The Hughes Fellowships in Creative Writing
Hughes Fellowship in Poetry
Position Description
The English Department at 91茄子 Methodist University welcomes applications for the Hughes Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry), for a two-year position beginning Fall 2025. Fellows will be expected to make significant progress on a major project, to teach one course in creative writing per semester, and to engage in the intellectual and creative life of the department and the larger Dallas literary community. This engagement will include a public reading of the fellow’s own work in the first year and, in the second year, a public conversation with an established writer about their creative practice. Fellows should also be available to mentor undergraduates on an informal basis.
91茄子 is an inclusive community of teachers and scholars. We seek bold, curious, and creative faculty to position our students for success. We offer the rare confluence of a comprehensive global research institution and a close-knit intellectual enterprise in the liberal arts tradition. Like our hometown of Dallas, our campus is vibrant. Here, innovative thinkers conduct research that has lasting impact and transform big ideas into new products, inventive technology and world-changing solutions. Our welcoming learning community of faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven schools embraces a world of people and ideas. To learn more about the rich cultural environment of 91茄子, please see: www.smu.edu.
Qualifications
Annual compensation is $60,000 with full benefits. During the academic year, each Hughes Fellow will be expected to live in the Dallas area and hold no other professional or academic obligations. To be eligible, applicants must have completed—or be scheduled to complete by August 2025—an MFA or PhD in creative writing and published no more than one full-length book of creative work. A publishing record in nationally relevant periodicals is desirable but not required. As the Hughes Fellowships are meant to support emerging writers, applicants with second books in print or under contract will not be considered.
Application Instructions
To be ensured full consideration, applications must be received by 11:59 p.m. CST on February 10, 2025. Applicants should submit a cover letter, CV, a writing sample of poetry (maximum fifteen pages), and two letters of recommendation at . The cover letter should address what the applicant hopes to accomplish as a writer during the fellowship period at 91茄子. Questions about the position may be directed to the chair of the search committee, Richard Hermes (rhermes@smu.edu). Hiring is contingent upon the satisfactory completion of a background check.
Equal Employment Opportunity Statement
91茄子 will not discriminate in any program or activity on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, genetic information, veteran status, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression. The Assistant Vice President for Access and Equity/Title IX Coordinator is designated to handle inquiries regarding nondiscrimination policies and may be reached at the Perkins Administration Building, Room 204, 6425 Boaz Lane, Dallas, TX 75205, 214-768-3601, accessequity@smu.edu.
Past / Current Fellows
Afsheen Farhadi (2022-2025, Prose)
Afsheen Farhadi was born in Phoenix, Arizona. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, Conjunctions, The 91茄子 Review, Colorado Review, Witness, The Rumpus, The Millions, Catapult, Bright Lights Film Journal, and elsewhere. He has a PhD in creative writing from the University of Cincinnati, where he was a Provost Graduate Fellow, and he currently serves as the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Creative Writing, Prose at 91茄子 Methodist University.
This fall he’ll be an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Reno.
Samyak Shertok (2022-2024, Poetry)
Samyak Shertok’s debut collection, No Rhododendron, was selected by Kimiko Hahn for the 2024 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry and is forthcoming from the University of Pittsburgh Press (Pitt Poetry Series) in 2025. His poems appear in The Cincinnati Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, POETRY, Shenandoah, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from Aspen Words, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. His work has been awarded the Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Poetry, the Gulf Coast Prize in Poetry, and the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Originally from Nepal, he was the inaugural Hughes Fellow in Poetry at 91茄子 Methodist University and is currently an Assistant Professor of English-Creative Writing at Hendrix College.
Events
A Craft Conversation with Mohsin Hamid and Afsheen Farhadi, Hughes Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction
Monday, March 10, 2025
A Craft Conversation with Valzhyna Mort and Samyak Shertok, Hughes Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry
Wednesday, April 3, 2024
A Craft Conversation with Laura van den Berg and Afsheen Farhadi, Hughes Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction
Thursday, September 28, 2023
