The Faculty

Our Graduate Program in Creative Writing has close to a 2:1 student-to-faculty ratio, one of the highest of any MFA program in the country, which means our MFAs and PhD Minors are never at a loss for guidance and mentorship in writing and publishing. Below are just a few of the credentials that have helped make our MFA program one of the best.

AMY QUAN BARRY, Professor (MFA: University of Michigan) is the author of the poetry collections Asylum, Controvertibles, and Water Puppets. 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 for the Arts.

SEAN BISHOP, Faculty Associate & Graduate and Institute Programs Coordinator (MFA: University of Houston) is the former managing editor of Gulf Coast and has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. His poems have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Boston Review, Harvard Review, jubilat, Ploughshares, Poetry, and other literary publications.

AMAUD JAMAL JOHNSON, Associate Professor (MPA: Cornell University) is the author of the poetry collection Red Summer. His poems have appeared in 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 (MFA: University of Iowa) 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 novella Brazil, winner of the Ruthanne Wiley Memorial Novella 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 on her website.

RON KUKA, Faculty Associate & Creative Writing Program Coordinator (MFA: University of Iowa) has published short stories 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, Professor (MFA: University of Iowa) 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. She is currently the College of Letters & Science's Jartz Fellow.

LORRIE MOORE, Delmore Schwartz Professor in the Humanities (MFA: Cornell University) is the author of the short story collections Self-Help, Like Life, and Birds of America, and the novels Anagrams, Who Will Run the Frog Hospital, and A Gate at the Stairs. 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, 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 both the Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

RONALD WALLACE, Felix Pollak Professor of Poetry & Halls-Bascom Professor of English (PhD: University of Michigan) 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, 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 Association for Writers and Writing Programs' 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.