns," published in Avant-Post; and "Some Differences Between Poetry & Standup," published by UbuWeb. Winner of the 2006 Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Poetry Fellowship, Mairead is an Associate Professor of English at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence.
ROB DAVIDSON received his MFA in fiction from Purdue in 1997, and is the author of a book of short stories, Field Observations, which won the 2002 Maria Thomas Fiction Award. Steve Yarborough said of Field Observations: "Davidson is a wonderful writer, a real find. He has the ability to make you care deeply about his characters. They become, for all their occasional quirkiness, as real as the folks next door." Rob is Assistant Professor of English at California State University, Chico.
CHIELOZONA EZE ('03) won the 2006 Olaudah Equiano Prize for fiction written by Africans living abroad. Eze, an Assistant Professor at Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago, won for his short story, "Lessons in German," which the judges described as "a narration about music and language, sex and sexuality, love and hate, art and artifice, knowledge and ignorance, light and darkness, genocide and communality, affirmation and denegation. Eze pours his body and soul, not unlike the enmeshed wine and flesh of his interracial protagonists, into a narrative that is one of the most consuming commentaries on contemporary dialectics of migration, globalization, and the return of beauty."
HENRY HUGHES earned his Masters in poetry at Purdue in 1990 and was the editor, in 1989, of the very first issue of Sycamore Review. After graduate school, he spent five years working in Japan and China. His poetry collection Men Holding Eggs was awarded the Oregon Book Award for poetry in 2004, and his work has appeared in many literary journals including Northwest Review, Harvard Review, Antioch Review and Passages North. Henry is an Associate Professor of English at Western Oregon University.
SARA LAMERS ('04) is the author of the poetry collection City Without Trees, published in 2007 by March Street Press. Her work has appeared in various literary journals such as The Midwest Poetry Review, Cold Mountain Review, Oxford Magazine, Hubbub, Rattle, and The Sierra Nevada College Review.
LAURA PRITCHETT received her PhD in Contemporary Literature/Creative Writing at Purdue and is the author of the novel Sky Bridge (Milkweed Editions 2005), which won the WILLA Fiction Award; and the short story collection Hell's Bottom, Colorado (Milkweed Editions 2001), which won the 2001 Milkweed National Fiction Prize and 2002 PEN USA Award for Fiction. Laura is also the editor of two books released in 2007: The Pulse of the River: Colorado Writers Speak for the Endangered Cache la Poudre and Home Land: Ranching and a West that Works.
ELIZABETH STUCKEY-FRENCH was a member of the first full class of masters in creative writing students at Purdue, graduating in 1989. She is the author of a novel, Mermaids on the Moon, a collection of short stories, The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa, and coeditor, with Janet Burroway, of Writing Fiction: A Guide to the Narrative Craft. Her stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, and The O. Henry Prize Stories 2005. Elizabeth is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Florida State University.
MARTIN WALLS received his MFA in poetry in 1997 and is the author of Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust (New Issues 2000) and Commonwealth (March Street Press 2005). Martin was awarded the prestigious 2005 Witter Bynner Fellowship in poetry. This carries a $10,000 prize and an invitation to read at the Library of Congress. Recent winners have included Naomi Shihab Nye, Carol Muske, Carl Phillips, Campbell McGrath and Heather McHugh.
WHAT OUR GRADUATES ARE SAYING
"The greatest thing the MFA program at Purdue gave me was time: time to write, to read, and to think. And with challenging courses and knowledgeable, distinguished professors, there was plenty to write, read and think about. In three years I was able to complete a novel, gain valuable teaching and editing experience, and be a part of a vibrant community of writers. Purdue's MFA program nurtured both my professional and personal growth. It was a great time." --Steve Edwards, 2000.
"The program is ideal because it's a very small program in the midst of a very big school. You will get to know your fellow MFA students and other English students very well, while Purdue feels like this vast universe swirling around you. If you teach, you'll get to survey the huge range of students that are out there. Having to handle such a variety of backgrounds, skill levels, and interests really enriches your teaching, making you a lot more versatile than you'd have to be at a smaller, more homogenous school. Plus, the added possibility of getting to teach creative writing is simply irreplaceable. Not many schools let their graduate students teach creative writing, but it's by far the best way I can think of to round out your education on the subject." --Liz Thelen, 1999.
"For me, the Purdue University MFA program provided all the necessary building blocks for beginning my writing career. The small, tightly knit group of writers often feels more like a family than 'a graduate program.' The professors are caring and interested, but they are also tough and demanding. You are challenged not only to do your best work, but to exceed your own highest expectations. If you are a highly motivated and serious writer, Purdue is the kind of place you want to be: a writing program that will support you as you push the limits of your own experience."
--Rob Davidson, 1997.
"In April 1994, I got a call in Monkstown, Co. Dublin, from Neil Myers offering me a place and an assistantship in the Master's Creative Writing Program at Purdue. I was overjoyed and told him there was no place I'd rather go right then than Purdue. He seemed a bit taken aback. Outside my door was Dublin Bay with its yachts and cormorants. I loved Seapoint, the part of Monkstown where I lived, and I loved my job, where my prospects were good. But I wanted to live in American poetry. So I arrived in a tiny plane in West Lafayette in July, with $400 and a 7-year-old child. I knew no one and couldn't drive: I wanted to write poetry, to keep my child safe, and to survive. I did a Master's, then a PhD. Marianne (Boruch) was my mentor, and served on my dissertation committee. I have always kept in touch with her. I worked with Tom Andrews too, and am glad of all that life at Purdue. I left there with many poems, friends, another daughter, and excellent qualifications and experience for a college teaching career." --Mairead Byrne, 1996.
"The MFA at Purdue challenged me to write honest, precise poems - poems with heart - and I made a few life-long literary friendships. Beyond workshop, the skills I learned from working with Sycamore Review are invaluable. Also, being a TA, teaching composition and creative writing, fostered my passion for education."
--Rebecca Bednarz, 2004.
"My admittance to the Purdue MFA program was a gift: three years of concentrated fiction writing, teaching and mentorship. Three years of ongoing conversation and friendship with other writers ? students, professors and distinguished visitors ? who care deeply about what they do. I worked closely with my professors on short stories, and in the third year, on the novel that would become my thesis. The teaching assistantship prepared me to work in both the composition and creative writing classroom. I grew up in Indiana, and like so many teenagers heading to college, traveled many miles in search of my own place in the world. Ten years later, that place was Purdue: a fantastic and fitting homecoming. Purdue embraces the literary life, brings you inside, and shows you how to make it your own."
--Sarah Layden, 2006
"My time as an MFA student in Purdue's Creative Writing Program has been, without a doubt, the richest and most rewarding experience in my life as a writer. If ever I find myself longing for the intimacy, mystery and slowly unfolding revelations of those years I spent reading and writing in West Lafayette, I have only to turn to one of Marianne Boruch's essays on poetry. There are a number of masterful poets in our language, but I know of none who writes and talks so passionately, so naturally, so masterfully about the craft of poetry as she does." --Dan Hefko, 1998
"I highly enjoyed and benefited from my time in Purdue's MFA program. A few things about the program set it apart from many of the the others I considered: three years versus two, which meant an entire year to work on a book-length collection, and the opportunity to teach creative writing classes. I can't express how my writing and my knowledge of literature and writing were affected during that time. I went in loving poetry and came out with a richer understanding of why and of what makes poems tick. The professors I had rocked my world with their wisdom and generosity. And the community of fellow students was something I could only truly appreciate after the fact." --Carolyn LaMontagne, 1999