According to the Creative Writing Program assistant Christina Ablaza, five fiction writers and five poets have been named Stegner Fellows for the 2011-12 academic year. With a pool of nearly 1,900 applicants, this was the most competitive year yet, Abalaza said in a press release.
The two-year fellowship program is named after Wallace Stegner, who founded the Creative Writing Program at Stanford. It provides the fellows with a stipend and covers tuition and health insurance for the duration of their participation in the program.
Stegner fellows also work with the undergraduate community by providing drop-in help at the Writers’ Studio, organizing workshops with the Poets’ House and giving one-on-one guidance through the Levinthal Tutorials.
Next year’s poetry fellows are Kai Carlson-Wee, Mario Chard, Chiyuma Elliott, Dana Koster and Mira Rosenthal.
Carlson-Wee holds an MFA in Poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Chard is wrapping up his MFA program at Purdue University.
Elliott, who holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson College, will receive her Ph.D. in American Studies from University of Texas at Austin this summer.
Koster received her MFA in Poetry from Cornell University and is currently working on a book of poetry.
Rosenthal, who earned her MFA at the University of Houston and Ph.D. at Indiana University, is set to publish her first book of poetry.
The fiction fellows are Juliana Xuan Wang, Shannon Pufahl, Anthony Marra, Helen Hooper and Luke Mogelson.
Wang will receive her MFA in Fiction from Columbia University and has written several stories about disenchanted outsiders.
Pufahl, who will receive her Ph.D. in English from UC-Davis this summer, is working on a novel entitled “Lines and Lines.”
Marra will obtain his MFA from the University of Iowa and is writing a novel, tentatively called “A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.”
Hooper, an MFA graduate of Warren Wilson College, hopes to use the fellowship to finish a collection of short stories.
Mogelson, who earned a bachelor’s degree from Bennington College, intends to work on his short story collection on the Farm.
— Ivy Nguyen