Faculty, Alumni, and Fellow News
We love hearing from our former fellows and students and encourage all of you to continue to update us on your activities and lives. News about your writing is, of course, welcome, but so is news about travel, marriages, babies, new houses, new dogs, new tattoos, and anything else that you want to celebrate or share. Send your news, including jpgs, to Jesse Lee or Judy.
Faculty News
Associate Professor Amy Quan Barry's second book Controvertibles was published by The University of Pittsburgh Press. Amy recently received UW's Romnes Award, which recognizes exceptional recently-tenured faculty members. Her travels to Antartica, Namibia, Mongolia and an outlet mall south of Milwaukee have influenced the story collection she's now working on. She will be on sabbatical for the 2008-09 academic year.
Professor Emerita Kelly Cherry will be Master Artist in Fiction at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in fall 2008 and the Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Writer-in-Residence at Hollins University for spring 2009. She recently was the Ferrol A. Sams Distinguished Chair in English at Mercer University.
Assistant Professor Amaud Jamaul Johnson's poetry collection Red Summer (Tupelo Press) was selected by Carl Phillips as the first recipient of the Dorsett Poetry Prize. In 2007 Amaud, his wife, English Department associate professor Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, their son Hayden and Hayden's three imaginary dogs all welcomed August Johnson to the family.
Professor Jesse Lee Kercheval's new short story collection, The Alice Stories, winner of the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize, is now out on the shelves. Her new poetry collection, Cinema Muto, selected by David Wojan as the 2008 winner of the Crab Orchard Poetry Series, will be out in February 2009. Jesse Lee also won first prize in the Center for Book Arts Chapbook competition. The Center designed and printed 100 hand-set limited edition copies of a chapbook of her poetry. Meanwhile, UW Press reissued her first novel, The Museum of Happiness. Jesse Lee's current passions include studying Spanish and playing the concertina. Check out Jesse Lee's website here.
UW's College of Letters & Science selected Associate Professor Judith Claire Mitchell's novel The Last Day of the War as its 2007 Common Book. The novel was sent to 600 first-year honor students who were then invited to a reception to eat pizza and discuss the book with Judy. Also in 2007 Judy was awarded a Vilas Associates Fellowship and a Creative Arts Award to provide support as she works on her second novel. And to make sure Jesse Lee's rat terrier Maya isn't lonely, Judy and husband Don Friedlich recently adpted a Westhighland white terrier they named Josie. Judy doesn't have a website, but guess who does?
Professor Lorrie Moore is finishing up a novel and working on a new collection of stories, some of which have appeared in The New Yorker. Her book reviews continue to appear in The New York Review of Books. A 2008 recipient of the Wisconsin Arts Institute's Emily Mead Baldwin Award, Lorrie was also recently inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Professor Ron Wallace welcomed new grandson Ernie who joined granddaughters Elsie and Ruby. For a Limited Time Only is his most recent book from the University of Pittsburgh Press. Other recent books are Long for this World: New and Selected Poems, also published by Pitt, and Now You See It, from Parallel Press. For Ron's website, click here.
Undergrad News
We hope more of our former Creative Writing Majors get in touch and share their news. We know you're out there. UW writers: email home!
Christopher Bakken, who is an Associate Professor of English at Allegheny College in Pennsylvania, is the author of two books of poems: Goat Funeral (awarded the Helen C. Smith prize by the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book of poetry in 2006) and After Greece (for which he won the 2001 T.S. Eliot Prize in Poetry).He is also co-translator of The Lions? Gate, a selected poems of the contemporary Greek poet, Titos Patrikios. His poems, essays and translations have been published in many magazines and newspapers, including The Paris Review, PN Review, Literary Imagination, Modern Poetry in Translation, and Parnassus: Poetry in Review.
Adam Fell, who holds an Iowa Writer's Workshop poetry MFA, writes to say that his poem "dichotomous key for selected families of adults" was published in Tin House. Adam explains that "a dichotomous key is what biologists use to figure out what species a certain animal or insect belongs to, though that's not really what the poem is about...."
Andrea Kurtz Lochen received her MFA from the University of Michigan. She also got married to Matt Lochen in summer 2008. Congratulations, Andrea, on both counts.
