MFA Program Faculty
Please click here for a full schedule of events, many of which are free and open to the public.
Paige Webb, Administrative Director of the Program, shares her thoughts on the upcoming residency:
It’s going to be wonderful to see the students and faculty all together at the residency – all in one place for this intensive creative experience. I’ve been in conversation with faculty and students mostly by phone and email throughout the year, because it’s an online program in the fall and spring, and I very much look forward to seeing everyone as they work together on Ashland’s campus. I’m excited to meet our new students and to work with the two new additions to our faculty, Kelly Sundberg and Michael Spurgeon. I’ve also been in close contact with the graduating students while they have been completing their theses, and I can’t wait to see them all graduate and read their work alongside the faculty.
It will be lovely to have our visiting editors in town – Mary Biddinger, Kelly Caldwell, Cassie Donish, Eric Obenauf, and Hilary Plum: almost all of whom I’ve worked with before in some capacity, and all are just stellar editors and writers and people. Also, I feel so lucky to have our visiting writers at Ashland: Justin Phillip Reed, Dan Chaon, and Hanif Abdurraqib. Justin and I overlapped in our MFA program, and it’s been a joy to see his work garner so much national attention recently (with winning the James Baldwin Writer-in-Residence and the National Book Award). I admire his poetry enormously, and when I saw that our graduating poetry students were reading his book Indecency in their thesis course, it seemed perfect to have him out for the residency.
I’ve also been reading Dan Chaon’s work, and completely taken by his most recent novel, Ill Will, which is one of those books that envelopes you, deeply connecting you to the characters and making you question some of the most basic assumptions we have about the human experience, connection to others, and what being good/well-intentioned means. And Hanif Abdurraqib is such a juggernaut of a writer – in both nonfiction and poetry – whose work I’ve long admired for its breadth and its depth. He’s a Columbus hero in the literary community, a huge connecting force, and also just a fantastic person. I know our students (and the public who attend) will be deeply impacted by his work and dedication to building literary communities, as well as by our other visiting writers, the visiting editors, and our brilliant faculty.
This is my first residency here at Ashland, so I’m just pumped to get everyone together and see the beauty of it in action.
Christian Kiefer, Director of the MFA Program, adds the following reflections:
Filmmakers are familiar with the term “magic hour,” which is the moment at the very end of the afternoon where the light is perfect and everything glows. The residency is the MFA program’s magic hour and I’m looking forward to all of it: the new students, the current students, the graduating students, seeing the faculty in deep conversation, the community of writers and writing and literature and literatures. I’m also looking forward to Ohio’s fierce summer beauty.
