Emiliano Gomez, Isabel Boutiette, Makella Brems, Oli Peters, Ryan Phung, Noah Loveless, Kyla D. Walker, Samuel Ekanem, Camille Lendor, and Sachie Weber. (Not pictured: Ivy Braxton Harrington.) All writers read excerpts from their final theses at Philbin Studio Theatre this past April In celebration of their hard work and dedication to the craft of writing, the Creative Writing Program wishes our graduates all the best in their future endeavors!
This past spring, like many faculty members and students in our program, I went to see the now 84-year-old Bob Dylan play the Morris Theater downtown The performance was electric perhaps in a different way than when he “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival as the 84year-old reinvented his songs for a different voice, a different age.
I have seen him many times over the years, going back to the late 80s, but this time I went with my two teenage daughters, Majken and Sinéad. They had never been interested in Dylan but this past winter we saw the Timothée Chalamet biopic A Complete Unknown and they were instantly smitten by this myth of youth, identity, and art
Most of all it’s the mythic narrative of the artist who puts his art above all He abandons friends, lovers, the entire “folk revival” in order to pursue his artistic vision It’s an important myth for writers, encouraging utter dedication to our art. However, this myth leaves out important facets of Dylan’s life and career. For one, the downtown art scene was abuzz with all kinds of literary, political, and artistic ideas that influenced him. Thinking of the artist as an isolated genius is useful in promoting dedication to one’s art, but thinking more socially of creating a social network with people who will challenge and support us is also essential. Perhaps if Suze Rotolo doesn’t take Dylan to see the special concert of Brecht-Weill songs he would never ha
have written carnivalesque songs like “Ballad of a Thin Man.”
One of the most important dynamics of the MFA experience is to engage with other interesting young writers to read each other’s work, and to receive feedback and reading tips from each other In addition to the workshops and our always strong reading series, we enjoyed a host of artist occasions for artistic exchange: MFA students curated and introduced a series of films at the Browning Cinema; Program Manager Paul Cunningham organized a series of events involving the MFAs in visual art, including the Solarium Gallery Show, where the graduating art MFAs displayed their work and the writing MFAs wrote ekphrastic responses; Azareen Van Der Vliet Oloomi continued to curate her writers discussion series, Literatures of Annihilation, Exile and Resistance, while Roy Scranton continued to host EHUM (Environmental Humanities Initiative) together with MFA student Makella Brems; in connection with the release of new books from Action Books and a new issue of the Notre Dame Review, we also organized a series of panels on translation and small press publishing with visitors Katherine M. Hedeen, Víctor Rodríguez Núñez, and Aleida Rodríguez; and at the end of the year, Jericho Brown read as part of the Kelly Writers Series in the downtown South Bend library, as well as participating in an dynamic question and answer session with students. In June, Dionne Irving and Paul Cunningham co-hosted the 2025 NonfictioNOW conference at the University of Notre Dame. All of these events were based on the idea that we must constantly take in new ideas, new influences. Dylan is certainly a prime example of someone who is constantly taking in new ideas and sounds, constantly reinventing himself.
