Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing

Poet Diane Seuss answers questions about writing and teaching.

USM's Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing — a low-residency graduate program bringing writers together from across the nation — continues to gain critical acclaim as faculty and alumni win awards, publish their works and even sign Hollywood deals.

The February 2019 episode of "The USM Update" again highlights the many achievements of our students and faculty in and out of the classroom. On this episode: how athletics and academics intersect, changes in the works at USM and how one master's program is shaping Maine and national literature.

Stonecoast MFA faculty member Diane Seuss has been nominated for a 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award. Seuss’s book, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf Press), was among six finalists in the poetry category announced on January 22. Her previous book, Four-Legged Girl: Poems, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2016. Widely published in the nation’s top literary magazines, Seuss is also a Pushcart Prize winner.

Join the Stonecoast MFA community for a week of readings and discussions with award-winning faculty and guests, January 11-13 and January 16-18, at the historic Harraseeket Inn in downtown Freeport, Maine. Evening events are free and open to the public.

Join author-activists Martín Espada and Cheryl Clarke and the Stonecoast community at the historic Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine, as we imagine future directions for the politics and aesthetics of transformation.

Stonecoast MFA faculty member Susan Conley discussses writing, teaching, and her latest novel, Elsey Come Home (Knopf, Janaury 2019).

In cooperation with Maine College of Art, Stonecoast MFA will host The Stories We Carry, an interactive community consideration of human migration, Thursday, October 18, 5:30-7:00 p.m., USM Glickman Library, Special Events Room, 7th Floor, on the Portland Campus.

Elisabeth Wilkins Lombardo’s friends will celebrate the publication of The Afterlife of Kenzaburo Tsuruda by She Writes Press at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, October 2 at Print: A Bookstore, 273 Congress St., Portland, and at 9 p.m. on November 5 at LFK, 188 St., Portland. Both events are open to the public.

Boston’s Stone Soup Poetry and The University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Review present the Stonecoast Review #9 Release Party, October 27, 7:00-9:30 p.m., at the Dudley Café, 45 Warren Street, Roxbury, Massachusetts.