A Reading List Worth Celebrating: Books from Northwestern's MA/MFA in Writing Program
Northwestern’s graduate writing programs have a lot to celebrate—and much of it can be found on the shelf.
A strong writing community creates the space writers need to develop their craft and bring new work into the world. For writers connected to the MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry programs, that creative community continues well beyond the classroom. Northwestern students, alumni, and faculty have published recent work across genres. Explore some of their latest books and find your next read.
Recent Books by Northwestern Writing Students and Alumni
The books below offer a snapshot of recent work from Northwestern’s writing community, with publications spanning fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and work across genres. They include debut books as well as new work from established authors and have been published by a range of independent and major presses.
Fiction
The Secrets of the Old Post Cemetery: An Ohnita Harbor Mystery (Ohnita Harbor Series), Patricia Crisafulli (2025)
The third entry in the Ohnita Harbor Mystery series finds librarian and document authenticator Gabriela Domenici drawn into a modern murder after unveiling a Revolutionary War–era spy map—one riddled with inaccuracies that may not be mistakes at all.
Fagin the Thief, Allison Epstein (2025)
A reimagining of Oliver Twist from the perspective of its most maligned character, tracing young Jacob Fagin's path from a grieving orphan to the man who takes in London's castoff children—among them a volatile boy named Bill Sikes. Winner of the 2025 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction
Waterline, Aram Mrjoian (2025)
A multigenerational Armenian American family on a small Michigan island confronts a sudden loss that forces them to reckon with inherited history and the silences that have shaped them across generations. Selected as one of Michigan Notable Books for 2026
Fan Favorite, Adrienne Gunn (2025)
Chicago copywriter Edie Pepper enters a popular reality dating show to win back her high school sweetheart, but as behind-the-scenes intrigue and an unexpected attraction to the show’s producer complicate her quest, Edie must reconsider what and who she truly wants.
True Failure, Alex Higley (2025)
After losing his accounting job, Ben hides the news from his wife and pours his energy into auditioning for a Shark Tank–style reality show—while she conceals secrets of her own—in a wry, unsparing look at what success and failure actually mean under late capitalism.
Memphis, Tara M. Stringfellow (2022)
Three generations of a Black family of gifted women confront racism, violence, and inherited trauma while drawing strength from art, love, and one another, in a story about family, memory, and the meaning of home. A Today Show “Read with Jenna” selection
Non-Fiction
The Veiled Prophet: Secret Societies, White Supremacy, and the Struggle for St. Louis, Devin O’Shea (2026)
A history of the secretive St. Louis society founded in the aftermath of an 1877 labor uprising, tracing how its costumed balls and civic pageantry masked a century of strikebreaking, racial exclusion, and elite influence reaching into national politics.
Chicago Cocktails: An Elegant Collection of Over 100 Recipes Inspired by the Wind City, Nicole Schnitzler (2025)
A neighborhood-by-neighborhood tour of Chicago's craft cocktail scene, pairing more than 100 original recipes with the stories and bartenders behind them.
Poetry
Magic Enuff, Tara M. Stringfellow (2024)
Celebrating Black Southern womanhood through the bonds between mothers, daughters, and sisters, this collection moves between rage and radical love to explore how strength and vulnerability, loyalty and betrayal, can coexist in the same breath. Winner of the BCALA Literary Award for Poetry
Recent Books by Northwestern Graduate Writing Faculty
Fiction
Wreck Your Heart, Lori Rader-Day (2026)
Wreck Your Heart follows a woman returning to her hometown and confronting the complicated bonds, long-buried secrets, and emotional wreckage of her past. As old relationships resurface, she must reckon with the choices that have shaped the life she thought she’d left behind. USA Today bestseller
Every Exit Brings You Home, Naeem Murr (2026)
Adrift between countries, identities, and relationships, Jamal “Jack” Shaban searches for belonging and a place to call home. Moving between cultures and emotional landscapes, Murr’s new novel explores displacement, desire, and the elusive meaning of belonging.
Defiant Acts, Jim Stewart III (2025)
Set in a predominantly Chicago suburb in the early 1990s, Defiant Acts follows a working-class interracial family navigating economic hardship, racial tensions, adolescence, and the daily challenges of holding a loving family together.
Direct Sunlight: Stories, Christine Sneed (2023)
A story collection that examines friendship, marriage, ambition, and family with wit and pathos, and illuminates the quiet tensions and unexpected turning points that reshape ordinary lives.
The Death of Us, Lori Rader-Day (2023)
When Ashley Hay's car surfaces in a pond on the Kehoe property fifteen years after she vanished—leaving her newborn son on Liss Kehoe's doorstep—the discovery reopens old wounds and threatens the secrets Liss has kept ever since. As the small town confronts what really happened that night, Liss must fight to protect her family while someone else works to keep the truth buried.
