Students and alumni of the MFA in Writing Program have published widely in multiple forms, including books, anthologies, journals, and websites. They've
read their work in bookstores and community institutions, and participated
in conferences at the local and national level. Click on the slide show above to view images of their books.
Fiction
Thomas Burke, Where Is Home and Other Stories
Liza Campbell, The Dissemblers
Clint Catalyst, Cottonmouth Kisses
Matthew D. Dalton, The Vertical Man
Nelson Eubanks, The First Thing Smoking
James B. Frost, World Leader Pretend
Jo Ann Yolanda Hernandez, White Bread Competition
Lindsay Tam Holland, Dragon Bone Hill
Brian Kluepfel, Anatoly of the Gomdars
Joshua Mohr, Some Things That Meant the World to Me, Termite Parade, and Damascus
Amy Novesky, Elephant Prince: The Story of Ganesh
Jane Porter, The Frog Prince, Flirting with Forty, and The Good Woman
Cynthia Robinson, The Dog Park Club
Wendy Tokunaga, Midori by Moonlight and Love in Translation
Nonfiction
Karen Benke, Rip the Page!: Adventures in Creative Writing
Lynn Bridgers, Death’s Deceiver: The Life of Joseph P. Machebeuf
George Dohrmann, Play Their Hearts Out
Rose Castillo Guilbault, Farmworker’s Daughter: Growing Up Mexican in America
Julie Love, Disrupted: On Fighting Death and Keeping Faith
Amy Novesky, Me, Frida
Tanya Pampalone, Where to Wear 2005: The Insiders Guide to San Francisco Shopping
Thomas Peele, Killing the Messenger: A Story of Radical Faith, Racism’s Backlash, and the Assassination of a Journalist
Poetry
Karen Benke, Sister
Susanne Dyckman, equilibrium’s form
Nicole Mauro, The Contortions
Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory [haca] & unincorporated territory [saina]
Helen Wickes, In Search of Landscape
Anthologies
Work by current students and alumni has appeared in:
The Best American Nonrequired Reading
Best New American Voices 2006
The Best Travel Writing 2005
The Best Women’s Travel Writing 2009
A Cup of Comfort for Divorced Women
Exact Fare Only II
Electric Feather: The Tranquebar Book of Erotic Stories
Flatmancrooked
From Macho to Mariposa: New Queer Latino Fiction
Going Alone: Women's Adventures in the Wild
Going Home to a Landscape: Writings by Filipinas
I Should Have Stayed Home
The Social Cause Diet
Times of Sorrow/Times of Grace: Writings by Women of the Great Plains Area
Vintage Voices: Words Poured Out
Wordstock Ten
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2004
Among the program's student honors and prizes are the
highest-ranking national Association of Writers and Writing Program's
award for nonfiction and/or fiction in three consecutive years;
inclusion in the Best New American Voices 2006 anthology (a competition
recognizing the best short fiction produced by students in graduate writing programs
across the country); the 2005 Espy Foundation Literary Contest award (with publication
forthcoming in Bellingham Review); the San Francisco Foundation's 2005
Mary Tanenbaum Award in Nonfiction; the Five Fingers Poetry Award; the Writer's
Digest Writing Award in short fiction; O Magazine 10-best list; first place in UC-Irvine's Chicano/Latino
Literary Prize; second place in the Nimrod/Hardman Katherine Anne Porter fiction
prize for 2005; the Backwards City Review Fiction Contest award; a prize in nonfiction
from the National League of American Pen Women; the Julia Peterkin Fiction Award;
2009 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Drama; 2011
Lambda Literary Fellow, 2011 FOCAL Award from the Friends of Children and Literature; 2011 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Poetry; honorable mention in Glimmer Train's Short Story Award for New Writers;
2010 Poets & Writers California
Writer’s Exchange Award; finalist for the 2011 American Fiction Prize; finalist for the
2011 Montana Prize for Creative Nonfiction; second place in the 2010 Saints and Sinners Literary Festival's fiction contest;
silver medal in the Travel & Sports category in the 2010 Solas awards competition; McGill
Medal for Journalistic Courage; first prize in Alligator
Juniper's national fiction contest; first prize in poetry and a finalist
in the fiction category for California's Writers Exchange Contest; winner in SF
Bay Guardian's LIT123 contest; a New California Media Award for the Best
in Ethnic American Media; and post-graduate artist residencies at the Headlands
Center for the Arts.
