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Congratulations to Stephanie Arhin (MFA '17) who is the new Recruitment and Diversity Program Manager for the Federal Railroad Administration.

George Mason University’s Creative Writing Program joins Mason’s University Libraries and Watershed Lit in presenting the Fall 2022 Visiting Writers Series, which will feature two writers each in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

The Cheuse Center for International Writers partnered with the Middle East Institute (MEI) Arts and Culture Center and the Abu Dhabi Music and Arts Foundation to create a two-day virtual, literary festival Narrating The Middle East: The DC Arab Literature Festival. “Literature offers audiences a chance to see the world through the eyes of others and the DC Arab Literature Festival is a window into the complex issues that writers in the Middle East are grappling with today,” said Kate Seelye, Executive Vice President at the Middle East Institute.

New in 2022, the Arts Innovation Award recognizes an organization that has implemented nontraditional or inventive approaches to their art form and has uniquely engaged audiences in the arts. In recognition of their forward-thinking literary programming, Fall for the Book is the Arts Innovation Award’s inaugural recipient.

Julija Pivo, 2020 graduate from Mason’s BFA program, has won a prestigious Fulbright English Teaching Fellowship to Lithuania, starting in Summer 2022. The award not only caps an impressive career at Mason, but also brings a family journey full circle: Pivo’s late father was a Fulbright scholar from Lithuania to America from 2000 - 2001.

Phil Goldstein hid his trauma for almost twenty years. A survivor of sexual abuse at the hands of his older brother, Phil did what most male victims do -- he locked his past away from the world. Today, Phil can celebrate the end of that long-held silence through the release of his debut volume of poetry, How to Bury a Boy at Sea published by Stillhouse Press in April of 2022. This arresting collection renders the complexities unique to male survivors of sexual abuse with clarity and bravery, a critical and too-often ignored storyline.

Part Two of this series—“Literary Journals 101”—will bring together writers and editors across genres of creative writing: fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. They will discuss their own publishing journeys, what makes a submission a ‘yes,’ and what they’ve learned about craft, equity, and community from working with literary journals.

Chelsea Lebron, a first-year MFA student in Creative Writing, has been named the recipient of this year’s Robert Raymond Scholarship, encouraging students who contribute to the MFA program’s diversity.