So It Goes 2023

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

CONGRATULATIONS MFA CLASS OF 2023 Graduating MFA students (from left to right) Jacob Anthony Moniz, Lance Carroll, Woori Kim, Arman Chowdhury, Zoe Darsee, Angie Lorang Mueller, Kalie Pead, Kristyn Garza, and (Lovely) Raju Kalam 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!

IN THIS ISSUE Director's Note Graduating MFAs Incoming MFA students

Faculty News Alumni News

The Notre Dame Creative Writing Program, now in its 33rd year – its “Jesus year,” if you’ll pardon the blasphemy – has emerged from the pandemic, like all of us, changed.

Our program is fortunate (and perhaps unusual) in that many of these changes have been for the better, including notably the re-establishment of a dedicated Creative Writing Program Manager position, staffed by translator, poet, and Notre Dame MFA alum Paul Cunningham ('15).

We do a lot here, and the program has struggled since our previous manager, Coleen J. Hoover, retired six years ago. Paul has already had a significant impact on the program, and we look forward to seeing his contribution shape the program going forward.

The program also saw the first substantial increase in MFA stipends in several years, with support from I.A. O’Shaughnessy Dean of the College of Arts and Letters, Sarah Mustillo, as well as a $1.5 million endowment from John and Patrice Kelly. The John and Patrice Kelly Endowment for Excellence will be used to support Creative Writing faculty in existing and future projects, with a special focus in community engagement, speaker series, and workshops. The program also unexpectedly emerged as the transformative focus of the English Department’s 2023 external review report: we were called upon to be both the “hinge” and the “doorway” to publicfacing, interdisciplinary, global humanities knowledge production and dissemination.” I can only hope we may fulfill that noble calling.

Our faculty, students, and alumni are certainly making a mark. Joyelle McSweeney won a Guggenheim last spring; Dionne Irving’s short story collection THE ISLANDS was shortlisted for the 2023 PEN/Faulkner award; Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi's short story ("It Is What It Is") was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2023 and she was also named a 2023-2024 Carl and Lilly Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow by the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University; two of our MFA alumni had first books reviewed in The New York Times, Joseph Earl Thomas for his memoir SINK and Nazli Koca for her novel THE APPRENTICE; and alum Ae Hee Lee won the 2022 Dorset Prize for her book ASTERISM and was named one of 12 finalists for the 2022 Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship. Last but not least, Creative Writing undergraduate alum Tess Gunty won the 2022 National Book Award for her novel THE RABBIT HUTCH.

Finally, we had a tremendous year of readings and events. We celebrated book launches for faculty members Dionne Irving, Orlando Menes (in collaboration with ILS), Johannes Göransson, and Steve Tomasula, as well as for alumni Francisco Aragon, Tess Gunty, and Joseph Earl Thomas. Tess Gunty’s visit was especially exciting, since we were also celebrating her winning the National Book Award, and collaborated on two readings for her, one on campus, and one at the St. Joseph County Public Library Main Branch. We also hosted readings from local poetry maven Pam Blair; novelists Myriam J.A. Chancy and Jamila Minnicks; poets Mike Corrao, Valerie Hsiung, Julie Morrissy, Destiny Hemphill, and Marty Cain; Sullivan Prize winner Maya Sonenberg; former US poet laureate Natasha Trethewey; and graphic novelist Kelcey Ervick. Two of our biggest events this year featured polymorphous literary superstars who defy generic categorization: the long-awaited Yusko Ward-Phillips lecture and Sandeen Memorial Poetry Reading with Anne Carson, and the NDIAS Visiting Artist collaboration with Patricia Lockwood. We also collaborated with other units on several events, including Afro-Latinx Poetry Now (ILS), Hanif Abdurraqib (English), an evening with the editors of the ecopoetic journal Reckoning (EHUM), and Catriona Lally (Irish Studies).

Like a certain dude one often sees hanging around Notre Dame classrooms, the Notre Dame Creative Writing Program manages to exemplify tradition while also subverting it. Also like that dude, we love and welcome everyone, while holding ourselves to a higher, otherworldly standard. Hopefully, in our 33rd year, we’ll come to resemble that dude in yet another way: that this year may be the beginning of a glorious transmutation.

