Student and Alumni Achievements

Student and Alumni Achievements

Maya Bernstein MFA ‘24 published a poem “The Primordial Catastrophe in the Process of Creation” in Viva Poetica.

Tangie Mitchell MFA ‘23 was named a 2024-2025 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow through the Poetry Project.

 Maria Santa Poggi MFA ‘24 interviewed U.S. Poet Laureate, Ada Limón, on her nature poetry anthology You Are Here for Electric Literature.

Miciah Hussey MFA ‘24 published an essay “Autumnal” in the Fall/Winter 2024 issue of the Bellevue Literary Review.

Abigail Oswald MFA ‘18 published an essay about genre, grief, and The Night House in Bright Wall/Dark Room

“Solitaire” by AJ Tierney MFA ‘08 was published in the “Solar Flare” issue of Same Faces Collective Art & Literary Journal

A flash fiction piece “This Time of Death” by Wendy Holmes MFA was accepted by Fractured Lit for their 2024 Anthology.

Melissa Faliveno MFA ‘11 announced a book deal for her debut novel HEMLOCK which will be published by Little, Brown.

Anya Johnson MFA ‘23 published a new poem in Anti-Heroin Chic.

Melissa Gelula MFA ‘24 was interviewed by Maria Santa Poggi MFA ‘24 for the Creative Independent.

Current MFA student Bee Hyland published their debut collection of stories Ethical Necromancy  (Winding Road, 2024).

Current MFA student Maeve Barry published a new story “Girabella” in The Sewanee Review Spring 2024 issue.

Abigail Oswald MFA ‘18 published an essay “The Descent (2005): ASearch History” in Bright Wall/Dark Room's "Obsession" issue.

Ash Pattison-Scott MFA ‘24 published an essay “The Speck” in The Audacity.

Current MFA student Beth Holly published a new prose piece in Green Hills Literary Lantern.

Katiy Heath MFA ‘20 published an essay “What is Special About Dusk” in LIT Magazine.

Sarah Levine MFA ‘11 published her debut collection of poems Each Knuckle with Sugar with Driftwood Press.

Current MFA student Hayley Shucker was a finalist for the 2024 Big Apple Film Festival Screenplay Competition.

Tangie Mitchell MFA ‘23 published new poems in KGB Lit, West Trade Review, and Berlin Lit.

Zachariah Claypole White MFA ‘23 published new poems in Sequestrum, The Rumpus, Pigeon Pages, and Bourbon Penn.

Arriel Vinson MFA ‘19 was named a Renee Watson Scholarship recipient through the Highlights Foundation.

Current MFA student David Marino published a story “Salemo” in Lightspeed.

Sreshtha Sen MFA ‘17 was named a 2024 Margins Fellow through the Asian American Writers’ Workshop.

Current MFA student Maeve Barry published two stories  and Fran Matos MFA ‘23 published a new poem in Columbia Journal.

Colter Jackson MFA ‘19 wrote and illustrated the children’s book Everyday Brave, which was published in 2024 by Beaming Books.

Abigail Oswald MFA ‘18 published an essay "Searching for Heather Donahue" in Bright Wall/Dark Room.

Traci Brimhall MFA ‘08 was named the Poet Laureate of Kansas from 2023-2026.

The poem “Today, while reading the definition of OCD” by Zachariah Claypole White MFA ‘23 was a finalist in the 2023 Frontier OPEN.

Current MFA student Maeve Barry’s story “The Ballet” won the 2023 Pigeon Pages fiction contest and her story “Parrot” won the 2023 Phoebe Spring Fiction Contest.

Ashley Lopez MFA ‘18 published a new story “Well and Good” in Gasher’s Spring 2023 issue.

Hera Naguib MFA ‘14 published a poem titled “At the Punjab Dhaba, Hampshire Street, Boston” in TriQuarterly, July 2023.

Christine Barker’s (MFA ‘05) memoir The Third Girl From the Left was featured in the New York Times “10 New Books We Recommend This Week.”

Apoorva Bradshaw Mittal MFA ‘19 published their story The Dollmaker in The Rumpus in September 2023.

Alexandra Lehmann MFA ‘03 published an article “Giving and Receiving the Sacraments in Prison -A Conversation with Mary Jo Kriz, DM, co-chair of the American Association Prison Ministry Committee”.

Melissa Joplin Higley’s (MFA ‘19) debut poetry chapbook FIRST FATHER was a finalist in the Lefty Blondie Press Inaugural Chapbook Contest (2023) and was published by Bottlecap Press (2023).

Abigail Oswald MFA ‘18 published a short story in The Rumpus “A Note to Say Hello, I’m Here” and an essay "Can't Remember to Forget You: Memento in Twenty Fragments” in Bright Wall/Dark Room.

Kaveh Bassiri MFA ‘07 had poems published in Somewhere We Are Human (2022), A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers (2022), and Without a Doubt (2023).

Sreshtha Sen MFA ‘17 published two poems in Kenyon Review and two poems in Massachusetts Review in Fall 2023.

Mahreen Sohail MFA ‘13 signed a book deal with A Public Space in September 2023 for the forthcoming fiction collection Hair, and Other Stories.

Mike Bagwell MFA ‘14 published new work in ITERANT, Sprung Formal, trampset, Heavy Feather Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, HAD, BULL, Bodega Magazine, SOFTBLOW, Whiskey Island, and others. He published the chapbooks A Collision of Soul in Midair (Bottlecap Press 2023), Or Else they are Trees, and a micro When We Look at Things We Steal their Color and Grow Heavy Under their Weight (Rinky Dink Press 2024).

