University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing and Translation

08/17/2026

First day of the Fall semester! Join us in welcoming a new cohort of remarkable writers to campus and their FIRST DAY in the MFA:

POETRY
Lie Ford
Knoxville, TN

Kath Rees
Fayetteville, AR

Sophia Schmitz
La Crosse, WI

Micah Grotegut
Orem, UT

Shana Carey
Venice, FL

Samantha Tuttle
Iowa City. IA

FICTION
Noah Leventhal
Richmond, VA

Juanjuan Zhang
Fuquan City, China

Billy Whyte
Cork, Ireland

Ethan Veenker
Sand Springs, OK

David Huang
Thousand Oaks, CA

Eric Lee
Madison, WI

TRANSLATION
D Kopec
Boise ID

07/21/2026

THE GREAT AWAKENING, a novel by longtime program professor of fiction Skip Hays is out today from Regal House Publishing.

We are celebrating the release today of Donald Hays' THE GREAT AWAKENING. "Satire doesn’t come any better,” says Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls. https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/the-great-awakening/

06/09/2026

BIG congrats to alum Kristin Entler! Their debut poetry collection, "Of Water Never Ceasing" is out now on Loblolly Press.

05/20/2026

Tremendous news: Alum Jacob Shores-Argüello has been awarded a prestigious Harvard Radcliffe Institute Fellowship!

Lasting an entire academic year, the fellowship awards scholars time and resources to conduct work on "groundbreaking projects."

Shores-Argüello "will write a novel told in pieces that draws on his transnational childhood across North and Central America to explore borders—between cultures, languages, and the natural world."

Congratulations, Jacob!

05/06/2026

Rising third-year poet EK Krone has been named the winner of Arkana's Arkansas Writers Award AND the magazine's Editor's Choice Award for her poems HUNTERS & GATHERERS and GENESIS. Kudos, EK!

Hear her read the poems here:

ARKANSAS WRITERS AWARD WINNER &EDITOR'S CHOICE AWARD BY EK KRONE hunters & gatherers everything i am is reinforced by everything i am not: boy means not girl, girl means not God, God means not real; not real as in the fact that i am a selfish girl: you give & i gather.you hunt & i

05/04/2026

Curious about the art of literary translation?

Professor Padma Viswanathan discusses the finer points of translating texts into English on the most recent episode of Short Talks from the Hill.

Listen here:

Writer Padma Viswanathan, who teaches graduate-level creative writing and translation, is also a celebrated translator of Portuguese. She explains the practice, art and deeper purpose of translating fiction into English.

04/27/2026

Poetry for this (almost!) end of semester Monday morning - "SOUTHERN LOVE SONG FOR Q***R GIRLS" by alum Dylan Hopper is up at Scavengers now.

sunlight-dappled dirt rises in plumes thick as flour-caked biscuits or sticky pollen   kissin’ tulips, your Alabama mouth soft- presses into the corner of my Carolina eye,   dilates our jinxed past or what seems set in the stone cracked across the creek, erratic, another nam

04/17/2026

Big congratulations to third-year fiction MFA Abuchi Modilim! Abuchi's story, AMERICAN ACTORS is up at Guernica now.

"We wanted to act out an American movie and shoot and shoot and shoot and shoot. We wanted to burn down the world like American actors."

04/08/2026

Join us at Fayetteville Public Library as we welcome acclaimed author Stephen Graham Jones to Fayetteville next Tuesday, 4/14!

HEADS UP:
Book sales begin at 5pm, and Stephen Graham Jones is scheduled to do a book signing from 5-5:45pm prior to the event.

The University of Arkansas Program in Creative Writing & Translation is proud to present its 2025-26 Distinguished Reader, acclaimed novelist Stephen Graham Jones, for a reading, Q&A, and signing.. Event starts at April 14, 2026 6:00 PM CDT