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GRADUATING MFA CLASS OF 2023

CONGRATULATIONS MFA CLASS OF 2023 Lance Carroll Lance Carroll is a writer who, while born in southern Missouri, has migrated throughout the entirety of the Midwest. He graduated from Shimer College—"the worst school in the country"—where he earned a degree in liberal arts after a year of study in Oxford.

At Notre Dame, he has served as the co-editor of fiction for Notre Dame Review and taught classes on nonfiction and speculative fiction. He is working on a hybrid memoir about sexuality and religious experience.

Arman Chowdhury Arman Chowdhury is a prose writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. His short story “Deficiency Notice” is a finalist for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He is working on a novel of speculative fiction centered on the encampment of stateless refugees and environmental collapse. His work has been supported by the University of Notre Dame, the Loft Literary Center, and the Tin House Summer Workshop.

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Zoe Darsee Zoe Darsee was born about noon on a Tuesday. Later they founded TABLOID Press, a publishing practice rooted in the poetics & sounds of the local, with poet, friend and artist Nat Marcus in Berlin, Germany. This work continues. Some of the poet's texts have appeared in Annulet, KEITH LLC, Spectra Poetry, The Quarterless Review, in translation for EDIT Magazine, and in vocal collaboration with musicians Exael and DJ Paradise. Their chapbook, BELL LOGIC, is forthcoming from Spiral Editions. They are interested in structure(s), ideologies, and are working on a novel, for free.

Kristyn Garza Kristyn Garza, a queer chicana from the U.S./Mexico border, moved from her hometown of McAllen, Texas to Austin to pursue her bachelor's degree in English Literature at St. Edward’s University. Garza has been researching the ways in which the liminality of the sonic poetic space can exorcise the haunting of trauma held within the femme body. She was longlisted for Palette Poetry's 2022 Sappho Prize and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, The McNeese Review, The Spectre Review, New Note Poetry, and as a finalist for RHINO Poetry's Founders Prize 2022.

(Lovely) Raju Kalam Raju Kalam, known as Lovely Raju to his fans and followers, has self-published a few books on Amazon and owns an Instagram poetry page with about 16k followers, where he publishes excerpts of his works.

He loves to write nature poetry and the poetry that motivates people to get out of anxiety, sorrow and depression. There is a secure place in his heart where theoretical physics sleeps. He aspires to preach Peace words through his writing. His debut poetry collection Hope is now available to preorder from Finishing Line Press and his second full-length poetry collection inside violence violence inside is forthcoming from Flower Song Press in 2024.

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Woori Kim Woori Kim has a B.A. and M.A. in English from Duksung Women’s University, Korea.

Angie Lorang Mueller Angie Lorang Mueller (sometimes publishing under the surname St. John, sometimes not) is from rural Missouri, and she writes stories that her dad says are “weird.” Her work has appeared in Dappled Things, Storm Cellar, About Place, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the J.F. Powers Prize in fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Angie considers herself a “Catholic writer,” whatever that means. She is fascinated by sacramental nature, flora and fauna, and—duh—women’s bodies. She lives in South Bend, IN with her husband and newborn.

Jacob Anthony Moniz Jacob Anthony Moniz is a writer and visual artist from California.

His work captures the ambiguities of memory, legacy, and grief, relying upon disparate forms of contemplation and narration to produce a sense of empathy in readers and viewers alike. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Penumbra, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Ocotillo Review, among other journals and publications. His short film "Mother of Mercy" was an official selection for Best Short Screenplay at the 2020 Rome Independent Prisma Awards. "The Pacific End," a short film based on his novel-in-progress, won Best LGBTQ Short Screenplay at the 2020 New Renaissance Film Festival in Amsterdam. In addition to receiving a 2023-2024 Fulbright award to teach and write in Portugal, his writing has most recently appeared in Penumbra and Roadrunner Review.

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GRADUATING MFA CLASS OF 2023

Kalie Pead Kalie Pead is a queer writer from Salt Lake City, Utah. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, living in South Bend Indiana with her partner. While she grew up in Salt Lake she will always consider home somewhere between the red rocks of Utah and the wilds of Wyoming. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Whiskey Blot, From Whispers To Roars, Metaphor, and Peculiar.

