SO IT GOES NOTRE DAME'S ANNUAL CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM PUBLICATION
CONGRATULATIONS MFA CLASS OF 2026
IN THIS ISSUE
Director's Note...2
Graduating MFA students (from left to right) Vince Vasudevan, Helen Quah, Rina Shamilov, Adalyne Perryman, Daryna Gladun, Proph Dauda, and Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk. All writers read excerpts from their final theses at the Eck Visitors Center 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!
Faculty News...3 Graduating MFAs...6 Incoming MFAs...8 Alumni News...10
SO IT GOES... is published annually by the Creative Writing Program at the University of Notre Dame Editor: Paul Cunningham
Director's Note: Johannes Göransson This is my final So It Goes issue as the director of the Creative Writing Program. I’d like to take the occasion to celebrate the classes that have moved through our program over the past couple of years. These students have been relentlessly playful, dedicated to their craft community, inventive readers of each other’s work, and innovative teachers of undergraduate creative writing classes. It’s been deeply fulfilling to see the way each new cohort of students has developed during their time at Notre Dame and how they have influenced each other while participating in the constant and necessary metamorphosis of the program. These students have explored forms, modes, styles, and genres. I have read their poems as plays, poems as footnotes, science fictions, poems and stories that incorporate visual work, plays, lyric narratives, lyric nonfiction, prose poems, stories that seem almost like lost myths, poems as videos. Outside of their own work, students have curated a wildly successful Thursday-night film series at the Browning Cinema, edited the undergraduate journal Re:Visions as well as the Notre Dame Review and Action Books, and worked hard in the outreach programs, working with the Robinson Center, the South Bend Zine Fest, La Casa de Amistad, and other organizations that do such vital work in our city.
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While it is bittersweet to see these young writers leave our campus, it is heartening to know that they are bringing the seeds of this program across the US and internationally (and on the Internet). The sign of the vitality of our program can be seen not just in the great work explored in their writing and reading while here for two short years, but also the reading, performance, translation that they engage with when they’ve left. I am looking forward to the new members of our programs, confident that they will continue to participate in the metamorphosis of the program. — Johannes Göransson, Director of Creative Writing
FACULTY NEWS DIONNE IRVING BREMYER Dionne Irving Bremyer began her term as director of Notre Dame’s Initiative on Race and Resilience. She received a 2025 Franco Large Humanities Research and Creative Work Grant competition for The Offshore Project: Who’s land? What land? Ireland-Jamaica Collaboration. She was a participant in the Zahm Retreat from the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good in Nairobi, Kenya. She received Franco Large Henkels Conference Grants for NonfictioNOW and hosted the NonfictioNOW Conference at Notre Dame in Summer 2025. Dionne also served as the chair of the 2025 Giller Prize jury, judged the Best Debut Short Stories 2025: The PEN America Dau Prize, and judged the PEN/Hemingway Prize. “How We Roll” (fiction) will appear in All This Beauty: An Anthology of Florida Writers (forthcoming from University of Florida Press in 2027 - edited by Kristen Arnett and P. Scott Cunningham). "Corsican Ceremony" will appear in Five Points vol.25, no 1, Spring/Summer in 2026.
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CYNTHIA CRUZ Cynthia Cruz has had poems published in the New England Review, Alice, and The American Wing [Postcollapse Art). In April, Cruz helped present the rerelease of Barbara Loden’s film, Wanda, at the fsk Kino Cinema in Berlin with a Q&A accompanying the film’s release. She presented a paper at the 6th Hegelen Perspectiva Conference: Hegel & The Critical Tradition (“Entlassen Hegel: Destitution, Madness, Emancipation”) in June and will be presenting papers at the 36th International Hegel Conference in Rome in September (“Entlassen Hegel: Destitution, Madness, Emancipation”) and at the Lacan Today Conference in Ghent in September (“The Return of the Asylum: The French Revolution and the Emergence of the Psychotic Subject”). On May 22, Cruz was a keynote speaker at the MIL Cultura e Political Series in Lisbon where she discussed the new translation of her book, The Melancholia of Class, into Portuguese. In June, she will be a keynote speaker and will also be joining Didier Eribon in conversation at the Festival Internacional de Filosofia. Her PhD dissertation, Entlassen Hegel: Destitution, Madness, Emancipation, is currently under review and her new collection of poems, Twilight, is scheduled for publication in September by Four Way Books.
