Poor Yorick Literary Journal is a free, online literary journal of the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University.
The journal accepts rolling submissions of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, digital art and photography, and other innovative works inspired by “rediscovery.” Finding the lost, rekindling old sparks, illuminating the shadows—Poor Yorick celebrates the joy, fear, hardship, and wonder of being human.
About the MFA
The Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University is a low-residency program that combines student-curated independent studies, online group workshops, and in-person residencies. The program encourages students to explore both creative genres (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction/memoir, screenwriting) and professional fields (journalism, public relations, marketing, grant writing, technical writing).
Our students are successful in a variety of areas both in and outside academia. WCSU MFA graduates have published books, found full-time teaching appointments, entered other terminal degree programs (PhD, MBA), and are working full-time as journalists, agents, editors, corporate communicators, marketers, and freelance writers.
Poor Yorick Staff
| Editor-in-Chief | Matt Homrich-Knieling (editor@pooryorickjournal.com) |
| Associate Editors | Kayla Bassingthwaite (poetry lead) Gita Hassin (fiction lead) |
| Advisor | Anthony D’Aries is the author of The Language of Men: A Memoir (Hudson Whitman Press, 2012), which received the PEN/New England Discovery Prize and Foreword’s Memoir-of-the-Year Award. His essays have appeared in Boston magazine, Solstice, The Good Men Project, Shelf Awareness, Memoir Magazine, The Literary Review, and have been finalists for Fourth Genre’s Michael Steinberg Essay Prize and the Diana Wood’s Memorial Creative Nonfiction Award. In 2011, Anthony was selected as Randolph College’s Emerging Writer-in-Residence. He has served on the board of PEN/New England as a member of the Freedom-to-Write Committee, leading writing workshops in prisons, shelters, hospitals, and residential care facilities, and co-chairing the inaugural PEN Writing and Trauma Conference. Anthony received the 2014-15 Writers’ Room of Boston’s fellowship in nonfiction. In 2016, he was selected as the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Fort Lyon writer in residence, where he taught writing workshops for homeless veterans. He currently directs the low-residency MFA in Creative and Professional Writing at Western Connecticut State University. |
| Webmaster | Jeffrey Shpunt |
| Past Editors | Adrienne Rozells Claire Pasley Morgan G. Cairns Cameron Phillips Brianna Paris Briana McGuckin Rebecca Shaw Melissa Johnson Carolyn Bernier Camellia Mukherjee Melissa Gordon Maggie McCarthy Erik Ofgang ~ Founding Editor |