Theย MFA Program for Writersย at Warren Wilson College recently celebrated its annual winter residency in Black Mountain, 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 facultyย online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.
Rita Banerjeeโs Opening Lectureย “Weaving, Braiding, Spinning: Art of the Lyrical, Nonlinear Narrative” challenges the dominance of the plot triangle, heroโs journey, and Aristotelian ideal of โplot as actionโ by exploring three approaches to narrative design that are derived from what was historically considered womenโs work: weaving, braiding, and spinning. These structural forms, which help acknowledge the context of a textย and make room for nonlinear,ย polyvocal narratives, move storytelling away from an egocentric,ย โmasculo-sexualโ plot triangle, to what Jane Alison calls aย more communal,ย โallocentricโ narrative design. Authors studied in this talk include Jane Alison, Elissa Washuta, Theresa Warburton, Ovid, Goethe, M.ย NourbeSe Philip, Lidiaย Yuknavitch, and Kate Morton.ย
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 โ January 2026, and can be accessed here:ย warrenwilsonmfa.org/store/
During the Innovation & Empowerment: A Workshop for Writers (July 10-28, 2026), Rita Banerjee will be teaching a lecture and workshop for writers on “Classical Greek and Indian Approaches to Poetry, Dramaturgy, and Storytelling” on July 18-19, 2026, followed by a faculty reading with Dr. Kristina Marie Darling on July 18, 2026 at 6 pm. More information about the course follows below:
In The Republic (ca. 375 BCE), Plato states, โthe tragic poet is an imitator, and therefore, like all other imitators, he is thrice removed from the king and from the truth.โ Plato wants to kick the poet out of the republic because the poet does not answer to the king, and because poets challenge the ready-made truths of the status quo. In the Sanskrit tradition, the poetย (kavฤซ)ย is depicted as a wise seerย (rishi),ย and one who holds up the heavens from the earth and thus serves as a translator of the celestial and the spiritual in theย Rig Veda (ca. 1500 BCE). In response to his tutor Plato, Aristotle composes a defense of poetry in theย Poetics (ca. 335 BCE), and argues that poetry, theatre, and literature are critically necessary for audiences as literature, and tragic theatre in particular, allows audiences to undergoย catharsis. Aristotle maps how effective narratives can be built and how literature can be separated into the categories of comedy and tragedy. In contrast, in theย Nฤแนญyaลฤstraย (ca. 200 BCE),ย Bharata outlines the eight main emotional states that are required to make any work of art become a classic. Bharataโs development ofย rasa theoryย provides a new way of considering narrative design which centers emotion, as do his discussions ofย bindus (turns)ย and how characters and plot develop in literary texts where emotion gives rise to action. In this class, we will study how literary theorists and dramaturgs such as Plato, Aristotle, Bharata, and Abhinavagupta offer different but intriguing approaches to poetry, dramaturgy, and storytelling and how we might use these classical Greek and Indian approaches to poetry and narrative design in our own creative work.
The Innovation & Empowerment: A Workshop for Writers (July 10-28, 2026) brings together an extraordinary faculty on the gorgeous greek island of Kefalonia to explore innovation and empowerment across literary genres. Featuring seminars led by Rita Banerjee, Molly Gaudry, Kristina Marie Darling, Simone Muench, Cutter Streeby, & Elizabeth A.I. Powell, we will discover new strategies for collaboration, hybrid writing, crafting short films and book trailers, as well as celebrating the artistic heritage of the island through lectures on the ode, Greek drama, and other topics as determined by student interest. The workshop will culminate in excursions to Assos, Fiskardo, Myrtos Beach, and many other breathtaking places on the island, where we will write and perform our work. Several distinguished visiting writersโincluding Matthew Rohrer, Avia Tadmor, Diana Whitney, and Jose Filipe Alvergueโwill also join via zoom to share their work and provide writing prompts that will guide our creative practice. More information about the workshop details and registration deadlines follow below:
In the 21st Century, creative writers in the United States are facing unprecedented challenges to their discipline, craft, and survival. In 2025 alone, writers have witnessed large cuts in government funding for universities and humanities departments, the suspension of the NEA Fellowship for Creative Writers, and a number of class-action lawsuits against Artificial Intelligence companies, such as Bartz vs. Anthropic, in which A.I. companies are accused of illegally downloading 7.5 million literary and scholarly books and 81 million research papers to train their Large Language Model systems.[1] In this era of late capitalism, how can writers find viable ways to maintain and grow in their craft, seek the education in the humanities they desire, and create sustainable careers and communities in creative writing? As a multi-genre writer who is deeply inspired by world literature and transnationalism, Dr. Rita Banerjee will discuss her journey as a writer and literary citizen, and will share resources on how creative writers can create sustainable, nurturing, and viable careers, writing practices, and literary communities despite the pressures of American capitalism.
