The University of Washington in Seattle announced on September 28 that its creative writing program had received a bequest of $15 million from the S. Wilson and Grace M. Pollock Foundation. The foundation is named for alumnus Grace Pollock and her late husband. Pollock’s four brothers also attended the university, and her father Loren Milliman was a teacher of creative writing and mathematics at the school. The endowment, which will support graduate students as well as undergraduate students majoring in English with a concentration in creative writing, is the foundation’s fourth gift to the university and the largest ever received by the College of Arts and Sciences.
The university’s creative writing program, which was established in 1947 and began to offer a master of fine arts degree in 1987, now has thirty graduate students in poetry and fiction. The faculty includes poets Linda Bierds and Heather McHugh, fiction writer Charles Johnson, and creative nonfiction writer David Shields.
