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News and Alumni Achievements

 

Below, please find a sampling of other alumni accomplishments, and as always, for up-to-the-minute Purdue Creative Writing News visit our Facebook page.

 

A Sample of Alumni Accomplishments

Purdue University’s MFA’s students and alumni are published novelists, short story writers, essayists, and poets. They are Wallace Stegner Fellows, Yaddo and Bread Loaf residents, Pushcart Prize and O’Henry Prize winners. Our students and alumni have had their stories, poetry, and essays published in prestigious journals and papers such as The Atlantic Monthly, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Threepenny Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Prairie Schooner,Tin House, Boston Review, Southwest Review, The Rumpus, The Believer, Glimmer Train, Southern Review, Virginia Quarterly Review and frequently have their work published in Best American Poetry (Simon & Schuster) and Best New Poets (University of Virginia Press).

James Tadd Adcox (MFA, 2007) is the author of a novel, Does Not Love, a novella, Repetition, and a collection of short fiction, The Map of the System of Human Knowledge. His work has appeared in GrantaPANK Magazine, and TriQuarterly​, among other places. He holds a PhD from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA from Purdue University.

Gregory R. Allendorf (MFA, 2013). Gregory is currently a PhD candidate at University of Missouri-Columbia with a concentration in poetry. His chapbook, Fair Day in an Ancient Town, was selected by Kiki Petrosino for the Mineral Point Chapbook series from Brain Mill Press (official release February 2016) and his poems have been published in Chicago Quarterly Review, Gigantic Sequins, and Memorious: A Journal of New Verse and Fiction.

Lindsey Alexander  (MFA, 2013). Lindsey produces the podcast "Story of My Life," which features guests over age 70 sharing how they came to be who & where they are. Her poems have appeared in The Southern Review, Waxwing, Arts & Letters, and other publications. Her work won the 2015 Devil's Lake Driftless Poetry Prize. In 2014, she was a scholar at the month-long NEH Institute "Reconsidering Flannery O'Connor."

Christopher Feliciano Arnold (MFA, 2009) won an NEA and placed a book with Macmillan (Picador).

Samantha Atkins (MFA, 2017). Samantha Atkins poems of hers have appeared in 32 Poems, Sixth Finch, Paris Review, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, Best New Poets, the Incredible Sestina Anthology, FIELD, Passages North, Mid-American Review, Gettysburg Review, Cortland Review, The Baffler, Redivider, Ruminate, and elsewhere. She is a Pushcart Prize winner, and has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She is an Assistant Professor of English at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota

Julie Babcock (MFA, 1998). Julie’s poetry collection Autoplay was published by MG Press in 2014 and her poems and fiction have appeared in numerous journals such as PANK, Slipstream, decomP, Spoon River Poetry Review, Split Lip Magazine, The Collagist, Rain Taxi, The Rumpus, and Feast: An Anthology from Black Lawrence Press. Julie currently teaches at the University of Michigan.

Rebecca Bednarz (MFA, 2004). Rebecca’s chapbook Camera Obscura (Noemi Press) was selected for publication by Carmen Giménez Smith. Her work has been featured in The Threepenny ReviewPrairie Schooner, and Phoebe. She is editor for curatorial initiatives at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, supporting the museum’s award-winning interdisciplinary exhibition and publishing programs. She holds an EdM from Harvard University.

Lori Benjamin (MA, English: Creative Writing, 1995) is a freelance writer, editor, and marketing consultant based in Montana. When she's not busy making a living, she indulges an obsession with classical piano and dreams of sending out old poems, writing essays, or getting back to her novel.

Dana E. Bisignani (MFA, 2007; Ph.D. candidate in Literature). Dana’s poetry has been published in Slipstream, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Cimarron Review, Grasslands Review. She has won numerous awards for teaching and scholarship and she blogs about gender, sexuality, race, and class at http://genderpressing.wordpress.com.

Mairéad Byrne (MA 1996, PhD 2001) earned an MA in Gaelic Literature (First Class Honors) from the Department of Modern Irish, University College Cork in 2021. Her recent publications include two chapbooks, In & Out (Smithereens 2019) and har sawlya (above/ground 2019); work in The Cast-Iron Airplane That Can Actually Fly: Contemporary Poets Comment on Their Prose Poems (MadHat 2019); and two essays, “Light in July,” in ReRites: Human and A.I. Poetry (Anteism 2019) and “The Shed of Poetry,” in A Line of Tiny Zeros in the Fabric: Essays on the Poetry of Maurice Scully (Shearsman 2020). She has published 6 collections of poetry in Ireland, the United States, and Brazil, including Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007); also four collaborative books with visual artists. Mairéad is Professor of Poetry + Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design and Affiliated Faculty Department of Literary Arts Brown University, both in Providence.