About the Author:
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. She is editor of the forthcoming anthology Disobedient Futures (University Press of Kentucky) in which writers imagine what the future cultures of the United States and the world could look like if folks disobeyed gender, tribal, and class paradigms, and explored disobedient forms of environmentalism and borders. She is also the author of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats and Cracklers at Night, the novella โA Night with Kaliโ in Approaching Footsteps, and is co-writer of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, tribalism, and intimacy in the United States and in France. Her work appears in Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition,Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Senior Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writersโ Workshop, which she co-founded at Harvard in 2008. She received a Vermont Arts Council Creation Grant for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the bookโs opening chapters โBirth of Cool,โ was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter, โThe Female Gaze,โ was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
[1] Reisner, Alex. โThe Unbelievable Scale of AIโs Pirated Book Problem.โ The Atlantic. Online. March 20, 2025.
On September 18, 6:30 pm EDT, Shanta Lee and Philip Brady, the editors of Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Tradition, will be celebrating the launch of their new anthology with a reading featuring their Sign & Breath Authors. Featured authors will include Tim Seibles, Rita Banerjee, Diana Whitney, Ru Freeman, Diane Raptosh, Philip Metres, Haleh Gafori, Claire Bateman, Carolyn Finney, and Bruce Smith. Please register on Zoom to attend the reading at 6:30 pm EDT.
Rita Banerjee will be reading from her flash essay “The Spirit Door” during the Sign & Breath Reading Launch.
Featuring a range of contemporary artists, many of whom work across different mediums and genres, Sign & Breath introduces the reader to one page that sings in any genre โ prose, fiction, poetry, spoken word, hybrid forms, and song โ across diverse traditions. Rather than define poetry as a genre with conventions, traditions, codes, and modalities, this book features poetry as a faculty that thrums in all written and spoken art. Readers are introduced to a text followed by a discussion with the author about creating the piece, ties to creative lineage, and the definition of voice through their practice. This anthology contributes to the dialogue among genres which will reframe understanding of poetry as an aesthetic experience of language. With one page that sings in any genre, Sign & Breath presents a new, inclusive perspective on poetry while two questions remain: Do we have a clearer understanding of what defines poetry? Do we have a clearer understanding of voice?
Sign & Breath: Voice and the Literary Traditionย debuted on August 26, 2025. You canย orderย Sign & Breathย hereย and read Rita Banerjeeโs personal flash essay โThe Spirit Doorโ and interview, which are featured in the anthology.
Theย MFA Program for Writersย recently celebrated its annual winter residency this past January. 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 facultyย online here. All MFA Store proceeds directly support graduate student scholarships in the MFA Program for Writers.
Rita Banerjeeโs Opening Lecture,ย “The Poetry and Power of Witness” asks, “How do we as writers process the various kinds of social trauma that inform and affect our daily lives?” In Against Forgetting, Carolyn Forchรฉ argues against an easy descent into forgetfulness or a culture of oblivion as espoused a constant carousel of rotating news headlines. She instead introduces the notion of โpoem as trace, poem as evidenceโ and how the work of a writer can serve as a witness to and record of history. And in her introduction to Playing in the dark, Toni Morrison writes that, โWriting and reading mean being aware of the writerโs notions of risk and safety, the serene achievement of, or sweaty fight for, meaning and response-ability.โ Some authors, studied in this talk, who wrestle with both their response and responsibility as witness to their particular social and historical moment, include Carolyn Forchรฉ, Solmaz Sharif, Fatimah Ashgar, Paul Celan, George Abraham, Noor Hindi, Jo Ann Beard, Yoko Tawada, Julio Cortรกzar, Agyeya, James Baldwin, Carvell Wallace, and Carl Phillips.
The Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers store features a rich archive of faculty lectures and craft discussions from January 1992 โ January 2025, and can be accessed here: https://www.wwcmfa.org/store/
In describing the complex and thought-provoking readings of the SAAG Masthead in 2024, Associate Editor of the South Asian Avant-Garde Iman Iftikhar writes, “Reading in 2024 often felt like fumbling for grounding amidst relentless upheaval. At times, it offered escape and solace. At others, it demanded grappling, interrogation, and a necessary confrontation. Whether through poetry, history, fiction, or essays, our reading this year insisted on engagement: on seeing, feeling, and remembering to live, even when it felt unbearable.
