So It Goes 2024

SO IT GOES NOTRE DAME'S ANNUAL CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM PUBLICATION

IN THIS ISSUE

CONGRATULATIONS MFA CLASS OF 2024 Graduating MFA students (from left to right) Taylor Thomas, Tim Fab-Eme, Gussie Beaver, Jamjun Rorsoongnern, Rose Darline Darbouze, Alaina Johansson, and Chibuike Ogbonnaya each read selections from their final theses at McKenna Hall Auditorium this past April. In celebration of their hard work and many talents, the Creative Writing Program wishes our graduating writers all the best in their future endeavors!

Director's Note Graduating MFAs Incoming MFA students Faculty News Alumni News

As I vacate the Director’s chair and hand things over to Johannes Göransson, I’m proud to say that the Notre Dame Creative Writing Program is in excellent shape and poised to continue developing in exciting ways. Thanks to the support of Dean Mustillo, Dean Morrell, and the College of Arts and Letters, our MFA stipends have increased to $25,000 a year, and we have more robust and sustainable support for graduate student professional development than ever before. In collaboration with other units on campus, we established the Center for Social Concerns International Justice Poetry Fellowship, a fully funded, yearlong writing and social-engagement opportunity for graduating MFA students, as well as the UNDERC–EHUM Lake of the Woods Environmental Summer Writing Residency, which supports a month-long residency in the lakes region of Northern Wisconsin.

Going beyond the bounds of campus, and working with our Community Outreach fellows Isabel Boutiette and Ryan Phung, we organized writing workshops and tutoring sessions at the Saint Joseph County Public Library, the Robinson Community Learning Center, the Center for the Homeless, and Westville Youth Correctional Facility, and also offered English-language tutoring to incoming refugees in collaboration with the United Religious Community of South Bend. In addition, we held the Creative Writing Program’s first tailgate, at the ND-Pittsburgh game, as well as our first AWP off-site reading, featuring faculty and alumni at a motorcycle coffee bar in St. Louis.

Our Program Manager Paul Cunningham, now in his second year in the position, has continued to go above and beyond in his support for graduate student enrichment and success, organizing visits to Hesburgh's Special Collections and Rare Books library and the Museum of Biodiversity, regular silkscreen printing workshops, and collaborative events with Arts@ND. Paul is also working with Ricky Herbst and the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre to develop collaborative film/poetry programming for 2025, and collaborating with Dionne Irving Bremyer to host the 2025 NonfictioNow conference here at Notre Dame.

As you can see from all the achievements you’ll read about in this newsletter, our faculty, alumni, and students have been doing amazing things. I can’t possibly list all their accomplishments here, but a few things to highlight include the remarkable success of Dionne Irving Bremyer’s book THE ISLANDS, which was a finalist for Canada’s most prestigious literary award, the ScotiaBank Giller Prize; Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi’s short story "Extinction” being selected for THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES 2024; Joyelle McSweeney publishing her tenth book, DEATH STYLES; and yours truly being named a Guggenheim Fellow. Alumni Jillian Fantin (‘22), Ae Hee Lee (‘16), Steve Owen (‘13), Kalie Pead (‘23), and Austyn Wohlers (‘22) have had debut books published or accepted for publication this year, and several other alumni have had subsequent books published, including Joseph Earl Thomas (‘19), whose second book, GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER, comes out in June.

Amidst global crisis, ecological collapse, political chaos, horrifying violence, and the ongoing ruination of American publishing and literary culture, somehow here at Notre Dame we’ve managed to make an island, to build a special place where people from different backgrounds and walks of life, with radically different ideas about what art can be or do, are able to come together and support one another, sustaining and remaking anew each year a a vibrant, funky, passionate literary community. We are infinitely grateful to our benefactors and supporters, including Nicholas Sparks, John and Patrice Kelly, and Ernest Sandeen, grateful to the community of readers, alumni, and supporters who give our work meaning, and grateful most of all to the students who take the risk of putting their work out into the world.

I feel blessed and lucky to be entangled in this place and in the lives of the people who come through here, privileged to have been able to contribute my labor during the past two years as director, and excited to see what happens next.

