HeyJaredMFA Writers
MFA Writers is the podcast where host Jared McCormack interviews creative writing MFA students about their program, their process, and a piece they’re working on.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 5
- Latest publication
- Sep 8, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 14, 2026
Latest episodes
“Manufactured Desires”: Mohammad Hakima on systems of control, finding community through writing, and pursuing an MFA at The New School (opens the original)
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In this episode, Mohammad Hakima tells Jared about immigrating to the United States from Iran, experiencing culture shock in America, and the very different mechanisms of social control he encountered in each country. They discuss the freedoms that can be hard-won in Iran versus the subtler pressures of American life, including what Mohammad calls “manufactured desires”: the ways culture and consumerism can shape what we want while convincing us those desires are entirely our own. They also talk
Can Where You Live Make You a Better Writer? katie wills evans on NOLA and the LSU New Orleans MFA program (opens the original)
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katie wills evans is a second-year MFA candidate in fiction at the University of New Orleans who considers herself a poet and teacher above all else, having spent the last fourteen years working with teenagers in New Orleans public schools. Their short story "Something for the Children" was a finalist in Writer's Digest's 2024 Short Short Story contest, their poem "meth addicted fish" was a finalist in the Connecticut Poetry Society's Experimental Poetry Contest, and they have essays and intervi
How Stories Make Us Human in the Age of AI, A Conversation with Jemimah Wei on The Original Daughter (opens the original)
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In our Season 7 premiere, Jemimah Wei talks about her debut novel, The Original Daughter , and how growing up in Singapore shaped the way she thinks about storytelling, identity, and our relationship with technology. She and Jared also explore what Singapore can teach us about the rapidly changing world of AI, the ways technology is training us to move faster than we were meant to, and how reading and writing can alter our experience of time. Their conversation asks what it means to resist the p
Jonny Teklit — University of Wisconsin–Madison rerelease (opens the original)
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On this episode, Jonny Teklit sits down with Jared to talk about crafting odes to small, granular subjects, sharing his personal productivity tips and the common writing advice that doesn’t work for him. Plus, Jonny discusses the pros and cons of UW-Madison’s rotating genre admissions policy and reflects on how Lynda Barry’s comics class changed his perspective on creative talent, revision, and experimentation. Jonny Teklit is an award-winning poet whose work has appeared in The Academy of Ameri
Meghan Perry — Debut Author Series — Water Finds a Way Rerelease (opens the original)
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15 years after her MFA, and 4 years after scrapping a book that just wasn’t working, Meghan Perry’s debut novel WATER FINDS A WAY is receiving strong positive reviews, including a coveted Kirkus star. She joins Jared to talk about the realities of post-grad writing, going “scorched earth” on revision, and the process of turning short stories into a full-length novel. Plus, she talks about grounding her work in a remote Maine fishing village, overlooked American cultures, and the hardships—and co
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