Faculty
Creative Writing Faculty
Quan Barry
Associate Professor
MFA: University of Michigan
Quan Barry is the author of the poetry collections Asylum and Controvertibles. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Missouri Review, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, and other literary publications. She is the recipient of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize (for Asylum) and has received fellowships from Stanford University, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the National Endowment of the Arts.
Amaud Jamaul Johnson
Assistant Professor
MPA: Cornell University
Amaud Jamaul Johnson is the author of the poetry collection Red Summer. His poems have appeared in publications such as The Cave Canem Anthology, The New England Review, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry Daily and other literary publications. He is the recipient of The Dorsett Prize (for Red Summer) and has received fellowships from Stanford University and Cave Canem.
Jesse Lee Kercheval
Sally Mead Hands Professor of English
Co-Director, The Program in Creative Writing
Director, The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing
MFA: University of Iowa
Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of the short story collections, The Dogeater, which won the Associated Writing Programs Award, and The Alice Stories, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize; the novel The Museum of Happiness; the poetry collections Cinema Muto, which won the Crab Orchard Poetry Series prize, Dog Angel, World as Dictionary, and Chartreuse; the memoir Space, which won the Alex Award from the American Library Association; and the creative writing textbook Building Fiction. Her stories and poems have appeared in The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Georgia Review, Chicago Review, Poetry London, and other literary publications. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Research and Study Center at Harvard, the Wisconsin Arts Board, and the James A. Michener and Copernicus Society of America. More information about Jesse Lee Kercheval may be found at her website.
Ron Kuka
Faculty Associate and Creative Writing Program Coordinator
Faculty Advisor, The Madison Review
MFA: University of Iowa
Ron Kuka's short stories have appeared in the Iowa Journal of Literary Studies, Toyon, and Pavement. His teaching has been recognized with the Chancellor's Hilldale Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Judith Claire Mitchell
Associate Professor
Director, The MFA Program in Creative Writing
Director, English 203: Introduction to Creative Writing Workshops
MFA: University of Iowa
Judith Claire Mitchell is the author of the novel The Last Day of the War. Her stories and poetry appear in anthologies and literary magazines such as Best of the Fiction Workshops, Shaping the Story, Behind the Short Story, Barnstorming, The Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly and others . She has received fellowships from the James A. Michener and Copernicus Society of America, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and the Wisconsin Arts Board.
Lorrie Moore
Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities
MFA: Cornell University
Lorrie Moore is the author of the short story collections Self-Help, Like Life, and Birds of America, and the novels Anagrams and Who Will Run the Frog Hospital. She is the editor of the fiction anthologies I Know Some Things: Stories about Childhood by Contemporary Writers and Best American Short Stories 2004. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, the Paris Review, and many other literary publications. Her short stories have frequently been reprinted in anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories of the Century edited by John Updike, the Best American Short Stories anthologies, and the Prize Stories: The O'Henry Awards series. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Irish Times International Prize for Fiction, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Ronald Wallace
Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry and Halls-Bascom Professor of English
Co-Director of the Program in Creative Writing
PhD: University of Michigan
Ronald Wallace is the founder and Co-Director of the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Program in Creative Writing and the founder and editor of the University of Wisconsin Press Poetry Series (the Brittingham and Pollak Prizes). He is the author of the poetry collections For a Limited Time Only, Now You See It, Long for This World: New & Selected Poems, The Uses of Adversity, Time's Fancy, The Makings of Happiness, People and Dog in the Sun, Tunes for Bears to Dance To, and Plums, Stones, Kisses & Hooks; the short story collection Quick Bright Things; and the critical books The Last Laugh, God Be With the Clown, and Henry James and the Comic Form. He is the editor of the poetry anthology Vital Signs. He has published poetry and stories in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, Poetry, The Paris Review and many other literary publications. His awards and honors include Council for Wisconsin Writers Book Awards, Wisconsin Arts Board Grants, the Helen Bullis Prize, three Distinguished Teaching Awards, two ACLS Fellowships, the Robert E. Gard Foundation Award, the Gerald A. Bartel Award in the Arts, the Wisconsin Library Association Notable Author award, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Major (Lifetime) Achievement Award, the Mid-List Press First Series Award for Short Fiction (for Quick Bright Things), and the Associated Writing Program's first George Garrett Award for "exceptional donations of care, time and labor on behalf of other writers." More information about Ron Wallace is available at his website.
Additional Creative Writing Faculty
The following members of the English Department's Literary Studies Program also teach creative writing classes and are additional valuable resources to our students:
Richard Knowles (undergraduate fiction)
Dickson-Bascom Professor of the Humanities
PhD: University of Pennsylvania
Richard Knowles is the author of the Shakespeare Variorum Handbook and the editor of English Renaissance Drama, and a new Variorum Edition of As You Like It.
Ann McClintock (creative nonfiction)
Simone de Beauvoir Professor of English and Women's Studies
PhD: Columbia University
Ann McClintock is the author of Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest; Olive Scheiner; and Simone Beauvoir. She also teaches in Women's Studies.
Rob Nixon (creative nonfiction)
Rachel Carson Professor of English
PhD: Columbia University
Rob Nixon is the author of Dreambirds: The Strange History of the Ostrich in Fashion, Food and Fortune; Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond; and London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Nation, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement, Critical Inquiry, South Atlantic Quarterly, and other literary and critical publications.
Emeritus Creative Writing Faculty
Kelly Cherry
Eudora Welty Professor Emerita of English and Evjue-Bascom Professor Emerita in the Humanities
Kelly Cherry is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and criticism including the novels and short story collections Sick and Full of Burning, We Can Still Be Friends, Augusta Played, Conversion, The Society of Friends, In the Wink of an Eye, The Lost Traveller's Dream, and My Life and Dr. Joyce Brothers; the poetry collections Death and Transfiguration, An Other Woman, Lovers and Agnostics, Rising Venus, Natural Theology, Songs for a Soviet Composer, Welsh Table Talk, God's Loud Hand, Relativity: A Point of View, Time Out of Mind, Benjamin John and Hazard and Prospect: New and Selected Poems; and the nonfiction and critical books The Poem: An Essay, The Exiled Heart, Writing the World, The Globe and the Brain, and History, Passion, Freedom, Death, and Hope: Prose about Poetry. She has also translated the Antigone of Sophocles and Seneca's Octavia.