Fiction
Fiction writers in the MFA program work with nationally and internationally known authors including Rebecca Makkai, Lidia Yuknavitch, Alan Heathcock, Peter Mountford and Brendan Basham.
Our faculty have published with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Knopf, W.W. Norton & Co., Graywolf, Bloomsbury, Viking, Tin House Books, Arte Publico Press, St. Martin’s Press, and more. Their short stories and excerpts have appeared in publications including McSweeney’s, Harper’s, Esquire, The Atlantic, Granta, The Rumpus, Guernica, Tin House, the Best American and Best American Nonrequired Reading series, Narrative Magazine, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Prairie Schooner, and Ploughshares. They have been awarded the American Book Award, New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Pulitzer Prize finalist, the Whiting Award, the Rooney Prize, the GLCA New Writers Award, the John Gardner Book Award, Best Book of the Year prizes, Washington State Book Award, Pushcart Prizes, the Iowa Short Fiction Prize, and the PEN/O. Henry Prize, among others.
Our emphasis is on helping you to hone your vision and create work in which you feel personally and intellectually invested. We encourage, celebrate, and help to promote our students’ successes as working writers.
Guests have included Carmen Maria Machado, Gina Frangello, Colum McCann, Téa Obreht, Luis Alberto Urrea, Benjamin Percy, Julie Iromaunya, Mat Johnson, Rick Moody, and Jesse Goolsby.
Lake Tahoe is an extraordinary place, and I don’t even mean that geographically — the people and writing and energy, the discourse and debate and discovery, are what will stay with you throughout the year. You’ll go back to your own desk, eventually, but you won’t be alone.
Rebecca Makkai, MFA faculty
