Notre Dame MFA in Creative Writing

10/09/2026

10/09/2026

BREAKING NEWS
The 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature is awarded to the Canadian author Anne Carson, “for her bold and inventive oeuvre that, in playful dialogue with the classical tradition, has created new forms for contemporary literature.”

Anne Carson was born in 1950 in Toronto, Canada. In 1981, she published her doctoral thesis in Classics entitled ‘Odi et Amo Ergo Sum’, and has, throughout her entire career, combined poetry writing with translation work and teaching at various universities. Almost all her literary production has centred upon the intersection between the philologist’s obsession with words and the poet’s desire for new meaning. She has herself identified the etymology of words as the starting point for all her work. Her translations from Classical Greek may be regarded as independent works in their own right. Among these is her interpretation of Sappho’s poem fragments, ‘If Not, Winter’ (2002), along with tragedies such as Sophocles’s ‘Electra’ (2001) and ‘Antigone’ (2015) and Euripides’s ‘Bakkhai’ (2015).

In the 1990s, Carson published a series of notable works. Among these is ‘The Glass Essay’ in ‘Glass, Irony, and God’ (1995), which demonstrates the potential of the long poem where genre boundaries are seen to blur.

The same decade saw the publication of another work, often heralded as Carson’s greatest, entitled ‘Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse’ (1998). This demonstrates her eminent ability to actualise the classical literary tradition. With a precise feel for contemporary idioms and experiences, she takes as her starting point poem fragments by the sixth century BC Greek poet Stesichoros concerning the winged red monster Geryon.

Throughout her entire authorship, Carson with a light touch explores the possibilities of writing, a process by which the literary sketch has become of particular value to her. Bearing witness to this is ‘Float’ (2016), a work consisting of twenty-two chapbooks on different subjects, capable of being read in any order. Another is ‘Wrong Norma’ from 2024, a diverse combination of texts with a strongly performative aspect in which Carson crosses over into various artistic and academic fields. Her collaborations with visual artists and choreographers and with opera and theatre directors demonstrate the freedom with which she relates to literary expectations and rule systems. It is this that lies behind the outstanding importance her work since the 1990s has had for the international art and literature scene.

Anders Olsson
Chair of the Nobel Committee

Learn more about the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature: https://bit.ly/4hnkhNO

10/03/2026

The Notre Dame MFA in Creative Writing combines generous, attentive focus on student work with active, engaged pedagogy. As featured in AWP's "Creative Writing Currently" series, our program was founded in 1992, and we have since continually recruited a diverse and dynamic body of students.

All of our MFA students receive a full tuition waiver, a fellowship providing a full stipend of $29,000, and a health insurance subsidy, as well as teaching, editorial, and/or organizing experience. We also encourage our students to take their work into the community through teaching local writing courses, organizing community events, and workshopping with incarcerated students at the St. Joseph County Jail. In the summer, students have an opportunity to apply for one of our summer internships with Park, Fine & Brower. We also offer a variety of post-MFA fellowships and literary prizes.

Some of our outstanding MFA alumni include:
Jenny Boully, 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in General Nonfiction
Joseph Earl Thomas, winner of the First Novel Prize from The Center of Fiction
Justin Haynes, winner of the PEN Open Book Award, Los Angeles TImes Book Prize, and OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature
Lily Hoàng, winner of a PEN Open Books Award and Cleveland State University Poetry Center's Nonfiction Book Prize
Betsy Cornwell, New York Times-bestselling author
Thirii M. Myint, winner of the 2019 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and the 2018 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize
Ae Hee Lee, winner of the 2022 Dorset Prize
Learn more by visiting our Alumni Spotlight (link in profile).

Similarly, our award-winning faculty represent a rich array of backgrounds, have distinguished themselves in a variety of genres and media, and teach from their expertise in both traditional and innovative practices. We're also home to Notre Dame Review, edited by Dionne Irving (Prose) and Johannes Göransson (Poetry). We also house independent press Action Books, edited by Johannes Göransson and Joyelle McSweeney. Action Books is dedicated to international writing and hybrid forms.

The application deadline is January 15, 2027.

https://english.nd.edu/graduate/mfa/

09/22/2026

Hosted by the Institute for Social Concerns, University of Notre Dame on Friday afternoons of select home football weekends, MVP Fridays tackle big questions by inviting national leaders, journalists, and writers to speak on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture takes place at 4:00 p.m. in the Geddes Hall Andrews Auditorium or Coffee House.

Anand Gopal is an American writer who contributes to The New Yorker and the author of Days of Love and Rage: A Story of Ordinary People Forging a Revolution(link is external), a work of narrative nonfiction about a group of revolutionaries who overthrew a dictator.

This event is co-sponsored by the Department of English, Creative Writing Program, Liu Institute for Asia & Asian Studies, Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience, Keough School of Global Affairs, Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion, Gallivan Program in Journalism, Ethics, and Democracy, and Franco Family Institute for the Liberal Arts and the Public Good.

09/22/2026

Scenes from yesterday evening’s talk and reading by Lauren Francis-Sharma (“The Case for the Secondary Character: A Writer’s Journey Through History”). Francis-Sharma was introduced by the Director of Initiative on Race and Resilience Dionne Irving Bremyer.

