Alum May Lee-Yang has released a new card game, Clap Back: The Asian American Edition, through her gaming company, Mayhem Games!

Are you or do you know a published writer of literary nonfiction? Our Creative Writing Program invites applications for the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer Chairship, a two-year academic year position starting August 2026. Priority deadline: January 5:

On Jane Austen's 250th birthday, an interview with Prof Elaine Auyoung about her book When Fiction Feels Real--which addresses Austen's skilled characterizations: cla.umn.edu/.../faculty-...

Pop-up exhibit tomorrow to celebrate Jane Austen's 250th birthday, at the University Libraries:

Prof Douglas Kearney wrote the libretto for the opera The Comet/Poppea, which the New York Times this week included in its "Best Classical Performances of 2025" list. Cheers! (gift article)

Apply to work in our great creative writing program! The Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities campus) invites applications for the Edelstein-Keller Endowed Visiting Writer Chairship: hr.myu.umn.edu/jobs/ext/371...

Best wishes from Pillsbury Hall to UMN students and faculty wrapping up the semester!

Prof Emeritus Hancher on Frank Gehry's Weisman:

"Sometimes things hurt in a way that we don’t really have words for ... But somehow I can tell you about looking at a cicada and you’ll understand the really important parts of what I mean." ~ @katnuernberger.bsky.social brevity.wordpress.com/2025/12/03/e...

"Held: Essays in Belonging (Sarabande Books) is full of stunning instances of symbiosis in the natural world" Fun to see new book by Prof @katnuernberger.bsky.social featured here:

Congrats to alum Helen Weil, whose debut chapbook The Day the World Ends is out with @finishinglinepress.bsky.social www.finishinglinepress.com/product/the-...

Including alum Ethan Rutherford's North Sun: "a spectacularly weird book, set at a time when myth and legend were perhaps still a bit more a part of reality than they are now"

Junior Isaac Leer’s favorite part of being an English major is “the built-in community”: “I was worried about feeling lost in the enormous College of Liberal Arts, but the English department has proved to be a smaller world.” Leer is also pursuing a BFA in acting!

Prof Elaine Auyoung contributed to Close Reading for the Twenty-First Century ("The Drama of Comparison: Alex Woloch on Jane Austen"):

Co-sponsoring this Institute for Advanced Study panel on Thursday: "Who Gets to Define 'Latino'?" Virtual and in-person:

When PhD candidate Thomas Forrest first read Toni Morrison as an undergrad, “I became interested in possible reasons that would encourage Black woman authors to deploy suicide in novels that often revolved around journeys of self-discovery.” Now Forrest has focused his dissertation on the topic:

Cool event next Tuesday from @ihrc-umn.bsky.social and the Nash Gallery with historian Jorell Meléndez-Badillo--who collaborated with Bad Bunny to add visual lessons on Puerto Rican history to his 2025 album “Debí Tirar Más Fotos"! It's the closing event for the Vaivén exhibit of Puerto Rican art:

“It’s hard to believe that a playwright who was so good at capturing the range of human emotions was not deeply impacted by the death of his only son" - Prof Katherine Scheil on Shakespeare's son Hamnet. Chloé Zhao's adaptation of Maggie O'Farrell's novel Hamnet is out this week

This past week almost 900 Twin Cities high school students taking our College in the Schools Literature course came to campus to meet and hear from author Hanif Abdurraqib. These two winners of the WNLI-CIS poetry contest got to read with Abdurraqib. Amazing writers, amazing energy, amazing event!

Best wishes tonight at the @nationalbook.bsky.social Awards to MFA alum Ethan Rutherford and novel North Sun, about a 19C whaling ship. "You have two spaces at once," he says. "[The sea is] limitless space, and you can’t see the depths. But on the boat itself, your characters can only stray so far”

thank you, UMN. Such a gift to have had 3 years to think about books during the MFA program. 🩵

Happy pub day to MFA alum @kristincollier.bsky.social with memoir What Debt Demands: Family, Betrayal, and Precarity in a Broken System! @grandcentralpub.bsky.social

Next Tues, MFA alum @kristincollier.bsky.social launches her NF debut What Debt Demands: Family, Betrayal, & Precarity in a Broken System--with assists from authors Zeke Caligiuri (current MFA student), @sunyungshin.bsky.social @mkdordiggsy.bsky.social and @jenbowen.bsky.social!

NBA Fiction finalist--and MFA alum--Ethan Rutherford on the best writing advice he ever received: "Trust the reader. Your job as a writer isn’t to reproduce, but suggest, the world"

Next Wed, Prof Kathryn Nuernberger celebrates the publication of her third essay collection, Held, which is inspired by symbiotic mutualism. Congrats! Nuernberger is also the author of three poetry collections. www.eventbrite.com/e/milkweed-b...

Congrats to Prof @katnuernberger.bsky.social, who today publishes her third essay collection! Held: Essays in Belonging focuses on symbiotic mutualisms, mutual aid, and ways of being together in a time of climate crisis. @sarabandebooks.bsky.social

Prof and poet Douglas Kearney is leading a group reading tomorrow, Tues, at @loftliterarycenter.bsky.social with poets from Cave Canem's MN Regional Workshop "Pattern/Constraint/Sound." Free with registration: loft.org/events/patte...

