Emphasis in Creative Writing Coordinator (Undergraduate Level Staff)

Susan Davis coordinates the Creative Writing Emphasis and teaches courses in the sequence. She works exclusively with undergraduates taking creative writing courses and even more closely with those completing the Emphasis. Her background includes training and performance in music and theater. She has written and published in multiple genres, including playwriting, non-fiction, fiction and poetry. (University of California, Irvine, M.F.A.)

Additional Instructors (Graduate Level Faculty)

 Poetry 

James McMichael , Professor of English, directs Graduate Programs in Writing (Poetry). A Joyce scholar, he has received Guggenheim and Woodrow Wilson Fellowships. Awards: A Pulitzer nominee and National Book Award finalist for his latest book of poems, Capacity. The Sara Teasdale, the Arthur O. Rens from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, The Shelley Memorial, The Kenyon Review for Literary Excellence, and a Whiting. He is also the author of Against the Falling Evil, The Lover's Familiar, Four Good Things, Each in a Place Apart , and The World At Large (poetry); and The Style of the Short Poem and Ulysses and Justice (criticism). (Ph.D. Stanford University)

Michael Ryan, Professor of English and Creative Writing has taught at Iowa, Princeton and Warren Wilson. His New and Selected Poems was published in 2004 by Houghton Mifflin, also a memoir, Baby B , by Graywolf Press. His first book of poems, Threats Instead of Trees , won the Yale Younger Poets Award. His second, In Winter , was a National Poetry selection in 1981, and his third, God Hunger , won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Secret Life , an autobiography, was published in 1995 and A Difficult Grace (essays) in 2000. Other distinctions include a Whiting Writers Award, two NEA fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review and the Poetry Society of America.

 Fiction 

Ron Carlson is the award-winning author of four story collections, including At the Jim Bridger and The Hotel Eden, two novels, and the young adult novel the Speed of Light. His stories have appeared in Harper's, The New Yorker, GQ, Esquire, Playboy, The Best American Short Stories, and The O. Henry Prize Stories; and are frequently performed on National Public Radio's This American Life and Selected Shorts. The film “Keith” adapted from the short story of the same name, won the top prize in its category at the Giffoni Film Festival in Italy in summer of 2007. 

Michelle Latiolais , Associate Professor of English, is a graduate of the Programs in Writing (Fiction and Poetry) at UC Irvine. She is the author of Even Now , a novel which received the Gold Medal for Fiction from the Commonwealth Club of California. She has a second novel, A Selfish Prayer for Light , and is at work on The Manicurist .
(MFA, University of California, Irvine)