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FACULTY NEWS JOHANNES GÖRANSSON Johannes Göransson has spent the year writing poems that he collected in the book The Adorations, which will be published by Black Ocean next spring. This past fall, Black Ocean published his translation of Aase's Berg's book Aase's Death. Ril Editores in Santiago, Chile published Verano, the Spanish translation of his book Summer. He traveled to Chile for several readings, including at the Neruda House in Isla Negra and at the tomb of Vicente Huidobro.
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY This year I became chair of the English department; was appointed the William P. and Hazel B. Chair of English; competed on Jeopardy! (!); found myself the surprised winner of a Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry; welcomed Cecila Vicuña to Notre Dame; re-released my play Dead Youth, or, the Leaks as a free digital scholarly edition housed at CUNY; had my new play Killanova premiere at MSU; was a visiting poet at Bennington; gave the Elliston poetry lectures as the University of Cincinnati; presented a keynote on the Necropastoral at the University of Cologne; performed with The Westerlies in Iowa City; and mourned the sudden loss of of two irreplaceable colleagues, Ernest Morrell and Xavier Navarro Aquino. Metabolizing this year of magnificent surprise and irreparable loss, I look forward to a year of sweetness.
ROY SCRANTON Last fall Roy published his sixth book, Impasse: Climate Change and the Limits of Progress, a peer-reviewed philosophical investigation of the problems we face in trying to make sense of climate change, with Stanford University Press. Impasse was reviewed in Choice, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Resilience.org, Times Literary Supplement, and the California Review of Books, and excerpted in The Baffler and LitHub. He published several essays, including “What the Humanities Can Teach Us About Climate Change” in The Chronicle of Higher Education, “Misunderstood Malthus” in The Conversation, “Strange New World” in Emergence, “Thinking with Rocks: Artificial Intelligence and Ecological Thought” in The Himalayan Journal, and “The World Is Getting Hotter: Pessimism May Be Our Only Hope” in The Boston Globe. He also published a review of Alex Garland’s film Civil War in The Cleveland Review of Books. He gave invited talks connected to Impasse at Xavier University, the University of Chicago, and the New School for Social Research, appeared on several podcasts, and held readings at numerous bookstores across the country. He was recently awarded a Large Creative and Performing Arts Grant by the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good in support of his next project, a book about Robert Altman’s 1980 film Popeye.
AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI Azareen Van Der Vlieto Oloomi is a 2025-2026 Scholar in Residence (Gender Studies). She received a Franco Institute Large Henkels Grant 2025-2026 for a lecture series on “The Politics of Translation” for Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance, a research collaborative and lecture series with ties to Cambridge University, NYU, ND College of Arts & Letters, and the Keough School for Global Affairs. ThinkND created a channel for Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance sharing its educational programming with 250,000 alumni. She received a Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies Research Grant for How To Vanish, a short story collection. She received a Franco Institute Editorial Grant (for Parallel Lives, a novel in progress) and a Franco Institute Small Research Grant (for A Love Supreme, a novel in progress, supported in its early stages by a Radcliffe Fellowship from Harvard). She was also awarded a Nanovic Institute for European Studies Large Research Grant for conducting research in La Spezia, Italy for a novel set there during WWII). “The Vanishing,” a short story from the collection, How To Vanish, appeared in the summer issue of The Sewanee Review. She will serve on the 2026 National Book Awards Jury in the Category of Translation.
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REMEMBERING PROFESSOR XAVIER NAVARRO AQUINO The English department is assembling a collection of memories and messages to honor the life and impact of Professor Xavier Navarro Aquino. Whether it’s a favorite memory in the classroom, a piece of advice he gave you, or simply a message of gratitude, we invite you to share your thoughts here. Sharing your message will help us to honor the legacy and significant contributions Professor Navarro Aquino made to the Notre Dame community.
