The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College recently celebrated its annual summer residency in Swannanoa, NC this July. The residency featured inspiring lectures and classes from both faculty and graduating students. And writers and readers can access the wonderful craft discussions and lectures from the MFA Program for Writers faculty online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.
Rita Banerjee’s Opening Lecture “Writing Towards Psychic Heat,” asks, “When writing towards psychic heat, is the only way out through?” Given the kinds of social traumas a reader and writer may have experienced or witnessed in their lives, this talk offers four alternative craft techniques and strategies that allow writers to write towards significant moments of emotional and psychic tension within their poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction. Some authors, studied in this talk, who offer an array of strategies to write towards psychic heat include Robert Frost, Brandon Taylor, Roxane Gay, Haruki Murakami, Arundhati Roy, Ocean Vuong, Patrick Rosal, Carmen Maria Machado, Rainer Maria Rilke, Alokeranjan Dasgupta, Jibanananda Das, Subhas Mukhopadhyay, Gillian Flynn, and Marcel Proust.
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 – July 2025, and can be accessed here: warrenwilsonmfa.org/store/