— Roy Scranton, Director of Creative Writing

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GRADUATING MFA CLASS OF 2024 Gussie Beaver Gussie Beaver received her B.A. in English from Duquesne University in 2022, Summa Cum Laude. She was the 2021 recipient of the O’Donnell Undergraduate Research Award and the Carroll Creative Writing Scholarship. This enabled her to attend the Elk Rivers Writer’s workshop in Livingston, Montana. She was a Duquesne University Writing Center consultant. Gussie was featured in Duquesne’s alumni magazine Much Ado and was the treasurer of the Duquesne Poet’s Society. Her work has been published multiple times in the literary magazine Lexicon. She is interested in the personification of animals and objects and experimenting with formation. Her favorite poets are Emily Dickinson and e. e. cummings.

Rose Darline Darbouze Rose Darline Darbouze is from Béraud, Haiti. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing and is a recipient of a grant from the Graduate School Professional Development Awards at the University of Notre Dame. She was the 2022-2023 Sparks Editorial Fellow at Notre Dame Review, and her work is forthcoming in the Birmingham Poetry Review.

Tim Fab-Eme Tim Fab-Eme worked as a field engineer at Shell's largest integrated gas plant in West Africa, where he gained insight into the destructive mechanisms that drive the fossil fuel industry. His poetry, which centers on social and environmental justice, has been published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and other countries. He co-edited the 2023 issue of Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, received a 2022 Cove Park writer-in-residence on climate action funding, and the inaugural CSC-IJ Poetry Fellowship.

Alaina Johansson Alaina Johansson lives in Indiana with dogs, Brigit and Søren. Previous work is published in Early American Literature, Psaltery & Lyre, and 3:AM Magazine. An MFA student studying Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, Johansson works as an editorial assistant at Action Books.

Chibuike Ogbonnaya Chibuike Ogbonnaya has received writing mentorship from Chimamanda Adichie and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.

They were a Lambda Fellow for fiction in 2023 and an Anaphora Writing resident in 2024. Their work has received the Josephine K. Piercy Memorial Award from the National Society of Arts and Letters (Indiana Chapter), a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize, and Tain't Taint Magazine's James Baldwin Prize for Short Story. They have also received a research grant from the University of Notre Dame for their historical writing project. Their fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Lambda's Emerge, Green Mountains Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Black Femme Collective, and elsewhere.

Jamjun Rorsoongnern Jam Rorsoongnern (she/they) is a ลูกครึ่ง writer exploring burlesque, the grotesque, and poetic protest. Her writing queers religious aesthetics to indulge in divine sinfulness and disidentification, particularly in relation to woman-ish-hood. Jam interned at Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, as the 2023 Nicholas Sparks Summer Fellow and served as editor-in-chief of Re:Visions for their 20th-anniversary edition. Following her graduation from Notre Dame’s MFA program, she plans to return to San Diego (occupied land of the Kumeyaay) to support her mother’s flower shop, watch baseball, and read for fun.

Taylor Thomas Taylor Thomas (she/her) is a biracial emerging writer from Indiana. Her work has been published in Bayou Magazine, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal, So to Speak Journal, and many more. She was the runner-up for the 2024 Nicholas Sparks Prize Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in South Bend, Indiana with her husband, Herschel, and her dogs, Bella & Buster. Website: taylornoellethomas.com

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2024 AWARD WINNERS Sparks Prize Awarded to a distinguished graduate of the Creative Writing Program as a post-graduation year of residency and writing time, funded by Nicholas Sparks. This prize is based on the quality of the writing and the likelihood that the submission will be published or will be developed into a publishable book.

2024 Winner: Chibuike Ogonnaya

Center for Social Concerns International Justice Poetry Prize This new annual fellowship supports a post-MFA poetry project related to international justice. The CSC-IJ Fellow will be in residence at the Center for Social Concerns and receive an additional year of research, reading, and writing. The winner also gives a public reading the following spring.

2024 Winner: Tim Fab-Eme

Samuel and Mary Anne Hazo Award for Poetry Recipient's work reflects Samuel Hazo's humanistic and aesthetic ideals and commitment to poetic craft. Selected by unanimous decision from current poetry faculty, the winner is based upon thesis, class performance, and contribution to the creative writing community and the MFA program.

2024 Winner: Tim Fab-Eme

Mitchell Award The Mitchell award is designed to honor one MFA second year student for their special contributions to the Creative Writing Program. It recognizes the student who has been the most involved citizen in the program and one of its best writers.