Caryl Pagel holds two MFAs, one in fiction from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and one in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Caryl's work has appeared in Elixir, DIAGRAM, and Octopus Magazine. She works for the Illinois Arts Council and reads for Another Chicago Magazine.
Patrick Somerville's first book, a story collection called Trouble, was released by Vintage Paperbacks. A new novel is forthcoming. Patrick's stories have appeared in a large number of lit mags including Epoch and the Beloit Fiction Review and in Best American Non-Required Reading 2007. Pat and another former undergrad writing major, Pete Coco, who now has an MFA in fiction from The Iowa Writers' Workshop, returned to Madison to talk to our students about applying for, surviving, and living life after receiving the MFA degree. While in town Pat also read at the Wisconsin Book Festival and at Borders Booksellers.
Danielle Trussoni whose memoir Falling Through the Earth about her relationship with her Vietman War vet father was named one of the New York Times' 10 Best Books of 2006, now writes to tell us her husband Nikolai Grozni’s book Turtle Feet: The Making and Unmaking of a Buddhist Monk is available and receiving wonderful reviews, including a full-page in the New York Times where it is called "a rollicking buddy narrative." Look for Danielle' work in the New York Times Magazine, the New York Times Book Review and many other venues.
Ben Warner is living in Marlyand, where he is a lecturer in creative writing at Towson State University.
Michelle Wildgen's first novel You're Not You was released by Thomas Dunne/St. Martins Press. Michelle recently left New York City and returned to Madison. She continues to work as an editor at Tin House.
Mark Wunderlich's second poetry collection Voluntary Servitude, published by Graywolf Press, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Mark also recently received an NEA fellowship. Mark is a member of the Literature Faculty at Bennington College in Vermont and last year joined the adjunct faculty of Columbia University's graduate writing program. "For the past two years," he writes, "my partner James and I have been restoring a 250 year old house near Catskill, New York."
MFA News
Hey, former MFAs: We are in the midst of compiling a university-required report on the first five years of the program. You will be receiving a questionnaire seeking information that we need to complete the report. Judy would be ever so grateful for your prompt response. And she would be very happy if you included some new news that she can add to this:
Erinn Batykefer's (P '07) collection Allegheny, Monongahela, was selected by Peggy Shumaker as this year's winner of the Benjamin Saltman Prize. Erinn promises to let us know when we can get our hands on the book. Erinn was also awarded Bucknell University's 2007-08 Stadler Fellowship. While at Madison, Erinn held the Renk Distinguished Graduate Fellowship in Poetry, was the recipient of an Associated Writing Programs Intro Journals Award for her poetry and received third prize in the 2006 International Tin House/SLS Kenya Nonfiction Contest. Erinn's poetry and essays appear in the journals Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Threepenny Review, Maisonneauve Magazine and others. Erinn took a number of creative nonfiction courses while a poetry student at Madison, so we are not surprised that in addition to everything else she is currently working on first collections of both creative nonfiction and poetry.
Dean Bakopoulos (F '04) is currently a Guggenheim Fellow and is teaching an advanced undergraduate class here in the creative writing program. Father of Lydia and Amos, Dean is finishing up his second novel. His first, Please Don't Come Back from the Moon, is being adapted for the screen.
When Stephanie Bedford (F '06) isn't running after tykes Ike and Oscar, she writes the occasional book review for the Capitol Times and works at a branch of the public library. A nonfiction piece by Steph appears in The Crab Orchard Review. She and Jesse Lee Kercheval have also taken to attending a slew of concerts together. Rock on, Steph. (note to self: find out if people still say "rock on.")
Lisa Marie Brodsky's (P '05) chapbook We Nod Our Dark Heads: Poems from the Alzheimer's Home was published by Parallel Press. She is the founder of the Inside Out Writing Workshops that foster healing through creative writing. For more information on these workshops
Nate Brown (F '08) spent June 2008 at Vermont Studio Center as the Studio's Pleasant Rowland Fellow and is currently living in Madison where he is teaching at Herzing College.
James Crews (P '07) is working at Humboldt State College and awaiting publication of his first chapbook from Parallel Press.
Marianne Erhardt (P '07) has left Madison for an editing position in North Carolina. Click here for an article about the important and truly inspiring work she and PhD/Creative Writing Minor Ray Hsu did in bringing poetry to Wisconsin's Oakhill Prison.