“These reflections do not aim to present a neat list of 2024โs ‘best; books or ‘essential reads.’ Instead, they are fragments of what stayed with us: works that lingered and called us back. Our favorites include a novel set in Baltimore tracing the lives of the Palestinian diaspora, texts that provide much needed clarity on revolutionary politics, a quiet yet searing study of sound and space, some comfort reads, and much more. These books held mirrors to the year and world we lived through, compelling us to look even closer when we could not look away. Here, in the voices of those who read and felt with these works, we share not only our most loved reads of the year but the struggles they opened up for us, allowing us to see anew.”
And of her selected readings in 2024, SAAG Editor Rita Banerjee writes:
One poetry collection that showed me how form could explode on the page, and how polyvocality and the acknowledgement of our ancestors could be conveyed, was JJJJJerome Ellisโs Aster of Ceremonies. The collection plays with the idea of โMaster of Ceremoniesโ as someone who both entertains and has authority over the stage. With his stutter, Ellis has difficulty pronouncing ‘master’ (which then becomes ‘aster’ in his work). Throughout the collection, Ellis interrogates the notion of master, both as the figurehead who controls the lives of others, often under authoritarian or tyrannical rule, and as a symbol of accomplishment and the mastery of craft.”
Join Friends of Writers onย October 26th at 7:00 PM ETย forย FOW Fall Fรชte, a celebration and fundraiser honoring the work of Friends of Writers in Hillsborough, North Carolina presented by FOW and House Party Reading Series. The evening will feature readings by alumni and faculty from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College including Sarah Audsley, Rita Banerjee, Megan Pinto, Carter Sickels, and Connie Voisine.ย
The event is free and open to the public. Limited edition broadsides made by Trish Marshall will be available for sale. Audio recording will be available after the event to registrants. RSVP required.
Sarah Audsley is the author of Landlock X (Texas Review Press). A Korean American adoptee, a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, and a member of The Starlings Collective, Audsley lives and works in northern Vermont. She is the Writing Program Director at Vermont Studio Center.
Rita Banerjee is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Director of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. She is the author of the poetry collections Echo in Four Beats, which was named one of Book Riotโs โMust-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018,โ and Cracklers at Night. She is also editor of CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writing, and author of the novella โA Night with Kaliโ in Approaching Footsteps. She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and her work appears in Academy of American Poets, Poets & Writers, PANK, Nat. Brut., Hunger Mountain, Tupelo Quarterly, Isele Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, VIDA, Vermont Public Radio, and elsewhere. She serves as Editor-at-Large of the South Asian Avant-Garde and Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writersโ Workshop, and she is the co-writer and co-director of Burning Down the Louvre, a forthcoming documentary film about race, intimacy, and tribalism in the United States and in France. She received a 2021-2022 Creation Grant from the Vermont Arts Council for her new memoir and manifesto on female cool, and one of the opening chapters of this new memoir, โBirth of Coolโ was a Notable Essay in the 2020 Best American Essays, and another chapter from her new memoir, โThe Female Gaze,โ was a Notable Essay in the 2023 Best American Essays.
Megan Pintoโs debut collection, Saints of Little Faith, is forthcoming with Four Way Books in September 2024. The winner of the 2023 Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Quarterly Review, Meganโs poems can be found or are forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Guernica, Ploughshares, Lit Hub, and elsewhere. Megan has received scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writersโ Conference, the Marthaโs Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writersโ Conference, Storyknife, The Peace Studio and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She lives in Brooklyn and holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson. http://www.meganpinto.com
Carter Sickels is the author of the novel The Prettiest Star (Hub City, 2020), winner of the Ohioana Book Award in Fiction, the Southern Book Prize, and the Weatherford Award, and selected as a Kirkus Best Book of 2020 and a Best LGBT Book by O Magazine. His debut novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury, 2012) was a Lambda Award and Triangle Publishing Award finalist, and adapted into a feature film that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020. His writing has appeared in publications including The Kenyon Review, The Atlantic, Oxford American, Poets & Writers, BuzzFeed, and Guernica. Carter has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writersโ Conference, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and MacDowell. He is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at North Carolina State University. You can find more information at http://www.cartersickels.com.