Billy Maich Academy of American Poets Prize

2024 Winner: Alaina Johansson

The Billy Maich Prize is awarded to the Notre Dame student, graduate or undergraduate, for excellence in poetry, recognizing the best group of poems from among those submitted. Students may enter no more than five poems and are encouraged to limit their entries to 250 lines.

2024 Winner: Isabel Boutiette

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INCOMING FALL 2024 MFA COHORT Proph Dauda (Prose) Proph Dauda is a writer and dog breeder who, for the most part, was raised by American missionaries at the Passion Center for Children in the small town of Zomba, Malawi. At Auburn, he served as a Teaching Assistant for core Literature, as well as the Assistant Managing Editor for the Southern Humanities Review, a graduate student-run literary magazine. His writing explores cultural values, social stratum, superstition, and the experiences of migrants arriving on the shores of America. His fiction has appeared in the Kansas State University’s Touchstone Literary Magazine. In 2023, his poetry received an honorable mention for the Robert Hughes Mount Jr. Prize in Poetry, sponsored by the Academy of American Poets at Auburn University. In the same year, he served as a judge for the Poetry Out Loud Contest for Auburn High School in Alabama.

Daryna Gladun (Poetry) Daryna Gladun is a Ukrainian poet, translator, artist, and researcher from Bucha (born in Khmelnytskyi). She is the author of five poetry collections (in Ukrainian): Рубати дерево [To Chop the tree] (2017), the winner of Smoloskyp Literary Prize and Oles Honchar International Ukrainian-German Literary Prize; Із тіні красивих червоних хлопчиків [From the shadow of handsome red boys] (2020), named one of the best poetry books of 2020 by PEN Ukraine; Радіо «Війна» [Radio "War"] (2022), translated into Polish by Janusz Radwański, and into Montenegrin by Anđela Radovanović; into German by Angela Huber, Війна не почнеться завтра [The war doesn't start tomorrow] (2023), translated into Swedish by Mikael Nydahl. Co-author with Lesyk Panasiuk of the poetry collection Портрет сонця в бомбосховищі [Portrait of the sun in the bomb shelter] (2023), translated into Polish by Aneta Kamińska. Co-author of children's books about prominent Ukrainian women Це теж зробила вона [She also made it] (2018). Her poems and short stories have been translated into dozens of languages and published in numerous Ukrainian and International magazines and anthologies.

Helen Quah (Poetry) Helen Quah is a British poet and doctor who has lived and worked in London for the last ten years. Interested in the surreal, political and genreshifting poetry of writers such as Kim Hyesoon, Bhanu Kapil and Don Mee Choi, her own work has appeared in British publications such as The Rialto, Magma, and The Poetry Review. She is a 2023 Eric Gregory Award recipient for her debut chapbook Dog Woman, which was published in June 2022 with Out-Spoken Press, inspired by the work of Portuguese painter Paula Rego.

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Adalyne Perryman (Prose) Adalyne Perryman graduated from SUNY Oneonta. In between, she worked to put together the Adirondack Family Book Festival, bringing a list of awarded and diverse writers to upstate New York. She enjoys analyzing the connection between truth and memory in her spare time while internalizing all the beauty the world can offer! She's a big fan of a good train ride, trees, and lakes.

Rina Shamilov (Poetry) Rina Shamilov is a poet from Brooklyn, New York, who is excited to leave the city for scenic Indiana. Her poetry explores self, grief, family, and movement, and she enjoys confronting her fears and pains through words. An English Literature and Art History student, she has won The Dean David and Sarrah Mirsky Memorial Award for Creative Writing Short Story and the Sara T. Herschfus Memorial Award for Excellence in English from her undergrad. Her nonfiction essays have appeared in The Forward, NewVoices, and Lilith. She is an MFA candidate at Notre Dame.

Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk (Poetry) Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk is a writer from Mexico City who spent her formative years in the US and has been a bilingual, bi-cultural bridgebuilder since. She obtained her degree in English Literature from UNAM and then spent 8 years in Chiapas, where she (re)discovered her passion for wild nature, community building, and social justice. She considers herself an ecofeminist thinker who creates verbal-affective ecosystems from a queer, neurodivergent, anti-colonial lens. Adriana is a recipient of the Fulbright-García Robles Grant for Mexican citizens to pursue postgraduate studies in the US.

