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Your submission at Articles for creation: CityU MFA (June 22)
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Robert McClenon (talk) 01:43, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

AfC notification: Draft:CityU MFA has a new comment
 I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:CityU MFA. Thanks! Robert McClenon (talk) 01:44, 22 June 2016 (UTC)

Question and Advice
First, you appear to be wondering why you had to create two nearly identical drafts. The answer is that you didn't, and you confused yourself as a result. Second, in view of the very small amount of information that you provide, my own thought would be that a stand-alone article is not warranted, and that your information should be added to City University of Hong Kong. Third, my advice to you is to ask for help at the Teahouse. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:47, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

AfC notification: Draft:CityU MFA has a new comment
 I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:CityU MFA. Thanks! Robert McClenon (talk) 16:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

AfC notification: User:Knoxtennessee/CityU MFA has a new comment
 I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at User:Knoxtennessee/CityU MFA. Thanks! Robert McClenon (talk) 16:48, 26 June 2016 (UTC)

CityU MFA
CityU MFA, the Master of Fine Art (MFA) program in Creative Writing at City University of Hong Kong (2010-2015), is the first low residency MFA program focused on Asian writing in English.

Table of Contents

1.	Establishment

2.	Curriculum

3.	Faculty Achievements and Awards

4.	Closure

5.	International Criticism

6.	Alumni

Establishment

CityU MFA was founded by writer Xu Xi in 2010 as part of the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong. Graduated from the MFA program for Poets and Writers at the University of Massachusetts, Xu Xi was a rare Asian student in the program. When she taught in the Fine Arts’ MFA residency program at Vermont College, Xu Xi’s international background attracted students from Asia and Europe into her mentorship. This sent a strong signal that the time had come for an Asia specific MFA program in English. In the summer of 2010, the first cohort of the MFA writers met in City University’s campus in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Curriculum

The program recruited in the following three genres: Fiction, Creative Non-Fiction (CNF) and Poetry, and required students to complete two summer residencies, three mini-residencies in Fall and Spring, and four individualized distance mentoring semesters throughout their two years’ study. During residencies (up to and including 2015), students of 21 nationalities from 17 countries met their writing faculty at City University’s campus in Kowloon, Hong Kong. The faculty members were full time writers and faculty from writing programs mainly in the United States of America, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia.

Each day of residency was fully scheduled with Writing Workshops in the morning, lunch/dinner lectures delivered either by writers-in-residence or visiting writers such as Pulitzer-winning novelist Junot Díaz and Poet Richard Blanco, Reading Like A Writer in the afternoon, and literary readings in the evenings. The last evening of each residency is dedicated to student reading, organized by student volunteers.

Departure from their residencies in Hong Kong marked the start of individualized distance mentoring semesters. Students and faculty mainly communicated via the Internet: creating and approving semester plans, submitting and commenting on portfolios, and evaluating semester experiences. In order to graduate, students were required to earn 45 credits.

The program also offered post MFA creative writing workshops and individualized distance mentoring to alumni and other MFA degree holders. Faculty Achievements and Awards


 * Xu Xi is the author of ten books and numerous essays. Her short story, Famine, won the 2006 O. Henry Prize Story award and Ploughshares' 2005 Cohen Award. Her novel Habit of a Foreign Sky was shortlisted for the inaugural MAN Asian Literary Award. Her novel THAT MAN IN OUR LIVES is published in 2016. She is the founder of CityU MFA program.


 * Sybil Baker is the author of The Life Plan, Talismans, and Into This World, which received an Eric Hoffer Award Honorable Mention, and was a finalist for Foreword’s Best Book of the Year Award. She is a creative writing faculty at University of Tennessee, USA.


 * Tina Chang is the author of three books, Brooklyn Poet Laureate in 2010, recipient of grants and awards from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Foundation/Money for Women, and the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Poets & Writers and The Academy of American Poets’, a finalist for an Asian American Literary Award from the Asian American Writers Workshop for her debut collection Half-Lit Houses. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, USA.


 * Marilyn Chin is an award-winning poet and the author of Hard Love Province, Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, Rhapsody in Plain Yellow, The Phoenix Gone, the Terrace Empty and Dwarf Bamboo. She is also the recipient of the United Artist Foundation Fellowship, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship at Harvard, the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship at Bellagio, two NEAs, the Stegner Fellowship, the PEN/Josephine Miles Award, five Pushcart Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to Taiwan, the SeaChange fellowship from the Gaea Foundation, and residencies at Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the Lannan Foundation, the Djerassi Foundation and others. She teaches at San Diego State University, USA.
 * Jose Dalisay is the author of five books, three plays, three screenplays and ten non-fiction works. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including 16 Palanca awards in five genres, Milwaukee Fiction Award, American Poets Prize, FAMAS Award for Best Screenplay, Catholic Mass Media Award for Best Screenplay, Man Asian Literary Prize 2007 Shortlistee for Soledad's Sister. He teaches at University of the Philippines in the Philippines.


