Three Professors Join U of A Programs in Creative Writing and Translation

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas programs in creative writing and translation, a top-ranked M.F.A. program, is expanding its reach and voice with three new faculty members. Award-winning authors Geffrey Davis, Toni Jensen, and Padma Viswanathan will join the faculty as tenure-track assistant professors in August.

“We’re thrilled to have Geffrey, Toni and Padma on board, but it’s our students who will really benefit,” said Dorothy Stephens, chair of the department of English. “It was our goal to find new faculty who were not merely talented in their own rights but who also had innovative and exciting ideas about teaching. Our M.F.A. program brings some of the best students in the nation here to Arkansas, and we give them top-notch teachers.”

The hires—two in fiction and one in poetry—fill a need left by recent retirements and bring the creative writing program back to its full teaching capacity.

Geffrey Davis

Poet Geffrey Davis is the author of Revising the Storm, recently published by BOA Editions and winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. He earned his Master of Fine Arts from Penn State and is now completing his Doctor of Philosophy at the same institution. His poems have appeared in journals nationwide and won numerous awards, including the Leonard Steinberg Memorial Prize from the Academy of American Poets. Acclaimed poet Dorianne Laux calls Revising the Storm “one of the best first books I’ve read in a good while.” And National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes says that Davis’ poetry “translates and transforms our contemporary modes of love, violence and history.”

Toni Jensen

Fiction writer Toni Jensen is the author of a short story collection, From the Hilltop, which was published in 2010 through the Native Storiers Series at the University of Nebraska Press. Her stories delve into the intertwined lives of Native characters outside the reservation. Always complex, her characters defy stereotype in favor of their own truths about life and tradition. Jensen’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2007; Best of the West: Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, 2011; and Denver Quarterly, among others. She comes to the University of Arkansas from Penn State, where she taught creative writing and literature.

Padma Viswanathan

Canadian novelist, playwright, and essayist Padma Viswanathan is the author of The Toss of a Lemon (2008) and The Ever After of Ashwin Rao, published this month by Random House Canada. Her novels dig deeply into issues of culture, memory, history, and identity to reveal characters complex in both their emotional and interpersonal connections. Author Manil Suri calls The Ever After of Ashwin Rao “a story that constantly compels and surprises.” Viswanathan’s stories have been published in journals nationwide, and her nonfiction and reviews have appeared in venues such as Elle Canada, The National Post, and The Rumpus Online.

“Our creative writing program has always been a place where the best writers teach and learn. By sharing their talent and intellect with our students, Geffrey, Toni, and Padma will continue that great legacy,” said Davis McCombs, director of the programs in creative writing and translation. “I’m so excited about the future of the program and, frankly, astonished at our good fortune.”

The University of Arkansas programs in creative writing and translation were founded in 1965 and offer Master of Fine Arts degrees in poetry, fiction and literary translation. Poets & Writers magazine consistently ranks the program in the top 40 M.F.A. programs among hundreds nationwide, and in 2007 The Atlantic Monthly named it one of the top five most innovative creative writing programs in the nation. Recent students have won Stegner Fellowships from Stanford University, the £15,000 BBC International Short Story Award, Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships, Exeter’s George Bennett Fellowship, and Fulbright Fellowships for international study and teaching abroad. Graduates of the program have published an estimated 400 books over the past 50 years.