MFA Faculty and Staff
Stetson University's MFA in Creative Writing was founded in 2015 by Terri Witek and Mark Powell with a goal to create a cross-genre program that offered courses both in Poetry in the Expanded Field and Prose.
The current program continues with this goal, giving MFA students the opportunity to explore courses in poetry and prose during the online, low-residency portion of the program as well as exploratory workshops across genres during the two nine-day residencies throughout each year.
Our core faculty are experts in their given genres and offer guidance in core workshops and in online packet exchanges throughout the semester. They are joined at each residency by guest artists and writers who run exploratory workshops and expose to even more ways of writing and creating. Through working with multiple instructors every semester, students are able to gain knowledge from a wide panel of experts in their crafts, while expanding their own work as artists.
Core Faculty:
Shastri Akella-Prose Professor
Shastri Akella's debut novel, The Sea Elephants (Penguin India, Flatiron Books USA) was named a most anticipated debut by Good Morning America. He won the 2025 Desperate Literature Short Fiction Prize, with judge Otessa Mosfegh calling his entry a ‘tender and haunting’ story of queer love on the Kashmir border." Lauren Groff selected his story for the 2024 Best American Short Fiction. His stories were also winners in the 2025 Galley Beggar Prize, the 2024 William Faulkner Prize, and the 2024 BLR Goldenberg Contest. His fiction was published in 2025 in The Massachusetts Review, Black Warrior Review, and Wasafiri London.
ENCOUNTERS LIST:
- Author Site
- Book, The Sea Elephants
- Fiction, The Magic Bangle
- Fiction, The Ghost that Shaped the Skin
- Essay, How Exile Allowed Shastri Akella to Write A Queer Novel
Kenzie Allen-Poetry in the Expanded Field Professor
Kenzie Allen is a Haudenosaunee poet and multimodal artist. Her debut poetry collection, Cloud Missives (Tin House, 2024), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the CLMP Firecracker Awards, the Indigenous Voices Awards, and the Maya Angelou Book Award, and was long listed for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Kenzie is the recipient of a 92NY Discovery Prize, an inaugural James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets, the 49th Parallel Award in Poetry, grants from Ontario Arts Council, and fellowships from Vermont Studio Center, Aspen Summer Words, and In-Na-Po. Her poems can be found in Narrative Magazine, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Best New Poets, and other venues, and her work extends into concrete poetry, digital media, and site-specific arts. A first-generation descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin, she teaches creative writing and Indigenous literatures at York University in Toronto.
ENCOUNTERS LIST:
- Artist Site
- Poetry Collection, Cloud Missives
- Interview, The Force that Shapes Us
Sarah LaBrie-Prose Professor
Sarah LaBrie is a Bay Area-born TV writer who grew up in Houston and currently lives in Los Angeles. She is the author of No One Gets to Fall Apart (Harper, 2024) a 2024 New York Times Notable Book and a finalist for the Writers League of Texas Book Award. Lorrie Moore calls No One Gets to Fall Apart “a brilliant memoir... a triumph of every kind of literary perseverance,” and the Los Angeles Times hails it as “extraordinary.” Her television credits include Minx (Starz), Blindspotting (Starz), Love, Victor (Hulu) and Made for Love (HBO Max). She currently has projects in development with Hulu and UTV. She’s been granted fellowships by Yaddo, Macdowell and the Austin Film Society and is an alumna of Brown University and New York University’s MFA in fiction program.
ENCOUNTERS LIST:
- Author Site
- Book, No One Gets to Fall Apart
- Story, Tender
- Co-Writer, Made For Love, HBO
- Co-Writer, Minx, Starz
- Co-Writer, Love, Victor, Hulu
Jeff Parker-Prose Professor
Jeff Parker’s latest work is the novella G v P (Panhandler Books, 2024). He is also the author of Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal (Harper Collins), the novel Ovenman (Tin House), and the short story collection The Taste of Penny (Dzanc). His many collaborative books and anthologies include: Clean Rooms, Low Rates; Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion: The Poetry of Sportstalk; A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors; Rasskazy: New Fiction from a New Russia; Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States; and The Back of the Line. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Tin House, and others. He teaches fiction in the MFA in creative writing at UMass Amherst and is the co-founder and Director of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.
