Community Writing Programs as an Alternative to an MFA

In this episode, host Landis Wade has a conversation with Heather Newton, an author, instructor and co-founder of a writing program about the value of community writing programs as an alternative to an MFA.

Access the episode HERE

Heather Newton is a practicing attorney, she teaches creative writing for UNC-Asheville’s Great Smokies Writing Program and is co-founder and Program Manager for the Flatiron Writers Room writers’ center in Asheville.

Her short story collection McMullen Circle, finalist for the W.S. Porter prize, is forthcoming from Regal House in January 2022. Her novel The Puppeteer’s Daughters is forthcoming from Turner Publishing in July 2022 and has been optioned for television.

Her novel Under The Mercy Trees (HarperCollins 2011) won the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, was chosen by the Women’s National Book Association as a Great Group Reads Selection and named an “Okra Pick” by the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance.