NEWS

Founding member of Warren Wilson's Program for Writers wins Nobel Prize in Literature

Staff Reports

Founding members of the MFA Program for Writers. Louise Glück is pictured with a hat to the far-right.

Louise Glück, a founding faculty member of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. She is the first American woman to win the award since Toni Morrison in 1993.

Glück taught in the program during its initial four years at Goddard College before transitioning the program to Warren Wilson in 1981.

Program founder and friend Ellen Bryant Voigt expressed her surprise for Glück winning the award.

“What a wonderful day for poetry,” Voigt said in a press release. “Although the world of commerce does not always get it right, this time it did.”

Glück previously won the Pulitzer Prize in 1993 for “The Wild Iris,” the National Book Award in 2014 for “Faithful and Virtuous Night” and a National Humanities Medal in 2015.

Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers is a four-semester residency followed by a non-resident semester to develop work.