Creative Writing M.F.A. Alumni Receive Fellowships From National Endowment for the Arts

Courtesy of Tobias Wray; Photo by Petra Lee

Tobias Wray, left, and J. Bailey Hutchinson

The Program in Creative Writing and Translation at the U of A is thrilled to announce that two alumni — Tobias Wray (2012) and J. Bailey Hutchinson (2019) — have been awarded Creative Writing Fellowships of $25,000 for the upcoming fiscal year. The fellowship was awarded to writers of poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Wray and Hutchinson are among 36 writers in the nation selected to receive a fellowship from a pool of 1,900 eligible applications received by the NEA for fiscal year 2023.

"What a thrill to see two of our exceptional alumni — and two such fine poets — among this year's NEA recipients," said program director Davis McCombs. "We're so proud of Bailey and Toby, and we look forward to reading the extraordinary new poems these grants will support."

The NEA's Creative Writng Fellowships allow recipients to set aside time for writing, research, travel and general career advancement. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive, anonymous process and are judged on the artistic excellence of the work sample provided.

 "The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support this group of poets and provide them with the means to focus on their writing," said the NEA's Director of Literary Arts Amy Stolls. "Their poetry explodes with originality in form and content, offering powerful reflections on the pain and joy of our modern times."

Tobias Wray's No Doubt I Will Return a Different Man won the CSU Poetry Center's Lighthouse Poetry Series Competition. His work has found homes in Adroit, Blackbird, Hunger Mountain, Meridian, Verse Daily and the Georgia Review, as well as in Queer Nature: A Poetry Anthology (Autumn House Press) and Poetry Is Bread (Nirala). He holds a Ph.D. in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he was a James A. Sappenfield Fellow, as well as an M.F.A. in poetry and translation from the U of A. He teaches poetry at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond. 

J. Bailey Hutchinson is the author of Gut, selected by Patricia Smith as the winner of the 2022 Miller Williams Poetry Prize. She received an M.F.A. in creative writing from the U of A, where she served as poetry editor for the Arkansas International and assistant director of the Open Mouth Literary Center, a community-based nonprofit literary organization. Hutchinson's work has been featured by Ninth Letter, Beloit, Muzzle Magazine, Waxwing, Peach Mag and more. She works as an associate editor for Milkweed Editions and teaches creative writing workshops through a number of organizations, including the Loft Literary Center. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Since 1967, the NEA has awarded more than 3,600 Creative Writing Fellowships totaling over $57 million. Many American recipients of the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award and Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and Fiction were recipients of National Endowment for the Arts fellowships early in their careers.

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