MFA APP REVIEW

MFA App Review is now closed. Read our full statement here <3

WHO ARE WE?

We're a group of MFA students and alums offering informal review of MFA application writing samples (fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction) and personal statements. We do this because we want to directly support the writers whose work we need to see, read, and be in conversation with as we make our own work.

Many of the institutions we interface with through this project—including the universities and colleges and departments that often house MFA programs—are inherently racist, and specifically anti-Black. The MFA App Review does not work for any institution—we only hope to redistribute the wealth and resources that institutions harbor, conceal, and hide through impenetrable processes, arbitrary rules, fees, “grants,” “fellowships,” and other miscellaneous institutional nonsense.

This project was initiated by Red Samaniego and Emi Noguchi and run by Red Samaniego, S. Yarberry, and Emi Noguchi.

The Team

red samaniego

founder

Red Samaniego writes about freak love, border worlds, and being a better communist. They were selected as the 2019-2020 Junior Fiction Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis; the 2019 Sandra Cisneros Fellow at Under the Volcano in Tepoztlan, Mexico; a 2018 Hattie Fitz Walker Scholar at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA; and the 2018-2019 Editorial Assistant at Dorothy, a publishing project. They're at work on a novel. On instagram: @curveofjoy and twitter @notyrmomscandy

Emi noguchi

co-founder, visuals+

Emi Noguchi is writing a novel about magical illnesses, naming, friendship, art-making, and Japanese puppetry. She’s a 2020 recipient of the John Weston Award, and her nonfiction and stories have been published in Fairy Tale Review, Essay Daily, and The Spectacle. She holds an MFA from the U of Arizona. Though she lives in Tucson, Emi will always be from north Jersey. Tweets at @emiafield.

rucy cui

publicity

s. yarberry

co-founder, poetry coordinator

S. Yarberry is a trans poet and writer. Their poetry has appeared, or is appearing, in AGNI, Tin House, Indiana Review, jubilat, Notre Dame Review, The Boiler, Redivider, pulpmouth, miscellaneous zines, among others. Their other writings can be found in Bomb Magazine, The Adroit Journal, and Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly. They currently serve as the Poetry Editor of The Spectacle. S. has their MFA in Poetry from Washington University in St. Louis and they are now a PhD candidate in literature at Northwestern University. 

mai tran

non-fiction coordinator

MICHAELJULIUS Y. IDANI

outreach

naomi gordon-loebl

non-fiction coordinator

maz do

fiction coordinator

MIRANDA POPKEY (she/her) and EMMA RUTH WILSON (she/her) are cis, white women who help out behind-the-scenes. Miranda has an ongoing rivalry of long standing with Emma's dog, Braverman.