Samar Fitzgerald (F '08) is the recipient of the first Friends of Creative Writing Award. An outside judge awarded Samar the $8,000 prize for her story "A Perfect Rotation of the Earth." The story appears in The Southern Review. Samar will be leaving us to teach creative writing at Rice University, where her husband TJ has a two-year lectureship in the history department.
Laura Fletcher (F '04) spent two years teaching English as a second language in Japan and has been awarded a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship at a school for the arts in Vienna for fall 2008. She currently teaches ESL here in Madison.
Jacob Gamage (P '07) is another MFA grad who, we are happy to report, continues to live in Madison. He is currently working with the Dictionary of Regional English here in the English Department.
Kevin Gonzalez's (P '05) first poetry collection will be published in 2009 by Carnegie Mellon Press. After leaving us with an MFA in poetry in 2005, Kevin received an MFA in fiction from The Iowa Writers' Workshop and then returned as our 2007-2008 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellow. Kevin's work has appeared in Playboy and the Crab Orchard Review, where, in each case, he won first prize in the magazine's fiction contest. His story in the Best New American Voices 2007 anthology was nominated by our MFA program and the one coming out in BNAV 2009 was nominated by Iowa but written while he was an MFA in Madison, so we're claiming that one, too!
Emily Green (P '05) also holds two MFAs, the one in poetry from us and the one in fiction from Ole Miss.
Lauren Groff's (F '06) first novel The Monsters of Templeton, published by Voice, a new imprint of Hyperion, was that rare literary novel to be both critically celebrated and on the New York Times bestseller list. Hyperion will also be publishing Lauren's next two books, the first a story collection entitled Delicate Edible Birds and the second a new novel. The stories will come out at the same time as the paperback of Monsters. Lauren's short story L. Debard and Aliette was selected by Richard Bausch for inclusion in the 2007 Best New American Voices anthology and by Stephen King for Best American Short Stories 2007. Following her stint as an MFA in Madison, Lauren received the Axton Fiction Fellowship at the University of Louisville. Following that stint, Lauren returned to Florida where she lives with her husband Clay Kallman. And as if all this is not enough, Lauren and Clay have become the parents of a son, Beckett.
Brian Hall (F '06) recently accepted a tenure-track assistant professorship at Cayuga Community College in Ohio, where he teaches writing.
Christopher Kang (F '05) is the recipient of a second MFA, this one in poetry, from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has poems forthcoming in Gulf Coast and Columbia.
Nick Lantz (P '05) returned to Helen C. White Hall as a 2007-2008 Halls Poetry Fellow. Nick's wife Victoria Petterson is pursuing her PhD in UW's Theatre and Drama Department. Nick's poems appear in The Southern Review, the Mid-American Review and other literary magazines.
Luana Monteiro's (F '04) first book The Little Star of Bela Lua, a novella and short stories, was greeted with fanfare from Oprah Magazine, Entertainment Weekly and Publisher's Weekly, the latter writing that "Monteiro's lyrical debut, set in provincial Brazil, [is] imbued with miracle and magic." Luana still lives in Madison, we're happy to say.
Sarah Nelson (P '07) is back in Los Angeles pursuing a career in grantwriting for the nonprofit sector. She writes that she misses the changing seasons "just a little."
Anna Potter (P '05) was the 2007 James Merrill Artist-in-Residence, which gave her the use of the late poets' waterfront home in Stonington, Connecticut including its library and extensive jazz LP collection. Anna is now living in Madison. much to our pleasure.
Rita Mae Reese (P '05) is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in fiction, and the Discovery/The Nation's Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. Rita Mae's work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah, Mid-American Review, and River Styx, and appears in the Atlantic Monthly Press anthology, From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. Rita Mae and her partner Elizabeth are the proud parents of the beautiful Charlotte.
Heather Swan (P '07), a former Martha Meier Renk Poetry Fellow and the recipient of UW-Madison's August Derleth Prize, is still in Madison, where she is pursuing a PhD in the UW English Department's Comp-Rhet Program. Heather's chapbook The Edge of Damage is forthcoming from Parallel Press, and her poems have appeared in The Cream City Review, Iris, Mothering Magazine, Forward, The Wisconsin Poets' Calendar and The Comstock Review, among others. She is also the recipient of the Wisconsin Center for the Book's 2007 Bookmark Prize; her winning poem "Interstice" and her photograph will appear on 1,000 bookmarks distributed at Book Festivals and other literary events nationwide.