Vince Vasudevan (Prose) Vince Vasudevan (he/him) is a multiracial speculative fiction writer interested in the intersection between literary and genre stories. A jack of all trades, Vince earned his B.A. in History at Virginia Tech and doubleminored in Physics and National Security/Foreign Affairs. As a result, he has worn many different hats in industry, and is currently a first reader for James Gunn's Ad Astra. Vince is teaching at the Novel Architects Workshop this summer, led by Kij Johnson and Barbara Webb. His future goal is to be a university-level educator. Vince writes futures so he can believe in a tomorrow.

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FACULTY NEWS DIONNE IRVING BREMYER In the fall of 2023 Dionne Irving Bremyer’s short story collection The Islands was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Additionally, The Islands was longlisted for the New American Voices Award and a finalist for the Hurston/Wright 2023 Legacy Awards in Fiction. She presented at the Association of Writing Programs Conference in Kansas City and gave readings all over the country including Villanova University, Texas Christian University, Bucknell University and at the Canadian Consulate in New York City. Her essay “Burning” originally published in The Rumpus was a notable essay in Best American Essays 2023. And in 2023 she was appointed the Rev. John A. O’Brien Associate Professor of English.

JOHANNES GÖRANSSON Some recent accomplishments: In the spring 24 issue of Lana Turner, illustrious critic Cal Bedient wrote about Göransson’s book Summer that it was "arguably the best lyrical poems of anger and grief [...] since Sylvia Plath tore up the runway." Spanish and Swedish translations of Summer are forthcoming. His translation of Swedish poet Ann Jäderlund's Ensamtal (Lonespeech) is coming out this spring (Nightboat Books).

JOYELLE MCSWEENEY Joyelle McSweeney launched her tenth book, Death Styles (Nightboat Books, 2024), in April, with "a world tour of Ohio," readings in Baltimore and New York, and upcoming events in New York, Bucharest, and Vancouver. The release was accompanied by features in BOMB Magazine, Poetry Daily, and Lit Hub and by forthcoming interviews in the Cleveland Review, David Naimon's Between the Covers podcast, and Poetry Foundation's Poetry Off the Shelf. Having spent her Guggenheim leave writing critical essays on poetry and translation for venues such as the New York Times, Hyperallergic, The Paris Review, the Poetry Foundation, Words without Borders, and elsewhere, McSweeney returned to teaching in Spring 2024 with great relief and joy.

ORLANDO MENES Poems are forthcoming or have appeared in Copper Nickel (“Origin”), Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (“The Poet Richard Crashaw to the Sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini”), Birmingham Poetry Review (“Elegy for William Blake and “At Stickle Ghyll”), The Yale Review (”Testament”), and African American Review (“Homage to Alejo Carpentier,” “Skin,” “Cuban Triolet,” and “Parable of the Seeds”). Poems reprinted in anthologies include “Miami, South Kendall, 1969”; “Sharing a Meal with the Cuban Ex-Political Prisoners”; “The Maximum Leader Addresses His Island Nation”; “Den of the Lioness”; “Palma y Jagüey”; “Wreath of Desert Lilies”; “Castizo”; and “Juancito’s Wake.” Contemporary Catholic Poetry: An Anthology, Eds. April Lindner and Ryan Wilson. Brewster, Massachusetts: Paraclete Press, 2024. “Doña Flora’s Hothouse.” Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology. Ed. Rigoberto González. New York New York: Library of America, 2024.

XAVIER NAVARRO AQUINO This academic year started off in the summer with an invitation to attend and read at the Calabash International Literary Festival in Treasure Beach, Jamaica. Some authors invited included Natalie Diaz, Joyce Carol Oates, Namwali Serpell, Staceyann Chin, and Jonathan Escoffery, and celebrities in attendance included Padma Lakshmi and Angelina Jolie. I was part of the search committee tasked with selecting the next Indiana State Poet Laureate and was a judge for the St. Joseph Public Library’s Spill the Ink Poetry Competition. I began work on an essay about mental health, legacy, and Francisco Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son. I directed two exceptional undergraduate theses and a wonderful graduate thesis. My next novel is currently out on submission and I will (hopefully) generate a new novel idea during my leave.

