Lauren Groff. Joyce Carol Oates. Lydi Conklin. These names are a few of the many who have earned their Master of Fine Arts degrees from the University of Wisconsin’s creative writing department. This year, the next generation of MFA students prepares to depart and make their own splash in the literary sphere.
The MFA program in fiction only accepts six students in its cohort every other year from a highly competitive pool. This year, six MFA candidates — Hannah Mackey, Felix Lecocq, Katherine Liu, H’Abigail Mlo, Charles Muhumuza and Shah Tazrian Ashrafi — will graduate after two years of study.
The six MFA students read from their works of fiction at an event hosted by the Wisconsin Book Festival on March 16, 2026. The Badger Herald reported on the event and spoke with each of the writers about their work and future.
Hannah Mackey: Curated Worlds
Mackey, who studied Creative Writing and Publishing and Editing at Susquehanna University, has always enjoyed creative pursuits, such as music and art, she said. Her parents were deeply influential in her love for writing, as were various stories that she hoped to mimic, she said.
“I just love the ways in which authors can transport you to a completely different world,” Mackey said.
While an undergraduate, Mackey was exposed early to creative writing workshops thanks to Susquehanna’s creative writing program. These classes taught her skills essential to the MFA program, such as how to constructively critique peers’ writing, Mackey said. While an undergraduate, Mackey also took courses on editing and publishing.
During her time between undergraduate and graduate school, Mackey wrote with friends online and spent time teaching and tutoring, she said. Teaching was a surprisingly helpful experience for learning how to write more effectively, thanks to its emphasis on helping others write and learning about other viewpoints, according to Mackey.
“I had to apply myself in a different way, but I was still engaging in text … I was still talking about reading and writing, which is all connected,” Mackey said.
Though she initially approached the MFA program with nervousness and a need to prove herself, Mackey found her classes, professors and peers all very supportive of her and her craft, she said. The program includes a strong mix of writing, reading and learning how to teach writing, according to Mackey.
Common themes in Mackey’s writing — or at least those identified by her friends — are mental health struggles, oppressive structures, religion and the role of subtly-ingrained beliefs in a society, she said. Mackey’s current creative writing thesis focuses on the Black Church, the desire for a community and the tension between wanting acceptance while being aware that one may not find it.
Lastly, Mackey offered advice for active and aspiring writers. They should find community and avoid comparing themselves to others, Mackey said.
“Celebrate, but don’t compare, the people around you,” Mackey said.
As for her next steps, Mackey intends to travel to the East Coast, find a day job and improve her writing further, she said.
During the MFA reading at the Wisconsin Public Library, Mackey read a fiction excerpt centered around siblings going through their mother’s belongings after her passing. Her use of sharp, humorous dialogue fit her immersive description of the location quite well, while still leaving room for ruminations on how we may never know the completeness of another human being, no matter how close.
“The woman we saw every day … was a meticulously curated version of our mother,” Mackey read.
Felix Lecocq: Becoming the Author
Lecocq majored in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Chicago and has always loved writing. An early instance of his craft came about in first grade, when he wrote a five-page story about the horrors of ancient Egyptian archaeology, he said.
“It was really awesome, that these … ideas I had in my head were interesting to someone else,” he said.
Studying English Literature and Creative Writing at the undergraduate level helped Lecocq understand the lineage of stories and authors over time, and place texts in their historical and political contexts, Lecocq said.
Lecocq spent a few years between undergraduate and grad school in copy editing, learning how to schedule time and engage with the real world. During this time, Lecocq made personalized reading lists and tried to diversify his cultural engagement, he said.
“My advice would be to wait … until you literally cannot bring yourself to work any longer because it’s so miserable, and then you should go to grad school,” Lecocq said.
Lecocq most frequently writes about objectification, whether in sexual relationships, warfare or in capitalism, he said. Another interest of Lecocq’s is how humans lose a sense of power as they age — a term sometimes referred to as ‘twink death’ — that may have always been an illusion, he said.
Lecocq’s work is not constrained to prose writing — he has also created and written video games. Video games are low-stakes places to play with language, images and ideas before transferring them to a written form, Lecocq said.
Lecocq, who is Vietnamese and grew up in London, tries to avoid writing Asian-American literature that neglects other minority groups or stories that whitewash Asian-Americans’ complicity in white supremacy, he said. Instead of traditional identity fiction, Lecocq pursues what he calls solidarity fiction, which contextualizes individuals in American society without neglecting its history, he said.
“If Asian-American canon is a subgenre of American canon, then who are we leaving behind?” Lecocq said.
The MFA program helped Lecocq’s writing as well as his ability to teach, he said. Outside of his appreciation for his fellow students, a favorite moment of Lecocq’s MFA career was when a few students told him his instruction had changed their lives, he said.
Writing a book requires creating habits, routines and a great deal of reading, according to Lecocq. One should also engage with the world and people around them more, and modify their mindset to write as best as they can, he said.