Connie Voisine is the author of the recent book of poems, The Bower, begun on a Fulbright Fellowship to Northern Ireland. A previous book, Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. Her first book, Cathedral of the North, won the Associated Writing Programโs Award in Poetry. She has poems published in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, Black Warrior Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Educated at Yale University, University of California at Irvine, and University of Utah, Voisine directs the creative writing program at New Mexico State University and teaches in Warren Wilson Collegeโs MFA for Writers. She was a 2021-2022 Guggenheim Fellow.
Tongass Mist Writing is owned and operated by Ruth Underhill @ruth_elizabeth_underhill, a local Sitkan with a dream to see more writers experience and cherish the mists of the Tongass National Forest with the knock of raven call and sound of rocks rolling up the shores of this beautiful Tlingit Aรกni land where she lives as a very lucky guest. Ruth shapes retreats and writing resources to allow #artists to carry its wild and beauty into their diverse and empowered writing. The retreat includes lodging on an oceanfront campus, daily meals, wilderness excursions, six literary salons, fireside readings, a wildlife cruise, and sauna. Tongass Mist welcomes its second visiting writer to Sitka in April 2023. Rita Banerjee will join the Sitka Fine Arts Campus April 12-16th for a four day retreat featuring wilderness excursions, generative writing salons, readings by a fire, literary craft talks and the incomparable experience of creating, enjoying a welcoming art community in the heart of the Tongass National Forest. Rita comes to visit us with incredible experience writing, film making, teaching, publishing and directing writing programs across the country. To apply, submit an application on the Tongass Mist Writing Retreat websiteby March 19, 2023 at 3 pm Alaska Standard Time.
The Cambridge Writers’ Workshop is delighted to have our writing faculty from our 2018 Summer in Paris Writing Retreat featured at SpokenWord Paris and Paris Lit Up this summer!
Paris Lit Upย will host Rita Banerjee as their featured writer on July 26, 2018 from 8:45 โ 11:00 pm!ย Banerjee will read from her new poetry collectionย Echo in Four Beatsย (FLP, march 2018),ย which was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry, and her edited volumeย CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writingย (C&R Press, May 2018).ย Banerjee will also read from her new collection of essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool, and her novel-in-progress about a Tamil-Jewish family in crisis during a post-authoritarian regime.ย
Paris Lit Upย ย is a non-profit community organization that aims to intensify collaborative artistic practices through community events, performance and publication.ย With emphasis on transnational writers, artists and musicians, Paris Lit Up promotes the importance of artistic synergy through transparent, democratic, consensus-based decision making.
Rita Banerjeeย is the Executive Creative Director of the Cambridge Writersโ Workshop andย editor ofย CREDO: An Anthology of Manifestos and Sourcebook for Creative Writingย (C&R Press, May 2018).ย She is the author of the poetry collectionย Echo in Four Beatsย (Finishing Line Press, March 2018),which was named one ofย Book Riotโsย โMust-Read Poetic Voices of Split This Rock 2018โ, was nominated for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and was selected by Finishing Line Press as their 2018 nominee for the National Book Award in Poetry.ย Banerjee is also the author of the novella โA Night with Kaliโ inย Approaching Footstepsย (Spider Road Press, 2016), and the poetry chapbookย Cracklers at Nightย (Finishing Line Press, 2010).ย She received her doctorate in Comparative Literature from Harvard and her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington, and she is a recipient of a Vermont Studio Center Artistโs Grant, the Tom and Laurel Nebel Fellowship, and South Asia Initiative and Tata Grants.ย Her writing appears in theย Academy of American Poets,ย Poets & Writers,ย Nat. Brut.,ย The Scofield,ย The Rumpus, Painted Bride Quarterly, Mass Poetry,ย Hyphen Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books,ย Electric Literature, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, AWP WC&C Quarterly, Queen Mobโs Tea House, Riot Grrrl Magazine, The Fiction Project, Objet dโArt,ย KBOO Radioโsย APA Compass, and elsewhere.ย She is the Director of the MFA in Writing & Publishing program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, an Associate Scholar at Harvard, and theย judge for theย 2017 Minerva Rising โDare to Speakโ Poetry Chapbook Contest.ย She is currently working on a novel, a documentary film about race and intimacy, a book on South Asian literary modernisms, and a collection of lyric essays on race, sex, politics, and everything cool.
Rita Banerjee 