You can hear Brandon Kilbourne read from Natural History this Wednesday at the U's @bellmuseum.bsky.social! @graywolfpress.bsky.social events.tc.umn.edu/event/25210-...

Next Wed, Prof Kathryn Nuernberger celebrates the publication of her third essay collection, Held, which is inspired by symbiotic mutualism. Congrats! Nuernberger is also the author of three poetry collections. www.eventbrite.com/e/milkweed-b...

Who was a possible muse for Shakespeare’s Dark Lady sonnets--and how has the "speculative Dark Lady tradition" inspired today's Black women artists? Cool event from the School of Music with Alisha Lola Jones:

CBI & UMN Anthro are delighted to host Nov. 14th lecture (noon to 1pm, Andersen Lib. 120) by Yale U. Prof. of Anthropology & CBI Research Fellow @lmesseri.bsky.social Lisa Messeri!! "IN THE LAND OF THE UNREAL" Free talk & lunch, reg. req. Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F... #HISTSCI

This Saturday, Prof Emeritus John Wright and Curator of the Givens Collection Davu Underwood Seru will discuss their paths as interdisciplinary scholars working in academia and in off-campus communities--and within the broader Black Studies tradition:

MFA alum Edward McPherson, who just published Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View, stopped by today to talk with students and Prof Kim Todd. Hanif Abdurraquib called Look Out "rich, hyperfocused, and overwhelming in its generosity"

Fab talk by Ocean Vuong last night, hosted by @umnenglish.bsky.social. He shared that he draws hope from his students, a generation who act in response to what they learn. I also loved when he commented on the novel as technology. I’ll be exploring this very idea in the spring!

A heartening evening last night with Ocean Vuong! Also thought-provoking, funny, and moving. That last standing ovation of the packed Great Hall was a joy. Thanks to all who attended!

"Where [journalists] are saying, 'How do we regain the trust of the public?' We don’t. We just ask the public to distrust equally" Jelani Cobb interviewed by Prof @sugi.bsky.social

"Redolent with insights into the ethical quandary of history-making, as well as the author’s own sense of awe at the full sweep of the human story, this is a wonder" @publisherswkly.bsky.social Happy pub day to MFA alum Edward McPherson with Look Out: The Delight & Danger of Taking the Long View

A week from today we're presenting Sarah Thankham Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different! The debut novel was a National Book Award finalist, and Lauren Groff called it "spiny and delicate, scathingly funny and wildly moving." Free, no registration necessary:

If you or someone you know is thinking about applying to MFA programs this year, at Minnesota we are fully funded for 3 years including covering your student fees, 1-1 teaching (mostly creative writing) with chances to teach in the summer, you can join the union, and live in a major city.

And: As one of our UMN alums, a successful cookbook author, noted, "My college background in English has nourished me far beyond career preparation, enabling me to live a full, rewarding life both in my work and in my personal pursuits"

PhD student Addison R. Cox has been looking at Black spec fiction from authors like Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and N.K. Jemisin, examining "the relationship between sound/music, race, and literature. What does Black music sound like and, more importantly, how do we know and interpret this?”

BA alum and poet Ed Bok Lee is reading at the 14th annual BEYOND BARS: Voices of Incarceration student reading Oct 25 at 7PM! Many English alums and faculty are mentors and instructors with Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. An amazing event free and open to the public, in person and online:

The first PhD cohort in American Indian & Indigenous Studies includes MFA alum and poet Kachina Yeager. Cheers for the inaugural cohort!

Fab editorial by @umnenglish.bsky.social faculty. "Majoring in English is by no means a bad investment of a student’s time and tuition dollars. ... While graduates with English degrees may start out earning less than peers in other fields, they out-earn them in the second half of their careers."

MFA alum Elizabeth Foy Larsen produced the documentary MAGIC & MONSTERS, screening in person/online 10-24 through the Twin Cities Film Fest. After litigation that exposed decades of sexual abuse at Minneapolis' Children's Theatre Company, the film follows the survivors' campaign for accountability:

Interested in an MFA in Creative Writing? Join us Oct 15 or 20 to hear from faculty and students re: our fully funded, three-year program. Since 2019, our students and alums have published more than 70 books! Register: www.eventbrite.com/e/umn-creati...

"the first half is a very traditional whaling narrative set at the end of the American whaling industry. Then about halfway through, it sort of turns into a fever dream" - MFA alum Ethan Rutherford, FINALIST now for National Book Award!

From alum Will Hermes, author of Lou Reed: The King of New York!

Very excited that MFA alum Ethan Rutherford has been named a National Book Award finalist for North Sun! "With one foot firmly planted in the traditional sea-voyage narrative, and another in a blazing mythos of its own, this debut novel looks unsparingly at the cost of environmental exploitation"

It's #BannedBooksWeek, and here's Prof V. V. Ganeshananthan interviewing novelist Yiming Ma re: the dangers of state censorship and self-censorship: