Arkansas Writers MFA Program at UCA

02/18/2026

The Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop is pleased to announce this year’s tenth annual Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award winners and finalists.
We received a record number of submissions this year and congratulate the following finalists:
Poetry:
What Good is Heaven Raye Hendrix Texas Review Press
The Book of Wounded Sparrows Octavio Quintanilla Texas Review Press
If In Some Cataclysm Anna Leahy Glass Lyre Press
The Infinite Field Alice Templeton Sixteen Rivers Press
Song of My Softening Omotara James Alice James Books
Sadness of the Apex Predator Dion O’Reilly Cornerstone Press
Prose:
Eyes by Hand: Prosthetics of Art and Healing Dan Roche MIT Press
Beware the Tall Grass Ellen Birkett Morris Columbus State University Press
This year’s winners were Frank Thurmond in Prose for Lottie Deno: A Novel of the Civil War and the American Southwest, Parkhurst Brothers Publishing and Britt Kaufmann in Poetry for Midlife Calculus, Press 53.
The McMath Award was founded in 2016 to promote recently published books and to honor central Arkansas author and literary advocate Phillip H. McMath, who selects the overall winner from the finalists chosen by students in the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop.
More information on the award and how to enter can be found here:

The 2025 Phillip H. McMath Post Publication Book Award will be open for nominations between February 1 and October 15, 2025 (postmark deadline). We now offer two awards, one for prose and one for poetry. We encourage you to read our guidelines below before submitting.

12/19/2025

The Arkansas Writers MFA at UCA has entered the chat 👋

Full residency
2-year program
Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Hybrid
📍Conway, Arkansas
Associated publications:

Learn more here: https://www.chillsubs.com/mfa-partners/arkansas-writers-mfa

The Arkansas Writers MFA at UCA has entered the chat 👋 - Full residency - 2-year program - Fiction, Poetry, Nonfiction, Hybrid - 📍Conway, Arkansas - Associated publications: Arkana, .bsky.social Learn more here: https://www.chillsubs.com/mfa-partners/arkansas-writers-mfa

12/12/2025

Congratulations to our graduating MFAs! We’re so proud! Go make your mark!

11/20/2025

We are proud to be part of this growing partnership with Chill Subs. Check us out and watch it grow.

Our MFA partners get it - being a writer is messy, uncertain, and (let's be honest) kind of ridiculous sometimes. These MFA programs are providing students with access to our database, tools, and all the other cool stuff we're building to help you publish, connect, discover opportunities, and share....

11/14/2025

Congratulations to Thomas Moran on his successful defense of his thesis! And that’s a wrap on 7 successful thesis defenses for fall ‘25! Congratulations everyone on a job well done!

11/08/2025

Congratulations to Storm Crouch on the successful defense of their MFA thesis.

11/08/2025

Congratulations to Jeremy Quinn on the successful defense of his MFA thesis!

10/31/2025

Congratulations to Shelby Nipper on her successful defense of her MFA thesis, a poetry collection.

10/31/2025

Congratulations to Orion Burns on her successful defense of her thesis, a poetry collection.

10/29/2025

Have you thought about continuing your writing education with an MFA in Creative Writing at UCA?

Good news! In honor of homecoming, applications to the program are FREE this week!
Check the details below!

You may think you need to have your whole application ready in order to qualify. Not so! All you need to do is start your application by November 1 to get the fee waiver. After November 1 you can work on adding your portfolio, statement of purpose, letters of recommendation and the rest.

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions.
Stephanie Vanderslice
Director, UCA MFA
From the Grad School:
In celebration of UCA's Homecoming, we are happy to announce that the UCA Graduate School application fee can be waived using code HOME2UCA.
This officer is only valid now through November 1st at midnight. Be sure to use it while you can!

Applying to Graduate School

About UCA's MFA Program:
The Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop is an intentionally small, deeply engaged program that nurtures a vibrant community of literary artists. Emphasizing mentorship, publication, and pedagogy, it provides a supportive home for your writing journey—now and for years to come.

The program provides graduate students the opportunity to concentrate on the study, practice, and teaching of Creative Writing in a highly focused writing environment facilitated by writers for writers. At 45 hours, this program will ensure that graduates build multi-genre backgrounds in the popular discipline of Creative Writing through workshops, forms courses, topics courses, a wide variety of electives, and specialized teaching and editing practicums. To ensure individualized attention, the program admits 5 to 8 students annually, with a total population of under 25 students. We offer two publishing assistantships, one with the award-winning national magazine the Oxford American, and one with our new online magazine, Arkana. We also offer the Porter Fund Scholarship, a $5000 yearly scholarship, to one student.

10/27/2025

Congratulations to Zane Grober on the successful defense of his MFA thesis, a fantasy novel.