“In order to write a book, you have to … become the person who is going to write a book,” Lecocq said.
Lecocq will be remaining in Madison for the near future, as he was recently accepted as a post-MFA Fiction Fellow at UW!
Lecocq’s reading at the MFA celebration was a buffet of writing — he chose to read one minute from several stories of his, as well as an essay about heart conditions. The stories focused on Vietnamese plantations, a character in love with a cringey coworker and a dynamic between a sugar baby and their sugar daddy.
“It’s so immoral, having all that wealth and not making something beautiful,” Lecocq read.
Katherine Liu: Living and Interacting with the World
Liu majored in Social Studies at Harvard College, but she always had an interest in creative pursuits, thanks to a love for reading at a young age, she said.
“[Narrative] is how I conceive of interacting with the world,” Liu said.
Liu took creative writing workshops as an undergraduate, which not only improved her writing abilities, but also motivated her future pursuits, she said. She took a few years between her time in Boston and Madison, and found the program quite supportive of her work and interests, she said.
UW’s workshop classes have been especially helpful for helping writers enter the mind of a reader, according to Liu. This includes balancing clearness and subtlety, she said.
Fixations of Liu’s writing explore relationships between family members and unlikely friendships, the afterlives of history, the role of memory and characters who face or grapple with their identity, she said. These forces subtly influence how people interact with one another and even drive historical and social processes, according to Liu.
“Historical moments … [and] lived experiences change how we view and therefore navigate the world and our relationships to other people,” Liu said.
Liu’s favorite aspect of the MFA experience has been engaging with her peers and professors, and she intends to frequently write after graduating, she said. Aspiring writers should frequently read, write and make space for writing in their lives, according to Liu.
The story excerpt Liu read at the MFA candidate celebration may be relatable to many UW students. It followed two insecure Chinese-American high-schoolers, obsessed with achievement and perhaps more importantly, outdoing one another.
Liu’s writing is wry and hilarious, while still leaving room to reflect on the toxicity of comparison. A major conflict of her piece was between distant superiority and intimate insecurity.
“It was so lovely to sculpt myself into the shape of achievement,” Liu read.
H’Abigail Mlo: Historical and Childhood Songs
H’Abigail, or Abi, Mlo grew up in North Carolina and studied at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, where she focused on family studies and education studies. Mlo’s interest in writing began early, when she would write stories about her classmates for fun, she said. She considered studying creative writing as an undergraduate but was initially daunted by workshops and truly came into her own as a writer online during the pandemic, she said.
“Getting my work read was still intimidating, but was broadly becoming more and more exciting and informative,” Mlo said.
Mlo has found workshops, such as in the MFA program, helpful for understanding writing at a line-by-line level, she said. While it was initially daunting workshopping with her peers, Mlo found them accepting and helpful, she said.
While the time has flown, Mlo felt pleasantly surprised by how much her writing improved on an intuitive level, she said. While there are few rules or formulas for writing, an MFA program can help writers identify methods or strategies to the craft, according to Mlo.
Mlo’s background in family and education studies had a surprising influence on her writing, she said. Her studies as an undergraduate were very interdisciplinary and focused on psychology, sociology, education and a more human perspective, Mlo said.
“I’m always pulling from [character’s] childhood,” Mlo said.
Mlo’s heritage is tied to the Jarai people, an indigenous group native to parts of Vietnam and Cambodia. A fine line Mlo walks when writing about the Jarai people is when to educate readers about their culture and when to allow things to be left unstated, she said. Overall, restricting how much information the author reveals about a culture to the readers can make said culture feel more immersive, according to Mlo.
While writing about the Jarai and in general, Mlo tries to balance telling inventive stories while maintaining and preserving their real-life history, she said.
“Where I’m seeing gaps is where I’m hoping to patch up or reinvent [the past] through fiction,” Mlo said.
In the near future, Mlo hopes to teach, publish short stories and work on a novel. At the public library reading, Mlo read from a story about romance in diaspora, and the differences between one’s home and where they find themselves in the present.
The story incorporated elements of magical realism, such as a haunting and persistent noise. Ultimately, a karaoke song between lovers fended off the nagging noise, an achievement only made possible by collaboration and affection.
“From the shadows, a song emerges,” Mlo read.
Charlie Muhumuza: Irreplaceable Paintings
Muhumuza was born and raised in Uganda and practiced law there before coming to UW for his MFA. He has always been a creative person, whether drawing on the walls as a child, playing with clay or, more recently, pursuing fiction. A major development in his interest in writing was finding a poetry group in Kampala to share his work with, Muhumuza said.
“My dad … took me there for the first workshop meeting … that’s where everything began for me,” Muhumuza said.
While Muhumuza did not study writing at his undergraduate institution, he read and wrote with the workshop almost every weekend, he said. Recurring themes in his writing include family, grief, love and interpersonal relationships, Muhumuza said.