I like to say that everything I know about poetry I learned from my mom’s record collection I remember vividly when, as a 14-year-old, just by chance, I put on my mom’s old copy of Highway 61 Revisited: the electricity of the surreal lyrics, the relentlessly inventive flow of words, surged through me It seems like a switch was turned inside my brain, and after that all I wanted to do was write poetry
(For Barbro Göransson, 1945-2025)
F A C U L T Y N E W S
DIONNE IRVING BREMYER
Johannes Göransson, Director of Creative Writing
Dionne Irving Bremyer’s “How We Roll” is forthcoming in The Florida Anthology (University Press of Florida, 2026). She served as a judge for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers, the IUSB Writing Awards, the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel, and the 2025 Giller Awards She was awarded two grants: the ISLA Large Humanities Research and Creative Work Grant competition for The Offshore Project: Who’s land? What land? Ireland-Jamaica Collaboration and an ISLA Large Henkels Conference Grants for NonFictioNOW. In Fall 2024, she was a PEAR Fellow at the Studios at Key West, Key West, FL. Invited readings included an event with the Canadian Writers in Person Lecture Series at York University in March; the “Big Read” event at Medgar Evers College English Department in February; and an Authors of the Jamaican Diaspora event featuring Christina Cooke, Maisy Card and Prince Shakur in January In March, Irving Bremyer served on two AWP panels: “AI Proofing the Creative Writing Classroom” (featuring Amorak Huey, Michael Dean Clark, Carla Sofia Ferreira, and Chris Haven) and “Away from Her: Canadian Writers on the Work & Evolving Legacy of Alice Munro” (Featuring Holly Flauto, Kevin Chong, and Kasia Van Schaik)
JOHANNES GÖRANSSON
Johannes Göransson has been writing poems about the movement of the elementary molecules, toxins, poisons, DNA in connection with art and children He’s been obsessed with Marianne Faithful’s song “Time Square” and the poems of Friederike Mayröcker. As always, it all comes back to translation. Last fall, the Poetry Foundation published “In Defense of Mimicry,” an essay that summarized a lot of his recent thinking about translation In it, he revives the much-maligned idea of the translator as an imitator He’s also been working on new translations by Aase Berg and Eva Kristina Olsson, as well as collaborating on translations of his book Summer into Swedish and Spanish. His next translation of Aase Berg (Aase’s Death) is forthcoming from Black Ocean in September.
A C U L T Y N E W S
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY
This year, Joyelle McSweeney traveled to the Bucharest Poetry Festival, the University of British Columbia, and Pomona College to read from her recent poetry book, Death Styles; this Spring, she visited the Netherlands for a multi-city tour in support of Radiations of War, a book of photos by Ukranian photographer Yana Kononova for which McSweeney wrote the text In addition to these workshops and performances, McSweeney wrote a major feature on the Danish author Tove Ditlevsen for the Poetry Foundation and saw new work featured in The Poetry Review, the journal of the Poetry Society, UK Her essay “Luminous Explosions: On Art and Ruins,” on Sean Bonney, Baudelaire, and South Bend, appeared in a special issue of English Language Notes edited by Ruth Ellen Kocher
ORLANDO MENES
Orlando Menes’ poem “Grace” (published in The Gospel of Wildflowers and Weeds) was chosen and read by Major Jackson on the podcast The Slowdown on January 9, 2025 (www slowdownshow org) New poems appeared in American Poetry Review (“Memento,” Poetica Aquae,” and “Water’s Creed”), Copper Nickel (“Origins”), Birmingham Poetry Review (“Elegy for William Blake and “At Stickle Ghyll”), Lily Poetry Review, (“Oration Written While Listening to Brian Eno’s ‘Slow Water’,” “Hear Me, All Apostates,” and “Pastoral”), and Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (“The Poet Richard Crashaw to the Sculptor Giovanni Lorenzo Bernini”). He was a Featured Poet in Volume 16, Issue No. 3 of Literary Matters (“Michel de Montaigne’s Apologia for the Xenomorph”; “Insula Cuba in the Reign of Caesar Fidelis Castrus”; Oliver Cromwell Perorates on Cuba Upon Seeing a Gilded Map of the Island”; “Havana, 1955”; and “Talking to William Blake“) Other poems are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner (“Pescado” and “Metamorphosis”), The Georgia Review (“Princess Margaret School, 1968” and “The Mango Tree” in Summer 2025), and Bennington Review (“Moonlight at Millbank”) 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 Menes was part of a panel called “Ever Ancient, Ever New: On Catholic Imagination” at the Contemporary Catholic Poetry Anthology Conference in the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture at the University of Notre Dame in November, 2024.