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GRADUATING MFA CLASS OF 2026 Proph Dauda is a writer from Malawi. He served as the Assistant Managing Editor for the Southern Humanities Review as well as the Managing Editor for the Notre Dame Review. His fiction has appeared in Touchstone Literary Magazine & Portland Review. His Poetry was published in Querencia Press’s Winter Issue, 2025. In 2023, he served as judge for Alabama State Council on the Arts hosted competition for Auburn High School in Alabama. Thesis: Incidents of a Town Sliced by Chirunga Road (Prose) Daryna Gladun is a Ukrainian poet, translator, artist, and researcher from Bucha (born in Khmelnytskyi). She is the author of five poetry collections. Gladun is a laureate of numerous literary contests, a recipient of fellowships from the President of Ukraine, International Writers’ and Translators’ House, House of Europe, Staromiejski House of Culture, Potsdam University, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Leslie Center for Humanities at Dartmouth College. She participates in various international literary and art residences, festivals, and art projects in China, Bangladesh, the USA, Canada, Israel, Ukraine, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Italy, Latvia, Moldova, Romania, France, and Poland. Thesis: Daryna in the Dark (Poetry) 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, the trees, and lakes. Thesis: Clay Pigeons (Prose) Helen Quah is a British poet and doctor who has lived and worked in London for the last ten years. Her debut chapbook Dog Woman (Out-Spoken Press) won the Eric Gregory Award in 2023 and her poetry has been featured in places such as Lana Turner, PROTOTYPE, and The Poetry Review. She has received support from Tin House Writer’s Workshop, the Liu Institute, and the Notre Dame Arts Initiative for a performance piece entitled “In Obedience to your Desire,” exploring the history of Chinese and Indian indentureship in the Caribbean. Thesis: Miss Mal (Poetry) Rina Shamilov is a poet and visual artist from Brooklyn, New York, born to Soviet immigrants. She is the author of My Mother's Armoire (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and Hungering: Dance of the Figurines, which was named a finalist in Black Lawrence Press' Immigrant Writing Series in 2025. Her work is either found (or forthcoming) in The Talon Review, Antiphony Press, Dreamboy Book Club, Ritual Dagger, and Ranger, among others. Her writing received recognition from The Academy of American Poets and was nominated for a Best of the Net award. Thesis: Cruelty’s Theater (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 bridge-builder since. She obtained her degree in English Literature from UNAM and then spent eight 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. Thesis: Crisis of Care (Poetry) Vince Vasudevan (he/him) is a multiracial speculative fiction writer interested in the intersection between literary and genre stories. He earned his B.A. in History at Virginia Tech where he also double-minored in Physics and National Security/Foreign Affairs. He is currently a first reader for James Gunn's Ad Astra, and his future goal is to be a universitylevel educator. Vince writes futures so he can believe in a tomorrow.
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Thesis: Forced Existence (Prose)
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2026 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.
2026 Winner: Daryna Gladun
Institute for Social Concerns International Justice Poetry Prize 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.
2026 Winner: Helen Quah
Samuel and Mary Anne Hazo Award for Poetry This 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.
2026 Winner: Helen Quah
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 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. Many esteemed poets won their first recognition through an Academy of American Poets College Prize, including Louise Glück, Jorie Graham, Kimiko Hahn, Joy Harjo, Robert Hass, Sylvia Plath, Ocean Vuong, and many others.
2026 Winner: Adriana Toledano Kolteniuk
2026 Winner: Rina Shamilov
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INCOMING MFA CLASS OF 2028 Anabel Barnett (Prose) Anabel Barnett (she/her) is a prose writer from Pennsylvania (of the “Go Birds” variety). She graduated from Kenyon College in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in English (emphasis Creative Writing) and Spanish Literature and Language. As a senior, Anabel earned The Spanish Award and highest honors on her Creative Writing thesis. She spent the two years following her graduation as a high school teacher, dorm parent, and coach at a boarding school in Delaware. Her work has appeared in Spires Literary Magazine, and has been a finalist in the Driftwood Press Short Story Prize, The International Bridport Prize in Short Story, The Masters Review Short Story Contest for New Writers, and Strange Pilgrims.
