Rice’s Vision for Creative Writing

The Power of a World-Class Faculty

By Sarah Brenner Jones

Lacy M. Johnson
Phots by Alan Nguyen

In November 2025, the Rice University Faculty Senate approved the creation of a new Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing, an initiative years in the making and shaped by deep reflection on what writers — and the world they write for — need now. The three-year program will welcome its first cohort in fall 2026, offering a bold reimagining of creative writing education grounded in place, cross-genre training and community engagement.

The MFA is explicitly place-based, rooted in Houston and the Gulf Coast region. Its curriculum engages the literary traditions, histories and voices that define the region, inviting students to learn from those who have shaped it and to write new work that responds to Houston and the Gulf Coast as they are now. At the same time, the program challenges the enduring myth of the solitary writer in the ivory tower. Writing is positioned as a collaborative art, one that gains power when it is in conversation with others.

Community engagement is central to the program’s vision. MFA students will partner with Houston-based nonprofits, schools and cultural institutions, contributing as writers, teachers, editors and creative partners. Writers sharpen their craft by listening closely, by observing the world around them and by learning to write with and for audiences beyond the academy. At the same time, community partners gain sustained creative support, new platforms for their stories and collaborators invested in Houston’s cultural and social vitality.

Equally distinctive is the program’s approach to craft. Led by a world-class faculty whose accomplishments span fiction, poetry, nonfiction, translation and hybrid forms, the Rice MFA is built on cross training writers across genres. Students will be encouraged to experiment, borrow techniques and resist narrow specialization. Small cohorts allow for close mentorship, rigorous workshops and a culture of intellectual generosity.

From the beginning, the Rice MFA has been built on a simple conviction: talent should never be limited by financial circumstance. Every student admitted to the program will receive a full tuition waiver and a guaranteed three-year living stipend, ensuring the freedom to write, study and engage fully with the city around them. Rice has committed to covering tuition and stipend support for the inaugural cohort as the program launches. Philanthropic partnership is now essential to extend that same level of support to the cohorts that follow. Supporting the Rice MFA means giving writers the time and security to do their best work, investing in Houston as a place of vital stories and voices, and helping establish a program poised to become a national model for what creative writing education can and should be.

Now, as the inaugural cohort approaches, meet the writers and teachers who are leading Rice’s new MFA in Creative Writing.

Lacy’s career embodies one of the core principles of Rice’s MFA: a deliberate move away from the myth of the solitary writer and toward a model of the socially engaged artist. That orientation began early. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, Lacy took a course titled Collaboration Among the Arts, which grouped writers, musicians, visual artists and theater students together and instructed them simply to make something.

“My group created a very experimental stage play,” Lacy recalled. “I was the writer and the director. It was the first time I really thought of myself as someone who makes more than what exists on the page.”

“Somewhere between that collaboration course and today,” she continued, “I stopped thinking of myself as an artist who makes things and started thinking of myself as an artist who makes things happen.” Over time, that shift in how she understood her work widened and determined how Lacy thought about what her art could accomplish in Houston. “Millions of stories are interwoven here,” she said. “The question for me is how to amplify those stories in ways that create change, that affect policy, that reach people involved in decision-making.”

That same question animates Rice’s new MFA. “We are activating people to be informed, ethical citizens of their communities,” Lacy said. “Our students will take the skills they learn at Rice and use them to benefit the places they live. Helping writers share knowledge with the public is one of the most important services a university can provide.”

One of the MFA’s strongest features, Kiese explained, is its commitment to breaking down genre silos. “You might come in as a poet and end up working with someone rooted in creative nonfiction. That’s ideal. The goal isn’t to create one kind of writer — it’s to make space for many kinds of creation.”

This multi-genre approach works because of the faculty’s range. “You just have a wide array of teachers who do multiple things well,” he said. “That’s rare. Usually, you get silos. Here, you get people who are extraordinary in more than one mode.”

That breadth of talent functions alongside Kiese’s commitment to place. He notes how Mississippi, his childhood home, taught him both the gravity and urgency of telling stories that honor where you come from and the people who shaped you. “Growing up in Mississippi was a gift,” he says. “I come from a place the rest of the world kind of laughs at. We are ranked 50th in almost everything, but we were never 50th in art making.” For Kiese, writing about place honors the artistry of his home state and the people, including his grandmother, whose stories were dismissed or unheard.

