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Fall for the Book will bring renowned writers Celeste Ng and Gary Larson to the George Mason University Fairfax Campus for this year's Fall for the Book festival.

Washington Independent Review columnist Caroline Bock interviewed Stillhouse Press Publicist and Marketing Manager Taylor Schaefer (MFA'25) on Stillhouse Press's work as a teaching press and publisher that focuses on projects off-the beaten path.

Stillhouse Press is thrilled to announce that Amy Stuber’s debut short story collection, SAD GROWNUPS has been awarded the 2025 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Short Story Collection. Publicized at the 61st annual PEN America Literary Awards on May 8, this remarkable recognition establishes Stuber as an exciting new voice in fiction—and marks a major milestone for Stillhouse Press and the alumni, graduate, and undergraduate students, each of whom assisted in making this prodigious accolade possible.

On May 15, 2025, the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center will return to the Arts Club of Washington to mark the ninth anniversary of the Cheuse Travel Fellowship, a program that has launched powerful literary works rooted in global research. The evening will feature readings by George Mason University MFA graduates whose Cheuse-funded international travel inspired their now-published and incoming books.

Exploring the 2024-25 annual theme of the Cheuse Center, broadsides by artists and poets bridge Cheuse Center themes and projects in multigenerational artistic collaborations. Our first poster: Only Language Can Hold Us Together is by Mason's own artist Kevin Jones and DC poet and Grammy award nominee Ethelbert Miller.

Announcement: purl, the first full length poetry collection by Michele Evans, is being published by Finishing Line Press. This debut collection, a semifinalist for the Airlie Prize, longlisted by Nine Syllables Press, and shortlisted by Yellow Arrow Publishing, is set to be released on February 14th, 2025. "malea," one of the poems in purl, won the 2023 ASP Bulletin Poetry Prize and was nominated for both a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award.

In an new article at the AWP website, Mason Creative Writing director Gregg Wilhelm reflects on the 2024 Fall for the Book festival and explores the opportunities available to Mason creative writing students through Watershed Lit: Center for Literary Engagement and Publishing Practice.

This February, MFA students Chelsea Lebron and Jaime Goh will be teaching creative writing courses for the Mason Community Arts Academy, the community arts education division of George Mason University’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. For the first time at Mason, MFA teaching assistants were given the opportunity to apply to teach a creative writing course of their own design for the academy.

On November 8th, the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center will convene four poets, to read and discuss their work on the Arlington campus’s Mason Exhibitions art gallery. Edited by poets Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, this anthology is a critical reminder of the struggles Ukrainians are facing in light of war, and serves as a beacon of hope, determination, and reckoning for Ukrainians across the globe in their continual fight for democracy.

Tania James' latest novel, Loot, is one of ten contenders for the National Book Award.