Veda Carmine-Ritchie (Poetry) Veda Carmine-Ritchie is a poet, essayist and prose writer from Portland, Oregon. They graduated from Bennington College in 2023 with a Bachelor of Arts, and have spent the years since writing and living in Brooklyn, NY. They are the literary editor and co-founder of GUM, a queer owned and operated indie publishing project. Veda is also the writer behind “Friend of Dorothy;” a monthly advice column from the print and digital publication, hankycode. They are the author of two poetry chapbooks: Glossary of 82+ Dog Training Terms A-Z (GUM, 2024) and Rolodex (Bottlecap Press, 2025). Veda’s writing has been published in physical journals such as No, Dear, New Words Press, A Common Well Journal, Bad Words, the pub., The Goose Egg, and several others.
Miguel Angel Garcia, Jr. (Poetry) Miguel Angel Garcia, Jr. earned his BA in English & American Literature and Philosophy (double major) at the University of Texas at El Paso. While there, he presented a paper at the American Literature Association 2023 Symposium in Santa Fe, NM on Cormac McCarthy’s philosophy of language and aesthetic practice in the novel Blood Meridian. His poetry has appeared in Camas Magazine, BorderSenses, and Los Angeles Review Online. He has twice been named a Finalist for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2018 & 2022), and was 1st Runner-Up in Poetry for the Los Angeles Review Literary Awards in 2020. An alum of the 2025 Tin House Autumn Workshop, he hopes to write poems that do justice to the life he has lived and ones he has witnessed.
Yasmin Ghaemmaghami (Poetry) Yasmin Ghaemmaghami is a writer and artist who grew up between Tehran and Northern California. She holds a BA in Environmental Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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INCOMING MFA CLASS OF 2028
Zakir Jamal (Prose) Zakir Jamal is a writer of fiction from Canada. He holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of Chicago and an MA in English from McGill. Within his fiction, he is interested in the ways that geographic distance collapses and expands in memory.
Emma Jones (Poetry) Emma Jones is a writer and musical artist from Boston, Massachusetts. They hold a B.A. in Philosophy, Literature, and Creative Writing from Evergreen State College. They are interested in poetics and pedagogy as ontological and liberative tools, focusing on the cybernetic entanglements of the systems that form our world. As part of their multidisciplinary fascinations, they are intrigued by the language potential of video games and expansive lyricism on the page.
Cameron Lee (Prose) Cameron Lee (she/her) is a writer and artist from Silver Spring, Maryland. Previously based in New York City, she worked in educational and community programming at The Central Park Conservancy and Art and Resistance Through Education (ARTE). A graduate of Columbia University, she received her BA in Creative Writing and Visual Arts. Through fiction, she’s interested in exploring change, personhood, marginality, and the natural world.
Tim Morrison (Prose) Tim Morrison is a novelist and screenwriter from the United States. He grew up in the Ozarks and earned his B.S. in Film and Creative Writing from the University of Central Arkansas. He co-wrote and appeared in the Romanian feature film Pigeon Tongue (2026) and is the author of Possible People, a novel set in a near‑future America. His work often engages with moral contradictions and existential disorientation. Tim has worked in wildland firefighting, trail building, and construction, experiences that inform the physicality of his writing. His time living in Australia and Mexico shapes his interest in global perspectives and the cultural dynamics of place.
