By Marjetta Geerling, Spalding MFA Alumni Association Director The MFA Alumni Association is excited to introduce a new addition to our Write with Me offerings: Write with Me Live! For as long as we've hosted Write with Me online meetups, one thing has stayed constant: no matter where you are, you can show up and write alongside fellow alumni. Write with Me Live! brings that same magic into the physical world. Across the country, alumni gather in person at a local coffee

by Kathleen Driskell, Chair After you see everything planned for your fall residency, it becomes easy to understand what we mean when we say that during residency, the days feel very long, and yet, the week seems to zip by. We have so much to tell you about. We’re busily putting on the finishing touches of our Fall 2026 residency in Louisville, November 14-21, and we look very much forward to having students, faculty, and alumni back on campus for seven days of workshops,

September 10, 2026 By Beth Ann Bauman, faculty, writing for children and young adults Fall is in the air. The days are getting shorter, and soon the leaves will crisp and fall. The wind will blow cool, and the change in season become palpable. The quiet chill of fall is the perfect time to curl up with a ghost story. Or better yet, to write one. Because ghosts represent all facets of the past, the subject is ripe with opportunities to explore weighty themes such as fear, g

Curious about Spalding’s graduate programs in creative writing? Looking for a top-notch workshop and enrichment experience to jump-start your writing? The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing is offering a creative writing community workshop November 18 – 20. Qualified applicants will study and write with workshop leader Lynnell Edwards, a prize-winning poet and member of the Spalding MFA faculty. With the Community Workshop package, you’ll receive thought

by Kathleen Driskell, Chair The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University is pleased to announce that West: A Translation, a one-of-a-kind poetry collection by award-winning poet and writer Paisley Rekdal, wins the 2026 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. West was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Award in Poetry and is the winner of the 2024 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and the 2024 Reading the West

July 30, 2026 by Jennie Malboeuf, poetry faculty I can’t say that what I’m about to say hasn’t been said before and better. By Kim Addonizio and Dorianne Laux, Anne Lamott, etc. But maybe you need to hear it again? At readings and lectures and Q&As that I’ve attended over the last twenty-five years, at least one person in the audience asks, What’s your process? Or what are your rituals? Or what is your daily schedule for writing? Probably they are at a loss for words. Or th

EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF Students Raluca Comanelea (F) published a prose piece titled “Gravity,” which is featured in the Summer 2026 Issue of Chestnut Review. Another of her short stories, “Tata,” will be featured in the online edition of The Hemlock Journal. A. E. Costello (W4CYA) has published a series of short stories on her Substack Tell Your Story. Her young adult paranormal novel The Ot

July 16, 2026 by Lynnell Edwards, poetry faculty I’ve been writing some haiku lately. Not a lot, but so far twelve, and I can see the shape of a series, a progression of seasonal tableaux. While this shouldn’t be any kind of revelation from someone who’s spent a career writing and teaching poetry, for me it’s a startling turn from my maximalist approach to the narrative, documentary, and persona poems that have characterized my last three books. Most recently, The Bearab

Students, faculty, and alums welcome! The fall 2026 edition of Spalding’s virtual Business of Writing Seminars takes place 11:00 a.m. – 4:45 p.m. EDT Saturday, September 19, for students, faculty, and alumni of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing at Spalding University. Four virtual sessions offer extracurricular instruction in the world of publishing and ways to seek production for plays and screenplays. You can attend any or all of these sessions depending on your i

Nick Martino Scrap Book Alice James Books / 2026 / 92 pp / $21.95 Paperback Reviewed by James Long, July 2026 Imagine being handed a set of photographs from before you were born, Polaroids documenting your parents facing a trauma that would come to shape your own life. As Nick Martino reveals on the page of his website dedicated to Scrap Book, this is exactly where his debut poetry collection began. Scrap Book is Martino’s attempt to reckon with a past fractured by his fa

July 2, 2026 by Angela Jackson-Brown, fiction faculty Finding a literary agent is very much like high school dating. You do everything you can to make the other person fall in love with you. You spend months, sometimes years, getting yourself ready. You obsess over every detail. You ask your friends what they think. You rehearse what you are going to say. Then, finally, you work up the nerve to hand over your number. And then you wait. And wait. And wait some more.

The Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing invites MFA alumni who graduated in poetry to submit proposals for a fifty-minute-long plenary craft lecture in the area of poetry. The lecture will be presented at the Fall 2026 residency, November 14-23. The deadline for proposals is August 28. Alumni may propose to lecture on craft or on an important figure or school of writing in the featured area. The best proposals will focus on distinct concerns of poetry but present inform