The MFA program does an effective job teaching students without formal writing experience the elements and nature of the craft, according to Muhumuza. Muhumuza has also learned more about publishing and how to get his work to the public, and was pleasantly surprised by the social aspect of the program, he said.
“A lot of the relationships we build happen outside of the workshop, and that’s important and very good as well,” Muhumuza said.
Muhumuza has been a tax advisor and worked with law firms. Literature and the law are connected in the sense that they both share a focus on narratives and language, according to Muhumuza. His brain works in a very similar way when writing a case brief and a story, Muhumuza said.
As for how he approaches interpersonal relationships, Muhumuza considers individuals’ desires and how they can come into conflict with one another, he said. To best depict dynamic interactions between individuals, one should first consider their unique traits and then how they blend with other personalities, according to Muhumuza.
“It’s about painting a character individually with their own quirks, with different characteristics, but when they come together [with another] they create something bigger than themselves,” Muhumuza said.
Muhumuza has an interest in a Ph.D. at some point, but plans to work in grant writing for the time being, he said. A favorite experience of Muhumuza’s came early in the MFA program, when he and his classmates spent a night watching the northern lights together, he said.
As for how aspiring writers can make the most of their craft, it is worthwhile to lean into their unique personalities and backgrounds, according to Muhumuza. For example, Muhumuza leans into his Ugandan background, his Catholic upbringing and his identity as a queer person while writing, he said.
“If you write the things that everybody’s writing about, then your story won’t stand out,” Muhumuza said.
Muhumuza read an excerpt at the MFA reading inspired by Uganda and the Ugandan diaspora. His writing had a grounded sense to it, particularly in how he painted images of the earth, fungi and other parts of the world.
Themes of Muhumuza’s reading included time, age, religion and tradition. The protagonist of his story stresses and works tirelessly at medical school, all while a sense of loss lingers and makes itself familiar.
“The missing of him was part of what made our house our home,” Muhumuza read.
Shah Tazrian Ashrafi: Absurd, Dystopic Realities
Ashrafi is from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and came to UW immediately after earning his undergraduate degree. An early moment that inspired his creative pursuits was reading the “Diary of Anne Frank”, which encouraged him to start journaling and writing poems, he said.
“I thought [about] how monumental words can be in someone’s life,” Ashrafi said.
Ashrafi studied political science and international relations at the Bangladesh University of Professionals, but spent many of his weekends reading and writing, he said. It was during his senior year that he took the next step and wrote a novel for himself, later publishing it, Ashrafi said.
Ashrafi later began writing short stories, and was published nearly every week by an English-language daily in Bangladesh. One of his biggest inspirations is George Saunders, and many of his short stories contain elements of magical realism inspired by Saunders, Ashrafi said.
“There’s something about the absurd that really pulls me … I feel like it gives you a new way of looking at the current system and state of things,” Ashrafi said.
Some of the strengths of UW’s MFA program include the financial support it offers, its great students and faculty and how it can help students expand their horizons, according to Ashrafi. More specific craft elements that Ashrafi practiced in the program include pacing, narrative control, interiority, story length and more, he said.
Ashrafi also frequently writes about dystopias. He was inspired by stories like “Don’t Look Up” and “Mickey 17,” which feel prophetic in their storytelling despite not directly having come to pass, he said. The general appeal of dystopian narratives is how they can improve critical thinking and empathy in readers, according to Ashrafi.
“Dystopian stories can really help as a mode of witnessing things and imagining possible futures out of a dreary climate,” Ashrafi said.
One of Ashrafi’s favorite parts of the MFA program has been befriending his peers and professors, he said. Small activities with them — such as walking around town or going by the lake — have stuck in his memory, and he feels more connected to the natural world than ever before, he said.
Potential writers should disregard naysayers who are skeptical about the role of writing, particularly as generative AI becomes more popular, Ashrafi said. Furthermore, it is especially important to write or otherwise practice creative pursuits during this time, according to Ashrafi.
“I feel like having a creative outlet can really help you in a therapeutic way,” Ashrafi said.
At the reading at the Wisconsin Public Library, Ashrafi read an excerpt from one of his longer projects. George Saunders’ influence was clear, especially considering his story featured a man waking up and finding himself in the afterlife.
Some themes from Ashrafi’s excerpt included the nature of death, religion and how one comes to terms with their passing. There also remained the hint of redemption for the protagonist, despite his seemingly irreversible position in the afterlife.
“Nothing would undo his reality,” Ashrafi read.
Bonds and the Future
The reading concluded in the central library. Metaphors, similes and infinite interpretations lingered ambiguously in the air. What was clear, however, was how much the MFA students have come to appreciate one another.
There were many choked words as the students introduced their peers, years of history tightly contained in short introductions. Indeed, with just six students, the MFA program succeeds at many authors’ greatest difficulty — finding a literary community to share their work with.
One wonders, as these six students move across the country and the world, if they will continue to be the first eyes on each other’s works before they inevitably find a broader audience.