ROY SCRANTON Roy’s second year as director of the Creative Writing Program passed in something of a fugue state, especially after the terrorist attacks of October 7. But he does remember learning Biblical Hebrew, as well as leading his synagogue’s refugee resettlement team, working in coordination with the United Religious Community of South Bend to welcome and resettle political refugees from Venezuela. He also accomplished several good things for the Creative Writing program, detailed elsewhere, and secured stable funding and institutional support for the Environmental Humanities Initiative at the Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values. Roy didn’t publish anything this year, but he gave a talk on ecofascism and ecoterrorism at the Society for US Intellectual History annual conference, gave a talk on climate change at Central Washington University, and submitted his sixth book to his editor at Stanford University Press. That book, Ethical Pessimism: Climate Change and the Limits of Narrative, is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2025. Roy was also awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Memorial Fellowship.

AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi was the 2023-24 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow at the Harvard Radcliffe Institute. Her essay, "Whose Time Are We Speaking In?" was awarded The Monroe K. Spears Prize for Best Essay by the Sewanee Review. Her essay, "James Baldwin in Turkey: How Istanbul changed his career—and his life," was one of The Yale Review's top ten most read essays of the year. Her short story, "It Is What It Is," was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2023 by Min Jin Lee. A second short story, "Extinction," was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2024 by Lauren Groff.

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FACULTY NEWS

NEW ND PUBLICATIONS THE 21ST EDITION OF RE:VISIONS Re:Visions began as a place to showcase undergraduate prose writing and has now expanded to include poetry and visual art.

Graduates and undergraduates from the University of Notre Dame as well those enrolled at St. Mary’s and Holy Cross College are invited to submit short stories, poetry, visual art, and other hybrid work of all kinds. They are also invited to serve as editorial assistants for the journal.

Graduate Editor : Sachie Weber Undergraduate Editors: Claire McKenna, Allison Srp, Bella Pawloski, Felicity Wong, Katie Clem, & Camila Salinas Marketing Team: Molly O’Toole & Lily Barth Design/Layout: José González & Gwyneth Lannon Cover Artwork: "Banana Holder,” CJ Rodgers

NOTRE DAME REVIEW ISSUE NO. 56 What is that inside voice telling you? It's telling you check out issue 56 of the Notre Dame Review. Featuring prose from Aaron Gilbreath and Chelsea Rathburn, as well as poetry from Herbert Woodward Martin, Rebecca Foust, and Sara Cosgrove, Inside Voice explores the inner dialogue and how it shapes us for better or worse.

Graduate Editors: Oli Peters Kyla Walker

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ALUMNI NEWS Robert Archambeau’s (‘96) novel Alice B. Toklas is Missing came out from Regal House in November of last year.

Kelley Beeson (‘99) will have two poems published at Four Way Review in their April issue.

She also recently published three poems in Kestral. Beeson will have a poem published in a new anthology distributed by City of Asylum: The Gulf Tower Forecasts Rain: A Pittsburgh Poetry Anthology. She will also be a featured poet at the 2024 Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books!

Angela Williams Bickham (‘98) is working with visual artist Sawyer Rose, FRSA, MRSS Visual Artist, on a collaborative project entitled "With My Name in Your Hand". The piece is composed of the names of Free Women of Color that Carter G. Woodon found listed as heads of households in the slaveholding American South within the 1830 federal census.

The first portion of this project is dedicated to North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The visual element is made of large panels of fabric that are the resting places for naming plates that are inscribed each woman's name. My poems connect with each section of the piece. The anchor poem is entitled: “With My Name In Your Hand: For the Free Women of Color Who Lived.” If you’re in London between November 15 and December 15, stop by RSA Coffee House and Dr Cross room to see the collaboration (8 John Adam Street, 8:30am-5:00pm).

In 2024, Tom Coyne (‘99) was named the new Editor of The Golfer's Journal. Coyne writes: “We are always looking for submissions from new writers — anything even remotely connected to golf and/or its settings.” This year, Stifel will award the first Coyne Prize for golf writing, a monetary award that supports the careers of new creators in golf. More info is available at CoynePrize.org Paul Cunningham’s (‘15) translation of Sara Tuss Efrik’s Danse Macabre Piggies appears in Experimental Writing: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2024). New writing has most recently appeared in Annulet, BOMB Magazine, The Ocean State Review, Amsterdam Review, Texas Poetry Review, and others. In January, he served as the Fiction Judge for the University of Mississippi’s 2024 Southern Literary Festival. In April, he was named a finalist for Quarterly West’s 2023 Poetry Book Prize. In May he was interviewed for The Blue Mountain Review. He was also a nominee for Notre Dame’s 2024 College of Arts and Letters Leadership in Excellence Award.