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2023 AWARD WINNERS Sparks Prize Awarded to a distinguished graduate of the Creative Writing Program as a postgraduation year of residency and writing time, funded by Nicholas Sparks. It is based on the quality of their writing and the likelihood that the submission will be published or will be developed into a publishable book.

2023 Winner: Lance Carroll

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

2023 Winner: Zoe Darsee

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.

2023 Winner: Kalie Pead

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 for 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.

G. Margaret Porter Gender Studies Graduate Writing Award (Essay)

2023 Winner: Kristyn Garza

These awards are named in honor of G. Margaret Porter, a retired Gender Studies Librarian at the Hesburgh Library who enabled high-caliber research in gender by ensuring that students and faculty had access to the best resources in Gender Studies and include a cash award of $150.

Winning entry: "Femme Trauma and Poetic Performance: A Sonic (Re-)Creation of the Self"

2023 Winner: Kristyn Garza

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INCOMING FALL 2023 MFA COHORT Ivy Braxton Harrington Ivy Braxton Harrington grew up in Richmond, Virginia with a fondness for her family’s roots in Baltimore. Her poetry developed out of her childhood connection to nature and sunlight. She explores the nuance of their intermingling and tries parsing out the scenes of the natural world.

She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Cornell University, completing a research thesis that combined the areas of her two majors, Linguistics and Literature. Recently, she has been finding richness in the works of Seamus Heaney and owes her love and appreciation of meter and rhyme to Dickinson, Housman, and Frost.

Isabel Boutiette Isabel Boutiette is a poet paying close attention to her dreams and the landscapes they unravel within. She is interested in glitches, cyber ecologies, anthropogenic horror, and mediumship.

Sometimes, she uses Photoshop to render celestial bodies. She has lived in San Francisco, Madrid, and Seattle, where for a few years she worked at Wave Books.

Makella Brems Makella Brems is a first-year MFA student and fourth-year Ph.D. student in Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. Her writing explores the rapidly evolving relationship between humans, nature, and technology in the age of the Anthropocene. Brems is a Graduate Fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study (2023-2024). She was previously a Visiting Scholar at the Rachel Carson Center in Munich (2022). Brems is from Phoenix, Arizona.

Samuel Ekanem Samuel Ekanem is a Nigerian writer. He was born and bred in Uwa in the Niger Delta, southern Nigeria. His fiction—largely contemporary and historical—explores life on the margins and spirituality. His works have appeared in The Fictional Café (USA), Down in the Dirt (USA), Literary Yard (India), The Sun (Nigeria) and elsewhere. A first-generation graduate, Samuel studied Communications Arts at the University of Uyo in Nigeria. While there, he served as the general editor of the student union magazine, The Informer, and as a research assistant. Away from literature, Samuel is passionate about humanitarian services. In 2020, during his compulsory national youth service in Nigeria, he raised funds and set up an ultra-modern public restroom. He also led a team of his fellow graduate volunteers to facilitate the Financial Inclusion Campaign on behalf of the Central Bank of Nigeria. He bagged an award from the government in recognition of his efforts.

Camille Lendor Camille Lendor is a writer from Toronto. Her work has appeared in Canadian Literature, PRISM international, The Malahat Review, and Stellium Literary Magazine, among other publications.

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INCOMING FALL 2023 MFA COHORT Noah Loveless 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. His work benefits from the merging of these fields, using poetry as a unique means of understanding and asking questions about topics like experience, self, and memory. 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. He is further interested in the wide field of language and the depth and dynamism of words. He lives in South Bend with his partner and two cats and likes to bake.

Oli Peters Oli Peters attempts to weird the word while writing about corporeal and corporate weirdness.

She received her BA from the University of Iowa. She is based in the Midwest.

Ryan Phung Ryan Phung, a Los Angeles native, is a graduate from UC San Diego where he studied Political Science and Creative Writing. His primary interests are apocalypse, movement, memory, and the poetics of stupidity. In his free time, he likes to pretend he doesn't know what a ladder is.