Heather Lee Schroeder (F '06) is working on a novel. Her story "Good Buffalo" appeared in Wisconsin People & Ideas (formerly the Wisconsin Academy Review) and was the second place prize winner in the annual Wisconsin Academy Review/Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops Short Story Contest. Heather Lee employs her writing, teaching and journalism skills in her current position at UW's School of Journalism, where she provides career and academic counseling to current and prospective students.
Emma Snyder (F '08) was selected by Kerry Eielson-Fanning and John Fanning as the recipient of the 2008 La Muse Writers & Artists Retreat residency. Emma will spend the month of June 2008 at La Muse in southern France working on her novel. After that, she will be living in Washington D.C.
Emma Straub (F '08) received the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing's first Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship (the HEAF). She also escaped part of the Endless Winter of 2008 (the coward!) by packing up partner Mike Fusco and traveling with the band Magnetic Fields. Emma and Mike will be married in October 2008. Mazel tov!
Poetry 2009 and Fiction 2010
Our newest class of poets, Laurel Bastian, Lisa Kundrat, Kristen Muir, Jessica Nordell, Hali Sofala, and Ryan Walsh, have finished their first year with us.
And welcome to our current fiction class, Angela Delarmente, Alyssa Knickerbocker, Stacey Mantooth, Vanessa Merina, Noreen McAuliffe, Barrett Swanson, and Jake Wolff.
PhD Creative Writing Minors
Mary Fiorenza is now the associate director of English 100 (Freshman Comp) here at UW-Madison. She joins us for the weekly Creative Writing lunches and is a great link between the Composition Studies and Creative Writing programs.
Ray Hsu accepted a postdoc at the University of British Columbia, which has the top creative writing program in the country. Ray will be doing interdisciplinary work developing urban community service initiatives, teaching courses on radio documentary writing, and contributing to collaborations between creative writers and molecular biologists.
Adam Koehler will begin his teaching career this fall at Manhattan College as Professor of English and Director of Composition. He is also Dad to Sebastian Koehler, who, despite the worry he caused in his early days, is now healhy and no doubt looking forward to finding out what its like to live on a coast.
Institute News
The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing had its 20th anniversary in 2006 and continues to celebrate by growing and changing, always for the better. In 2007-2008, our generous donor Carl Djerassi, who already funds a fiction fellowship in his name and a poetry fellowship in the name of his late wife Diane Middlebrook, made it possible for the Institute to offer a new fellowship in a new genre. The Carl Djerassi Distinguished Fellowship in Playwriting at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing will bring a mid-career playwright to Madison to write and to teach for one semester.
Another change: we've introduced the new Halls Emerging Artist Fellowship that will be awarded to a graduate from our own MFA program. The HEAF, as we call it, is in almost all respects identical to the other poetry and fiction fellowships we offer with just a few differences--no application fee, but a little more administrative work and an anonymous outside judge making the pick. Thanks to a generous gift by an anonymous donor, we were also able to award a new Friends of Creative Writing Prize, a gift of $8,000 to a graduate of our MFA program who has not published a creative book, that we hope will allow the recipient to devote some serious time to writing.
Another new development: David Wells, Executive Director of Edenfred, the Madison artists' residency, and the Institute have begun participating in a program that brings international writers at risk in their homelands to the United States, where the writers can work on their literary projects without fear, give public readings and be a part of a supportive literary community. Edenfred will furnish the housing and the Institute will provide an honorary fellowship, office space and that all-important community to the writer. Our first writer, arriving in fall 2008, will be Farkhondeh Hajizadeh, an Iranian writer and publisher.
A few years ago we introduced The Glass Bookcase Reading Series named for the glass cases (we're up to three) in the Creative Writing suite in Helen C. White Hall, where we display the latest fellows' books (as well as books by undergrads, MFAs, and faculty). The Glass Bookcase series provides a small honorarium to encourage fellows who have published a first book to give a reading in Madison. Funds are quite limited and are distributed on a first come-first served basis. Last year the fellows we welcomed back to Madison included Antoine Wilson and Ellen Litman. If you have a first book forthcoming and would like to read in the series, contact Jesse Lee.