XAVIER NAVARRO AQUINO
Xavier Navarro Aquino spent the academic year on leave conducting research for his third novel He interviewed estranged family members looking to unpack a personal history weighed by the threads of Puerto Rico’s colonial past and present His research resulted in extensive travel, taking him to Madrid, London, Edinburgh, and Berlin where he studied the works of the expressionists and old masters. Particular focus was spent on Francisco Goya, Francis Bacon, and Otto Dix, though he was ecstatic to find many other artists that are inspiring his work He used these models to explore his own family history of visual art Like Vincent van Gogh and other painters that started later in their lives, he believes his most vital accomplishment on leave has been that a painter was born, and he now endlessly paints and writes as a means to recover and build upon his family legacy. Professor Aquino was also invited by Dr. Conrad James, the Director of the Centre for Caribbean Studies at the University of Toronto to give a lecture and speak with students enrolled in a travel study course about Puerto Rican history The students read his debut novel, Velorio His excerpt from his new and completed novel, Two Young Kings was noted in the Best American Stories series. He was also invited to the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival but had to decline due to a scheduling conflict. He looks forward to returning to campus this fall, energized and inspired
ROY SCRANTON
Roy spent the 2024-2025 academic year on leave as a Guggenheim Fellow, taking advantage of the unstructured time to read widely, write for pleasure, continue learning Biblical Hebrew, and save Hyrule from the evil Gerudo warrior Ganandorf in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Roy's sixth book, Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, comes out from Stanford University Press on August 5 He has other work forthcoming, including a review of Alex Garland's Civil War for the Cleveland Review of Books and a book chapter on George Orwells 1984, Eric Voegelin's The New Science of Politics, and Gnosticism
AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI
“Extinction,” Best American Short Stories, 2024, Ed by Lauren Groff; “Whose Time Are We Speaking In,”; Sewanee Review, Awarded The Monroe K. Spears Prize for Best Essay in February 2024 (essay originally published in 2023); James Baldwin in Turkey,”; The Yale Review, listed as their Top Ten Most Read Pieces of 2023 (list compiled in 2024) Call Me Zebra / Chiamatemi Zebra (Novel), Keller Editore, Italian Edition, 202 Full spread review of Chiamatemi Zebra in Italy’s La Repubblica by critic Leonardo G Luccone; Interview with TGR Radio of Radio 1 & 3; Book launch events in Bologna, Italy in July 2024 and at the Florence book Fair in May 2024. She gave presentations at Southampton Writers Conference July 8-13, 2025; Binghamton University, March 5-6, 2025; Berkley College, Remote Class Visit, May 13, 2025; Brown University, Literary Arts, Writer in Residence, Dec 1-6 2024; and UCSD, Class Visit (via zoom), May 2024 Franco Institute Large Henkels Grant for Literatures of Exile AY 25-26 on “The Philosophy of Translation” Harvard University Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies Fellow, 2023-2024; Nanovic Institute Research Grant, $7500, for conducting background research on a novel in progress, The Awakening; Franco Institute; Small Creative Works Grant, $3000, for editorial support on How To Vanish: Six Stories: A Novella; Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, $1500, for editorial support on How To Vanish: Six Stories: A Novella
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 : Adalyne Perryman
Undergraduate Editors: Anna Fent, Allison Srp, Connor Kaufmann, Lily Brustkern, Max Dow, Sofia de Lira
Marketing: Sofia de Lira
Design/Layout: Connor Kaufmann, Sbeydi
Ponce Duarte
Artwork: "Hope” by Shayanta
NOTRE DAME REVIEW ISSUE NO. 59
Issue 59 of the Notre Dame Review represents a changing of the guard with our new editors Dionne Bremyer and Johannes Göransson. This issue features poetry translations of works by Inger Christensen and Kim Yurim, among others. Number 59 also features prose from Rone Shavers, Wesley Weissberg, and Kevin Chong, to name a few. So sit back and relax with this engaging issue.
