With several of its alumni securing book deals by developing projects through the Creative Practice Workshop, CLA's flagship program has a track record of supercharging WashU faculty's creative practice.
The Center for Literary Arts (CLA) has announced its two Creative Practice Workshop Fellows for Spring 2026.
Zachariah Ezer, assistant professor of performing arts, and Melanie Micir, associate professor of English, will each receive a semester leave from classroom instruction to focus on a creative practice project. Fueled by collaborative feedback sessions between themselves and CLA staff, they will sharpen their writing with an eye toward publication.
Ezer will develop a new play, Pine Bluff, AR. The inspiration for the story struck Ezer when he attended the recent Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s theatre classic Our Town.
One line stood out to him during the production: “Y'know—Babylon once had two million people in it, and all we know about 'em is the names of the kings and some copies of wheat contracts... and contracts for the sale of slaves.”
Drawing from that last item in particular, Ezer’s play will use the techniques of ergodic literature to tell the story of a community through its documents and records. But in this case, the town’s circumstances are anything but ordinary.
“Pine Bluff, Arkansas is getting weird,” Ezer says of his project. “A lot of people have died of cancer, but even more are turning into… something else. These mutants aren’t happy, and they’re getting organized.”
Micir’s Creative Practice Workshop project will meld real and speculative St. Louis history into a new project, After Atascadero. Her initial point of inspiration is the American Women’s League, a pioneering feminist organization launched in University City, Mo., in the early 20th Century. Boasting more than 700 chapters throughout the country at its height, the AWL was a major contributor to the women’s suffrage movement in America. But when the group later shifted its operations to Atascadero, Calif., its influence quickly waned.
Building off this true history, Micir imagines an alternative timeline where the organization had the opportunity to thrive in and beyond the St. Louis area.
“After Atascadero will take the form of an exhibition catalogue, complete with a curator’s introduction, several short essays, captioned images (of both real and fictionalized archival material), bibliography, and index,” Micir says.
CLA’s previous Creative Practice Workshop participants have gone on to notable success thanks to the time and attention that the workshop provided. G’Ra Asim, assistant professor of English, and Flora Cassen, associate professor of history, both have books under contract that they developed through the workshop, while associate professor of Korean language and literature Ji-Eun Lee is developing a public-facing book project based on her translations of Korean travelogues.
“We’ve been proud to see our colleagues develop their work in the intensely collaborative environment of the Creative Practice Workshop,” said Danielle Dutton, Center for the Literary Arts co-director. “The success of our workshop alumni illustrates how a little time and effort can bring great ideas into full bloom. We’re excited to see how our two newest participants take their creative practice to the next level.”