Kyla D. Walker Kyla D. Walker is a Turkish and Creole writer from Los Angeles. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Pomona College and will be pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Notre Dame this fall. Currently, she is an editorial intern at Electric Literature. In 2023, she was selected to be a Periplus Collective Fellow and to attend the Tin House Summer Workshop in July. Her prose has been published in Electric Literature, Cultbytes, Agave Review, The Alexandria Review, and is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review.

Sachie Weber

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. These experiences both inform the themes of her writing and validate her certainty that writing is her life’s passion. She loves science fiction, magical realism, and believes in ghosts when in the right company. She expresses love through food.

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FACULTY NEWS

DIONNE IRVING BREMYER In 2022-23 Dionne Irving Bremyer's story collection THE ISLANDS was shortlisted for the PEN/Faulkner Award and she received two Pushcart nominations, one for an essay that appeared in West Branch and one for a story that appeared in Electric Literature. THE ISLANDS was twice featured in The New York Times.

She also presented and gave readings at the Miami Book Fair, the Association of Writing Programs Conference, and the Printer's Row Literary Festival, among other places.

JOHANNES GÖRANSSON Johannes Göransson began the school year with the publication of his new book-length elegy, Summer (Tarpaulin Sky Press, 2022), and ended the year with the publication of The New Quarantine (Inside the Castle, 2023), a collaborative reimagining - with Swedish writer and performance artist Sara Tuss Efrik - of his first book A New Quarantine Will Take My Place (2007). In between he gave talks and readings at a bunch of places, such as Washington University, Bennington College, Stockholm Poetry Festival, The Splice Poetry Series, and he edited four new volumes for Action Books.

JOYELLE MCSWEENEY Joyelle McSweeney has spent the first half of her Guggenheim year writing public-facing criticism of US and international contemporary poetry for such major venues as the Poetry Foundation and the New York Times Books Review and readying her tenth book, Death Styles, for publication next Spring. She is presently consulting with John Milton in preparation for her next project, a War on Heaven.

ORLANDO MENES Recent publications include The Gospel of Wildflowers & Weeds (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2022, 84 pages). (Reviewed in the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books, The Hudson Review, Plume, Literary Matters, and America: The Jesuit Review of Faith & Culture.) Poems in journals: “How Not to Build a Model Rocket” and “Salvador Dalí with Anadromes.” TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics [tabjournal.org/ Chapman University], vol. 10.4 (July 2022). “First Communion,” “Triptych Number 3: Victor Manuel,” and “The Magnificent Jeremiah Expounds on the Impending Doom of Miami.” Literary Matters [literarymatters.org/ The Catholic University of America], vol. 14, no. 3 (Spring/Summer 2022); “Letter to José Lezama Lima” and “Minotaur.” Literary Matters [literarymatters.org/ The Catholic University of America], vol. 14, no. 2 (Winter 2022); “Ezan.” Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry (2022), 57-58. Critical Essays in Books: “Testarudo.” Latinx Poetics: The Art of Poetry. Ed. Ruben Quesada. (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico Press, 2022).

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FACULTY NEWS

XAVIER NAVARRO AQUINO

Xavier had short stories published in The Sewanee Review (“Two Young Kings” Winter, 2023) and Prairie Schooner (“Blood Brothers” Volume 96, Number 1, Spring 2022).

ROY SCRANTON In summer of 2022, Roy took over as director of the Creative Writing Program, and that fall taught the first iteration of his innovative, large-format creative nonfiction course, “Witnessing Climate Change.” In 2022–2023, Roy also served on the Notre Dame Presidential Forum Advisory Committee, where he organized two events marking the twentieth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, “Aftermaths I: The Invasion of Iraq in Historical Perspective,” a panel featuring Spencer Ackerman, Andrew Bacevich, and Omar Dewachi, and “Aftermaths II: The Invasion of Iraq in the Present,” a reading featuring Amal alJurbouri, Dunya Mikhail, Mortada Gzar, and Salar Abdoh.

