14th Annual
Little Grassy Literary Festival
April 3rd-7th 2023
The Little Grassy Literary Festival is lovingly named after Little Grassy Lake which is located near our campus in southern Illinois. Since 2009, the graduate students in the MFA creative writing program have invited writers from around the world to share their work and knowledge with the community. We bridge the gap between our fiction and poetry writers to collaborate on this festival. We hope this sentiment carries over into our work as we aim to connect not only authors of different genres but of all diversities!
We are excited, as we are every year, to see the writers we love and the community we foster come together through art. You can find the 2023 schedule here.
Meet The Team
Michaela Zelie
(She/Her)
Michaela Zelie was born and raised in Western Rural Maine and South-Central Vermont. She got her BFA in Creative Writing with a minor in psychology from the University of Maine at Farmington in 2018. She is currently a third-year MFA candidate in Poetry at The University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. Aside from poetry, Michaela writes creative nonfiction, and is a visual artist. Her work is concerned with patterns, the body, illness, gender roles, sex and sexuality, the landscape, the family, religion and disability.
Director, Social Media Manager & Website Designer
Claire Hutchinson
(She/Her)
Claire is a first-year candidate of the MFA Poetry program from Kansas City, where she grew up participating in competitive slam poetry competitions. She received her bachelors’ in both creative writing and classical studies from the University of Arkansas. Her work frequently addresses themes of longing, the unknown, and mythologies, and her favorite medium for creating poetry is through zine-making. Some day she wants to disappear into the desert and communicate exclusively through snail mail.
Assistant Director, Secretary
Graham (He/They)
Graham is a first-year MFA Fiction candidate at SIU-Carbondale. They write whatever they feel like genre-wise but center their works around themes of alienation, envy, transsexuality, same-gender desire, politics, the grotesque, and finding the joy in being in the margins of society. Graham wishes to one day become a published author and instructor of creative writing, owing his own success to the people who fostered his development. A huge part of how they spend their free time is listening to podcasts on non-fiction topics, jamming to indie rock, and reading books.
Treasurer
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Thank you to our sponsors
The Fine Arts Committee | The Graduate Professional Student Council | Faculty | Southern Illinois Students | Alumni | SIU LGBTQ Resource Center