Mario Chard (MFA, 2011) is the author of Land of Fire (Tupelo Press, 2018), winner of the 2016 Dorset Prize, a 2018 Notable Debut by Poets & Writers Magazine, and the 2019 Georgia Author of the Year Award in Poetry. His work has appeared widely in journals and magazines, including The NationThe New Yorker, Poetry, among others, and his honors include the “Discovery” Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and an inaugural fellow for the U.S. Ledbury Poetry Critics, he lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Cara Chamberlain (MA, 1988). Cara’s poetry, essays, and short fiction have been published or are forthcoming in over 150 journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, The Southern Review, Passages North, and Tar River Poetry. She is the author of Hidden Things (FootHills Publishing, 2009), a collection of poetry. She currently teaches at Rocky Mountain College.

Lauren M. Carpenter (MFA, 2014).  Lauren Carpenter’s poems have appeared in Rivet, The Greensboro Review, Dark Sky Magazine, and The Lumberyard.

Mario Chard (MFA, 2011) was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University from 2011-2013. Winner of the 2012 “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize, Mario's first book, Land of Fire, was selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky as the winner of the Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press, published in 2018. Poems from Land of Fire appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, and Boston Review, among others, and it was recently selected as one of ten notable debuts from Poets & Writers Magazine. He currently teaches English at The Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Georgia.

Sean M. Conrey (MFA, 2002, Ph. D. in English, 2006) is Associate Director of Syracuse University Project Advance. He is the author of two full-length poetry collections — The Book of Trees (Saint Julian Press, 2017), which won a 2018 Catholic Press Award, The Word in Edgewise (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014), as well as a chapbook, A Conversation with the Living (Finishing Line Press, 2009). His articles, essays, and poems have been published in Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing and Culture, The Wayfarer, American Letters and Commentary, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Notre Dame Review, and more recently in Sisyphus, The Museum of Americana, Really System, and Verdad: Journal of Literature and Art and elsewhere.

Tony Cook (MFA, 2010), an Indianapolis Star reporter, was named Indiana Journalist of the Year in 2014 by the Indiana Society of Professional Journalists.

Kelsey Cox’s (MFA, 2011) work has appeared in The Albion Review, REAL: Regarding Arts and Letters, and Tales of the Unanticipated. She has recently signed with Stefanie Lieberman of Janklow & Nesbit literary agency and is working on revisions to her mystery novel. She lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and daughter and teaches composition courses online for Southern New Hampshire University.

Brian Czyzyk (MFA, 2021) is a poet from Traverse City, Michigan. His work has been awarded an AWP Intro Journals Award, named a "Notable" by Best American Essays 2020, been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, the Orison Anthology, and a Pushcart Prize, and has appeared in Colorado ReviewThe Cincinnati Review, and Poetry Magazine, among others. He is currently a Voertman-Ardoin Fellow at the University of North Texas.

Rob Davidson  (MFA 1997, PhD 2002) is Professor of English at California State University, Chico. He is the author of four fiction collections: What Some Would Call Lies: Novellas (Five Oaks, 2018); Spectators: Flash Fictions (Five Oaks, 2017); The Farther Shore (Bear Star, 2012); and Field Observations (U of Missouri, 2001). He is also the author of a monograph, The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells (U of Missouri, 2005). In 2015-2016, he was awarded a Fulbright to teach creative writing and Asian American literature in Taiwan. Please visit robdavidsonauthor.net.

Laura Donnelly (MFA, 2007). Laura Donnelly’s first full-length collection of poetry, Watershed, won the 2013 Cider Press Review Editors’ Prize and was a finalist for the Brittingham and Pollak Prizes. She is also the author of a chapbook, Nocturne Schumanns Letters (Finishing Line Press, 2010), and her poems have been published in Rhino, Cimarron Review, Typo, Third Coast, PANK, Flyway, CutBank, Poetry East, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. She is a former Editor-in-Chief of the national literary journal Third Coast and the recipient of a Yaddo fellowship and is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the State University of New York at Oswego.

Melinda R. Dunn (MFA, 2005). Melinda R. Dunn’s poems have appeared in Georgetown Review and Phoebe. She works as the academic program manager for Butler University’s MFA program in Creative Writing in Indianapolis.

