Amherst, MA – The University of Massachusetts’ MFA for Poets and Writers announces the first annual Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer In Residence to take place October 20 - 24, 2025 on the UMass campus. This inaugural residency will feature novelist and critic Garth Greenwell, winner of the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for Small Rain which was also nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
The 2025 residency will include three, two-hour craft talks for MFA students featuring lectures, presentations, group discussion, and writing exercises. Greenwell will take part in the Living Writers course designed for undergraduates and taught by MFA graduates. Greenwell will give a public reading on October 23, 2025 at 6pm in the Bernie Dallas Room (Goodell Hall) as part of the MFA’s Visiting Writers Series. The reading is free and open to the public.
Sabina Murray, MFA Program Director and notable fiction writer said, "Dan and Merry Glosband are longtime supporters of the MFA and our graduate students. The Glosbands were early champions of the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action, and now they are again making a difference for emerging writers with this important residency."
Fiction writer and MFA faculty member, Jeff Parker said, “Garth is one of the greats of contemporary American literature, and he is highly coveted as speaker and teacher of creative writing. We’re honored to have him serve as the inaugural Glosband Writer in Residence in which capacity he will spend substantive time with our students.”
This residency is made possible through the generous underwriting of Merry and Daniel Glosband. The program will alternate bringing a prose writer and poet to campus each year to deepen and further develop the MFA students’ understanding of craft.
More information about Garth Greenwell:
Greenwell’s first novel, What Belongs to You, won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His second novel, Cleanness, was a New York Times Notable Book and was nominated for many awards, including the Prix Sade. It was named a Best Book of 2020 by The New Yorker, Time, The Washington Post, and over 30 other publications. His books have been translated into more than fifteen languages.
Greenwell’s writing on literature, art, and music appears widely, including in The New Yorker, The Guardian, Harper’s, and elsewhere. A collection of his essays is forthcoming. A Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Vursell Award for exceptional prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, he is a Distinguished Writer in Residence at New York University.
Links to recent press:
2025 PEN/Faulkner Award Winner
The Message at the Heart of Garth Greenwell's Small Rain, Vulture
Garth Greenwell: The novelist on writing about the body in crisis, The Yale Review