Lauren Francis-Sharma, a Pushcart nominated writer, is the author of Book of the Little Axe, a 2020 finalist for the Hurston/Wright Award in Fiction. Her critically acclaimed first novel, ‘Til the Well Runs Dry was awarded the Honor Fiction Prize by the Black Caucus of the ALA. Her third novel, Casualties of Truth, a finalist for the 2025 Caricon Prize, has been named a “Best Book to Read” by NPR, and was inspired by her time at South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commision’s Amnesty Hearings. Lauren has written the new introduction to the latest edition of the classic South African novel, Cry, the Beloved Country, and is co-editor of the 2026 anthology, Welcome to the Mountain: A Portable Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is the Assistant Director of Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, serves as Awards Chair for the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, and is a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, the University of Michigan Law School, and the University of Pennsylvania.

09/19/2026

MFA field trip to Hesburgh Libraries ' Rare Books & Special Collections! 😮📚 Grateful thanks to curator-extraordinaire Daniel Johnson, our subject specialist for English literature and digital humanities! His selections never cease to amaze our students!

09/18/2026

Thanks to everyone who joined us this week to celebrate Notre Dame MFA alum Misael Osorio-Conde's debut poetry collection: some were just the Fragments / es qué fueron sólo los Fragmentos (available from Baobab Press).

https://baobabpress.com/books/fragments/

Misael was introduced by Professor Johannes Göransson who writes: “Like César Vallejo, his most obvious predecessor, Misael Osorio-Conde writes poetry that moves, vibrates, transforms. As Emerson wrote to Whitman, ‘This book makes me happy the way a great power makes one happy.’”

Grateful thanks also goes to Francisco Aragón and Letras Latinas for sponsoring the reception - catered by the wonderful Dena’s Kitchen LLC 😋🎉

09/15/2026

Tomorrow @ 5pm: The Creative Writing Reading Series invites you to join us on Wednesday September 16, 2026 for a reading from returning MFA alum: poet and translator Misael Osorio-Conde! We will be celebrating the release of Misael's debut poetry collection some were just the Fragments // es que fueron solo los Fragmentos (Baobob Press, 2026).

A reception sponsored by Letras Latinas will follow.

When: Wed Sep 16, 2026, 5:00 pm
Where: 232 Decio English Commons

https://english.nd.edu/news-events/events/2026/09/16/creative-writing-series-ft-misael-osorio-conde/

Misael Osorio Conde is a poet and translator. He earned his MFA at the University of Notre Dame and is currently enrolled in the Program for Writers at University of Illinois, Chicago. Some of his poems have appeared in the journals Protean Magazine, The Texas Review, and The Brooklyn Rail. His full length debut, the bilingual, some were just the Fragments // es que fueron solo los Fragments, is forthcoming from Baobab Press.

09/15/2026

Hosted by the institute on Friday afternoons of select home football weekends, MVP Fridays tackle big questions by inviting national leaders, journalists, and writers to speak on questions of meaning, values, and purpose. Each lecture takes place at 4:00 p.m. in the Geddes Hall Andrews Auditorium or Coffee House.

This Friday's featured lecture:

Imbolo Mbue: “Every Story Is a Love Story”

Mbue is a Cameroonian American New York Times bestselling novelist, short story writer, and author of the novel Every Story Is a Love Story(link is external), which tells a story of hurt, regret, forgiveness, and healing.

Mbue will be introduced by Francisco Robles, associate professor in the English Department, faculty fellow at the Institute for Latino Studies, concurrent professor of the Gender Studies Program, and faculty affiliate of the Initiative on Race and Resilience.

This event is co-sponsored by the Creative Writing Program, Department of Africana Studies, Department of English, Franco Family Institute for the Liberal Arts and the Public Good, and Notre Dame Initiative on Race and Resilience.

09/15/2026

We are absolutely thrilled to be just one month out from "What Miracle: New Revelations on the Prose Poem," the inaugural Prose Poetry Network conference, held at Notre Dame Rome, October 15 and 16, 2026. Our conference, located in the heart of the Eternal City, will bring together esteemed practitioners of the prose poem, leading theorists, emerging scholars and doctoral students, and even skeptics of prose poetry as a medium of lyric expression. We believe that now is the perfect moment to embrace cross-cultural dialogue and reinforce global scholarly networks as we consider together this relatively little-studied modality, especially given the explosion in scholarship surrounding matters of hybridity as well as broader critical and creative interest in devising new means of pushing against the boundaries of form and genre.

On Day 1, we will hear panelists engage questions of Rhythm, Genre, Mode; Alternative Genealogies of the prose poem; Lyric Reading and Its Discontents as they pertain to hybrid modalities; and Hibernospheric Exchanges occurring across the Irish diaspora. There will be the first of two dialoghi after lunch—You Go Rimbaud: On Translating Rimbaud's Illuminations, which features Adrien Fischer and Jahan Khajavi discussing the art of collaborative translation—and as the day's culmination, a Keynote by Will Schutt, winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize and esteemed translator from the Italian.

Day 2 will feature panelists addressing matters of temporality Across Continents of Time; how the prose poem is understood alongside other Hybrid Variations and forms of intermediality; how breaks from formal orthodoxy can facilitate/are facilitated by Rapture / Rupture; and what Contemporary Departures in poetics might show where prose poetry is headed in the 21st century. The second post-prandial dialoghi Render: Poetic Fictions and Fabulations will feature PPN director Clíona Ní Ríordáin in conversation with Billy Ramsell about his new book Render, a collection of "translations" by an invented Catalan poet. Finally, after an Aperitivo onsite, the conference will conclude with a gala Poetry Reading by our gathered poets, including Will Schutt, Johannes Göransson, and Ellen Dillon.

See the full conference schedule and the list of participants at the links below.

Thanks to our generous sponsors: the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, the Notre Dame Department of English, and the Notre Dame MFA in Creative Writing.