PhD Program
See writers who attended this programPoetry: Brenda Cárdenas, Rebecca Dunham
Fiction: Katharine Beutner, Liam Callanan, Valerie Laken
This program offers teaching assistantships, fellowships, and awards.
The program hosts several internal writing contests with cash awards, and the United We Read Graduate Student/Faculty Reading Series and the Visiting Writers Series. Visiting writers and poets have included Juan Felipe Herrera, Peter Rock, Daniel Borzutzky, Paisley Rekdal, Nicole Cooley, C. Dale Young, Carmen Giménez Smith, Robert Olen Butler, Kyoko Mori, Ron Tanner, Adam Johnson, Nega Mezlekia, Charles Bernstein, Lysley Tenorio, and Craig Santos Perez, among many others.
The program also features internal projects such as the Literary Circular and Read Local: Eat Local, which provide opportunities for students to edit and curate flash fiction and poetry publications in inventive formats.
Students usually complete their PhD in four to five years.
Henri Cole, José Dalisay, Derrick Harriell, William (Trent) Hergenrader, Rachel Himmelherber, Caroline Knox, Soham Patel, Ching-In Chen, Phong Nguyen, Kyoko Mori, Melissa Olsen, Stephen Powers, Rene Steinke, Ron Tanner