Isabel Boutiette is a poet interested in glitches, cyber ecologies, anthropogenic horror, Jewish mysticism, and mediumship She has lived in San Francisco, Madrid, and Seattle, where for a few years she worked at Wave Books Her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, we are in the shop zine, Spirit Duplicator, Tagvverk, Tiding House, and her chapbook, Paradise HD, is out with Spiral Editions. (Thesis: GEMATRIA)
Makella Brems is a prose writer and a PhD Candidate in Political Science here at Notre Dame. In her creative writing and her academic research, Brems seeks to understand, document, and shape the fast-changing relationship between humans, nature, and technology Brems' work has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Flash Fiction Magazine, The Review of Politics, and elsewhere Brems was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona (Thesis: Mania)
Samuel Ekanem was the winner of Nigeria’s NYSC’s Presidential Honors Award for outstanding services toward national development. His works have appeared in The Fictional Café, Down in the Dirt, Literary Yard, and elsewhere. In 2025, he received the Frazier Thompson Graduate Student Research Award and a grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA). He has served as a juror for the Scholastic Writing Awards. (Thesis: The Basilica of the Sacred Heart)
Emiliano Gomez is from Marysville, a gold rush place His poetry collection Townies was a finalist for the 2023 DIAGRAM / New Michigan Press chapbook contest. He has received grants from the California Arts Council and contributes to the Cleveland Review of Books. His recent work can be found at Action, Spectacle, Alchemy, Broadkill, Interpret Magazine, mercury firs, Yalobusha Review, and others. (Thesis: Go for the Gusto)
Ivy Braxton Harrington graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University with a double major in Linguistics and Literature Her Master’s thesis consists of a collection of devotional poems that give thanks and appreciation to Christ's creation, the gift of faith, and Christ’s Saints She has a passion for teaching and works as a Social Media Fellow for Notre Dame Press. She recently married Notre Dame Master’s graduate Nicholas Dybas, and spends her free time singing with Campus Ministry's liturgical choir, Magnificat. (Thesis: Riding on the Wings of God: A Melody of Christ’s Creation)
Camille Lendor holds a BA in English from the University of Toronto and is an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches creative writing and serves as an Action Books Editorial Fellow Her work has appeared in PRISM international, The Malahat Review, filling Station, Mantis, and Canadian Literature, and others She received a 2022 Hatty Fitts Walker Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center, and her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. (Thesis: And When It Gets Too Human)
Noah Loveless is an MFA candidate in poetry from Maine. He graduated summa cum laude from the University of Maine in 2020 with degrees in English and Philosophy During his undergraduate career he won UMaine's Grenfell Prize for a portfolio of poems and he received a McGillicuddy Humanities Fellowship which he used to research the philosophy of Walter Benjamin (Thesis: parsemé grouwth)
Oli Peters' writing is forthcoming in Annulet, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, and mercury firs. Her past work appears in Pleiades, New World Writing, Rain Taxi, Heavy Feather Review, and abo zine. Her dance-performance piece "Body Glyph State" will be performed at the 2025 Iowa Choreography Festival. She received her BA from the University of Iowa. (Thesis: Spell Drive, An Elegy)
Despite the resemblance, Ryan Phung is not Oli Peters. They are a seriously unserious writer from Los Angeles. You can find them in utopia. (Thesis: On Ruin)
Kyla D. Walker is a Turkish American writer from Los Angeles. Her writing has been published in the LA Times, Electric Literature, and The Threepenny Review. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she has also been selected as a Tin House Summer Workshop Scholar, a PERIPLUS Collective Fellow, and a Virginia Center for Creative Arts Fellow-in-Residence More of her work can be found at kd-walker com (Thesis: Posing for the Afterlife)
Sachie Weber is a fiction writer born and raised in San Francisco. As a mixed race woman, Sachie writes about isolation, belonging, and communication by miscommunication. She has a Creative Writing minor from Stanford but majored in chemistry and worked as a software engineer for five years. She loves science fiction, magical realism, and believes in ghosts when in the right company She expresses love through food (Thesis: Inside Voices)
2025 AWARD WINNERS
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.
This new annual fellowship supports a post-MFA poetry project related to international justice. The ISC-IJ Fellow will be in residence at the Institute for Social Concerns and receive an additional year of research, reading, and writing. The winner also gives a public reading the following spring.
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.
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.
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.
2025Winner:KylaWalker
2025Winner:OliPeters
2025Winners:IsabelBoutiette &KylaD.Walker
2025Winner:DarynaGladun
2025 Winner: Ryan Phung
I N C O M I N G F A L L 2 0 2 5 M F A C O H O R T
Riane Bayne (Poetry)
Riane Bayne is a poet focused on blending gothic and liminal imagery with influences from the Romantic and Victorian periods. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee; Riane lived in downtown Chicago while attending Columbia College Chicago for her BA in Poetry. As an MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame, Riane is pursuing a future as a Poetry instructor with an interest in Archival Research. Her work has appeared in Allium, Wholesome Zine, and The Same Faces Collective In her free time, Riane enjoys exploring Chicago Nightlife, collecting perfume, and coordinating drag looks with her partner
Tafara Gava (Prose)
Tafara Gava is a Zimbabwean born novelist. He's divided his life between Harare, Germany's Black Forest & several east-coast cities in the U S His fiction is preoccupied with the taboo in many a postcolonial African society Gava is curious about cultural syncretism how 21st century Zimbabwe juggles modernism & Christianity with a lush pre-colonial underworld of witchdoctors & rituals Brandeis University awarded Gava the 2020 Bernard Herman Endowed Prize in Fiction for Heritage, for a collection of short stories.