Well, that's the institutional news. Here's what's going on with our fellows:
Halls Poetry Fellow Deborah Bernhardt is teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo.
Halls Poetry Fellow Eric Burger teaches in the University of Colorado at Boulder's Program for Writing and Rhetoric. He was Sewannee's 2007 Tennessee Williams Scholar
Halls Poetry Fellow Ashley Capps received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Shortly after graduating, she kept the Akron Poetry Prize in the Institute family when judge Gerald Stern selected Mistaking the Sea for Green Fields as the prize's eleventh annual winner. (Sharmila Voorakkara won the prize in its tenth year.) Ashley's book was published by the University of Akron Press.
Halls Poetry Fellow Anne Caston received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in the English Department at University of Alaska-Fairbanks, where she won the University's Excellence in Teaching Award and is currently directing the Creative Writing and Literary Arts' Graduate Studies Program. Anne's second collection of poems, the newly released Judah's Lion (Cider Press Review), was awarded the 2006 Cider Press Review prize. She is now working on Deep Dixie, a pseudo-memoir about growing up Southern.
Halls Fiction Fellow Charles D'Ambrosio's latest story collection The Dead Fish Museum was a New York Times Notable Book.
Djerassi Fiction Fellow Gabrielle Daniels is living in Madison and working on her ambitious historical novel.
Halls Poetry Fellow Kirk Lee Davis is living in Cambridge and working at an organization called SHARE at the UMASS Memorial Medical Complex in Worcester. He tells us, "I'm getting a crash course in the lives of hospital employees. I've lately been publishing a few things on the DIAGRAM website and working on contributions to the instructors' edition for the new writing textbook, Seeing & Writing 3."
Halls Poetry Fellow Blas Manuel De Luna's first collection of poems Bent to the Earth from Carnegie-Mellon University Press was nominated for the National Critics' Circle Prize.
Halls Fiction Fellow Anthony Doerr spent a year in Rome as an American Academy Fellow and wrote his latest, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia and the World's Largest Funeral, about his experience. (The funeral was Pope John Paul's; the twins and insomnia were Tony's.) Tony, Shauna and the twins, Henry and Owen, are now back in Idaho. Tony taught at the Taos Writers Conference (along with Jesse Lee) during the summer of 2007 and is currently teaching at Warren Wilson's MFA program.
Halls Poetry Fellow Rebecca Dunham's second poetry collection The Flight Collection will be published by Tupelo Press in 2009, following close on the heels of her first book and winner of the 2006 T.S. Eliot Prize, The Miniature Room (Truman State College Press). Rebecca is an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The story collection that Smith Fiction Fellow Danielle Evans worked on during her fellowship year was snapped up by Riverhead in a two book deal. The collection is Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self (due out in early 2009) and the second book, a novel, is tentatively titled The Empire Has No Clothes. Danielle was also nominated for two Pushcart Prizes this year and her story "Virgins" appeared in The Paris Review.
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Beth Ann Fennelly's family now consists of novelist husband Tom Franklin, daughter Claire and son Thomas Gerald Franklin III. Beth Ann teaches at the University of Mississippi.
Djerassi Fiction Fellow Matt Friedson's work appears in the annual prize anthology Best New American Voices and literary jounals such as Prairie Schooner, StoryQuarterly, New England Review and The Ontario Review. Matt lives in England with his wife, their twins and their youngest, Joe (aka Joseph Simon Burr Friedson). Matt works raising money for ethnic minority projects and organizations.
Max Garland continues to teach and write at UW-Eau Claire.
McCreight Fiction Fellow Miriam Gershow tells us her first novel, The Local News, will be published in early 2009 by Spiegal and Grau, a Random House imprint. She writes, "This is one of those times that I can't help but feel blessed for the friends and colleagues and peers and family and teachers who supported me for so many year in this venture, long before I got any good at it, and even after I got better, long before I had anything to show for it. For that, thank you thank you thank you, all." Miriam was also nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize, received an Oregon Literary Fellowship and saw her story, "A Step Ahead" named a distinguished story of 2007 in that year's Best American Short Stories.
Halls poetry Fellow Lise Goett has been teaching at the University of New Mexico in Taos.