 * Evan Fallenberg is the author of two novels, translator of seven novels, one novella, two nonfiction, and four plays. He is the winner of the first prize of American Library Association Barbara Gittings Stonewall Book Award for Literature, Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, Haaretz Prize for short fiction, the second prize of PEN Translation Prize, Times Literary Supplement Risa Domb/Porjes Prize for the Translation of Hebrew Literature and the finalist of National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, Samuel Goldberg Foundation Prize for Jewish Fiction by Emerging Writers, Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction and Harold U. Ribalow Award. He teaches in Bar-Ilan University, Israel.
 * Luis Francia is the author of four books of poetry and nonfiction, the winner of both the 2002 Open Book Award and the 2002 Asian American Writers award for his memoir Eye of the Fish: A Personal Archipelago. He teaches at Hunter College, City University of New York, USA.


 * Robin Hemley is the winner of two Pushcart Prizes for Fiction, first place in the Nelson Algren Award for Fiction from The Chicago Tribune, and the Independent Press Book Award for Nonfiction. He teaches at Yale-NUS College, Singapore.


 * Justin Hill is the author of seven novels, recipient of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize and the Betty Trask Prize, as well as being a 2001 Washington Post Book of the Year award for his debut novel The Drink and Dream Teahouse. He also won the Somerset Maugham Award, and his latest novel, Shieldwall, was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. He taught at City University of Hong Kong until 2015.


 * Tabish Khair is the author of fifteen books, among which The Bus Stopped (2004) was shortlisted for the Encore Award (UK) and The Thing About Thugs (2010), was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature[1] and the Man Asian Literary Prize. He teaches at University of Aarhus in Denmark.


 * Sharmistha Mohanty is the author of three books, Book One, New Life and Five Movements in Praise. She translated Broken Nest and Other Stories by Tagore and Bengali classic Pather Panchali.


 * Nami Mun is the winner of a Pushcart Prize and Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award (2012) for her book Miles from Nowhere. She is the recipient of Orange Prize finalist (2009) and Whiting Award (2009). She is also the author of The Anniversary.


 * Suzanne Paola is an award-winning author of four books and four poetry collections, winner of Pushcart Prize for her Hosts in 2012, NAMI/Ken Johnson Award for A Mind Apart in 2006, and American Book Award for Body Toxic in 2001. Other awards she won include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, and a Library Journal Best Science book of the year, in addition to being named a Lenore Marshall Award finalist.


 * Jess Row is the author of four books and recipients of a Whiting Awards, a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for his fiction. He teaches at The College of New Jersey and Vermont College of Fine Arts, USA.


 * James Scudamore is the author of three books, Wreaking, Heliopolis and The Amnesia Clinic. He won Man Booker Prize in 2009, Commonwealth Writers' Prize in 2007, Costa First Novel Award in 2007, Dylan Thomas Prize in 2007, Glen Dimplex Award in 2007 and Somerset Maugham Award in 2007.


 * Ravi Shankar is the winner of the National Poetry Review Prize in 2011 for his Deepening Groove. He is the author of collections of poetry Instrumentality (2004) and the co-author of the collaborative chapbook Wanton Textiles (2006). He also won the Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts.


 * Ira Sukrungruang won the 2015 American Book Award and a Bronze Medal in the Florida Book Awards for his memoir Southside Buddhist. He is also the author of Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy, In Thailand It It Night, and The Melting Season. He teaches at University of South Florida, USA.


 * Madeleine Thien is the author of the story collection Simple Recipes (2001), and three novels, Certainty (2006); Dogs at the Perimeter (2011), shortlisted for Berlin’s International Literature Prize and winner of the Frankfurt Book Fair’s 2015 Liberaturpreis and Do Not Say We Have Nothing (2016). The awards and prizes she won include the City of Vancouver Book Award, Amazon First Novel Award, a Canadian Authors Association Award, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and The Ovid Festival Prize, and in addition, she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Kiriyama Prize for Fiction, and The Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. Her newest book Do Not Say We Have Nothing is long listed for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.

