In addition to its many guest contributors, The MFA Years had regular bloggers each year from 2014 to 2018. These bloggers, along with the former editor-in-chief, are listed below.
Caitlin Neely
Editor-in-Chief
Poet Caitlin Neely graduated from the creative writing MFA at the University of Virginia in 2016. She founded The MFA Years in 2014 and Reservoir in 2016, running both sites until 2018. Her poetry has been published in West Branch, The Journal, Passages North, Sixth Finch, and others.
Email Caitlin: cdayspringneely@gmail.com
Cady Vishniac
Blogger, Editor-in-Chief
Fictionaut Cady Vishniac earned her MFA in creative writing at The Ohio State University. She blogged for The MFA Years in 2015–2018 and relaunched the site as The Workshop in 2020. She’s also been an editor at Reservoir, The Journal, and Raleigh Review. Her stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, New Stories from the Midwest, New England Review, Joyland, etc.
Cady started a PhD in 2018, but academia is dying and hostile to caretakers, so she left to work a series of editorial and social media gigs. It’s going well. So well, in fact, that she conceived The Grind, our alternative careers column for writers.
Email Cady: cady@readtheworkshop.com
Martina Clark
Blogger
Nonfiction author Martina Clark blogged for The MFA Years from 2014 to 2016 while earning her MFA from Stony Brook University. She’s an educator, writer, and advocate for social justice and human rights for all. She writes memoir, personal essays, and travel pieces. She has had the good fortune to travel extensively but will always be a Californian (even though she currently lives in Brooklyn, New York). She has never, however, ridden an elephant, a camel, or a zebra. Nor does she intend to.
Email Martina at her website, martina-clark.com.
J.R. Dawson
Blogger
J.R. Dawson blogged for The MFA Years from 2014 to 2016. She holds an MFA from Stonecoast and has been seen in Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine, Lightspeed, Escape Pod, Daily Science Fiction, and others. She is an Active Member of SFWA and Codex. Living in Omaha, Nebraska, with her pupperinos and husband, she enjoys working as a freelance teaching artist, writing science fiction adventures, and traveling to Disney World. She is represented by Rena Rossner.
Contact J.R. at her website, jrdawsonwriter.com.
Rachel Heng
Blogger
Rachel Heng blogged for The MFA Years in 2017 and 2018. Her novel, Suicide Club, was published in 2018 by Sceptre, Hachette, and Henry Holt, Macmillan. Her fiction has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Glimmer Train, McSweeney’s, Best New Singaporean Short Stories, Kenyon Review, and Guernica. She was born in Singapore, went to school in New York, and worked in London before moving to Austin, Texas, to earn her MFA in fiction at the Michener Center for Writers.
Find Rachel at her website, rachelhengqp.com.
Minda Honey
Blogger
Essayist and advice columnist Minda Honey blogged for The MFA Years in 2014 and 2015. She holds an MFA from the University of California, Riverside. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where she leads community-based writers’ workshops and pays her bills with her words. Her work has been featured by the Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, Longreads, Teen Vogue, The Washington Post, and others.
Email Minda: mindahoney@gmail.com.
Whittier Strong
Blogger
Essayist Whittier Strong got his MFA in creative writing with a focus in nonfiction at the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2017, writing for The MFA Years in 2014 and 2015. Before all that, he graduated from Metropolitan State University with a BA in creative writing. He has special interests in sociology and philosophy, and his work has been featured in The Rumpus.
Email Whittier: whittierstrong@hotmail.com
Stephanie Lane Sutton
Blogger
Stephanie Lane Sutton, who blogged for The MFA Years from 2016 to 2018, writes poetry, essays, and fiction. Her chapbook of stories, Shiny Insect Sex, was published by Bull City Press in 2019. Her writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, the Offing, and Black Warrior Review, among others, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and PEN America’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. She has a creative writing MFA in poetry from the University of Miami.
Find Stephanie at her website, stephanielanesutton.com.