SPRING 2026 LITERARY READING SERIES

MFA WELCOME BACK READING

Wednesday, January 14, 6-8 PM, Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)

Join us as we kick off the semester with a reading from our first-year MFA students!

MFA TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Carlene Kucharczyk & Chelsea Krieg (Poetry Reading)

Thursday, March 26, 6-8 PM, Duke Energy Hall, Hunt Library (map)

CARLENE KUCHARCZYK’s first book Strange Hymn was the winner of the Juniper Prize for Poetry and was published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2025. She was the Writer-in-Residence at the Carl Sandburg Home and holds an MFA from North Carolina State University.

CHELSEA KRIEG was raised in southeastern Virginia. Her debut poetry collection, Everything Is Water, won the Southern Poetry Breakthrough Series (Virginia) and is forthcoming with Texas Review Press in 2026.She received an MFA in poetry from North Carolina State University. Her work may be found in Fairy Tale Review, Writing the Land: Virginia Anthology, Terrain.org, Gulf Coast, New South, The Southern Poetry Anthology Vol. IX: Virginia, and elsewhere. She was runner-up in Hub City’s New Southern Voices 2023 Poetry Prize and a finalist for the New South 2021 Poetry Prize. Chelsea lives in Durham, NC and teaches creative writing at North Carolina State University, where she also codirects the MFA Program.

Tennessee Hill & Darkly Lem (Fiction Reading) 

Friday, March 27, 6-8 PM, Talley Student Union, Room 4101 (parking and directions)

TENNESSEE HILL holds an MFA from North Carolina State University. She has been featured in Best New Poets, POETRY, Adroit Journal, Southern Humanities Review, Arkansas International, and elsewhere. Her debut novel Girls with Long Shadows was published by Harper in May 2025. She lives and teaches in Houston.

DARKLY LEM is five authors in an impeccably-tailored trenchcoat (Josh Eure, Craig Lincoln, Ben Murphy, Cadwell Turnbull, and M. Darusha Wehm). They live in an Earth-type locality in the Central Cluster with their five kids, several spouses, and a modest menagerie, where they are at work on Many Worlds novels.

Josh Eure is the editorial manager of Many Worlds. His stories have won Asimov’s Dell Award and the Brenda L. Smart Prize and reached the finalist list in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award for New Writers. He has also won Sundress Publications’ Best of the Net Award and has appeared in Oxford American, Flame Tree Press, James Gunn’s Ad Astra, Surreal South, Southern Cultures, Raleigh Review, Black Sheep, and Not One of Us, among others. He was a finalist for the Piedmont Laureate. Josh is a member of the Many Worlds writing collective and is a fifth of the writing team Darkly Lem, author of The Formation Saga, which starts with Transmentation | Transience. 

Craig Lincoln is a writer of science fiction and fantasy and a graduate from North Carolina State University, earning an MFA in Fiction. He has held a myriad of odd jobs, including but not limited to: bus boy, projectionist, cruise ship janitor, fast food worker, and an airplane refueler. His short fiction has appeared in various markets, and co-authored a trilogy with four other talented authors, under the Darkly Lem pseudonym. He currently resides in Durham, North Carolina with his wife, two kids, and a dog.

Ben Murphy lives and teaches in North Carolina, with his wife and a small menagerie. A graduate of the NC State MFA program, he is one fifth of Darkly Lem.

Cadwell Turnbull is the award-winning author of The Lesson and the Convergence Saga. His short fiction has appeared in The Verge, Lightspeed, Nightmare, Asimov’s Science Fiction and several anthologies. His novel The Lesson was the winner of the 2020 Neukom Institute Literary Award in the debut category. No Gods, No Monsters was the winner of a Lambda, a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and the Manly Wade Wellman Award, and longlisted for the PEN Open Award. We Are the Crisis was a finalist for the Manly Wade Wellman Award and an Ignyte Award. Turnbull grew up on St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands.

M. Darusha Wehm is the Nebula Award winning and Sir Julius Vogel Award-winning author of over a dozen novels, several poems, many short stories, and some games. They are also a fifth of Darkly Lem. Originally from Canada, Darusha lives in Wellington, New Zealand after spending several years sailing the Pacific.

MFA Faculty & Alumni Book Fair 

Saturday, March 28, 1-4 PM, Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)

Come browse and purchase books from alumni and faculty at our first-ever MFA Faculty & Alumni Book Fair. Some authors will be onsite to sign copies of their books. Come enjoy chatting with NC State media vendors and enter a raffle or two!

MFA Faculty Emeritus & Open Mic 

Saturday, March 28, 6-8 PM, So & So Books (Map)

Join founding MFA faculty Jill McCorkle, John Balaban, John Kessel in conversation with Belle Boggs for a Q&A about the history of our MFA program. Stay for an open mic available to alumni, graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and the community! 

MEGAN PINTO & NC State Poetry Contest Award Ceremony (Poetry Reading)

Wednesday, April 2, 7:00-8:30 PM, Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)

Megan Pinto is the author of Saints of Little Faith (Four Way Books 2024 (US), forthcoming with the87press, 2025 (UK & Ireland)) and the chaplet Lovesick (Belladonna* Collaborative). Megan’s poems can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets.org, Ploughshares, the Slowdown Podcast and elsewhere. She has won the Anne Halley Prize from the Massachusetts Review and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers, as well as scholarships and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and Storyknife. She lives in Brooklyn. 

MFA GRADUATE READING

Wednesday, April 22, 7:00-8:30 PM, Caldwell Hall Lounge, Caldwell Hall (map)