Closure

The newly appointed Acting Head of the Department of English from a public policy and administration background, Hon Chan, announced the termination of the MFA program on March 2, 2015. The reason offered for closure was the program’s unsustainable financial ability, although there had been no attempt to contact or consult with the program leader Xu Xi. Yet on March 24, the university senate estimated a profit from the program for 2014-2015 based on the budget approved by former acting head of the English Department Rodney Jones. Xu Xi, the MFA program leader, reported the program had achieved financial self-sustenance as of 2015.

The University’s official notification of the closure was published on April 27, 2015, via an email stating that the program was no longer financially viable.

The program’s external examiner Shawn Wong from University of Washington questioned City University’s financial report because it showed that the Finance Office had “retroactively created new expenses for the program to pay years after the expenses were settled.”

On April 30, 25 Internationally renowned writers protested against the university’s decision, asking the university’s President Way Kuo, Provost Arthur Ellis and Chairman Hu Shao-ming to re-open the program.

On May 3, 97 alumni and students requested to meet with the university’s senior officials for reconsideration of the closure.

The university’s officials agreed to meet with protest representatives, all the while not budging from their decision to axe the program.

International Criticism On April 29, 2016, two days after the announcement to terminate the CityU MFA program was made, US Pulitzer Prize winners Junot Díaz, Rae Armantrout, and Robert Olen Butler, signed a petition letter to the President, Provost, and Chairman of the Council of the City University of Hong Kong, expressing concerns of the university’s decision to close the program and asking the school to reconsider the closure. Twenty two other authors who also signed the letter are Jess Row (USA), Tabish Khair (India/Denmark), Nami Mun (USA), Evan Fallenberg (Israel), Robin Hemley (Singapore), Jose Dalisay (Phillipines), Suzanna Paola (USA), Shawn Wong (USA), Marilyn Chin (USA), Luis Francia (USA), James Scudamore (UK), Ravi Shankar (USA), Tina Chang (USA), Bob Shacochis (Pulitzer Prize finalist, USA), Ira Sukrungruang (USA), Sybil Baker (USA), Sharmistha Mohanty (India), Madeleine Thien (Canada), Chang-rae Lee (USA), Richard Blanco (US Inaugural Poet, 2012, USA), Richard Jackson (USA), Rawi Hage (Canada). Altogether fifty-eight writers signed the petition delivered to university officials.

These writers petitioned that the university offered no convincing explanation for the program’s closure. Instead, the MFA program had increased the university’s international visibility through its low residency model, recruiting students of 21 nationalities from 17 countries, which therefore strengthened Hong Kong’s influence on the global literature and arts arena.

On April 30, students and alumni of the MFA program formed a Facebook page called “Save CityU MFA” to protest the university’s decision to close the program.

A clear connection has been inferred between the shutdown of the MFA program and the Umbrella Movement of September to December 2014.

Numerous CityU MFA writers published essays in support of the Occupy Central movement to counter Xi Jinping’s government that imperiled the existing freedom of speech in Hong Kong.These essays hardened the university’s resolve that the program should not enroll further students from 2015 indefinitely.

City University remained in lockstep position with Beijing by appointing communist party officials to lead the school council.

Alumni

He also won an Outstanding Academic Papers by Students award in 2014.
 * Blair Reeveis the finalist in the Still/Foyles short-story competition for Mini-Opera for Ernst Mahler, author of Hogart the Hedgehog Turns Nink and Greta von Gerbil & Her Really Large Lexicon. , featured author in the Hong Kong Young Readers Literary Festival 2016.


 * Hayley Katzenis the author of The L Word: Facing the School Bully (2012), Fracking Up A Storm (2013), The Lonely Death (2013), The Weight of Summer (2013), Bachelor Brothers (2015), Gods and Housework: Do it Yourself (2014), Lost in the Familiar (2015), On Privacy, Cut Down to Size (2016) and 'Spirit Levels' Going Down Swinging (2016). She won Runner-up Nature Conservancy Nature Writing Prize for Lost in the Familiar (2015), 3rd place Outstanding Short Story Competition for The Weight of Summer (2013).


 * Andrew Robin won the 3rd place of Glimmer Train’s June Fiction Open competition (2015) for Greater Love, . He also won the 3rd place in Glimmer Train’s December Fiction Open (2014), and Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize for Japs.


 * Gregg Schroeder is the author of Apartment 6D (2013), Half My Hundred-Year Life (2015)


 * Mags Webster is the winner of Anne Elder Award (2011) for her poetry collection The Weather of Tongues.