ENCOUNTERS LIST:
- Interview, Proper Imposters & G v P
- Book, Where Bears Roam the Streets
- Book, Ovenman
- Story Collection, The Taste of Penny
- Fiction, Photography Collaboration, Clean Rooms Low Rates
- Collaborative Book, Erratic Fire, Erratic Passion: The Poetry of Sportstalk
- Essay Collection, A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors
- Story Collection, Back of the Line
Terri Witek-Poetry in the Expanded Field Professor
Terri Witek's newest books include Down Water Street (aboveground press) and W / \ SH, a dystopian collaborative work with poet Amaranth Borsuk (Anhinga Press/ Visual Poetry Series), both forthcoming. Her work has been included in many journals and anthologies, including 2 from 2021: JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset) and WAAVe (Women Asemic Artist and Visual Poets) Witek’s art/text mixes are often featured in collaboration: she teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes; they also lead The Fernando Pessoa Game at the Disquiet International Literary Program each summer in Lisbon. Their collaborative work has been represented at ARCO in Madrid and in Seoul, Chania (Crete), Miami, New York, Philadelphia, Lisbon, and Valencia, Spain.
ENCOUNTERS:
- Author Site
- Book, The Rattle Egg
- Book, Body Switch
- Book, The Rape Kit (Slope Editions Prize)
- Book, Exit Island (Florida Book Award medalist)
- Book, The Shipwreck Dress
- Book, Carnal World
- Book, Fools and Crows
- Chapbook, copies: I loved you in the hard old way
- Chapbook, Newsers (Yavanika Press Publications Prize)
- Chapbook, On Gavdos Ferry
- Chapbook, First Shot at Fort Sumter/Possum
- Chapbook, Courting Couples (Center for Book Arts Prize)
- Anthology, JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset)
- Anthology, WAAVe (Women Asemic Artist and Visual Poets)
- Publication, BEYOND THE ILLEGIBLE ON BOUNDARY AVE
- Exhibitions with Cyriaco Lopes, The Severe Ones and Gods of Remainder (The Liminal Gallery, ARCO 2023 - Madrid)
Staff:
Brendan Bowles-Prose Professor & Program Director
Brendan Bowles is a writer from Toronto, Canada. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University (2019-2021) and a Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (2017-2018). He holds an MA from the University of Toronto and an MFA from The University of Massachusetts Amherst. His work has been published and produced for stage and radio and has won some of the largest short story awards in Canada, including an Emerging Writer Award from the Writers Trust of Canada. His work has been supported by fellowships and residencies from Villa Sarkia, Lighthouse Works, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Banff Center, as well as grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada, British Columbia, and Toronto Arts Councils.
Savannah Kater-Program Coordinator
Savannah Kater, MFA Program Coordinator, is a triple hatter, receiving her Bachelor's, Masters & MFA in Creative Writing from Stetson University. Her work has been published in Collateral Journal and the WAAVe (Women Asemic Artist and Visual Poets) anthology. She has also curated site-specific visual poetry addressing the multi-generational effects of war. She is the CEO and founder of the nonprofit Scrap the Waste Corporation and is passionate about community outreach.
Ryan Rivas-Publishing Coordinator
Ryan Rivas is the author of Nextdoor in Colonialtown (Autofocus, 2022) and Lizard People (ThirtyWest, 2023). He is the Publisher of Burrow Press, and the Coordinator of MFA Publishing at Stetson University's MFA in Creative Writing program. A Macon Writers Workshop fellow, his work has appeared in The Believer, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and elsewhere.
Founded by Ryan Rivas in 2010, Burrow Press moved its operations to Stetson’s MFA program in 2020. Burrow publishes award-winning poetry and prose in print, as well as online via BP Review. Students in the MFA program have the opportunity to get hands-on experience working with Burrow and to attend quarterly workshops and talks focusing on various aspects of the publishing industry. Burrow maintains strong community ties to Central Florida and beyond and receives vital support from its dedicated base of subscribers.
Shelby Smotherman-Tech & Photography
Shelby Smotherman is a writer, artist, and theatrical technician working in the Tampa Bay Area. Most often, she works with paint and lighting and uses language from her technical background to fill her poetry, as well as taking heavy influence from pop culture. Shelby is also a Stetson MFA alumni and has been with the program since it's founding.
>Acclaimed Past Core Faculty & Guest Faculty:
- Shastri Akella
- Kenzie Allen
- Kristen Arnett
- Samiya Bashir
- Amaranth Borsuk
- Edgar Heap of Birds
- Gabrielle Civil
- Lydi Conklin
- Steven Dunn
- Samuel R. Delany
- Kate Folk
- Sarah Gerard
- Yuri Herrera
- Justin Lerner
- Gloria Muñoz
- Glexis Novoa
- Leah Sandler
- Edwin Torres