Meanwhile, Roy applied for two NEH grants; finished a draft of a scholarly book on climate change, narrative, and ethical pessimism; and started making notes for a new book on the 1980 Robert Altman film Popeye. He also published an essay, “What Good Is Dissent?” in Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America's Forever Wars, edited by Daniel Sjursen and Andrew Bacevich, and another essay, “The Arc of History,” in the art magazine Nuda. And little by little, Roy’s Environmental Humanities Initiative continues to grow, supporting graduate student workshops, talks, and field trips integrating ecology, scholarship, and the arts.

AZAREEN VAN DER VLIET OLOOMI Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi will be the 2023-2024 Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Fellow in Fiction at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University, where she will be working on her fourth novel. Her story, "It Is What It Is," originally published by Electric Literature was selected for the Best American Short Stories 2023, forthcoming in October. In the Fall of 2022, she interviewed author Idra Novey for BOMB Magazine. In the spring of 2023, The Sewanee Review published her craft essay, "Whose Time Are We Speaking In?" and The Believer's "Department of Objects" published her story, "Rumi." She continued to direct Literatures of Annihilation, Exile & Resistance, an international initiative that hosts writers who work at the crossroads of literature and human rights. In May, she was promoted to Full Professor and appointed as the Dorothy G. Griffin College Professor at Notre Dame. In June, her essay "James Baldwin in Turkey" appeared in The Yale Review.

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NEW ND PUBLICATIONS THE 20TH 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 Editors included: Jamjun Rorsoongnern (Editor-in-Chief) and Taylor Thomas (Graduate Liason) Undergraduate Editors included: Drew Morgan and Annie Brown Design/Layout: Annie Brown Cover Artwork: "Light in the Darkest of Times" by Kylo Goskoy

NOTRE DAME REVIEW ISSUE NO. 55 Issue 55 of the Notre Dame Review shows us it's a Grave New World out there. We are at a crossroads in this world between the dangers of climate change and an increase of autocratic leaders attempting to drag everyone back into the past. The artists and authors featured in this issue grapple with the possibilities of what is to come while demonstrating that the people of the world will not go quietly. Enjoy works by James Davis May, John Poch, KateLynn Hibbard, and Jenny Husk among others.

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ALUMNI NEWS Francisco Aragón's ('03) essay “Glorious View: Landscapes of Memoria” appeared in Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (University of New Mexico Press, 2022). Also: July of 2023 will mark twenty years since Francisco joined Notre Dame’s Institute for Latino Studies (ILS), where he has reached the rank of Professor of the Practice, and where he established Letras Latinas, the ILS’ literary initiative, which will be celebrating its 20th anniversary (2004 – 2024) next year.

Robert Archambeau’s ('96) novel Alice B. Toklas is Missing will be published by Regal House this November, with an audio book version to be available from Tantor Media. The sequel to the novel, called The Bloomsbury Forgery, is about to be represented by the JVNLA agency in New York. He continues to serve as the in-house poetry critic for The Hudson Review, and was recently appointed poetry editor of The Fortnightly Review.

Jace Brittain ('15) has new publications in ANMLY ("The Polycarpists and their mouths") and two poems in ballast. He continues to co-manage Carrion Bloom Books with Rachel Zavecz ('15).

In 2022, Dawn Burns (Comer) ('98) published Evangelina Everyday through Cornerstone Press. Dawn has since been busy with interviews, readings, and book signings, including at the Southeast Wisconsin Festival of Books. Last August, Dawn accepted an associate professor position in Michigan State University's First-Year Writing Program and moved with her family to Michigan. While continuing to support her SwampFire community, Dawn has also started building creative community in Lansing, starting with the Many Voices Reading Series she began with MSU colleagues and Scott Harris of the fabulous Everybody Reads Books and Stuff. Her 2023 goal is to find a home for Born Beneath Pedro's Sombrero: Tales from the National Association of Tourist Attraction Survivors.

Betsy CornwelI ('12) had an essay in the New York Times' Modern Love column in January, and she just sold her first memoir in a preempt to Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster.