Coco at the Ritz, Gioia Diliberto (2021)
Arrested from her suite at the Ritz in August 1944 for treason tied to her wartime affair with a German spy, Coco Chanel faces an interrogation whose true details history has never fully revealed. The novel imagines that psychological battle of wits, along with the mystery of why she escaped the punishment so many other women faced. It's a portrait of a brilliant, flawed woman reckoning with the choices she made when the line between survival and collaboration was dangerously thin.
How to Walk on Water and Other Stories, Rachel Swearingen (2020)
This award-winning collection of realist and speculative short stories features darkly compelling stories of characters confronting family conflicts, loss, and their complicated pasts across a range of vividly rendered settings.
Non-Fiction
River of Books: A Life in Reading, Donna Seaman (2024)
A literary memoir in which a Booklist editor and longtime book critic reflects on her lifelong devotion to books, tracing how reading has shaped her identity, relationships, work, and understanding of the world.
Firebrands: The Untold Story of Four Women Who Made and Unmade Prohibition, Gioia Diliberto (2024)
A story of the four formidable women Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Pauline Sabin, and Mabel Willebrandt who shaped both the rise and eventual repeal of Prohibition, revealing the complex role women played in one of America’s most consequential social experiments
Benjamin Banneker and Us, Rachel Jamison Webster (2023)
Webster’s newest book explores the life and legacy of the pioneering Black scientist and surveyor alongside the author’s own family history, weaving biography, memoir, poetry, and archival inquiry into a meditation on race, inheritance, and belonging in America.
Poetry
The Wyeth Ekphrastics, John McCarthy (forthcoming, 2026)
Winner of the Burnside Review Chapbook Prize, this forthcoming collection extends McCarthy's ekphrastic attention to the visual art of the Wyeth family, though full details on its scope and themes aren't yet available ahead of publication.
The Under Hum, Simone Muench (with Jackie White) (2024)
A collaborative collection built from shared lines and voices woven across their two authorial perspectives, this book moves through womanhood, illness, grief, and abuse, tracing a speaker's path from silence into defiant, healing speech.
How a Creative and Professional Community Prepares Authors for Publishing
These recent publications reflect a writing community where writers have the support to develop their work and ultimately share it with readers.
Northwestern's part-time writing programs were built around the idea that writers get better by working closely with other writers. Students in the MA and MFA programs study fiction, nonfiction, poetry, or a combination of genres in small workshops led by published, award-winning faculty. Throughout the program, they attend readings and literary events and become part of the Chicago literary scene in ways that extend well beyond campus. Many students go on to teach, edit, and publish.
“Whether a workshop or a seminar, a literature course or publishing practicum, Northwestern faculty infuse each course with imagination and energy, as well as a deep well of curiosity and reverence for the practice of writing itself. Students are encouraged to find the sense of play in their work—and to work at a pace in the program that feels comfortable for them.”
–Christine Sneed, Faculty Director
That professional approach carries through the curriculum. Along with workshops and electives in literary studies, students in the MA and MFA programs can get hands-on experience in teaching and publishing, including the opportunity to edit an international literary magazine alongside their peers.
Works written by students and alumni show that sustained feedback, structured revision, and an active literary community can give writers the foundation they need to develop their craft and succeed as published authors. Designed for working professionals, Northwestern University’s MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry programs make it possible to pursue that ambition without putting your career on hold.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can you do with an MA or MFA in writing? Graduates of Northwestern's writing programs go on to publish books, teach creative writing, edit for literary magazines and publishing houses, and build careers that combine writing with related professional work.
What is the difference between an MA in writing and an MFA in writing at Northwestern?
The MA in Writing and the MFA in Prose and Poetry share the same faculty and courses. The MFA is a deeper course of study that requires additional coursework and a more extensive creative thesis. The thesis is a book-length manuscript or its equivalent, developed under a faculty mentor and second reader. For many students, this becomes the first full draft of a published book.
Who teaches in Northwestern's MA/MFA in Writing program?
Courses are taught by a faculty of published, award-winning writers across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, many of whom continue to publish books of their own while mentoring students.
What genres do Northwestern SPS writing students and faculty publish?
Members of the SPS graduate writing community have published in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry as well as dual-genre work.
How do writing programs help students get published?
Through sustained workshop feedback, one-on-one faculty mentorship, a structured creative thesis, and practical training in teaching, editing, and publishing—all part of the Northwestern curriculum.
Northwestern University School of Professional Studies offers many degree and certificate programs, with evening and online options available. To learn more about how Northwestern University's MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry graduates to advance their careers, fill out the form below and we will be in touch with you soon.