Northwestern University's MA in Writing & MFA in Prose and Poetry Programs

Join us for a fall faculty and alumni reading, Saturday, October 10, 4 PM CT, at Brothers K Coffeehouse, 500 Main St, Evanston, cohosted by Booked Bookstores - featured readers: Mimi Bhattacharyya, Brett Tyler Brown, Jenn Hipps, Eric Johnson, Lori Rader-Day and Michael Zapata!

Mimi Bhattacharyya is a writer whose work explores migration, belonging, and the stories families inherit across generations. A recent graduate of Northwestern University’s MFA Program in Prose and Poetry, and a recipient of the Distinguished Thesis Award, she blends memoir, braided nonfiction, and literary inquiry to examine the Bengali diasporic experience, the tension between memory and history, and the evolving meaning of home.

Brett Brown is a recent graduate of Northwestern’s Master in Writing program. He received the Distinguished Thesis Award for Master of None, a linked story collection about young men in Cleveland that addresses masculinity, intimacy, and the quiet humiliations of early adulthood. His story “A Picture of Fragility” received an honorable mention in the 2025 Gulf Coast Magazine Prize in Fiction. His first book, Haley’s Comet, was a self-illustrated children’s novel he completed in middle school. He often writes while listening to music and thinks of his stories as having soundtracks.

Jenn Hipps recently earned her MFA in Creative Writing degree from Northwestern University. In her fiction, she’s interested in exploring how, even in an abundance of love and goodwill, people are so very good at messing up what’s most important to them, and the vulnerable work that true repair demands. She’s currently working on a novel her baby-queer self would have loved to read.

E.W.I. (Eric) Johnson (he/him) is a Chicago poet interested in gothic romance, ecological decay, and bumblebees. He has poems appearing in Burning House Press, Sonora Review, Jet Fuel Review, and the climate change anthology "Dear Human at the Edge of Time." Eric is a recent graduate of Northwestern’s MFA program in Prose and Poetry.

USA Today-bestselling author Lori Rader-Day has been nominated for crime fiction’s highest award, the Edgar Award, and has won a few others, including an Indiana Author Award from Indiana Humanities. Lori earned her MFA in creative writing from Roosevelt University in Chicago; she also has an MA in creative nonfiction from Ball State University. Lori chairs a non-profit crime fiction readers’ event called Midwest Mystery Conference. Wreck Your Heart is Lori’s eighth novel.

Michael Zapata is the author of the novel The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, winner of the 2020 Chicago Review of Books Award for Fiction and a Best Book of the Year for NPR, the A.V. Club, Los Angeles Public Library, and BookPage, among others. He is a recipient of a Meier Foundation Artist Achievement Award and the DAG Prize for Literature. He is on the faculty of StoryStudio Chicago and the MFA faculty of Northwestern University. As a public-school educator, he taught literature and writing in high schools servicing drop out students. He currently lives in Chicago with his family.

Congratulations to MFA fiction alumnus Ankur Thakkar whose debut novel is out on September 15 from Northwestern University Press, edited by literary force Megan Stielstra!

Here's more about Ankur's novel:
A story of first love across cities spanning the decade that transformed the internet

In the halls of an elite East Coast high school, Arjun and Payal fall in love as the world begins to tilt toward the digital. Over the next eight years, their trajectories diverge as sharply as the fractured internet itself. Payal ascends to the dizzying, dopamine-fueled heights of New York's influencer economy, finding fame on Boost, a looping video app that is as rewarding as it is demanding. Meanwhile, in a cavernous office in Chicago, Arjun, a musician whose dreams have quieted, now cleans up the same platform's debris, moderating the internet's darkest videos. When a brutal act of political violence against a beloved musician goes viral, this rip in reality forces the pair to confront the motivations of the platforms they inhabit. A sharp exploration of creative ambition and the multifarious nature of identity, this is a story of love in the time of infinite scroll and a look at what we sacrifice to be seen.

Two upcoming events in Chicago with MFA alumnus Devin O'Shea - one next week at Pilsen Community Books on Thursday, July 9, and one in August with Rebecca Makkai for Haymarket Books!

Happy publication day to MFA alumnus Devin O'Shea! His new book, THE VEILED PROPHET, is out today from the great Haymarket Books!

The Veiled Prophet Haymarket Books: books for changing the world.

Sharing an interview with one of our creative nonfiction faculty, Donna Seaman, about her most recent book, RIVER OF BOOKS. This interview originally appeared in Newcity Lit and was conducted by faculty director Christine Sneed - republished recently in Sneed's Substack, BOOKISH.

Thinking with Your Entire Being: An Interview with Writer and Editor Donna Seaman Her newest is River of Books: A Life in Reading

New and recent books by our graduate creative writing faculty - EVERY EXIT BRINGS YOU HOME - Naeem Murr; DEFIANT ACTS - James Stewart; HOW TO WALK ON WATER - Rachel Swearingen; RIVER OF BOOKS - Donna Seaman; SCARED VIOLENT LIKE HORSES - John McCarthy; WRECK YOUR HEART - Lori Rader-Day!

This Friday, May 29, 2026 join MFA fiction alumnus Ignatius Valentine Aloysius for a book launch at 7 pm at Roscoe Books in Chicago.

His second collaborative poetry collection is Everything I Touch Is—& Isn’t—You (Roadside Press), a collaboration with recent Santa Cruz, CA poet laureate David Allen Sullivan! Also featuring Carlos Cumpián, Faylita Hicks, and Nina Sudhakar!

Last night’s MFA faculty reading with .stewart312 John McCarthy 🖊️📚!!

MA & MFA Faculty Reading
Next Friday, May 15!
6:30 PM
In-person at The Book Cellar
4736 N. Lincoln Avenue
Chicago
Northwestern University School of Professional Studies
Featuring Rachel Swearingen JJames Stewart Donna Seaman, Naeem Murr & John McCarthy, hosted by Christine Sneed- please join us for a convivial literary event!

Congratulations to fiction faculty member Laurie Lawlor who won the Society of Midland Authors' Children's Reading Round Table Award for her nonfiction book Many Voices: Building Erie, the Canal That Changed America!

Many Voices: Building Erie, The Canal That Changed America Building Erie, The Canal That Changed America