UMN English (@umnenglish.bsky.social)

@umnenglish.bsky.social Oct 13, 2026, 9:43 PM

Thinking about applying to Creative Writing MFA programs? Stop by one of our virtual open house sessions to meet our MFA faculty, ask questions, and learn more about the UMN MFA program!
10/16/26 4-5pm CST
10/21/26 1-2pm CST
Join us! Register: z.umn.edu/MFAOpenHouse26

Flier with text and registration link included in caption plus additional listing of faculty: Douglas Kearney, Megan Giddings, Peter Campion, Kathryn Nuernberger, Aamina Ahmad, Julie Schumacher, V. V. Ganeshananthan, Lance Richardson, Kim Todd

@umnenglish.bsky.social Oct 6, 2026, 7:58 PM

Help celebrate 25 years of the @uofmhumanrights.bsky.social this Friday!

@penamerica.bsky.social Oct 5, 2026, 12:42 PMReposted by @umnenglish.bsky.social

🧵 Nearly 12,000 (11,982) books were banned in public schools during the 2025-2026 school year, according to PEN America’s newly updated Index of School Book Bans. #BannedBooks #BannedBooksWeek

@umnenglish.bsky.social Oct 5, 2026, 7:32 PM

On World Teachers' Day, cheers for Professor Andrew Scheil, who won CLA's 2026 Motley Exemplary Teaching Award, and Senior Lecturer Melissa Licht, who won the U's 2026 Distinguished Teachers Morse-Alumni Award!

@umnenglish.bsky.social Oct 1, 2026, 7:16 PM

BA alum (and novelist) Peter Geye remembers the impact of taking a class with Prof (and memoirist) Patricia Hampl:

@umnenglish.bsky.social Oct 1, 2026, 5:17 PM

Prof @sugi.bsky.social who won the Women's Prize for Fiction in 2024 will serve as a judge and mentor in this new @womensprize.bsky.social program (free to enter):

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 29, 2026, 7:05 PM

Next week: Dr. Deborah Mutnick is visiting to discuss her new book No Race, No Country: The Politics and Poetics of Richard Wright, with a special focus in this talk on Wright's writing about fascism in relation to nationalism, colonization, and capitalism:

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 23, 2026, 5:55 PM

Sorry for the fuzzy photo but it was sure fun to hang with George Saunders, Prof Julie Schumacher, and 2000 other people last night! Thanks to Saunders for sharing insights and jokes--and for appreciating Minnesota.

Prof and novelist Julie Schumacher looks on as fiction writer George Saunders speaks into a handheld mic and gestures. Both seated on chairs onstage at Northrop.

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 23, 2026, 5:29 PM

Thanks for attending! Such a wonderful event with George Saunders--and a great audience.

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 22, 2026, 8:47 PM

Fiction writer George Saunders discussed craft with our undergrad and grad students today: "Stories have a mind of their own," he said. "If you have an agenda, they don't like that." Public reading and conversation tonight at 7:30pm at Northrop! z.umn.edu/saunders26

George Saunders seated at classroom table, gesturing; on left heads of two students seen from behind

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 7:03 PM

Congratulations to Prof Tosin Gbogi, whose book Nigerian Hip-Hop: Race, Knowledge, and the Poetics of Resistance (Oxford UP) is the winner of the 2026 Best Book Prize of the African Studies Association of the UK. Cheers!

Prof Tosin Gbogi and book cover of Nigerian Hip-Hop, which features a hand holding a microphone

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 17, 2026, 5:29 PM

"The kind of very private thing that happens to you when you're reading a book is not small, you know? I mean, you're sitting in your house, you read a book, and something happens to you"
An interview with George Saunders in @mspmag.bsky.social by @deardara.bsky.social before our event next Tues:

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 16, 2026, 2:33 PM

A few (free) tickets left for our George Saunders event in Minneapolis next Tuesday! He'll be reading from the #1 NYT bestseller VIGIL, and be in conversation with Prof Julie Schumacher (another fiction writer, of course, so craft tips on the agenda). Co-sponsored by @loftliterarycenter.bsky.social

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 15, 2026, 4:26 PM

Hear Prof Megan Giddings on the craft of short fiction and what it takes to publish a story collection compared to her three novels! (Her latest novel Meet Me at the Crossroads was one of 2025's NPR’s Books We Love and the Washington Post’s Best Science Fiction/Speculative Novels.)

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 14, 2026, 5:18 PM

First year? Transfer? Already taking ENGL and ENGW classes? Pick up bagels, swag, and info this Wednesday at our undergrad open house! The Learning Abroad Center, FUSE, Tower, and our undergrad advisor will be there to answer Qs.... 10 am-12 pm Sept 16, in Pillsbury Hall room 114.

Face of stone building engraved with columns, flowers, checkered squares, and text Pillsbury Hall. Two blue overlaid rectangles with text: Welcome (back)! Open House Wed Sept 16 10am-12pm

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 10, 2026, 8:26 PM

American Occupation is co-edited by MFA alum Su Hwang w/ an afterword by Prof Douglas Kearney--plus contributions by Profs V. V. Ganeshananthan and Charles Baxter and alums Victoria Blanco, Ed Bok Lee, Jim Moore, and chaun webster, and current MFA student Zeke Caligiuri--among other writers. Jan 26!

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 9, 2026, 6:41 PM

Congrats to MFA alum Brian Laidlaw, this week publishing his first nonfiction work (after two poetry collections) Erratica: On Climbing, Language, and Touching Stone @milkweededitions.bsky.social

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 9, 2026, 1:01 PM

Welcome to fall semester, UMN students! Best wishes getting settled into your English and Creative Writing classes this week. If you need assistance, stop by room 112, or email [email protected] FYI, there's no access to Pillsbury via those grand steps--see the ground floor doors....

Stone building with archway over stone staircase, and turret. Blooming hostas in foreground and blue sky in background.

Face of stone building with two archways over ground floor doors; two rows of windows above reflecting blue sky. Text engraved in stone: Pillsbury Hall

@megiddings.bsky.social Sep 8, 2026, 4:34 PMReposted by @umnenglish.bsky.social

hello, today the final story in my collection, "How to Be a Black Writer" is in @literaryhub.bsky.social:
lithub.com/how-to-be-a-...

the story is in stylistic conversation with Lorrie Moore's "how to become a writer" and Kiese Laymon's "you are the second person"

From the screenshotted excerpt: "You chose this program based on money and because you never had a Black person of any gender teach you anything about writing or reading. You learned math and Black Studies and the safest way to blow and push life into another person from other Black people, but none of them had taught you how to tell a story.

There is a family legend about how you learned how to read, that one day you were sitting at a kitchen table, four years old, beads in your hair because you were fresh back from a visit to your Mom-Mom’s, and you said something like, “Good morning. I hate Mondays. Lasagna,” and your parents realized you were reading a comic aloud to yourself. Reading came to you like a sudden burst into fruit brought forth by unseen winds.

You wanted a lineage. Sometimes, creating one doesn’t take generations upon generations. It can be established, at least in the arts, with the right, thoughtful conversation or idea passed around a table in two hours and forty-five minutes on a rainy Tuesday afternoon.

I want to tell you that you’ll make it through this year. But did you?

@umnenglish.bsky.social Sep 8, 2026, 7:37 PM

Prof @megiddings.bsky.social today publishes her debut story collection Black Arts (Amistad), with a launch 7pm tonight at Magers & Quinn—congratulations! "High marks for this ebullient, ideas-driven collection" - Publishers Weekly. Giddings is the author most recently of Meet Me at the Crossroads: