It was standing room only in the Rhododendron Room at WVU’s Mountainlair for the MFA hooding ceremony on Thursday, April 28th at 7:30pm. Family, friends, classmates, and colleagues gathered to hear the graduating third-year MFA students read from the culmination of their graduate work—their thesis.

“You’ve written the stories and essays and poems you needed to write,” Mary Ann Samyn, Director of the Creative Writing Program, said to the ten graduates. “And we’ve been happy to keep you company along the way.”

Each graduate was introduced by his or her thesis director and received a hood that symbolized the completion of their graduate degree. The readings each began in very different places—sky blue bruises, tomatoes, a butterfly shrub, explorations with a young niece, drawings of dead bodies, graves, oil, birth, dreams, snakes—but they all ended in the same way: enthusiastic applause and a wide smile from the writer who penned the words. You can listen to the entire reading here.

Congratulations to the WVU MFA Class of 2016!
(in order of reading)

Melissa Ferrone (Manassas, VA)

Maryann Hudak (Solon, OH)

Shaun Turner (Richmond, KY)

Travis Mersing (Aurora, WV)

Hailey Foglio (Salem, WI)

Feagin Jones (Richmond, KY)

Barrett Lipkin (Virginia Beach, VA)

Emily Denton (Franklin, TN)

Claire Fowler (Charleston, WV)

Maggie Behringer (Chattanooga, TN)