Jeanne De Vita (‘00) started a podcast focused on fantasy romance (aptly named The Fantasy Romance Podcast, LOL) which goes behind the scenes with author interviews and discussions about the genre with a focus on topics of interest to readers. It's on Spotify and Apple, but her Substack includes the full video. De Vita is teaching this Spring (April) at Stanford's Continuing Studies creative writing program in addition to at the UCLA Extension Writers Program and in the Editing and Publishing Certificate. She is the Managing Editor of the UCLA Literary Journal Southland Alibi which launched last year, and she has a Substack now where she posts lots of free writing tips and strategies primarily for genre fiction authors. One of her literary clients signed an agent and has a book out with Harper Collins in 2025, but she’s still primarily focused on commercial and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, and prescriptive nonfiction in her practice. She has two books coming out later this year. Stay tuned!

David Ewald’s (‘03) latest story collection is The Fallible: Stories (Macromere Press, 2023).

Valerie Sayers writes: “Each of these stories arrives with a pop of surprise. With their focus on American-style masculinity, self-doubt, and violence, stories ricochet off each other in especially satisfying fashion. Sometimes swaggering, sometimes fumbling, the narrators are all compelling, all the characters' lives well worth examining. What a fine, ambitious collection The Fallible is."

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ALUMNI NEWS Jillian Fantin’s (‘22) new collection is A Playdough Symposium (Ghost City Press), which was reviewed by Max Stone for Sundress Publications (online). New poems appear in LIMINAL SPACES (“to be rollickin randy dandy o”) and wind-up mice’s “by the sea” issue (“Date Night”). A new interview with Shelley Feller (“Lyric Essentials”) as well as reviews of Robin Sinclair’s Someone Else’s Sex and Max stone’s The Bisexual Lightning Makes Everyone Beautiful all appear in Sundress Publications (online). They also blurbed Jesse McCarty and Sarah Haines’ Our Fairy Diary (I Read Stuff Books). Fantin’s debut full-length collection is The Doughnut World (fifth wheel press, July 2024). They also have a new chapbook on the way: young velvet porcelain boy (forthcoming from kith books. With Joy Wilkoff (cofounder of RENESME LITERARY), Fantin released one full-length issue, two Tweet-length calls (Anthology Forthcoming April 2024), and one digital pamphlet from January to December 2023. They also have three new pieces forthcoming in Cass Garisson’s “Cats & Their Poets” Zine (Release TBA).

Amy Wray Irish ('98) was the winner of the 2023 Poetry Mesa Chapbook Competition for her book Down to the Bone. Irish's work was selected by Catherine Marenghi and Judyth Hill, author of the internationally renowned poem "Wage Peace." The judges celebrated Irish's book as "stunning in its visceral imagery, powerhouse energy, and startling insights into the felt experience of being a woman in both real and imagined worlds." Please email Irish at lunablue_girl@msn.com to order Down to the Bone, or go to her website www.amywrayirish.com to read other recently published poems.

Jahan Khajavi ('20) has co-translated Sleepless Traveler (Nero Editions, 2024), a new collection of Sandro Penna’s poetry (Sleepless Traveler, Nero Editions) with Tim Moore.

The side-by-side translation of Penna’s lyric poetry is coupled with illustrations by the American artist Louis Fratino—who also contributed a brief original text—as well as an essay on Penna by the Italian poet Nico Naldini, translated into English.

Ae Hee Lee’s (‘16) debut poetry collection, Asterism (2024), is now available from Tupelo Press. Asterism was the winner of the 2022 Dorset Prize. In February, Lee was interviewed

by Chicago Review of Books. She was also featured on Poets & Writers’ AWP panel: “Getting the Word Out: Poets on Publicizing their Debut Collections.”