Djerassi Fiction Fellow Tamara Avila Guirado's story "Above Asmara" was chosen by Scott Turow as the winner of the 2006 Robie McCauley Fiction Award. The story appears in StoryQuarterly 42.
Djerassi Fiction Fellow Justin Haynes is getting his PhD at Vanderbilt University.
Halls Poetry Fellow Rick Hilles's collection Brother Salvage won the Agnes Lynch Starrett poetry prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Rick is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. (See also: Reisman, Nancy.)
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Cynthia Marie Hoffman and husband David Studner are living in Madison. Cynthia's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in New Delta Review, Nimrod, GW Review, Pebble Lake Review, and the anthology Best New Poets 2005. She also won a prize in the Poetry Society of Virginia's annual contest. She is presently a member of the Lake Effect Poetry Group, which also includes Jesse Lee and new fellow Nick Lantz.
McCreight Fiction Fellow Frances Hwang received Colgate's Olive B. O'Connor fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Prize. Her book of stories Transparency was published by Back Bay Books.
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Jennifer Key won the Jessie Bryce Niles chapbook contest sponsored by The Comstock Review.
The Age of Orphans, Djerassi Fiction Fellow Laleh Khadivi's first novel in her planned trilogy on the Kurds, will be published by Houghton Miflin as part of a two-book deal. Laleh writes to Jesse Lee, "I wrote the majority of it (during my fellowship) year in Madison. I am so grateful to you and the program and all involved for the time and space to write this book. Who knew that the winter was such a creative watershed?" Laleh was the 2007-2008 Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction at Emory College.
Halls Poetry Fellow Karen Kovacik's new book of poems, Metropolis Burning, is out from Cleveland State University Press. Karen was a recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed her to spend a year in Warsaw.
Halls Fiction Fellow Rebecca Lee's novel,The City is a Rising Tide, was published by Simon & Shuster. The Christian Science Monitor calls it a "slender gem of a novel."
McCreight Fiction Fellow Ellen Litman's first book, The Last Chicken in America, a novel in stories, was released by W. W. Norton. Ellen read in Madison during the Wisconsin Book Festival and led a craft panel of UW-Madison fiction writers. She teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.
Halls Fiction Fellow Allyson Goldin Loomis and Halls Poetry Fellow Jon Loomis, the justifiably proud parents of Henry Loomis, are expecting another child. Allyson and Jon both teach at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. Jon's new book and first novel, High Season, is a mystery garnering high praise ("an auspicious fiction debut...full of entertaining twists and sly observations" says Publishers Weekly).
Djerassi Fiction Fellow John McNally's third novel America's Report Card is out in paperback and he's finished a new novel and story collection. His latest edited anthology is When I Was a Loser: True Stories of (Barely) Surviving High School. John's story "Creature Features" was named a Distinguished Story of 2007 in Best American Short Stories 2007. John has a great website well worth checking out.
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Erika Meitner's marriage to Steve Trost was featured in the New York Times' Vows section, complete with a quote from Rita Dove. Erika's new work appears in Crab Orchard, Kenyon Review, Mid-American Review, 32 Poems, and Tampa Review and, she writes "a few of my old ones are in the anthology Never Before: Poems About First Experiences from Four Way Books." Erika recently joined the creative writing faculty of Virginia Tech.
Halls Poetry Fellow Lydia Melvin published her first poetry collection, South of Here (New Issues Press).
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Sarah Messer is an associate professor at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
Hall Poetry Fellow, Derek Mong, and new wife Annie Fischer, have moved to Louisville, Kentucky. However, don't expect to find them at home during summer '08: a teaching fellowship is taking Annie to Moscow and Derek will be doing some teaching in Ohio.
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Aimee Nezhukumatathil's second collection of poetry, At the Drive-In Volcano, was published by Tupelo Press in spring of '07. Aimee is now an associate professor at SUNY Fredonia where she teaches creative writing and environmental literature. She was the first member of her English Department to be named the Hagan Scholar, an award given to a junior faculty member for distinguished scholarship. In 2006, she received the SUNY-wide Chancellor's Award for Scholarship and Creative Activities. Aimee lives with her husband, Dustin, son, Pascal, and geriatric dachshund Villanelle.
Halls Fiction Fellow Ann Packer's bestselling novel The Dive From Clausen's Pier was made into a movie starring Michelle Trachtenberg for the Lifetime network. Ann visited Madison in fall 2007 as part of her book tour for her latest novel, Songs Without Words.