Kite Elsin (Poetry)
Kite Elsin earned a BA in Philosophy at Pomona College, where he was awarded the Morton O Beckner Prize for special talent in the pursuit of philosophy and the Eda May Haskell Library Prize for the most intelligently curated library in one or more fields of interest. He went on to earn an MA in English and American Literature from Boston University. Kite has lived throughout North America and Europe. His poetry engages urbanism and moral psychology as tools for mapping grief, performance, and the multiple self. He is especially interested in ekphrasis, the politics of authenticity, and sheer calculated silliness.
Kiprop Kimutai (Prose)
Kiprop Kimutai is a Kenyan writer and winner of the 2023 Graywolf African Fiction Prize for his manuscript The Freedom of Birds, which is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2026 His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in No Tokens, The Johannesburg Review of Books, Kwani?, Evergreen Review, Jalada Africa, Doek! and Lolwe. He is a 2023 Miles Morland scholar and was a finalist for the 2018 Gerald Kraak Award. In 2024, he was a speaker at Yale University's 2nd Genesis Epistemologies Conference and is currently nominated for the 2025 True Stories Award for his essay about his residency in Saint Paul De Vence, where James Baldwin lived in for the final years of his life In his fiction, Kiprop is interested in tackling the rich histories of the Rift Valley region of East Africa by researching and recreating its deep pasts, and imagining its possible futures
Nikhita Thomas (Prose)
Nikhita Thomas is a first-year prose candidate who grew up mostly in Bangalore, India She reads She draws Sometimes writes in English Loves a long list of ladies, especially Fran Lebowitz.
Maggie Wu (Prose)
Maggie Wu is a writer, photographer, and pianist Her fiction and essays have been published in DIAGRAM, Glass Mountain Magazine, and is forthcoming in 3:AM Magazine Before her MFA, she received a Fulbright grant to Taiwan, where she taught English as a second language, and worked at Georgetown University as an AI policy researcher. She graduated from Amherst College in 2022 and calls Oregon home. You can find more of her work on her substack and website:
Miharu Yano is a poet and literary translator from Tokyo, Japan They hold a BA from Waseda University and an MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa
(Photo Credit: Joshua Thermidor)
Jacob ZF (Poetry)
Jacob ZF is from Boston, Massachusetts They studied art and writing at Vassar College Jacob uses poems as off-site storage units, virtual pickaxes, and eccentric incantations to participate in the ongoing project of communication.
ALUMNI NEWS
Zachary Anderson (‘17) participated on two panels at this year’s New Orleans Poetry Festival: “Speaking Against: On Poetic Contradiction” and “Navigating Nowhere: Embodying & Abandoning Grotesque Landscapes.”
Jace Brittain (‘15) published excerpts from Telling of the Bees (Poems After the Museum of Jurassic Technology) in Community Mausoleum and Grotto Journal. Their writing and translations have appeared in or are forthcoming from Annulet, ANMLY, Puerto del Sol, Dream Pop Journal, and others.
Betsy Cornwell’s (‘12) memoir Ring of Salt is coming out on September 30 with Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster in the US and Dialogue/Hachette in the UK and Ireland She also received a Markievicz Award from the Arts Council of Ireland in August, and began working as a mentor for the Irish Writers Centre. She did not think when she was at the home of the Fighting Irish that she’d end up making her life in Ireland, but here we are . . .