Work by current students and alumni has also appeared in: 7x7, 26, Alaska Quarterly
Review, All Hallows, Aurora Review, The Binnacle, The Black Boot, Backwards City
Review, Bay Nature, Berkeley Fiction Review, CavanKerry Press, The Christian Science Monitor, Cimarron
Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Comet Magazine, Cosmopsis Quarterly, Crab Orchard
Review, CutBank, Cutthroat, Denver Quarterly, Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry &
Prose, Dos Passos Review, Eleven Eleven, The Farallon Review, Feathertale, Femina India, Fence, Fiction Attic,
Fiction Circus, First City Delhi, The First Line, The Frogmore Papers, Gargoyle, Georgetown Review, Generations Literary Magazine, Glimmer Train, Gettysburg
Review, The Greensboro Review, Hawaii Women's Journal, 14 Hills, Interim,
Jane Magazine, JONES AV., Kalliope, Literary Mama, LOST magazine, MORE Magazine, The New York Times, The New York Times Book Review, Opium, 34th Parallel,
Phantasmagoria, Pif, Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets & Writers, Pomona Valley Review,
Prose: aX, Quercus Review, Puffin Circus, Raving Dove, Room of One's Own, San Francisco
Chronicle, Santa Clara Review, Shenandoah, SLAB, SmokeLong
Quarterly, SoMa Literary Review, So to Speak, The Sun, TAYO Literary Magazine, Third Coast, Tiny Lights: A Journal of
Personal Narrative, Vallum New International Poetics, VOLT, Word For/Word: A Journal of New Writing, Yoga International,
Zaum, and Zyzzyva.
Our MFA journal Switchback is conceived and produced by students in the Program and accepts submissions in
all genres. Alumni and students in the MFA Program have published their work in Switchback as well as The Battered Suitcase, Big Toe Review, The Black Boot, The
Collagist, The Cultural Society, Curly Red Stories, Errant
Parent, Emprise Review, Fresh Yarn, FreightTrain,
Indie Reader, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, Liar's League,
Lodestar Quarterly, Literary Mama, Midway Journal, McSweeny's, The Millions, The Molotov
Cocktail, Mother Jones, Pindeldyboz, Planet-mag, Oxford Magazine, 580 Split,
SUB-LIT, Third Coast, TransLitMag, Verbsap, Salon, Sub-Lit, Stone's
Throw Magazine, Tattoo Highway, True/Slant, Writers' Dojo,
and Writers Quest.
The stream of activities in and around the program highlights a belief in the community
value of literature and features student participation in a number of literary
and service organizations, including Poets and Writers, Zoetrope, Swords to Ploughshares,
California Poets in the Schools, the Squaw Valley Writer's Conference, The Bread
Loaf Writers' Conference, Portland State University's Write to Publish Conference, San Francisco LitQuake, the Walden House Liberal Arts
Program, the Associated Writing Programs Conference, the Vermont Studio Center,
the Northern California Writers Circle, the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, Under
the Volcano Writing Conference outside Mexico City, Women in Letters and Literary
Arts (WILLA), and the Summer Literary Seminars in New Jersey, Prague, Czechoslovakia and St.
Petersburg, Russia.
Students and alumni have read their work at 826 Valencia, Books and Bookshelves, the San Francisco Main
Public Library, Intersection for the Arts, Bernal Yoga Literary Series, Cody's Books,
Diesel Bookstore, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference, The San Francisco
Foundation, the Canvas Gallery, Lone Mountain Readings series, Book Passage, the
Bazaar Cafe, Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts, Sebastopol Center for the Arts, and the Emerging American Writers Series
produced by The New Short Fiction Series in Los Angeles.