As of fall 2008, McCreight Fiction Fellow Imad Rahman, author of the story collection I Dream of Microwaves, will be teaching and directing the creative writing program at Cleveland State.
Middlebrook Poetry Fellow Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy is an assistant professor at the University of Chicago. His first book of poems Facts for Visitors was published by the University of California Press last year. He's been back to Madison for readings a number of times.
Halls Fiction Fellow Nancy Reisman's novel The First Desire received the Goldberg Award in Fiction from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture and was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Award in fiction. Nancy is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt and is married to former Halls Poetry Fellow Rick Hilles, both of whom recently read in Madison as part of the Glass Bookcase series.
Fiction Fellow Holiday Reinhorn and husband Rainn Wilson are the parents of Walter Wilson, who paid his first visit to Madison during Holiday's tour in support of her book of stories Big Cats ( Free Press). Publisher's Weekly says of Big Cats,"These tight and uncontrived stories bring authentic characters to vivid life."
McCreight Fiction Fellow Brandi Reisenweber finished her stint as the wrter-in-residence at the Kerouac Project of Orlando, where she got to live and write for three months in the Florida home Kerouac shared with his mother after writing On the Road. Brandi is now teaching at Illinois-Wesleyan University. She also edits Letterpress, an e-newsletter for fiction writers.
Halls Poetry Fellow Lisa Rhoades' book Strange Gravity won the Bright Hill Press Poetry Book Award.
Halls Fiction Fellow Stephen Schottenfeld and his wife, former UW PhD student, Susan Uselman, along with the young Henry Schottenfeld, will be leaving Memphis and heading to the University of Rochester where Stephen will be teaching. Stephen's story, "Artie Gottleib, Consulting Philosopher," was named a Distinguished Story of 2007 in Best American Short Stories 2007.
Halls Fiction Fellow Joseph Skibell is working on a book of stories with R. Gedaliah Fleer, a mystic from the Old City of Jerusalem. In addition, a theater/dance adaptation of his first novel, A Blessing on the Moon, is set to premier soon and a long section of his second novel, The English Disease, appeared in an anthology of second generation Holocaust literature co-edited by Lillian Kremer.
Halls Fiction Fellow Debra Spark's Curious Attractions: Essays on Fiction Writing was described by Booklist as, "a pleasure for readers and writers alike." Her work has also recently appeared in Ploughshares, The Ginkgo Tree Review and www.narrativemagazine.com.
Smith Fiction Fellow Adam Stumacher and his wife May are finally living together, in Boston, after spending their first year of marriage apart (Adam in Madison for his fellowship year and May in Kuwait with a fellowship of her own). Adam's short story, The Neon Desert, was selected by Richard Bausch for the 2007 Best New American Voices anthology.
McCreight Fiction Fellow Lysley Tenorio is an assistant professor in creative writing at St. Mary's College of California.
Smith Fiction Fellow Jacinda Townsend Gides is now at Southern Illinois University, where she teaches creative writing and watches her daughter Rhianna "grow up too fast."
Halls Poetry Fellow Kate Umans is teaching at her alma mater, the University of Michigan.
Halls Poetry Fellow Sharmila Voorakkara and her husband John Bullock are living in Athens, Ohio, where Sharmila is an assistant professor in the creative writing program at Ohio University.
Halls Poetry Fellow Katherine Whitcomb is an assistant professor of English at Central Washington University. Her work has recently appeared, and is forthcoming, in The Yale Review, Post Road, Alaska Quarterly Review, and the Parallel Press Anthology. Both Judy Mitchell and Amy Quan Barry got to spend some time with her recently (visiting writer gigs: a great way to see one's friends) and admired her wonderful new home and her most excellent cat, Manny Ramirez.
Smith Fiction Fellow Antoine Wilson read from his critically-acclaimed first novelThe Interloper (Handsel Press) in the 2007-08 Glass Bookcase Series. In other exciting Wilson news, he and Chrissy are the new parents of Leonide Leighton Wilson. Antoine writes that Leo said his first word at one week: Aa," which Antoine tells us "is a basaltic lava forming very rough jagged masses with a light frothy texture, common to Hawaii (and useful in Scrabble).