Last night, our 25th cohort at CCA MFAW gathered in the very room where we first welcomed them into the community. What an honor it’s been to witness these writers grow—not only on the page, but in courage, generosity, rigor, and voice.
Congratulations to Isaiah, Anthony, Zeeniya, Hana, Solomon, Jazz, and Susan. Sending heaps of gratitude to the faculty, friends, families, and literary community who supported this cohort through every stage of the journey.
Next up: graduation!
✨We were absolutely enthralled. ✨
A huge thank you to Nina Schuyler for visiting us and giving a masterclass on sentences—their music, their architecture, and their infinite possibilities. Nina reminded us that a sentence can do almost anything: reveal character, bend time, hold tension, sing.
Brilliant, generous, thoughtful, and deeply gracious, she left us newly in love with language. We’re so grateful for your wisdom, Nina. 💫✍️
Follow Nina @ninaschuyler
And thank you @isaiahkye for the lovely photograph.
✨COME THROUGH FOR THE CLASS OF 2026✨
Join us as we celebrate the 2026 graduates of CCA MFA Writing with an evening of readings, community, and joy.
Featuring readings by:
Isaiah Diaz-Mays
Hana Malia
Jasmin Guillén
Anthony Silva
Susan Skeele
Solomon Sofolawe
Zeeniya Yahiya
📍 H&S Homeroom
145 Hooper St, San Francisco
🗓 Thursday, May 14
⏰ 6–8:30 PM
Readings + celebration + reception🥂
Next week at CCA MFA Writing we’re thrilled to welcome Nina Schuyler.
Novelist, author of the acclaimed craft book Writing Stunning Sentences, and a master of language at the sentence level, Nina will join us for a conversation on style, syntax, and the art of making prose sing.
📍 CCA MFA in Writing, Homeroom
🗓 4/28
⏰ 3:30–4:30 PM
Nina Schuyler is the author of the novels Afterword, The Translator, and The Painting, and the award-winning craft book Writing Stunning Sentences. Her work has been shortlisted for the Northern California Book Awards and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and she has received the Marfa Lights Fiction Prize. She teaches creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and in the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University.
✨NYPL’s World Literature & Arts Festival is happening now—and you can stream events for free from anywhere.
We’re especially proud to see CCA MFA alum LaTasha Diggs featured in a powerful lineup of writers, artists, and thinkers exploring storytelling across borders, languages, and forms.
From immigration narratives to oral history, poetry, performance, and beyond, the festival brings together voices shaping the global literary landscape today.
📅 Upcoming highlights:
• Beyond Borders: Highlighting Immigration Stories — April 23
• The Unwritten Word: Voices, Verses & the Living Archive of Oral History (feat. LaTasha Diggs) — April 28
💻 All events available to stream free via NYPL @nypl
You may have seen the recent piece in Poets & Writers about CCA’s closure in 2027.
What it can’t fully show is what continues here, every day—
workshops, mentorship, and a community of writers at work.
These images are from the past few weeks.
We’re still here. And this final chapter matters.
🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡
✨We’re thrilled to celebrate Mariana Bastias, a first-year in the program, who’s been awarded a full scholarship to this year’s Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference—one of the most prestigious gatherings for literary translators in the country.
Each summer, Bread Loaf brings together writers, translators, and editors for an immersive exchange of language, craft, and culture, supporting the vital work of carrying stories across borders.
Mariana’s work moves between prose and poetry, drawing deeply from her Chilean upbringing and multilingual experiences.
Congratulations dear Mariana!
📽️Mariana reads to the accompaniment of alum @jessamynviolet@movieclubtheband
Join us on Tuesday, April 21 at 2 pm as we welcome Aimee Nezhukumatathil, a poet and essayist whose work is rich with lyric exuberance, intellectual generosity, and deep engagement with ecology, race, family, and wonder. Her writing invites readers to slow down, to look closely, and to recognize how curiosity and delight can coexist with grief, history, and survival.
In this conversation, Nezhukumatathil will reflect on her creative practice across poetry and prose, tracing how attention, intimacy, and lyric clarity shape her work. She will also discuss her latest book, Night Poems, offering insight into how her writing continues to evolve—expanding her exploration of care, perception, and the everyday marvels that sustain us. The discussion will touch on craft, audience, and the courage it takes to insist on joy as a mode of seriousness.
In a cultural moment marked by exhaustion and fracture, Nezhukumatathil’s work reminds us that wonder is not escapism but a form of resistance—one that insists on connection, presence, and the possibility of renewal. Her writing offers writers permission to cultivate beauty, curiosity, and emotional precision without apology.
4/21 2-3 pm, H&S Homeroom
Free and open to the CCA Community