Steve Edwards  (MFA, 2000) is the author of the memoir Breaking into the Backcountry, the story of his 7 months of solitude as the caretaker of a backcountry homestead in Oregon. His essays and fiction have appeared in Orion Magazine, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Literary Hub, Longreads, and elsewhere, including the anthology on fatherhood, When I First Held You (Berkley Books/Penguin USA, 2014). Among his awards are Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship for Fiction/Nonfiction and PEN-Northwest Wilderness Writing Residency, Josephine County, Oregon. He is an associate professor of English Studies at Fitchburg State University in Massachusetts.

Carol Frome (MA). Carol Frome’s work has appeared in many literary journals, including The Humanist, Nimrod, Colorado Review, Plainsongs, and The Stockholm Review of Literature, among others. She is also a recipient of a Discovery/The Nation Award and her collection, Lives & Mortalties is forthcoming from WordTech Communications’ CW imprint.

Wayne Neal Gill Jr. (MFA, 2001). Wayne’s poems have been published in Fence, Maize, Bombay Gin, Northwest Review, and Silverfish.

Sarah Green (MFA, 2005) is the author of Earth Science (421 Atlanta, 2016) and the editor of Welcome to the Neighborhood: An Anthology of American Coexistence (Ohio University Press/Swallow Press, 2019). 

Stephen D. Gibson (MA, 1995). Stephen D. Gibson’s fiction has appeared in The Southeast Review, Quarterly West, Story Quarterly, Western Humanities Review and elsewhere.

Eric Goddard-Scovel (MFA, 2009) is a digital artist, poet, editor, and technical writer currently based in Spring, Texas. Three chapbooks of his work, most recently same: a Stein wreader (2016), have been published by Beard of Bees Press, and his work with Gnoetry 0.2 can be followed at the Gnoetry Daily blog. His digital and visual poetry have also appeared in NOÖ Weekly, The Bleed, Newark Review 3.0, and Opon. He is currently completing a generative book project (with digital poetry and generative art) called No Blame with the poet and rhetorician Tyler Carter.

Brent Goodman (MFA, 1996) is the author of the chapbooks Trees Are the Slowest Rivers (1998) and Wrong Horoscope, winner of the 1999 Frank O’Hara Award. His full-length poetry collections include The Brother Swimming Beneath Me (Black Lawrence Press 2009), which was nominated for both a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry and the Thom Gunn Award, and Far From Sudden (Black Lawrence Press 2013). His work has been featured in Poetry, Diagram, Sou’wester, Modern Haiku, Court Green, Pleiades, The Heron’s Nest, Pank, Green Mountains Review, Frogpond, Diode, Contemporary American Voices, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry East, and Zone 3, among others. Goodman has twice received Wisconsin Arts Board Individual Artist Fellowship Awards.

Barbara C. Harroun (MFA, 2003). Barbara Harroun is an assistant professor of English at Western Illinois University where she teaches creative writing and composition. Her work has appeared in the Sycamore Review, issues of Another Chicago Magazine, Buffalo Carp, Friends Journal, In Quire, issues of Bird's Thumb, Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland, Requited Journal, Festival Writer, and Red Wolf Journal and is forthcoming in i70 Review, Sugared Water, Per Contra, The Riveter Review, Catch and Release, Pea River Journal, and Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal.

Daniel C. Hefko (MFA, 1998). Daniel’s poetry has been published in Negative Capability, The Threepenny Review, Seneca Review, and New York Quarterly. His textbook English Composition was published by The College Network (2000) and reprinted in an expanded edition in 2002.

Julie Henson (MFA, 2015) was the winner of Devil’s Lake 2016 Driftless prize in poetry for her poem “Speculative Folklore of a Great-Great,” and Redivider’s Beacon Street 2015 poetry prize for her poem “Fell the Trees.” She was a finalist for Washington Square Review’s 2015 poetry contest, Iowa Review’s 2014 poetry contest, and a semi-finalist for Boston Review’s 2015 and 2014 “Discovery” contest. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review, Colorado Review, Salt Hill Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Devil’s Lake, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Redivider, Iowa Review, Quarterly West, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, cream city review, Spoon River Poetry Review, CutBank, Southern Indiana Review, and others. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Purdue University and she lives in Indianapolis.