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ALUMNI NEWS Francisco Aragón (03’) published a new book, Handbook of Foams /Manual de espumas by Gerardo Diego, translated by Francisco Aragón (Shearsman Books, 2026). Diego (1896-1987) was an avant-garde Spanish poet and member of the noted Generation of ’27. In 1979 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize in recognition of his life’s work. Manual de espumas was his breakthrough work in his creationist mode and is appearing in English for the first time. Francisco will be giving a series of readings to promote it: June 9 in Bryant Park in New York City; June 11 at The Writers Center in Bethesda, MD; July 8 at BASE Milano in Milan, Italy; July 15 at the Cervantes Institute in London, England; July 24 in Austin, TX in the I Scream Socials series; and September 30 on the Notre Dame campus as part of a day-long gathering on translation. His readings in Italy and the United Kingdom were made possible in part by support from the Franco Family Institute for Liberal Arts and the Public Good, College of Arts & Letters and the ND Arts Initiative. Robert Archambeau (96‘) has another novel coming out this November: The Bloomsbury Forgery, from Regal House. It is the sequel to 2023's Alice B. Toklas is Missing. He has also become Advisory Editor to The Hudson Review. Margaret Emma Brandl (‘13) was granted tenure and, beginning in fall 2026, she will officially be an Associate Professor of English at Austin College in north Texas, where she will teach mostly creative writing courses and the occasional class in literature or translation studies. This past year she also completed a novel manuscript and has begun submitting to agents. This past year, Dawn Burns (Comer) (‘98) published A Green Glow on the Horizon, their second book of fiction, with Cornerstone Press. Valerie Sayers calls A Green Glow on the Horizon "the rare book that manages to be wildly inventive, serenely wise, and delightfully zany," and Dawn has packed it with their favorite obsessions--tourist attractions, cryptids, misfit humans, taxidermied squirrels, Belle Gunness, and more. In addition, Dawn has published creative nonfiction and memoir in two anthologies: Lingering Inland: A Literary Tour of the Midwest (Andy Oler, editor); On an Inland Sea: Writing the Great Lakes (Michael Welch, editor). In Lingering Inland, Dawn examines the intersection of U.S. Highway 30 and Michael Martone in their life; in On an Inland Sea, Dawn explores a childhood experience of fishing for smelt in Lake Michigan in 1983. Dawn is an assistant professor at Michigan State University where they teach first-year writing in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures (WRAC) department, and creative writing in the English Department. Dawn continues to build creative community wherever they go—at MSU, in Lansing, on road trips, and through the SwampFire community of writers and artists they founded in 2008. Dawn is always up to something and always up for something, be it an event or a creative collaboration! To hear more of what Dawn has been up to, listen to their 2025 conversation on the Bonnie Jo Talks to Everybody podcast. Tom Coyne’s (‘00) next book, A Course Called Home: Adventures of an Accidental Golf Course Owner, comes out from Simon & Schuster/Avid Reader May 5, 2026. It's the story of his quest to save a 100-year-old golf course in the Catskills. Also, Coyne’s book A Course Called Ireland has been adapted into a travel documentary series for the BBC and Paramount, co-hosted by him and Bill Murray. Filmed this past September, to be released in the fall. Betsy Cornwell’s (‘12) has reopened her arts residency space in west Ireland, The Old Knitting Factory, after many renovations, and is now taking applications for paid residencies and accomodation. She is also open to applications for fully-funded residencies for single parents, including a childcare stipend, in May. There is more info available here: https://oldknittingfactory.com/ Paul Cunningham’s (‘15) most recent book of poetry, Brillo (Lavender Ink Press), was published in November 2025. His fifth book of poetry, A Falſe Tongue, is forthcoming from White Stag Press in 2027. In October, he gave the keynote reading at Slippery Rock University’s 20th anniversary celebration of SLAB (Sound & Literary Arts Book). In April, he served as the University of Georgia’s Virginia Rucker Walter Poetry Prize judge and, at the 2026 New Orleans Poetry Festival, he participated in a panel discussion called “Transgressive Ecologies: Writing Political Urgency through Radical Poetics.” Other new writing hag