Inciting Joy (Algonquin, 2022) by Ross Gay MFA ‘98 was the winner of the 2022 Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Memoir/ Nonfiction and named a Best Book of 2022 by the Boston Globe, Salon.com, The San Francisco Chronicle, Publisher’s Weekly, and more.

Ashley Lopez MFA ‘18 published a new essay “Reliquary Reimagined” in Prairie Schooner’s  Winter 2022 issue.

Melissa Febos MFA MFA ‘08 was the recipient of a 2022 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship.

Hila Ratzabi’s (MFA ‘07) debut book of poetry, There Are Still Woods, was published by June Road Press in 2022, and was a Nautilus Book Award gold winner in poetry and National Indie Excellence Award finalist.

Jee Leong Koh's (MFA ‘05) hybrid work of fiction, SNOW AT 5 PM: TRANSLATIONS OF AN INSIGNIFICANT JAPANESE POET, won the 2022 Singapore Literature Prize in the English fiction category.

Kaveh Bassiri MFA ‘07 received a 2022-2023 Tulsa Artist Fellowship.

Sarah Ahmad MFA ‘20 published a conversation with poet Giannina Braschi in POETRY Magazine.

Mahreen Sohail MFA ‘13 was a 2022 MacDowell fellow.

Kaveh Bassiri MFA ‘07 had poems published in the anthology Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (2021).

Melissa Febos’s (MFA ‘08) nationally bestselling essay collection GIRLHOOD was named a notable book of 2021 by NPR, Time, The Washington Post, and others.

Bethany Ball MFA ‘13 published her second novel The Pessimists with Grove Press in 2021.

T Kira Māhealani Madden MFA ‘12 received the 2021 Lambda Literary's Judith A. Markowitz Award for Exceptional New LGBTQ Writers.

Kaveh Bassiri  MFA ‘07 received a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Arkansas Arts Council.

Be Holding (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) by Ross Gay MFA ‘98 was the winner of the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Award and shortlisted for the 2022 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Awards.

Curtis Bauer MFA ‘99 published translations of poetry and prose from the Spanish: his publications include the novel The Home Reading Service, by Fabio Morábito (Other Press, 2021), the memoir Land of Women, by María Sánchez (Trinity University Press, 2022) and the full-length poetry collection This Could Take Some Time by Clara Muschietti (eulalia books, 2022).

Melissa Faliveno MFA ‘11 published her debut essay collection TOMBOYLAND, named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, New York Public Library, Oprah Magazine, Electric Literature, and Debutiful. She was also the recipient of a 2021 Award for Outstanding Literary Achievement from the Wisconsin Library Association.

Kaveh Bassiri MFA ‘07 was the winner of the Anzaldúa Poetry Prize for 99 Names of Exile and the winner of the Rick Campbell Chapbook Prize for Elementary English. He also received a 2020 Artist 360 Grant sponsored by the Mid-America Arts Alliance. He had poems published in Best American Poetry 2020, Best New Poets 2020, and the anthology The Heart of a Stranger (2020).

Mahreen Sohail MFA ‘13 published the short story “Hair” in Granta, April, 2020 and a non-fiction piece titled “Shareef” in Guernica, December, 2020.

Melissa Barrett (MFA ‘07) published Moon on Roam (Gold Wake Press 2019), a collection of poems that was a finalist for more than a dozen book prizes. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2019, 2020, and 2021 and is the recipient of four Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, a Tin House writer’s scholarship, an Oboh Prize, a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg prize, a Vermont Student Center residency, and a Galway Kinnell scholarship from the Community of Writers.

Samantha Paige Rosen MFA '17 published work including "Unlearning the Shame of Living with My Parents as An Adult" in Catapult, "Everyone Has Moved On and I'm Still Thinking About Miranda's Coming Out Scene" in Electric Literature, "Finding Motivation, Line by Line" in Hippocampus Magazine, and "betty: a queer reckoning" in Kiss Your Darlings: A Taylor Swift Anthology.

Jonathan Vatner MFA '11 discussed his first book, Carnegie Hill, in an interview with Authorlink Magazine​.

“elegy with two degrees of separation”​ by KT Herr MFA ‘20 was selected as a finalist for the 2019 Frontier OPEN Prize.

Arriel Vinson MFA ’19 published “What Majorette Dancing Taught Me About Desire and Divorce” in Shondaland, “After Divorce at Twenty-Four, Lizzo Taught Me to Love Myself Again” in Catapult, and “For the gone Black boys” in BOOTH.

"The Lists" by Barbara Lock MFA ‘22 received an honorable mention in the 2020 Great American Fiction Contest Anthology by The Saturday Evening Post.

Fantasy fiction novel The Other Side Chronicles - The Impending War by Chinmay Rastogi MFA ‘22 is available on Amazon.

“Elegy for My Elegies to Trans Girls’ Bodies” and “Golden Signs While Her Sister Gives Up Her Tail” by Brennan Bogert MFA ‘20 was published in issue 29 of Anomaly.

"Expecting Him" by Natalie Gerich Brabson​ MFA '19 was published in the Fall 2019 issue of Cleaver Literary Magazine.

The poem "Long Way Home" by Shuang Ang MFA ‘20 was the winner of Epiphany’s 2019 Breakout 8 contest.

ECLIPSED, a memoir essay by Jessamyn Hope MFA ’03, appeared in the current issue of The Common.

“Happy Father’s Day Mom”, by Moncho Alvarado MFA ’17 appeared in Breadcrumbs Mag.

THE SINK, a short story by Jessamyn Hope MFA ’03, appeared in the current issue of J Journal.

Nusrat Hossain MFA ’18 was awarded a Center for Fiction Emerging Writer Fellowship for 2019.