Alumni

An MFA program is only as strong as the students that make up the experience. GMU MFA alumni have gone on to careers in publishing, teaching, higher education, media, communications, technical writing, editing, project management, government, and more. Our Alumni join us each year for alumni readings and various events and programming, such as Fall for the Book, New Leaves, and Visiting Writers public readings. If you haven't come back yet for one of these events, please check out our upcoming events because we would love to see you.

Alumni, we want to hear from you! Send us your news and updates here. We regularly publish alumni news in our department newsletters, so please keep us posted on your accomplishments. 

Alexandria Petrassi (Poetry MFA '19) served as Editor-in-Chief for So to Speak, a student-managed literary journal with an intersectional feminist outlook. After graduation, they rose to become Communications Director at Split This Rock, a D.C.-based social justice-driven literary organization.

Photo by: Ron Aira/Creative Services/George Mason University

Alumni News

Ellen Weeren offers A Reason To Write

Ellen Weeren offers A Reason To Write

Over the last decade, Ellen Weeren, BA ’90 and MFA ’19, has been run­ning the Facebook group A Reason to Write, serving a community of more than 750 writers at all stages of their careers with news, opportunities, and regular doses of motivation—and more recently, she’s taken that mission from the virtual world into the real one.

Leeya Mehta Receives the Faculty Member of the Year Award

Leeya Mehta Receives the Faculty Member of the Year Award

Each year, the George Mason University Alumni Association celebrates the achievements of alumni at the annual Celebration of Distinction awards program. The Alumni Association recognizes alumni for their outstanding professional achievements and service to the university, and honors the achievements of alumni from each school, college, and affinity chapter.

Visiting Nonfiction Writer Mako Yoshikawa

Visiting Nonfiction Writer Mako Yoshikawa

Mako Yoshikawa is the author of the memoir, Secrets of the Sun, published in 2024 and called “incandescent…gorgeous” by Booklist and “deeply felt, eloquent” by Michiko Kakutani.