McNeese State University will host a poetry and fiction reading featuring three of its Master of Fine Arts alumni on March 27 at 7 p.m. in Stokes Auditorium in Hardtner Hall, according to a March 20 announcement.
The event highlights the achievements of J. Bruce Fuller, Michael Shewmaker, and Jenn Alandy Trahan, all former Wallace Stegner Fellows at Stanford University. The Stegner Fellowship is known for its selectivity, accepting only ten writers out of more than two thousand applicants each year.
“We are welcoming back three alumni who have been awarded the extraordinarily prestigious Stegner Fellowship. This Stanford University fellowship offers two fully funded years at Stanford during which time writers work under the mentorship of world-class faculty,” said Dr. Keagan LeJeune, dean of McNeese’s College of Liberal Arts. “The Stegner Fellowship has an exceptionally low acceptance rate. Of the more than 2,000 applicants each year, only 10 are chosen. That McNeese has had four of its alumni receive this award is truly amazing and speaks to the program’s long history of stellar accomplishments.” LeJeune also noted that Pulitzer Prize-winning author Adam Johnson (1996), now a professor at Stanford, is another McNeese alumnus who received the fellowship.
McNeese’s MFA program in creative writing has been offered for 45 years and is Louisiana’s oldest such program. The curriculum centers on workshops where students review each other’s work and take craft-based courses with faculty including Michael Horner and Vallie Lynn Watson in fiction, as well as Michael Robins and Kevin Thomason in poetry.
Fuller currently teaches at Sam Houston State University and directs Texas Review Press; Shewmaker teaches creative writing at Stanford; Trahan is a Jones Lecturer at Stanford after her Stegner Fellowship. Their works have appeared in publications such as The Southern Review, Best American Poetry, Harper’s Magazine, and The Best American Short Stories.
For those seeking accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act for this event or more information about McNeese’s MFA program, contact details are available through the university’s Office of Campus Compliance and Civility.
