Boise State University MFA in Creative Writing

05/13/2026

Ayotola Tehingbola (MFA, fiction writing, 2024) recently had her story collection, “Lagos Will Be Hard for You,” shortlisted for the 2025 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

The collection, featuring stories set between Nigeria and the US, explores the constant straddling of two worlds: the need to make sense of home, and the weight of being lost and out of place in a new world. Tehingbola puts the experiences of African characters center-stage as her stories weave the imagined with the real, the personal with the political.

Read the full story on our website: https://www.boisestate.edu/tfcw-cwmfa/home/mfa-news/

04/07/2026

New location! The Fernando Flores reading and book signing on Friday, April 17 will now take place in the Center for Visual Arts Atrium on the Boise State campus.

Event Details

At 7 PM on Friday, April 17, 2026, Flores will give a reading of his work, followed by a Q and A and book signing. Free and open to the public, the Hemingway Center Reading Series brings renowned writers to campus each year.

04/01/2026

At the end of March, Boise State MFA poetry students worked with Peter Gizzi, winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize in poetry, in a stunning setting. In Ketchum, Idaho, at The Hemingway House, the poetry MFAers and Gizzi workshopped and discussed student pieces. Gizzi served as this year's Ketchum Visiting Writer, a highlight of Boise State's MFA program.

The final home of Ernest Hemingway and his wife, Mary, The Hemingway House serves as an historical site and artist residency for writers. Maintained by The Community Library, The Hemingway House provides a beautiful and resonant setting for Boise State MFA students to receive feedback from renowned authors.

As part of his visit to Boise State, Gizzi also gave a reading at the The Community Library in Ketchum, as well as on campus.

Each semester, the Boise State Creative Writing MFA program invites an esteemed author to run the Ketchum workshop. Working closely with The Community Library in Ketchum, the visiting author stays at the Hemingway House and gives a reading for both the Ketchum and Boise State communities. Past Ketchum workshop authors include Joy Williams, Adam Johnson and Rick Bass.

03/31/2026

Join the Creative Writing Program for a book launch with Basque poet Leire Bilbao, along with her translator, Joana Urtasun. Bilbao's new collection, "Between Fish Scales," is her English language debut, and will be available for advance purchase and signing.

"I loved reading Basque poet Leire Bilbao’s playful, shapeshifting verse. This is a book of small, strange miracles."
- Katie Peterson

Event Details
7:30 PM
Friday, April 3
Hemingway Center, Room 110
Free and open to the public

03/13/2026

Tonight! Don't miss esteemed poet Peter Gizzi, winner of the TS Eliot Poetry Prize. Gizzi will give a reading the the Hemingway Center at 7:30 PM.

Peter Gizzi
7:30 PM
Friday, March 13
Hemingway Center
Free

"Having read Peter Gizzi's work through the immense and singular wingspan his books make, I am still awestruck and dumbfounded as to how these poems are made. This book believes in language. It also offers it the utmost reverence: by lowering it to human height, where the living are. What a masterwork of deft maneuvering within the dynamo Gizzi has made of the lyric."
―Ocean Vuong, author of Time is a Mother

03/10/2026

Congratulations to creative writing professor Mitch Wieland, whose forthcoming novel, THE GHOSTS OF OKUMA, was featured on Kirkus's 'Best Indie Books' List!

Kirkus Reviews wrote about “The Ghosts of Okuma” earlier this year, giving it one of their coveted star reviews. The magazine receives 10,000 submissions every year and only 10% of those earn prestigious star reviews. From star-reviewed books, only a select few are chosen for for the “Best Indie Books” list each month.