Henry Hughes (MFA, 1990) was the first editor of Sycamore Review. His poems and stories have appeared in Antioch Review, Carolina Quarterly, Harvard Review, The North American Review, Shenandoah, Southern Humanities Review, Seattle Review, Sewanee Review and Poetry Northwest. He is the author of four poetry collections, including Men Holding Eggs, which received the Oregon Book Award, and Moist Meridian, which was a finalist for the award. Hughes is also the author of the memoir, Back Seat with Fish: Adventures in Angling and Romance, and the editor of the Everyman’s Library anthologies, The Art of Angling: Poems about Fishing, Fishing Stories, and the forthcoming River Poems. He is the deputy editor of The Flyfishing & Tying Journal, a regular book reviewer for Harvard Review, and a professor of English at Western Oregon University. Please visit at http://hughespoetry.com/

Allison Hutchcraft (MFA, 2011). Allison Hutchcraft’s poems have appeared in American Letters & Commentary, Barrow Street, the Beloit Poetry Journal, The Cincinnati Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Jessica Jacobs (MFA, 2013) is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, published by Four Way Books in March 2019. Her debut collection, Pelvis with Distance, which was her graduate thesis at Purdue, was winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including Orion, New England Review, Guernica, and The Missouri Review. Recipient of the John Grammer Fellowship from the Sewanee Schoool of Letters, she has served as Writer-in-Residence at schools including Hendrix College, Converse College, and UNC-Wilmington's MFA program and is now the Associate Editor of Beloit Poetry Journal. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown.

Mitchell Jacobs (MFA, 2018) is currently attending the University of Southern California's PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing. His work has appeared in literary journals such as Gulf Coast, Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Northwest, and Southern Review, as well as the Best Poets 2019 anthology and the Slowdown podcast through American Public Media.

Natalie Ruth Joynton (MFA, 2010). Natalie Ruth Joynton’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, LA Times, and live on CNN’s Weekend Express with Susan Hendricks. In 2020 her first book, Welcome to Replica Dodge, placed as a finalist in the Next Gen Indie Book  Awards. An avid runner, reader, and educator, Natalie lives with her family in Michigan. 

Alisha Karabinus's (MFA, 2014, PhD candidate, English) short fiction has been published in many journals including PANK, The Pinch, Baltimore Review, The Southeast Review, Word Riot, Ninth Letter, and Smokelong Quarterly and has been shortlisted or a finalist for many awards including Flyway’s Iowa Sweet Corn Prize for Short Fiction and the Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction Contest 2014. Her game reviews and criticism have appeared on multiple sites including Haywire Magazine, Not Your Mama’s Gamer, and Joystiq.

Munib Khan (MFA, 2015) was accepted with funding to several PhD programs and is attending Florida State University.

Matt Kilbane (MFA, 2014) is an assistant professor of English at the University of Notre Dame where he teaches and writes about poetry and poetics, media history, and the digital humanities.

Benjamin Kolp (MFA, 2008). Ben's first published short story appeared in Kenyon Review Online in 2016, was translated into Hungarian, and was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize. He is a product manager in the technology industry.

Kara Krewer (MFA, 2015) is currently pursuing her PhD in creative writing at the University of Georgia, where she's a Presidential Graduate Fellow. A 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, her poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2017, West Branch, The Georgia Review, The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.

Sarah Layden (MFA, 2006). Sarah Layden’s first novel, Trip Through Your Wires, was recommended and reviewed by The Chicago Tribune, PANK, and elsewhere. Sarah is the winner of the Allen and Nirelle Galson Prize for fiction and an AWP Intro Award. Her short fiction can be found in Boston Review, Stone Canoe, Blackbird, Artful Dodge, The Evansville Review, Booth, PANK, the anthology Sudden Flash Youth, and elsewhere. A two-time Society of Professional Journalists award winner, her recent essays, interviews and articles have appeared in Ladies' Home Journal, The Writer's Chronicle, NUVO, and The Humanist

Natalie Lund’s (MFA, 2015) is the author of We Speak in Storms and The Sky Above Us. Her third novel, The Wolves Are Watching, will be out fall of 2022. Her flash fiction has appeared in CHEAP POP, CutBank, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Literary Orphans. She works in communications at the University of Chicago.

Michael S. Manley in 2021, Michael began working as the Chief Technology Officer of ThinkCERCA.com, an education technology company focusing on literacy and critical thinking skills. Michael also serves on the advisory board for the Wildacres Writing Workshop (https://www.wildacreswriters.com/).