Monica Mody (‘10) had two poetry collections come out: Bright Parallel (Copper Coin, 2023) and Wild Fin (Weavers Press, 2024). She moved to the Santa Barbara area to teach as core faculty in the Pacifica Graduate Institute's Mythological Studies MA/PhD Program. Her peer-reviewed article, "Arts-based Practices: Research and Transformation in the Academy," was published in the Transformative Power of Art Journal. Tarka Journal published her scholarly essay and poem sequence, "When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix." Her conversation with PakistaniAmerican poet Sophia Naz, "Roots and Resonance," was published by The Bangalore Review, and a poem "Glasshouse—Anthropocene" came out in Greening the Earth: A Global Anthology of Poetry (Penguin Random House India, 2023). She read at the South Asian Literary and Arts Festival in Menlo College, CA, where she also interviewed poet, curator, and cultural critic Ranjit Hoskote on his aesthetics. The Center for Black & Indigenous Praxis at the California Institute of Integral Studies invited her to speak on a BIPOC Scholar Panel, and the Department of Women's Spirituality invited her to do a book talk/reading and conversation in conjunction with her two new poetry collections, in October 2023 and then in March 2024. Other presentations included the El Mundo Zurdo Conference and a Scholar Salon at the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology; readings included the 2023 Lit Crawl San Francisco. Monica was also invited on The Beat: A Poetry Podcast and the Mythic Podcast. Stay in touch with her via her substack (monicamody.substack.com/).

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ALUMNI NEWS Jayne Marek’s (‘05) book Dusk-Voiced (Tebot Bach) has been delayed but should be out in 2024. Her next book, Torrential (Cornerstone Press), is scheduled for April 2025. For the second time, she won the Bill Holm Witness Poetry Contest. New work is out or forthcoming in Caustic Frolic, Eastern Iowa Review, Cutthroat, Sheila-Na-Gig, Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature, Banyan Review, and elsewhere. She judged this year's Cider Press Review Poetry Book award.

DIONNE IRVING BREMYER

Mark Marino (‘96) (and The Marino family) is excited to share our first print version of the Mrs. Wobbles stories, entitled Unboxing. It's middle grade. Find Your Way fun about our magical foster care home The Tangerine House.

Steve Owen’s (‘13) debut short collection, A Visitor Kills Me, is now available on Amazon. Of A Visitor Kills Me, Steve Tomasula writes: “The sheer beauty of these minimal stories is breathtaking, and together offer a penetrating gaze into some of the darker corners of life.”

Kalie Pead’s (‘23) debut poetry collection Today, Aries is forthcoming from White Stag Press.

Stuart Ross (‘03) will publish his second novel, The Hotel Egypt, this winter from Spuyten Duyvil Publishing. Follow his work here: https://linktr.ee/myskypager Joseph Earl Thomas’ (‘19) second book God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer is forthcoming from Grand Central Publishing in June, 2024.

Valerie Vargas (‘21) published a new translation of a María Calcaño poem in Issue 3 of Grotto. Her poems “[I keep a terrarium of small eyes]” “Delirium” and appeared in Issue 2 of Grotto.

Austyn Wohlers’ (‘22) debut novel Hothouse Bloom is forthcoming from Hub City Press in Spring 2026.

Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (’09) and his co-editor Eric Tinsay Valles set a world record when both their anthologies—A Given Grace: An Anthology of Christian Poems and The Jesuit: Finding God in All Things—collected multiple literary accolades.

This feat represented a world’s first-ever—twice over—for any writer to receive both the Illumination Christian Book Gold Award (Digital Media) and the Living Now Gold Book Award (Digital Media) for two separate publications in consecutive years. This received media coverage in Today’s Catholic, Catholic Sabah, and World Catholic Association for Communication (Asia). Desmond’s reading and hosting engagements included the Singapore Writers Festival, Asian Festival of Children’s Content, National Reading Movement’s Read! Fest, Poetry Festival Singapore, SHS-NTU Medical Humanities Conference, Unity Young Writers Festival, Ministry of Education Literature Seminar, and Toastmaster Annual Conference. He appeared in National Library Board’s The Library Report Video Series, in “Are Celebrity Memoirs Written Just For Publicity?”, as well as Our Grandfather Story’s Love Enabled Series, in a documentary featuring a poet living with cerebral palsy. He was interviewed for his thoughts on public libraries, which were carried by TODAY and Channel NewsAsia. He has new poems published in Poems for Ephesians, Adamah Media, Meniscus Literary Journal, Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Foreshadow, eratio, Ballast, Porch Literary Magazine, Valiant Scribe, As Surely As the Sun, Ekstasis, Verse-Virtual, Muse-Pie Press Fib Review, All Shall Be Well: A Poetry Anthology for Julian of Norwich, and the always spectacular Notre Dame Review. His other updates may be found on his author website: desmondkon.com

SO IT GOES... is published annually by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame Editor: Paul Cunningham