Sams Writer-In-Residence
The Ferrol A. Sams Jr. Distinguished Chair of English, established in 1993, brings a respected fiction writer, poet, or playwright to Mercer University during the spring to teach a semester-long advanced writing workshop. The distinguished writers-in-residence conduct one seminar (CRW 485) and offer readings and lectures during their appointments. Made possible by a grant from the Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, this endowed chair honors Dr. Ferrol A. Sams Jr., a physician, author, and distinguished alumnus of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, whose many works include Run with the Horsemen, The Whisper of the River, and Down Town.
The Sams program allows creative writing students to work with distinguished writers beyond Mercer’s core faculty and to study advanced topics in creative writing. In 2024, for example, Sams Chair Tiphanie Yanique taught a poetry workshop on writing from nature and the archive, while 2021 Sams Chair Dionne Irving’s fiction workshop focused on creative research.
2025 Sams Writer-in-Residence
Fiction Writer Sanjena Sathian
Sanjena Sathian is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Gold Diggers, which was named a Top 10 Best Book of 2021 by the Washington Post and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. It won the Townsend Prize for Fiction. Her short fiction appears in The Best American Short Stories, The Atlantic, Conjunctions, One Story, Boulevard, and more. She’s written nonfiction for The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Drift, The Yale Review, and NewYorker.com, among other outlets. She also writes for screen, and is co-writing the television adaptation of Gold Diggers, which is in development with a major streamer. Her second novel, Goddess Complex, will be released in March 2025. Sathian is an alumna of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has taught at Emory University, the University of Iowa, and Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. She is teaching CRW 487: The Shape of the Imagination at Mercer.
Past Sams Writers-in-Residence
Since 1995, the Ferrol A. Sams Jr. Distinguished Chair of English has drawn renowned writers to Mercer’s campus, including winners of the National Book Award, the American Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize.
2024: Tiphanie Yanique, poetry
2023: Jessica Handler, fiction
2022: Rose McLarney, poetry
2021: Dionne Irving, fiction
2020: None (Georgia Poet Laureate Chelsea Rathburn taught advanced poetry writing in her first year on Mercer faculty)
2019: Melanie Sumner, fiction
2018: Erin Belieu, poetry
2017: Susan Rebecca White, fiction
2016: Frank X. Gaspar, poetry
2015: Robert Boswell, fiction
2014: Jim Grimsley, fiction
2013: Judson Mitcham, poetry
2012: Bret Lott, fiction
2011: Erin Belieu, poetry
2010: Mary Hood, fiction
2009: Mark Jarman, poetry
2008: Chris Offutt, fiction
2007: Margaret Gibson, poetry
2006: Kelly Cherry, fiction
2005: David Bottoms, poetry
2004: Alvin Greenberg, fiction
2003: Rebecca Gilman, playwriting
2002: Pattiann Rogers, poetry
2001: Fred Chappell, fiction
2000: Stephen Dietz and Allison Gregory, playwriting
1999: Louis Simpson, poetry
1998: Gloria Naylor, fiction
1997: Sandra Deer, playwriting
1996: Dana Gioia, poetry
1995: Will Campbell, fiction