Paul Cunningham’s (‘15) third book of poetry Sociocide at the 24/7 (DIAGRAM/New Michigan Press) was published in February 2025 and featured in Dennis Cooper’s “5 books I read recently & loved” list. His fourth book of poetry, Brillo, is forthcoming from Lavender Ink. He is one of seven collaborators in Katrine Øgaard Jensen's Ancient Algorithms (forthcoming from Sarabande Books in October 2025) At AWP, he participated on a panel called “Writers and/as Artists Seizing the Image ” At the New Orleans Poetry Festival, he participated on a panel called “Poetry and Other Arts” and the “Carrion Bloom Books Fifth Anniversary Reading.” His poem “Plot, or, Entrance to a Red Oak” was selected by Lillian-Yvonne Bertram as the Runner-Up for Spoon River Poetry Review’s 2024 Editor’s Prize and appears in Issue 49.2. Other new writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Indianapolis Review, Ballast Journal, The Ekphrastic Review, Udolpho, and the American Pop Culture Almanac 1776-2026: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Moon Tide Press, 2026)
Zoe Darsee (‘23) and Elise Houcek have a book forthcoming from Inside the Castle this summer From The Pocket Of Agent Dickinson It’s a “lysergic neo-noir collaborative poet’s novel” that was written with an Oulipean constraint Mike Corrao is designing Darsee’s press, TABLOID Press, has a new series of pamphlets forthcoming early this summer and fall called Paraphernalia Among the many international writers TABLOID is publishing, the first series will include: Maria Hardin (Sweden), Liola Mattheis (Germany), Rudi Burkhardt (Germany), Zan de Parry (USA), Valentina Alvarado Matos (Spain), Hayes Hoey (USA), Beatrice Martini (Italy/Germany), and Thomas Huston (USA) They also have a series of poems ([Self-Portrait]) in Blush Magazine and they are quite happy with the poems that came out last winter in Coma / Community Mausoleum
Jeanne De Vita (‘00) started teaching every quarter for both UCLA Extension and Stanford Continuing Studies Her editing clients have seen great success this year While romance and romantasy is a mainstay of her business, she edited a debut work of historical literary fiction called The Umbrellamaker's Son for Tod Lending, an Oscar-nominated documentarian The editor at HarperCollins who acquired the book is the same editor who acquired The Tattooist of Auschwitz, and author Heather Morris gave Tod a lovely blurb for the book. She has clients who have published domestic thrillers with Bloodhound Books out of the UK She’s currently editing a scholarly work for an author who is publishing a literary work about Thomas Hardy De Vita has also reopened her own online writing school (book-genie com) and expects to have on-demand courses and workshops open to the public by June. This summer she’ll celebrate 12 years on the west coast.
Stephane Dunn (‘00) published a piece at MSNBC called “Ryan Coogler’s ‘Sinners’ isn’t just scaring audiences It’s scaring Hollywood” in April 2025 Dunn also discussed Coogler’s Sinners and its on-screen themes about race in the American south in Alison Stewart’s NPR podcast All Of It. She will explore the cultural impact of Blaxploitation films in a conversation with curator Ric Ross for the ADAMA Arts Salon in Pittsburgh on May 18.
David Ewald (‘03) published The Book of Stan with Macromere Press in 2024
ALUMNI NEWS
Justin Haynes’ (‘03) debut novel, Ibis (The Overlook Press), was published on February 11 this year. It received a starred review from Publishers Weekly: “Evoking the themes of Ovid, the language of Toni Morrison, and the genre-blending of Octavia Butler, Haynes scales the heights of his ambition This soaring work is not to be missed ” Jenny Offill, author of Dept of Speculation and Weather describes Ibis as a “brilliant, shape-shifting novel” that “teems and with charms and curses, stunning disasters and startling moments of grace.” Pulitzer Prize winning poet Jericho Brown calls Ibis “A stunning debut as witty as it is rapturous.” From Debutiful: "The writing in this book is simply stunning. Haynes has the ability to seamlessly bring together plots and characters and shift ideas with such precision and subtly By the time you finish this novel, you will feel as if you've lived in New Felicity for decades and truly understand generation of characters "
Rebecca Hazelton Stafford (‘05) had a young adult novel published with Quill Tree Press, an imprint of Harper Collins, in September 2024 It’s called Rabbit and Juliet She has a book of poetry coming out from Louisiana State University Press in 2025 called Generic Husband
Elise Houcek (‘21) and Zoe Darsee have a book forthcoming from Inside the Castle this summer From The Pocket Of Agent Dickinson. It’s a “lysergic neo-noir collaborative poet’s novel” that was written with an Oulipean constraint Mike Corrao is designing
Kristyn Garza’s (‘23) chapbook, Dictionary of Bodies, was selected by Gasher Press for their 2024 Spring Poetry Chapbook Prize. It was released this past fall in November and its launch was celebrated with a collaborative tattoo/poetry reading event to bring the body into the poetry space. Since her chapbook release, Garza has had her poem "Some Sirens Aren't Meant to Sing" published in the Fairy Tale Review's 20th anniversary issue, The Arsenic Issue, this past April
Mark Marino (‘96) did a workshop production of his musical, Homeboys about the founding of Homeboy Industries. He’s releasing a VR Experience called Shields Down, which is about recovering from trauma.