Terrance Manning, Jr. (MFA, 2014). He won first place in Iowa Review’s short fiction contest. He also received first place in Boulevard's Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, The David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction, and Crab Orchard Review’s John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. His work appears or is forthcoming in prestigious literary magazines Witness, Ninth Letter, Southwest Review, Hunger Mountain, The Carolina Quarterly.

Christine Butterworth-McDermott (Ph.D., 2002) is a freelance editor, writer, and artist. Her latest work in poetry includes a chapbook: all breathing heartbreak (2019) and a full-length collection about showgirl Evelyn Nesbit, Evelyn As: Poems (Fomite, 2019). She is the founder and co-editor of Gingerbread House Literary Magazine. Her forthcoming book, Spellbook of Fruit and Flowers (Fomite), features poems that were published in the Massachusetts Review, River Styx, Southeast ReviewTar River Poetry, and The Normal School.

Rebecca McKanna's (MFA, 2015) fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in or are forthcoming from Colorado Review, Third Coast, Michigan Quarterly Review, Arts & Letters, Joyland, New Delta Review, Midwestern Gothic, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and as one of Narrative's Stories of the Week, among other publications. She was the winner of the 2018 Third Coast Fiction Contest, a finalist for Narrative’s 2014 Story Contest, a finalist for Boulevard’s 2015 Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers, and an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s March/April 2016 Fiction Open. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of Indianapolis.

Beth McDermott (MFA, 2014). Beth McDermott is the author of How to Leave a Farmhouse, a chapbook published by Porkbelly Press (2015).  She earned her PhD from the Program for Writers at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Beth’s poetry has been published in journals such as DIAGRAMHarpur PalateBayou, Watershed Review, The National Poetry Review, and Southern Humanities Review. She is an associate editor with RHINO.

John Milas (MFA, 2019) has published fiction in journals such as The Southampton Review, XRAY Literary Magazine, Peatsmoke, and elsewhere. His graduate thesis, a novel entitled The Militia House, was acquired by Henry Holt. His website is johnmilas.com

Rosalie Ruth Moffett (MFA, 2013) is the author of Nervous System, which won the National Poetry Series prize and will be published in 2019 by Ecco/Harper Collins. She is also the author of June in Eden, which won the Ohio State University Press/The Journal award. A former Wallace Stegner Poetry Fellow at Stanford University, she has also received the Discovery / Boston Review prize, the Ploughshares Emerging writer prize, and support from the Bread Loaf and Tin House writers workshop. Her poems have appeared in Tin House, The Believer, FIELD, Kenyon Review, Narrative, Beloit Poetry Journal  and other magazines, as well as the anthology Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets. She lives in Athens, GA.

Aaron Morales (’03)’s MFA thesis Drowning Tucson was published by prestigious Coffee House Press in 2010, and called the "bleakly human debut of the new Bukowski." He was an assistant professor of English at Indiana State University.

Alex Mouw's (MFA, 2014) poetry has appeared or is forthcoming West Branch,Colorado ReviewSouthern Indiana Review, and elsewhere. He also writes nonfiction and was recently selected as runner-up for Ruminate Magazine's VanderMey Nonfiction Prize. He served as a visiting assistant professor of English at Hope College before beginning a Ph.D. in literature at Washington University in Saint Louis.

Patrick Nevins (MFA, 2008) is the author of a novel, Man in a Cage (Malarkey Books, 2022), and a collection of stories, The Commission of Inquiry (Cornerstone Press, 2024).  He is also an associate professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College in Columbus, Indiana

Gretchen Steele Pratt (MFA, 2007). Gretchen’s poetry collection, One Island, was published by Anhinga Press in 2011 and her poems have been published in Best American Poetry 2011 and Best New Poets 2009 as well as Cimarron Review, Southern Review, Mid-American Review, Gettysburg Review, AGNI, and Boston Review. Her poems have won the Anhinga Prize for Poetry and have been shortlisted for prizes including the Erskine J. Poetry Prize.

Nicholas Reading (MFA, 2003). Nicholas Reading is the author of the chapbook The Party In Question (Burnside Review Press, 2007). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Bat City Review, jubilat, Nimrod, Painted Bride Quarterly, and San Pedro River Review. He also serves as the Managing Editor for Sport Literate.

Jessica Suzanne Reed (MFA, 2000). Jessica’s essays and poems have been published or are forthcoming in the journals North American Review, Bellingham Review, The Fourth River, Spiral Orb, Conjunctions, Web Conjunctions, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Spiral Orb, Kudzu House Quarterly, The Fourth River, and Isotope: A Journal of Literary Nature and Science Writing.

