MFA Writers

What happens when a tech startup employee starts taking online writing classes? They end up in an MFA program, of course. In this episode, Ray Wise sits down with Jared to talk about finding writing in their 20s and the lessons they bring from the tech world to their creative work. Plus, they discuss Rutgers-Camden’s multi-genre emphasis, weekend writing retreats with the MFA community, and the pros and cons of a small program.

Ray Wise is a multi-genre writer living in Philadelphia, where they are completing their final semester in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden. Ray's work has been published in Passages North, Rose Books Reader, Barrelhouse, Hobart, etc., nominated for Best of the Net, and supported by Sundress Academy for the Arts. They are currently at work on a novel manuscript and a poetry collection. Find them on Twitter/X @ray__wise and catch them reading in Philadelphia for the Rose Books Reader launch on April 26th at Clown Bar.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

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Integrating elegy, ekphrasis, and dance notation, Oli Peters’s thesis project is a multilingual, multi-genre exploration in translation and lyric poetry. In this episode, she shares how her program encourages creative experimentation, even when she submits work that feels “absolutely unpublishable, verging on unreadable.” Plus, she discusses her courses in Medieval manuscripts and theater, university-funded opportunities in Paris and Ireland, and how being rejected from MFA programs right after undergrad led her to spend five years writing daily for no one but herself.

Oli is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Notre Dame. Her writing is forthcoming in Annulet, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, and mercury firs. Her past work appears in Pleiades, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, Heavy Feather Review, and abobo zine. Her dance-performance piece "Body Glyph State" will be performed at the 2025 Iowa Choreography Festival. She is a MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame. Find her at her website, oliupeters.wixsite.com/olipeters, and on Instagram @olimpeters.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

• Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
• Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
• Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.
• Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.

STAY CONNECTED

• Twitter: @MFAwriterspod
• Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast
• Facebook: MFA Writers
• Email: [email protected]

Can you find a close community in a low-res program? Emily St. Martin, having met her best friends in her MFA, says absolutely yes. She joins Jared to talk about how her program has helped her craft her memoir-in-progress, the fear and reward of vulnerability in creative nonfiction, and how writing lets us acknowledge and redefine our pasts.

Emily St. Martin is an independent journalist based in Los Angeles, CA. She has written for the New York Times, InStyle Magazine, Cosmopolitan, VICE, Los Angeles Magazine, The Fix, The Hollywood Reporter, People and elsewhere, including for the Southern California News Group where she won a third place award for best news feature with the LA Press Club in 2022. She holds a BA in Journalism from The University of La Verne and is currently pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction in the University of California Riverside’s Palm Desert Low-Residency program. Find her at her website, emilystmartin.com, and on Twitter @ByEmilyStMartin.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

• Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
• Leave a rating and review on Apple Podcasts.
• Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.
• Apply to be a guest on the show by filling out our application.

STAY CONNECTED

• Twitter: @MFAwriterspod
• Instagram: @MFAwriterspodcast
• Facebook: MFA Writers
• Email: [email protected]

How does our excavation of ancestral history shape our understanding of ourselves and how can writing guide us through this process? On this episode, Derek Chan discusses the role of family stories in his poetry and life, the magic of bewilderment in art, and the dissonance between our external language and our internal being. Plus, as a first-generation and international student, he offers advice for others moving to the United States to pursue higher education.

Derek Chan is a writer and educator from Melbourne, Australia. He holds a First-Class Honours in Literary Studies from Monash University, where he received the Arthur Brown Thesis Prize. His writing has appeared in journals and anthologies such asBest of Australian Poems,Australian Poetry Anthology,Cordite Poetry Review,Meanjin,The Margins,Juked, and elsewhere. He has been a finalist for awards by Frontier Poetry and Palette Poetry. He is currently an MFA candidate at Cornell University, where he is an Editorial Associate for EPOCH and a university fellow. Find him at his websitederekchanarts.com and on Instagram@derek_chan_.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers atMFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

• Donate to the show at Buy Me a Coffee.
• Leave a rating and review onApple Podcasts.
• Submit an episode request. If there’s a program you’d like to learn more about, contact us and we’ll do our very best to find a guest who can speak to their experience.
• Apply to be a guest on the show by filling outour application.

