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Ashley Wurzbacher聽earned her MFA in Fiction from Eastern in 2010 and her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston in 2016. Her stories have appeared in聽The Iowa Review,听Michigan Quarterly Review,听Gettysburg Review,听, and elsewhere. Her novel,听How to Care for a Human Girl聽(Atria Books) will be published in August 2023. Her story collection,听Happy Like This聽(University of Iowa Press) won 2019 the John Simmons Short Fiction Award and was a聽New York Times聽Editor’s Choice. In 2019, she was selected by Brandon Hobson as one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees. She is currently an Associate Professor of English at the University of Montevallo, where she teaches creative writing.

Here’s what she had to say about the MFA program:

“My experience at Eastern helped me clarify my career goals. Not only did I gain invaluable teaching experience as a TA, but I also got to try out editing through an internship with Willow Springs and got nonprofit/community teaching experience through Writers in the Community. I left the program with a clear sense of my interests and abilities in all three areas. Ultimately, I determined that teaching was the right career for me, but I felt (and still feel) confident in my skill set in other writing- and teaching-adjacent fields, as well. I also felt confident in my ability to market those skills by clearly and elegantly communicating them to potential employers. The MFA program honed my critical thinking/reading skills, sharpened my communication skills, and helped me get used to giving and receiving constructive feedback. These are skills that are vital to *any* career.”