A New Decade Begins

At the 2017 summer residency, CWLA's low-residency MFA program celebrated its 10th anniversary. In days of yore, the department operated as a traditional three-year program. For several reasons, the faculty proposed shifting to a low-residency model and university administrators immediately understood the brilliance of their plan. The low-residency program opened for business in Summer 2007 with a lot of enthusiasm, the faith of a brand-new group of students and mentors, and (let's be honest) a teensy bit of trepidation. Twelve days later, Director David Stevenson and his merry band of faculty celebrated the residency's success and then took a long nap.
 
Alumni of the low-residency and original program joined current students and faculty for a celebratory reception. 

In any creative writing program, successes and accomplishments come every day in ways most others don't see. Anybody who keeps writing after graduation is hugely successful. So are those who find and contribute to a literary community. The simplest way to track these kinds of accomplishments is to take note of the number of students who have published short stories, essays, poems, anthologies, articles, and books. We'd need  another 10 years to list every single publication, but look here for some highlights.

Here's to another decade of great writing by good people.