Courtney McDermott (‘11) is currently the Associate Director of the Experimental College at Tufts University and she is pursuing an Executive Ed.D. in Higher Education at Boston College. She has also finished a novel and is currently shopping it around.
Kalie Pead’s (‘23) debut poetry collection Today, Aries is forthcoming from White Stag Press in June 2025 Joyelle McSweeney writes: “Today, Aries opens up ancient vistas of possibility with the ease of a card flipping over to show the future’s face. An elegant and surprising work.” RJ Ingram writes: “Today, Aries reminds readers to practice. By delicately placing ritual between beauty & fun, Kalie Pead offers the world an open invitation to practice investigating inwards ‘as if the future is a game / until there are no cards left ’”
Stuart Ross’ ('03) new novel, The Hotel Egypt, is now available from Spuyten Duyvil Publishing. Excerpts from the novel have appeared in Bull, Man’s World, and New World Writing.
Sheheryar B. Sheikh (Shero) (‘07) published his second novel, Call me Al: The Hero’s Ha-Ha Journey in 2019 with Harper Collins His monograph, The Post-9/11 Great American Novel, is forthcoming from Bloomsbury Academic in November 2025. Most excitingly though, he will be a presenter at the “Steve Tomasula: The Art of Representation” conference in Paris in June 2025.
Marcela Sulak’s (‘92) collection The Fault, a novella in verse, came out with Black Lawrence Press in July 2024 (alumna Beth Ann Fennelly blurbed it) Her translation of Sharron Hass’s Music of the Wide Lane, translated from Hebrew, will be out with University of Texas Press in October 2025. She will also be at this year’s ALTA conference if anyone would like to say hi.
Joseph Earl Thomas’ (‘19) second book God Bless You, Otis Spunkmeyer was published in 2024 It received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews In a review at The New York Times, Danez Smith writes, “[...] like the work of Jackson Pollock, [Thomas’] novel reveals itself the longer one spends time with it. Keep looking, the chaos will start to show its pattern, its rhythm, its dimension and awe-inspiring color ”
ALUMNI NEWS
Austyn Wohlers’ (‘22) debut novel Hothouse Bloom is forthcoming from Hub City Press in August 2025. Blake Butler calls it “The rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large, convalescing fervent depth and resolve where it’s gone missing underneath the wearying vaneer of our everyday ” Thirii Myo Kyaw Myint writes, “I had the impression reading this novel that I was viewing an impressionist painting, or occupying the liminal state between sleep and wakefulness. I did not want to break my gaze, or to wake up.” Roy Scranton calls it “A beautiful, bountiful, harrowing debut.” Her writing has appeared in The Baffler, The Massachusetts Review, Guernica, and elsewhere She is also a musician, releasing music alone and with the band Tomato Flower
DIONNE IRVING BREMYER
Rachel Zavecz’s (‘15) debut poetry collection The Book is a Tower Always Never Watching was published by CLOAK in October 2024. Publisher: “Depicted through the beautiful and grotesque decadence of the cybernetic, reality bends / mutates / coalesces in the subterranean landscapes of the flesh ” Zavecz currently serves on the Board of Directors for the New Orleans Poetry Festival
Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (’09) authored Heart Fiat, a collection of Catholic poems (Wipf & Stock Resource Publications, USA; Poetry Festival Singapore, Singapore). The first edition is dedicated to Pope Francis, published to mark the pontiff’s visit to Singapore in 2024 The book won the Illumination Christian Book Gold Award (Poetry), making this his third win Desmond is the happiest he has ever been, and now teaches creative writing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His other updates may be found on his author website: desmondkon.com