Rebekah Silverman (MFA, 2007) lives in Chicago, IL. After over a decade working in management, operations, and fundraising for nonprofits, she joined the consulting firm Ter Molen Watkins & Brandt as Assistant Vice President in 2018.

Kelsey Ronan grew up in Flint, Michigan. Her work has appeared in Lit Hub, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Detroit and teaches for InsideOut Literary Arts. Chevy in the Hole is her first novel.

Emily Skaja’s first book, BRUTE, won the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets (Graywolf Press, 2019). She holds an MFA from Purdue University (‘15) and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati (‘19), where she was a Taft Summer Research Fellow and also earned a certificate in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Skaja is the Poetry Co-Editor of Southern Indiana Review and serves on the editorial board of The Pinch. Her poems have been published in Best New Poets, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, FIELD, and The New York Times Magazine. She is the winner of the Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, an AWP Intro Journals Award, the Russell Prize, and an Academy of American Poets College Prize. She has received fellowships from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Skaja is an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at the University of Memphis.

Cassander Smith (’05) received her PhD from Purdue and is an associate professor of English at Alabama University.

Elizabeth Stuckey-French (MA, 1994) is the author of three novels Where Wicked Starts (with Patricia Henley), The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady, Mermaids on the Moon, and a collection of short stories, The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa. Along with Janet Burroway and Ned Stuckey-French, she is a co-author of Writing Fiction: A Guide to the Narrative Craft. Her short stories have appeared in The Normal School, Narrative Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Five Points, and The O’Henry Prize Stories 2005. She was awarded a James Michener Fellowship and a Florida Book Award and has won grants from the Howard Foundation, the Indiana Arts Foundation, and the Florida Arts Foundation. She teaches fiction writing at Florida State University.

Jacob Sunderlin (MFA, 2012) is the author of This We in The Back of The House (Saturnalia Books, 2022) which won the Saturnalia Editors’ Prize. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Narrative, Ploughshares, and other magazines. He has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Djerassi Resident Artist program. 

Daniel Blue Tyx (MFA, 2009) is a freelance writer who focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border region. He is a contributing editor at the Texas Observer, and his journalism and essays have appeared in the Oxford American, the Washington Post, and Best American Travel Writing. 

Natalie van Hoose (MFA, 2013) is the science writer for the Florida Museum of Natural History. She previously covered research news for Purdue's College of Agriculture. Her fiction has appeared in The Southeast Review, and her nonfiction has been published or is forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction and Rougarou.

Corey Van Landingham (MFA, 2013) is the author of Antidote, winner of the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry, and Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens, forthcoming from Tupelo Press. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Georgia Review, and The New Yorker. She is a book review editor for Kenyon Review, and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Michael X Wang (’09) Received his PhD from FSU at Tallahassee. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Cimarron Review, Prick of the Spindle, Day One, Driftwood Press, and Juked, among others. His chapbook, A Minor Revolution (StoryFront, 2013), is available from Amazon. A story from his MFA collection appeared 2015 in the New England Review. He teaches at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama.

Anna Lowe Weber is a lecturer in the English department at The University of Alabama in Huntsville. She teaches classes in poetry, fiction, and composition. Her poetry has been published in the Iowa Review, Black Warrior Review, Salamander, Rattle, and Ninth Letter, among other journals. She has been a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist, and her manuscript, Variations on a Domestic Theme, was a semi-finalist for the Idaho Prize for Poetry. In addition to teaching, she serves as coordinator for Alabama’s Region Five Poetry Out Loud competition.

Joshua R. Wild (MFA, 2011). Joshua Wild’s poems have been published in Poetry and Best New Poets 2011.

Dallas Woodburn (MFA 2011), a former Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University, has published fiction & nonfiction in Prism Review, The Fourth River, ZYZZYVA, The Nashville Review, The Los Angeles Times, and Monkeybicycle, among many others. Her short story collection Woman, Running Late, in a Dress (Yellow Flag Press) won the 2018 Cypress & Pine Short Fiction Award and her debut novel The Best Week That Never Happened is forthcoming from Month9Books. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Dallas won first place in the international Glass Woman Prize and second place in the American Fiction Prize. Her plays have been produced in Los Angeles and New York City. Dallas is the founder of Write On! Books, an organization that empowers youth through reading and writing endeavors.