Creative Writing
Union University has a vibrant creative writing community and a strong placement history among its graduates. Through the Creative Writing Workshop and the Annual Reading Series, Union students have the opportunity to hear from and workshop with some of the finest contemporary writers. Past readers at Union have included former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Wright, Mark Jarman, Kate Daniels, Dave Smith, Ann Patchett, Gregory Orr, Margaret Skinner, Li-Young Lee, Judson Mitcham, and Clyde Edgerton.
Upcoming Event
33rd Annual Creative Writing Workshop Reading featuring Cornelius Eady
Thursday, February 26, 2026, 1 p.m., Grant Event Center, Salon 2
Book signing and reception at 2 p.m.
Cornelius Eady is the author of several books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed Hardheaded Weather, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Victims of the Latest Dance Craze, winner of the 1985 Lamont Prize from the Academy of American Poets, The Gathering of My Name, which was nominated for the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, and his most recent collection The War Against the Obvious. With poet Toi Derricote, Eady is cofounder of Cave Canem, a national organization for African American poetry and poets. He is Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, recipient of The Academy of American Poet's 2025 Wallace Stevens Award, an NEA Fellowship in Literature, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to Bellagio, Italy, and The Prairie Schooner Strousse Award. Eady has been a teacher for over twenty years, and is currently the Chair of Excellence in the English Department at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.