Douglas Curran ('00) had an eventful year and is grateful for the opportunity to share. His story “Pericolo! Non Leggere!” appeared in the British magazine The Frogmore Papers last fall. And two new stories will be published this summer: “How to Tell a Joke with a Gun to Your Head” in Evening Street Review and “Her Holland, on an Overcast Day” in a new anthology to be brought out by great weather for MEDIA. The latter organization, an independent publisher in New York, invited Curran to read from his work as a featured writer at their Spoken Word Sundays series at the Parkside Lounge in NYC this past April.

His website, late January of this year, can be found at www.Douglas-Curran.com.

In September, Paul Cunningham ('15) was interviewed about his second full-length book Fall Garment (Schism Press, 2022) in an episode of the Writing the Rapids podcast. New writing has appeared or is forthcoming in BOMB Magazine, Texas Poetry Review, The Ocean State Review, and the anthology A Flame Called Indiana: New Writing from the Crossroads (Indiana UP, 2023). In March, Cunningham presented on a panel at AWP called "#FeelsBad: Writing Discomfort and Pessimism in Genre." In June, he'll read with Tiana Nobile in The Splice Poetry Series in New Orleans, Louisiana. His translation of Sara Tuss Efrik's play Danse Macabre Piggies will be anthologized in Experimental Writing: A Guidebook and Anthology (forthcoming from Bloomsbury).

Renée E. D’Aoust ('06) recently received two Pushcart Prize nominations for two essays published in Invisible City and Trestle Creek Review.

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ALUMNI NEWS After the success of her serialized zombie series, Jeanne De Vita ('00) published three epic fantasy romance novels in 2022 under her pen name Callie Chase. She ghostwrites 34 books per year for a USA Bestselling Author's brand and teaches Story Structure, Developmental Editing, Copyediting, Romance Writing, and Freelance Editing for UCLA Extension, Writers.com, and in other places. She is the Managing Editor of the UCLA Literary Journal Southland Alibi and her freelance editorial business book-genie.com has a new look and expanded services, including author ads and marketing. Jeanne's grateful and as amazed as ever that she's teaching, editing, and writing full time and equally as shocked to celebrate her tenth year living in Los Angeles in May 2023. (She still has a love/hate-relationship with her "new" home city!) She's spent the early part of 2023 getting back in touch with her passion for playing Magic the Gathering (everything old IS new again) and on a recent trip home to Chicago was happy to find her welcome letter from the MFA program and her teaching evals from First-Year Writing students.

Kevin Ducey ('04) has a new poetry collection Gravity's Angel out now from Kingston University Press (May, 2023). Learn more about Ducey's poetry by visiting kevinducey.net Jillian Fantin ('22) is finishing up the last months of their 2023 Sundress Publications Editorial Internship; they were interviewed by Archetype; they were a Tilted House 2022 1BR/3BATH Chapbook Prize Semifinalist with young velvet porcelain boy; and they cofounded Renesme Literary with poet Joy Wilkoff! Additionally, they have poetry forthcoming with wind-up mice, Gutslut Press, L I M I N A L . S P A C E S . M A G, and Zoe Darsee's yet-to-be-named Bell Anthology! They have a chapbook, A Playdough Symposium, forthcoming from Ghost City Press's 2023 Summer Series. Since graduating from Notre Dame, they've published poems in poetry.onl, Spectra Poets Online, Dream Pop Journal, Harpur Palate, and Olney Magazine. New reviews appear in Sage Cigarettes, Archetype, Drizzle Review, and Bridge Eight Press.

In October 2022, Rebecca Greenes Gearhart's ('21) fiction chapbook Elkhart came out with Berlin-based press Tabloid (co-founded and edited by Zoe Darsee, MFA '23). Elkhart was also featured on Dennis Cooper's "Best of 2022" end of year list Chris Holdaway's ('16) debut poetry collection Gorse Poems was published by Titus Books in 2022.

Nazli Koca's ('20) debut novel is The Applicant (Grove Press, 2023). In a review from The New York Times, Shreya Chattopadhyay writes "Koca especially shines when illuminating 'women’s pain,' which 'lies beneath the territories of countries, of languages we speak.'"

Koca is a writer and poet from Turkey who lives in the US. Katie Lehman's ('99) poetry collection Emily Dickinson's Lexicon is forthcoming from Dos Madres Press. Some of the poems have been published by Fortnightly Review.

