1. Academics
  2. Humanities & Social Sciences
  3. MFA in Creative Writing
  4. Poetry
Filled bookshelf in Hay-on-Wye, Wales famous as the Town of Books
Work with
Carolyn Forché, Patricia Smith, Brian Turner, Nathalie Handal,
& Lee Herrick.

Poetry

Our poetry faculty consists of nationally and internationally known writers from many different backgrounds, working in broadly diverse styles and subject matter. At SNC Tahoe, you’ll work with writers like Carolyn Forché, Patricia Smith, Brian Turner, Nathalie Handal, Lee Herrick, and many more.

Our faculty have been awarded the Edita and Ira Morris Hiroshima Foundation Award, a Lamont Poetry Selection, the Lenore Marshall Prize, National Book Award nominations, shortlist for the T.S. Eliot Prize (U.K.) and winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize (U.S.), the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, Lannan Foundation Fellowships, the Poet’s Prize, USA Fellowships, Guggenheim Grants, NEA Fellowships, a Witter Bynner Foundation Poetry Fellowship, and the Alejo Zuloaga Order in Literature. Their work has been published in Poetry, APR, The Paris Review, the Guardian, the Best American Poetry Series, Vanity Fair, the Poetry Foundation, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Georgia Review, Poetry Ireland, and for Words without Borders, among many others.

Cover of Blue Hour by Carolyn Fourche, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of A Five Kingdoms by Kelle Groom, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of The Lives of Rain by Nathalie Handal, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Gardening Secrets of the Dead by Lee Herrick, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Rigger Death & Hoist Another by Laura McCullough, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Anxious Music by April Ossman, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of The Rural Lives of Nice Girls by Gailmarie Pahmeier, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Of Dirt and Tar by June Saraceno, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah by spoken word poet Patricia Smith
Cover of Inquisition Lane by Matthew Sweeney, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Here, Bullet by Brian Turner, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College
Cover of Map Predetermined and Chance by Laura Wetherington, faculty in the low-residency MFA in Creative Writing program at Sierra Nevada College

“In the Sierra Nevada College MFA program, graduate students can expect supportive rigor, literary inspiration, and a deepened understanding of their craft. We want to work with you and share what we know—from idea to final draft, from the personal to the political, from the local to the global. This program builds writers, and through your words, your life and others’ lives may well be transformed.”

— Lee Herrick, MFA Faculty

Recent guest authors have included Tanya Shirley, John F. Deane, Sinéad Morrissey, Matthew Sweeney, and Damir Šodan.

SNC Tahoe provides a nurturing, mentoring environment for its students, where social and environmental justice issues can be explored alongside poems that explore the interior world of the artist. We equip students with the tools — and the inspiration — to succeed in their writing lives long after obtaining their degree. As we see it, the poems we write today have something to teach us about the poems we will write tomorrow.

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