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Arts
MFA for Poets and Writers Announces Fall Visiting Writers Series Schedule
The UMass MFA for Poets and Writers program has announced the program for the Fall 2025 Visiting Writers Series. This year’s series features Ariana Reines, Garth Greenwell, Layli Long Soldier and Jeff Parker, with readings held in the Old Chapel’s Great Hall that are free and open to the public.
Celebrating its 62nd year, the Visiting Writers Series at UMass Amherst presents emerging and established writers of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. This year, Greenwell will be the inaugural Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence, a new residency program hosted by the UMass MFA. The Merry and Daniel Glosband Writer in Residence program brings renowned poets and writers to the UMass Amherst campus to work with creative writers in a weeklong intensive featuring craft talks, readings and classroom visits. The Visiting Writer Series is produced by the MFA for Poets and Writers and the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts and Action, and is made possible with support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the University of Massachusetts Arts Council, the Massachusetts Review and the UMass Department of English.
More information and complete bios for each featured writer can be found on the Visiting Writer Series website.
Visiting Writers Series for Fall 2025
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Ariana Reines is an award-winning poet, Obie-winning playwright, performing artist, and translator.
Her most recent books are “The Rose” (Graywolf, 2025) and “Wave of Blood,” published in the UK in 2024 by Divided Publishing. Her other books include “A Sand Book” (Tin House, 2019), winner of the 2020 Kingsley Tufts Prize & longlisted for the National Book Award, “The Cow” (Alberta Prize, 2006), “Coeur De Lion” (2007) and “Mercury” (2011), all from Fence Books, and “The Origin of the World” (2014) from Semiotext(e). Her Obie-winning play “Telephone” (2009) was commissioned by The Foundry Theatre and has been performed and published in Norwegian translation at the Mollebyen Literary Festival (2017) and at KW Berlin (2018) among others.
Among Reines’ performances & theatrical works include: “Mortal Kombat” (2015), performed at The Whitney Museum in New York and Gallery TPW in Toronto; “Lorna” (2013), performed at the Martin E. Segal Theatre in New York; and “The Origin of the World” (2013), performed at Modern Art, London.
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Garth Greenwell is the author of “What Belongs to You,” which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for many other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the L.A. Times Book Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize.
His second book, “Cleanness,” was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize and the Prix Sade, among others. A New York Times Notable Book, it was named a Best Book of 2020 by over thirty publications.
His new novel, “Small Rain,” won the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
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Layli Long Soldier is the author of the chapbook “Chromosomory” (2010) and the full-length collection “WHEREAS” (2017), which won the National Books Critics Circle award and was a finalist for the National Book Award. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and poetry editor at Kore Press. In 2012, her participatory installation,
“Whereas We Respond,” was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. She was awarded a Whiting Writer’s Award in 2016.
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Jeff Parker is the author of several books including “Where Bears Roam the Streets: A Russian Journal,” the novel “Ovenman” and the short story collection “The Taste of Penny.” His newest novella, “G v. P,” was published in the collection “Proper Imposters” by the University Press of Florida. The co-founder and director of the DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal, Parker is a professor of English at UMass Amherst and teaches prose in the MFA Program.