Bringing that legacy to Rice feels natural. Houston, in his imagination as a child, was a cultural force whose music, language and swagger influenced Mississippi. “When I was growing up,” Kiese said, “Houston was a real city. I thought if you could make it in Houston, you could make it anywhere.” Today, he sees Houston as a place alive with artistic energy, a city that mirrors the multiplicity and creative urgency he wants for his students. “There's so much writerly energy around Houston and around this area that I feel like it's just begging to be tapped or centralized in some way.”

The idea for “The Anniversary” took shape while Andrea was teaching his popular “Writing the Family” course at Rice. He invites students into the emotional and psychological complexity of family narratives — “a labyrinth of the Minotaur,” where each writer must decide how, or whether, to emerge. For Andrea, writing is rooted in empathy, an effort to reach a place where one can feel the human condition of others. “Writing is leaving your safe area and meeting someone who shares the same human condition,” he said. “That same thing happens in the MFA community, and it also happens in translation. Translation requires empathy. It is a mutual act of trust, a way of feeling what another life or another culture means through a shared language.”

In his translation courses, Andrea begins by asking students to bring a book that feels close to their soul, “an author who feels like a twin in another language.” When he translated “The Little Prince” from French into Italian, he felt that connection immediately. “It was like finding someone who was saying the things I wanted to say, things tied to my childhood,” he recalled. “I am an existentialist in both writing and translating. I try to get as close as possible to myself. Only when you find your truth in another author can you make them alive in your own language.”

“Part of what makes Rice’s MFA unique is its integration with the Houston community,” Phillip said. “Universities bring attention and resources to major cities, but they often fail to give back to the communities that sustain them. Our faculty already work with organizations like Inprint and Kindred Stories, and we can do more. As we deepen our relationship with Houston as a city and a home, we’ll teach our students to do the same. Writers are servants to the public, though that’s sometimes forgotten in a culture of celebrity. I’m proud that we have a different vision — and the resources to make it real.”

As a professor of creative writing, Phillip pushes students to rethink what it means to be a successful writer by considering not just where work circulates, but whom it serves.

“Yes, we want our writing in the world,” he said. “But we also have to imagine the world in generous, responsible ways. We have to see it beyond greed and destruction and value people as more than potential book buyers. A program committed to community has to show writers the many ways they can be useful — to literacy programs, public workshops, neighborhood reading series, book clubs and shared spaces that don’t always get attention.”

Tomás’ translation course diverges from traditional models. Rather than beginning with a favorite author or canonical text, students start with an honest assessment of their own weaknesses. If a poet struggles with metaphor or a fiction writer with dialogue, that weakness becomes the foundation of their translation project. Students then seek out a writer, someone they can read in another language, whose strengths lie exactly where the student wishes to grow.

Translation, Tomás argued, exposes a writer’s limitations with startling clarity. “When a student tries to translate Federico García Lorca,” he said, “they must attempt to be as agile with metaphor in English as Lorca is in Spanish. It’s impossible, of course, but the attempt is the training. Wrestling with Lorca’s imagery becomes the workout that builds the very muscle they lack.”

Ultimately, Tomás teaches that translation is not about perfection but about recreating an experience. “Translation is an art form,” he said. “It’s the purest form of close reading there is. You identify every aesthetic move in the original, and then you try to duplicate those moves so they have the same impact in a new language. That’s creation.”

Reading the Gulf Coast:
The Summer 2026 Reading List

Curated by Lacy M. Johnson, writer and director of Rice’s MFA in Creative Writing, this summer reading list invites readers into the rich, complex literary traditions of Houston and the Gulf Coast. Spanning fiction, nonfiction and poetry, and including works in translation, these books explore place, history, voice and community. Whether you’re discovering this tradition for the first time or returning to it, the list offers a compelling entry point into the conversations at the heart of Rice’s new MFA in Creative Writing.

Fiction

Nonfiction

Poetry

Accelerate the Vision

Rice’s MFA program will shape the next generation of Gulf Coast voices. With your support, these artists can focus on their craft and bring new work into the world. To learn how you can support Rice’s MFA in Creative Writing, contact Emily Stein, senior director of development, at 713-348-3424 or emily.m.stein@rice.edu.

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