PJ Lombardo ('21) published a review of Mike Kleine's agbogbloshie ("Intensive Maximalism") in a new issue of TQR Mag. He also co-founded Grotto (grottojournal.net) with poet Maxwell Rabb.

Jahan Khajavi's ('20) debut poetry collection Feast of the Ass is available from Ugly Duckling Presse. Of Feast of the Ass, Moira Egan writes: "Queer, cunning, quirky, the poems are subtly imbued with the ghosts of Ginsberg and Wilde [...] This Feast is indeed a Feat."

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ALUMNI NEWS In 2023, Jayne Marek ('05) has written three book reviews, a blurb, and published a dozen or so poems. She has also published photos, such as five bee pics in the New York Times' "Spelling Bee Answers" page (daily bee photos). That is fun! While she waits for a delayed poetry book to appear, her recent poetry manuscript was shortlisted in several contests.

So polishing continues.

Monica Mody ('10) published a hybrid academic essay and poem sequence, "When Yoginis Appear with Animals: Animistic Relational Elements and the Non-Dual Matrix," in Issue 7 of Tarka Journal published by Embodied Philosophy. An article, "Arts-based Practices: Research and Transformation in the Academy" was published in the peer-reviewed Transformative Power of Art Journal (Volume 1, Issue 2 Winter 2023). Her poetry appeared in the Winter 2022 issue of the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature. The Lantern Review blog published a guest reflection on identity and community. Mody was an invited speaker at the Association for the Study of Woman and Mythology Scholar Salon (Oct 2022) and at the Pacifica Graduate Institute (Feb 2023). She presented at the El Mundo Zurdo Conference, and read her work at the 2022 South Asian Literary Arts Festival. The Beat, a poetry podcast produced by the Knox County Public Library, recorded Mody reading two of her poems and two linked sonnets by the Bengal Renaissance poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt.

Gwen Oxenham's ('06) second book, Under the Lights and in the Dark: The Untold Stories of Women's Soccer, is now a limited audio docuseries, HUSTLE RULE, produced by Nike, hosted by Ted Lasso's Hannah Waddingham. Her third book, Pride of a Nation, is now out with Random House. She contributes features regularly to ESPN and Sports Illustrated.

This summer, she will be the head of creative content for the broadcasting company producing the 2023 Women's World Cup. Rumit Pancholi ('08) is currently Communications Officer in the Publisher Division of the Communications Department of the International Monetary Fund, where he manages the flagship publication, the Global Financial Stability Report and serves as the Communications Chair of GLOBE, the institution's LGBTQ+ group. Rumit enjoys volunteering, gardening, and hiking, as well as traveling with his husband, Luke, and spending time with their dogs, cats, and iguana.

NoNieqa Ramos-Richards’ ('01) debut picture book YOUR MAMA illustrated by Jacqueline Alcántara earned starred reviews from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Kirkus. The Virginia Center for the Book selected YOUR MAMA as Virginia’s Great Read for 2021 highlighted by the Library of Congress’ Center for the Book at the National Book Festival.

YOUR MAMA won a Nerdy Book Club Award, was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize, a School Library Journal Best Picture Book of 2021, a Kirkus Best Picture Book of the 2021, a Bank Street Books Best Book of 2021, a 2022 ALA Rise Feminist Book Selection, and a National Council of English Books Notable Poetry Book. Their latest picture book, BEAUTY WOKE, earned starred reviews from Booklist and Kirkus, was a Kirkus Best Book of 2022, a Chicago Public Library and New York Public Library Best Book of 2022, and a Bank Street Books Best Book of 2023. In 2024, NoNieqa will be releasing a dystopian YA novel with Lerner Books (unannounced), a short story retelling of "The Raven" in a SFF YA anthology with Inkyard Press (RELIT: 16 LATINX REMIXES OF CLASSIC STORIES), a short story in an MG anthology with Penguin (unannounced), and their first picture book bio, THE TRES HERMANAS: A SISTERHOOD of the COMMON GOOD. NoNieqa lives with their soulmate, Michael, superhero to children and educators, champion of equity and diversity, superintendent-extraordinaire, and their two beloved beasties in a plantopia of books, Legos, music, and art.