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ALUMNI NEWS has appeared or is forthcoming in the Lover’s Eye Press David Lynch Tribute Folio, Burning House Press Online, Heavy Feather Review, The Indianapolis Review, Transat' Revue (Anne Portugal Issue), and the American Pop Culture Almanac 1776-2026: An Anthology of Poetry and Prose (Moon Tide Press, 2026). He is currently working on a textbook tentatively called Ready-To-Wear: Teaching Poetry and Fashion in the Classroom and launched literary fashion webzine Seam Allowance (seamallowance.org) in June. In September 2025, David Ewald’s (‘03) latest novel, The Thief of That, was published. It was reviewed by Foreword Reviews: https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/the-thief-of-that/ Michelle Anne Schingler of Foreword Reviews calls The Thief of That a "riveting science fiction caper" that follows a protagonist (an "endearing antihero") whose "actions are egregious and fascinating, leading to uproarious, absurdist twists." Jeanne De Vita (‘00) is now a literary agent at Martin Literary Management. She is acquiring in all fiction genres, with a heavy emphasis on commercial fiction, but she’s also open to select upmarket and literary works. (No YA/MG, poetry, or anthologies at this time.) She also represents select nonfiction, but prefers narrative nonfiction over memoir. She is still teaching at UCLA Extension and Stanford Continuing Studies as well as editing some projects privately, but her primary focus at the moment is list-building. Rebecca Greenes Gearhart’s (‘21) prose chapbook, In the Place Beyond the Carport, is now available from Bottlecap Press. Justin Haynes’ (‘03) debut novel, Ibis (The Overlook Press), was the winner of the PEN America Open Book Award (2026); the OCM Bocas Prize for Fiction (2026); shortlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (2025); and shortlisted for the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction (2025). PJ Lombardo’s (‘21) debut poetry collection The Blue Cherub was published by Cult House Books in 2026. In a review from Expat Press, Sofija Popovska calls The Blue Cherub a “mouthpiece through which the world groans, like ‘fighter jets grieving forward uselessly.’ The Blue Cherub is a book of revelation.” Angela Mi Young Hur (05‘) has a new novel, The Loom Tree, being published in June 2026 by Erewhon/Kensington. Her previous novel, Folklorn, was included in The New York Times Book Review’s top ten SciFi/Fantasy list and in NPR’s Books We Love list. It was also an IndieNext pick and optioned by AMC TV Networks for series development. A Korean translation is forthcoming from Open Books. 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. Jacob Schepers (‘19) was an invited speaker at the 2026 Festival of Faith and Writing at Calvin University from April 16-18. His sessions included a talk titled "Lightning Rod Poetry and Tuning Fork Poetics," which addressed pushing boundaries in creative practice, and a moderated discussion with Alan Koppschall, an editor at Plough magazine. His second full-length poetry collection, Ugly Ground Swell Moss, was published by Spokane-based Carbonation Press in May, 2026. Lindsay Starck’s (’10) novel Monsters We Have Made was named a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards and winner of the Wisconsin Library Association Award for fiction. She has a short story (“Safekeeping”) forthcoming in Conjunctions, and an essay (“The Sunshine Protection Act”) was recently published in the New England Review.
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ALUMNI NEWS Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (’09) walked away with eight Catholic Media Association Book Awards for his poetry collection, Heart Fiat, and the anthology, The Jesuit: Finding God in All Things (co-edited with Eric Tinsay Valles). This historic win received media coverage in Today’s Catholic, Catholic Sabah, Light of Catholics in Asia News, and World Catholic Association for Communication (Asia). Heart Fiat is a collection of Catholic poems (Wipf & Stock Resource Publications, USA; Poetry Festival Singapore, Singapore) dedicated to Pope Francis to mark the pontiff’s visit to Singapore in 2024. The book also clinched several other US-based international awards, like the National Indie Excellence Award (Poetry), Nautilus Silver Book Award (Lyric Prose & Hybrid Works), and Independent Publisher Silver Book Award (Poetry–Specialty). Apart from publishing new work in journals, Desmond was happy to undertake more speaking engagements, and adjudicate on several national literary competitions/awards. He feels incredibly blessed, and remains deeply grateful for being able to simply continue doing what he loves. Desmond currently teaches creative writing at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. His other updates may be found on his author website: desmondkon.com
JOYELLE MCSWEENEY WINS WINDHAM-CAMPBELL PRIZE Joyelle McSweeney, the William P. and Hazel B. White Professor of English and English Department Chair, was awarded this year’s prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Poetry, an award administered by Yale University that grants recipients $175,000 to support their creative pursuits without financial strain. The anonymous selection committee recognized McSweeney for her “complex, powerful, and contemplative ecopoetic writing, exploring nature, trauma, style, and resilience through the ‘necropastoral,’ whilst subverting our understanding of contemporary language.” In April, Notre Dame’s Arts Initiative and the Keough-Naughton Institute hosted a reception to honor McSweeney. Faculty, students, staff, and friends gathered in the Decio English Commons to celebrate her remarkable achievement.