 * Andrea Brittan is the author of Shoe Gazing, which won the second place in the Standard/RTHK Short Story Competition and published in in Two Thirds North – 2012. . She is also the author of Rattle (2015)


 * Sonia Leung’s short story has appeared in Mala Literary Journal. Her Home among the Lost Souls won the third prize of Hong Kong Top Story 2015


 * Sree Ramachandran Iyer has published in Drunken Boat Literary Journal of the Arts and is also a Pushcart Prize Nominee.


 * Jenn Chan Lyman is the author of Vigil, The Seventh Year (2014), The Natural (2013) and Two Old Fools (2012). Her “The Natural” was nominated for Pushcart Prize 2013 and “Two Old Fools” made it to the finalist for Glimmer Train's May 2012 Short Story Award for New Writers.


 * Joe Holroyd is the author of The Paranoid Character. and his novel 'Constant' was longlisted for The Bridport Prize 2015


 * Sheree Chua


 * Fan Dai


 * Karla Delgado
 * Mikyung Kang


 * Natalie Lord
 * Eric Mu


 * Claire Noble


 * Daniel Pang
 * Peter Phillips


 * Jacinta Read


 * Lavanya Shanbhogue
 * John Francis Smith
 * Mitchell Stocks


 * Nicholas Wong


 * Michelle Wong


 * Denis Wong
 * Mable Jin Woo


 * Joy Al-Sofi
 * Quenntis Ashby


 * Arthur Chan


 * Anneli Horner Matheson


 * Huang Haisu


 * Sophie Kalkreuth
 * Mandy Lam


 * On Yuk Leung


 * Adnan Mahmutovic
 * Elizabeth Marshall
 * Colum Murphy


 * Ciriaco Offeddu


 * Sonali Raj
 * Keane Shum


 * Sandy Sinn-Hussey
 * Amanda Skelton Webster
 * Joni Tan


 * Vivian Tang


 * Sarah Vallance


 * Lucy Watson


 * Genevieve Yim


 * Alistair Yong


 * Sebastian Bitticks
 * Kevin Brown


 * Carl Coleman
 * Hung Der


 * Christine Deschemin
 * Judy Keung


 * Miho Kinnas


 * Vincent Lim


 * Luis Mak Chan


 * Geoffrey Miller


 * Sophie Monatte


 * Robert Powers


 * Xiao Ming Shan


 * Verena Tay


 * Gershom Tse
 * Simon Berry


 * Joe Brown


 * Rebekah Chan


 * Joey Ling Min Chin
 * Coombs Ame


 * Ash Dean
 * Ruijiao Dong


 * Jennifer Lee


 * Samantha Leese


 * Edmund Price


 * Nicola Sebastian
 * Ingvild Solvang


 * Ember Swift


 * Genevieve Mei Xuan Wong


 * Lara Day


 * Jordan Dotson


 * Clint Ettinger


 * ML Fung


 * Peter Goff


 * Carmen Ka Man Ho
 * Tata Mapa


 * Saffron Marchant
 * Matthew Muller


 * Kamana Srikanth


 * Danielle Van-de-Broucke

Knoxtennessee (talk) 19:14, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

AfC notification: Draft:CityU MFA has a new comment
 I've left a comment on your Articles for Creation submission, which can be viewed at Draft:CityU MFA. Thanks! Robert McClenon (talk) 03:04, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: CityU MFA (October 4)
 Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by Robert McClenon was:

The comment the reviewer left was:

Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.


 * If you would like to continue working on the submission, go to Draft:CityU MFA and click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window.
 * If you need any assistance, you can ask for help at the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:WikiProject_Articles_for_creation/Help_desk&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:CityU_MFA Articles for creation help desk] or on the [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Robert_McClenon&action=edit&section=new&nosummary=1&preload=Template:Afc_decline/HD_preload&preloadparams%5B%5D=Draft:CityU_MFA reviewer's talk page].
 * You can also use Wikipedia's real-time chat help from experienced editors.

Robert McClenon (talk) 03:11, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Your draft article, User:Knoxtennessee/CityU MFA


Hello, Knoxtennessee. It has been over six months since you last edited your Articles for Creation draft article submission, "CityU MFA".

In accordance with our policy that Articles for Creation is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the  or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. 1989 (talk) 17:15, 15 January 2017 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:CityU MFA


Hello, Knoxtennessee. It has been over six months since you last edited your Articles for Creation draft article submission, "CityU MFA".

In accordance with our policy that Articles for Creation is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the  or  code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. 1989 14:12, 22 May 2017 (UTC)