STAY CONNECTED

• Twitter:@MFAwriterspod
• Instagram:@MFAwriterspodcast
• Facebook:MFA Writers
• Email:[email protected]

Speculative memoir allows Matt Homrich-Knieling to lean into the subjective nature of memory and explore his experience with separation anxiety. Plus, he and Jared discuss how Matt created a specific list of experiences he wanted from an MFA, which allowed him to narrow his MFA application list to just three programs. They also talk about how the WCSU program requires students to choose both a creative and a professional genre, and how they develop community despite being a low-residency program.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

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15 years after her MFA, and 4 years after scrapping a book that just wasn’t working, Meghan Perry’s debut novel WATER FINDS A WAY is receiving strong positive reviews, including a coveted Kirkus star. She joins Jared to talk about the realities of post-grad writing, going “scorched earth” on revision, and the process of turning short stories into a full-length novel. Plus, she talks about grounding her work in a remote Maine fishing village, overlooked American cultures, and the hardships—and community—her characters face.

Meghan Perry graduated with an MFA from Emerson College in 2009 and currently directs the Writing Center at St. John's Preparatory School in the Boston area. She has published stories in Cold Mountain Review, Sycamore Review, The Fourth River, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, WATER FINDS A WAY, was published in November 2024 by Delphinium Books with an audiobook by Penguin Random House. The novel has received a Kirkus star and been featured in Newsday and Condé Nast as one of the top books of this fall. Find her at meghanperry.com.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

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The pod team is traveling this week, so we invite you to travel back to a great episode from our previous season. We’ll be back with new episodes in the New Year — how fitting! Wishing you all a beautiful close to 2024.

Drawing from her decade-long career in Silicon Valley, Jamie Li tells Jared about writing tech satire that struck her MFA colleagues as far-fetched and her tech friends as totally realistic. Plus, Jamie talks about how her background as a Chinese immigrant and the model minority myth shape her interest in writing about in-group/out-group behaviors, and her attraction to VCFA’s emphasis on experimental and cross-genre writing.

Jamie Li is a Southern California-based fiction writer and product marketer. She holds a BA from Dartmouth College and is pursuing her MFA at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her writing has been recognized in the New York Times and published in Slant’d Magazine, Mangoprism, and elsewhere. She writes the Creative Juice newsletter and exists online on jamieli.co or IG @j.a.m.i.e.l.i.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

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It’s winter break! Strap on your snowshoes, brew a hot chocolate, and escape to the heat of the Vegas desert with one of our favorite episodes from last season. Wishing you all rest, writing inspiration, and early-decision acceptances.

This week, an MFA with an international focus! Krista Diamond sits down with Jared to talk about UNLV’s required (and funded) study abroad component and its emphasis on translation. Plus, Krista shares lessons learned as a freelance writer, info on the Vegas literary community, and how her experience working and living in national parks informs her fiction and nonfiction alike.

Krista Diamond is a Las Vegas based writer whose work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The New York Times, Longreads, Hazlitt, Catapult, Electric Literature, Joyland, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by Tin House and Bread Loaf. Her essay “That Girl is Going to Get Herself Killed,” which first appeared in Longreads, was adapted for audio by Oscar-nominated actress Naomie Harris. She is currently a third year in the fiction MFA program at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, where she is working on a novel about paparazzi. Learn more at www.kristamariediamond.com and on Twitter at @kristadiamond.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

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In this instant classic episode, Wilson M. Sims and Jared talk about the step-by-step process of getting an agent, what they do (or know they shouldn’t do) when a story isn’t working, how MFA programs are like basketball drills, and approaching craft discussions in ways that are more flexible and time-varying than declarative and concrete. Plus, Wilson discusses making lasting connections with faculty and visiting writers and shares the realities of living on an MFA stipend and pivoting to part-time to maintain a day job.

Wilson M. Sims is a behavioral-health worker and policy strategist in the final year of his MFA program at Florida Atlantic University. His work is published in Longreads, The Florida Review, Witness Magazine, and Virginia Quarterly Review. He is the winner of the 2021 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction, and his essay “Unknown Costs,” received a special mention in the 2025 Pushcart Anthology. Find him at wilsonmsims.com.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

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In this episode, PhD Candidate Mackenzie McGee talks about her process when writing speculative fiction, including how she decides on topics and themes, how her process changes when writing flash versus her novel, and how writers are able to explore politically dangerous topics by leaning into speculative elements. She then tells Jared about her decision to pursue the PhD after finishing her four-year MFA program and how KU is particularly supportive of speculative writers.

Mackenzie McGee is a speculative fiction writer from the Midwest. A winner of the 2021 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, her work can be read in Porter House Review, Nat. Brut, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Cease, Cows. Mackenzie earned her MFA from the University of Arkansas and is currently a second-year PhD student in English-Creative Writing at the University of Kansas. You can find her at mackenziemcgee.com.

MFA Writers is hosted by Jared McCormack and produced by Jared McCormack and Hanamori Skoblow. New episodes are released every two weeks. You can find more MFA Writers at MFAwriters.com.

BE PART OF THE SHOW

STAY CONNECTED