How author and distinguished professor Tracy Daugherty helped shape the nationally-recognized program
Tracy Daugherty
By Jessica Krueger, CLA Student Writer - February 5, 2026
In 2015, Tracy Daugherty sat down to talk about his life and career for Oregon State University’s Sesquicentennial Oral History Project — and certainly there was a lot to say. A Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English and Creative Writing at OSU, Daugherty taught at the university from 1986 until 2013, twenty-seven years. During this time, Daugherty and his colleagues in the English department built and designed what now, perhaps, is one of OSU’s most prestigious programs: the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing.
Nationally recognized, the M.F.A. in creative writing program is taught by award-winning faculty specializing in fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. Today, so many people apply to the program that it is only able to accept four percent of applicants. That being said, the admissions process is a wholistic one. And students that are accepted into the program receive full funding through graduate assistantships. “I really think the university has gotten behind this program and in a way that we might not have expected,” Daugherty said in 2015. “It has flourished and it's one of the best in the country right now.”
When Daugherty arrived at OSU in 1986, courses and programs offered by the English department were relatively limited. And there were no graduate degrees . Daugherty explained that, at the time, “The idea of an English major still sounded strange to a lot of people. We were service providers. Our job was to teach students to be better writers so they could succeed in other fields.” Still, OSU’s English department was, and continues to be, home to a great many prominent writers. Bernard Malamud, for instance, winner of a Pulitzer Prize and two National Book Awards, taught there from 1949 to 1961.
Throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Daugherty said, the English department continued to grow, adding more courses and faculty to meet rising demand. “The (creative writing) courses were becoming very popular. A lot of students wanted to continue their studies,” Daugherty said. “So there began to be pressure from the students to have further courses, which led to us hiring more creative writing teachers. That was great for me,” Daugherty added, “because I got company and colleagues.”
By 2002, the M.F.A. in creative writing program was not only up and running — thanks to Daugherty and his colleagues in the English department, including Marjorie Sandor and Ehud Havazelet — it had graduated its first cohort of students. Today, alumni of the M.F.A. program enjoy literary and academic success. The program continues to graduate accomplished writers of nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. It also hosts a variety of events and visiting writers to bolster its students’ education and to nurture the Corvallis writing community.
Daugherty chose to teach at OSU back in 1986 because he was excited about the future of the university’s English department. He enjoyed the company of his peers there. “I had an offer from one other school, but because OSU had seemed so very warm, I just came,” Daugherty said. “I felt I was getting in on the ground floor of something that was just being built, and that was a really exciting thing.”
Before moving to Corvallis to teach at OSU, Daugherty lived in Texas. He grew up in Midland, where his father worked as a geologist in the oil industry. “I think I was expected to become an oil man,” Daugherty said, “though I was never pushed by my family to do one thing or the other. They didn't say to me ‘you have to stay here and follow in your father's footsteps.’ … (They) were quite willing to let me follow my own path.” After high school, Daugherty studied creative writing at Southern Methodist University. There, he earned his undergraduate and master’s degrees. Later, Daugherty received his doctorate from the University of Houston, where he studied under postmodernist writer Donald Barthelme.
Throughout his career at Oregon State, Daugherty kept busy and he continues to write today. Over the years, he has authored seven novels, seven short story or novella collections, and ten works of nonfiction. His 2023 biography of novelist and screenwriter Larry McMurtry was a finalist for a 2024 Pulitzer Prize. It received critical acclaim from The New York Times Book Review, as did Daugherty’s 2015 work, The Last Love Song: A Biography of Joan Didion. Daugherty's 2010 biography on his mentor Barthelme was a Times notable book of the year. Daugherty has also received five Oregon Book Awards.
Even after retiring from his faculty position at Oregon State, Daugherty stays involved in the local writing community. “I feel it's important,” Daugherty said, “not to be the kind of writer who withdraws from the world into the ivory tower. It’s essential to promote literature, not just your own, but others, to be a part of literary culture, to help.” Because Daugherty was a founder of OSU’s M.F.A. in creative writing, this philosophy undergirds the program as well.
“The people who care about literature,” Daugherty said, “are going to go out into the world and create the future. I mean, quite literally. Whatever shape literature is going to have, it's going to be because of these people now here. It means that they can't just focus on their own writing and lock themselves in a room. They have to go out and do something and be part of something."