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SO IT GOES

SPRING 2023

ALUMNI NEWS Jared Randall ('09) has begun blogging on Wordpress and Medium and sharing poetry readings and other thoughts about the world and the collective future on YouTube. His serial novel, The Forsworn, is still under construction and nearing a first-draft completion on Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/story/318921623-the-forsworn-of-cirque). Also look out for a new serial novel beginning soon on Kindle Vella, The Culling of Cirque. Follow his work [here] and [here] and [here]

DIONNE IRVING BREMYER

Dr. Michael Richards ('02) has been superintendent of Harrisonburg City Schools for the past four years. He resides in Virginia with his soulmate NoNieqa and his two beloved beasties, Jandi and Langston.

Stuart Ross' ('03) recent work has appeared in Oyez Review. He writes a column on new books at Eclectica Magazine, where he is Reviews Editor.

This year, Sarah Roth's ('15) writing appeared in mercury firs, Gastropoda, Foglifter, and Synapsis. As an editor at Tendon, Johns Hopkins University's medical humanities journal, she helped usher in the fifth issue, "Sanctuary." Roth is excited to be heading to a writing residency at Hypatia-in-the-Woods in August. She's currently ABD at JHU and is hoping to finish her Ph.D. sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Sami Schalk's ('00) second academic book Black Disability Politics came out from Duke UP in October 2022 and is available open access here.

Jacob Schepers ('19) and Sara Judy ('20) have launched ballast, their new online poetry journal. With two issues out this year and two more already in the works, ballast has had the privilege of publishing a handful of fellow ND MFAs among the contributors. Follow on Twitter (@ballastjournal) and Instagram (@ballastpoetryjournal).

Lindsay Starck ('10) had new pieces recently accepted in lit journals: "Emile Benveniste" is forthcoming from Epiphany; "Fata Morgana" is forthcoming from Salamander; and "History of the Handshake" is forthcoming from Fourth Genre. Her novel Monsters We Have Made is forthcoming from Vintage/Anchor Books in 2024.

Joseph Earl Thomas' ('19) debut book is Sink: A Memoir (Grand Central Publishing, 2023).

Desmond Francis Xavier Kon Zhicheng-Mingdé (’09) and his co-editor Eric Tinsay Valles won gold for Digital Media at the 2023 Illumination Christian Book Awards. This was for The Jesuit: Finding God in All Things, a commemorative e-anthology to mark the Quadricentennial Canonization of St. Francis Xavier and St. Ignatius of Loyola. Following their win last year in the same category for A Given Grace: An Anthology of Christian Poems, this makes it a world’s first for any author to clinch the top prize twice in consecutive years. This received media coverage in the Union of Catholic Asian News, LiCAS News, and World Catholic Association for Communication (Asia). Fresh from the lifting of COVID-19 travel restrictions, Desmond was invited to the Canberra Poetry on the Move Festival as an International Featured Poet. Other reading and hosting engagements included the Singapore Writers Festival, Poetry Festival Singapore, Unity Young Writers Festival, Singapore Literature Prize Awards Ceremony, SingHealth NUS-NTU Medical Humanities Seminar, and Ministry of Education Literature Seminar. He has a recent interview on the Australian podcast Death and Donuts by Seb James, with new poems appearing in Ekstasis, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Not Only Lines: NUS Centre of the Arts 30th Anniversary Anthology, and People of Asia Journeying with Jesus: Reflections on the Synod on Synodality. Desmond has been named one of the judges for the Dr Alan HJ Chan Spirit of Singapore Book Prize, Singapore’s richest book award, as reported in The Straits Times.

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

SO IT GOES

SPRING 2023

COMING ATTRACTIONS: CWP READING SERIES 2023-2024

LUIVETTE RESTO

FRED ARROYO

MOLLY LYNCH

VICKIE VERTIZ

SOFIA SAMATAR

JONATHAN ESCOFFERY

VICTORIA MARÍA CASTELLS

ADA LIMÓN

CARMEN GIMÉNEZ SMITH

HEIDI ANDREA RESTREPO RHODES

CRISTINA RIVERA GARZA

LANCE CARROLL