HFU MFA Program

Happy Holidays from the Holy Family Creative Writing MFA program❄️☃️

Wishing you and your loved ones a safe, joyful, and healthy holiday season, and a peaceful New Year✨

Are you Philadelphia’s next Poet Laureate?✍️✨

Your voice could shape the city—submit your work and let your words lead the way.

The deadline for applications for the 2026–2027 Poet Laureate is Sunday, November 30, 2025, at 11:59 p.m.

🔗https://libwww.freelibrary.org/programs/poet-laureate/

Less than a month away! Come join us for our upcoming Distinguished Writers Series!

The Holy Family Creative Writing MFA program is back to host our Distinguish Writers Series, and we’re so excited to welcome Daniel Torday as our guest this fall!

Join us on November 18th at 6:30pm in the ETC Auditiorium to hear readings from his book, The 12th Commandment, and participate in the Q&A with students and faculty afterwards📖

You can also register to access the livestream at https://holyfamily-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9wIOrE6TQ_S9ixwfdiGpbg #/registration

2025 Digital Residency Spotlight #1✨

This November the MFA program is hosting another digital residency with some incredible visiting faculty that are ready to share their work, lead discussions, and get to know our talented Holy Family students!

Please help us in welcoming Dr. Maya Popa📚 ✍️

Dr. Maya C. Popa is most recently the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder (W.W. Norton 2022; Picador 2023) named one of the Guardian’s Best Books of Poetry. American Faith (Sarabande 2019) was runner-up in the Kathryn A. Morton Prize judged by Ocean Vuong and was awarded the North American Book Prize in 2020.

She is previously the author of three chapbooks and has received numerous awards, including from the Poetry Foundation and the Oxford Poetry Society. Her writing has been commissioned by The United Nations and other institutions, and her
poetry has been featured on a Louis Vuitton trunk for the Visionaries campaign, as well as in the Van Cleef & Arpels Spring Festival. She holds a PhD on the role of wonder in poetry from Goldsmiths, University of London, where she was a recipient of a department bursary for exceptional merit, and previous degrees from Oxford University, NYU, and Barnard College.

Popa is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at NYU. She works closely with established and emerging writers
through Conscious Writers Collective, her online writing platform and community designed to help writers identify and meet their writing and publishing goals.

The Holy Family Creative Writing MFA program is back to host our Distinguish Writers Series, and we’re so excited to welcome Daniel Torday as our guest this fall!

Join us on November 18th at 6:30pm in the ETC Auditiorium to hear readings from his book, The 12th Commandment, and participate in the Q&A with students and faculty afterwards📖

You can also register to access the livestream at https://holyfamily-edu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9wIOrE6TQ_S9ixwfdiGpbg #/registration