01/09/2026

Join us in congratulating creative writing Professor Mitch Wieland, whose forthcoming novel, "The Ghosts of Okuma," received a Kirkus Star!
"A strange, beautiful, and unexpected exploration of the fallout of family tragedy," the starred review noted. "Filled with rich detail and lovable characters [...] Whether depicting the memories of a mother and son in California or staging an eerie conclusion set against a 'rain-drenched radioactive forest,' Wieland finds something fascinating and engrossing in every twist of the tale."
The novel will come out in November 2026 from Regal House Publishing.
About "Ghosts of Okuma"
Wieland's novel centers on two teenagers, both marked by tragedy and loss, who form an unlikely friendship in Tokyo, Japan.
The novel received much advanced praise from writers, including Anthony Doerr, best-selling author of "All the Light We Cannot See" and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. “By turns comic and tragic, Mitch Wieland’s "The Ghosts of Okuma" is a sharply-written and brilliantly-paced novel that manages to become both a satisfying love story and a devastating look at the lives of one family shattered by su***de and another displaced by the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster," Doerr wrote. "It’s so funny, charming, and infused with tenderness that it’s a pure pleasure to read [...]”
About Mitch Wieland
Professor Mitch Wieland, a teacher for nearly three decades, co-founded Boise State University’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. During his time at Boise State, Wieland also founded The Idaho Review, an award-winning literary journal edited and published by the MFA Program. Wieland authored two acclaimed novels: “Willy Slater’s Lane” and “God’s Dogs,” winner of the Idaho Book of the Year Award and finalist for the John Gardner Fiction Book Prize. Regal House Publishing will publish his third novel, “The Ghosts of Okuma,” in 2026. Wieland’s short fiction appears in The Missouri Review, The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review, and numerous anthologies, including Best of the West. Wieland received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, the Idaho Commission on the Arts, and the Alexa Rose Foundation. Wieland has also served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and received Boise State’s Excellence in Graduate Mentoring Award in 2024. The Idaho Commission on the Arts (Arts Idaho) appointed
Professor Mitch Wieland as the 2026–2027 Idaho Writer in Residence, the state’s highest literary honor.

11/22/2025

Thanks to School of the Arts for the fun chat.

Professor Mitch Wieland joined Boise State in 1996. In his time here, he created the...

10/21/2025

Thrilled to share that Matthew Denton-Edmundson has an essay in the 2025 Best American Non-Fiction anthology, published today! This year’s editor, Jia Tolentino, selected Denton-Edmundson’s essay, “How to Love Animals,” for the anthology. Denton-Edmundson currently serves as a visiting assistant professor in the Creative Writing Program. Congratulations, Matthew!

Of the 2025 anthology, Kirkus Reviews called it, “A potent collection that speaks to dark times.”

10/14/2025

We can't wait for tomorrow, Thursday 10/16!! The Hemingway Center Reading Series will present author Whitney Collins, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize.

"Collins exhibits a contagious appreciation for the world’s strange horrors, big and small.”

- Publisher’s Weekly

Event Details

At 7 PM on Thursday, October 16, 2025, Collins will give a reading of her work, followed by a Q and A and book signing. Free and open to the public, the Hemingway Center Reading Series brings renowned writers to campus each year.

About Whitney Collins

Whitney Collins authored two story collections: "Ricky and Other Love Stories," longlisted for The Story Prize, and "Big Bad," which won the Mary McCarthy Prize, a Gold Medal IPPY, and a Bronze Medal INDIES.

The Best American Short Stories 2022 selected Whitney’s story “Lush” as a Distinguished Story. She also won a Pushcart Prize for “The Entertainer,” a Pushcart Special Mention for “The Pupil,” the American Short(er) Fiction Prize for “Ricky,” and the ProForma Contest for “Cray.”

Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, Gulf Coast, The Pinch, The Los Angeles Review, and swamp pink, among others.

Currently, she is finishing up her third story collection and on the fiction faculty at Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, where she received her MFA.

10/07/2025

Join us in congratulating Professor Mitch Wieland, who was named the Idaho Writer in Residence by the Idaho Commission on the Arts!

A professor in and founder of the Boise State Creative Writing MFA Program, Wieland has taught for nearly three decades.

“As Writer in Residence, I hope to continue building connections among Idaho’s diverse literary communities,” said Wieland. “After nearly thirty years of teaching and writing here, I’m eager to give back—to help writers in every corner of the state find their voices and audiences.”