UL Lafayette graduate lands acclaimed poetry fellowship

Published

A University of Louisiana at Lafayette alumnus is the recipient of the prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry from Stanford University.

Dr. J. Bruce Fuller, ’15, is one of five poets selected from about 1,700 applicants for the fellowship. He holds a doctorate in English/creative writing from UL Lafayette and a master’s of fine arts from McNeese State University.

Previous Stegner fellows include writers Ernest J. Gaines, Raymond Carver, Ken Kesey and Tobias Wolff.

The two-year fellowship is named after Stegner, a novelist and founder of Stanford’s Creative Writing Program. It carries a $26,000 annual stipend. The Creative Writing Program pays fellows’ tuition and health insurance to enable them to concentrate on writing and attending weekly workshops with faculty. 

Fuller is a past recipient of the William J. Doré Writing Fellowship from McNeese State University and  winner of the 2013 Swan Scythe Press Chapbook Contest.

He is the author of five poetry collections since 2010: “The Dissenter’s Ground,” “Flood,” “Notes to a Husband,” “Lancelot,” and “28 Blackbirds at the End of the World.”

His work has appeared in Louisiana Literature, Pembroke Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, Aldus, Trigger,  Louisiana Review, Swamp Lily Review and others. He is the editor of Yellow Flag Press.