Updates from Alumni
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Got something to post? We’d love to hear from you! Please send your news to Eric Goodman.
Nora Bonner
Nora Bonner is working on her M.F.A. at Florida State University. Her story “Burying Jeremy Green” was published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading in 2010.
Ted Brengle
Ted Brengle is a playwright living in Chicago. Since his graduation in 2005, he has been a semi-finalist for the National Playwrights Conference and his play “Alone Together” has been produced in Cincinnati, Columbus, Ohio, and New York City. In 2010, his play “Absent Friends” was produced in Columbia, Missouri, and his plays “Alone Apart” and “Alone At Last” were selected for the Element New Plays Festival in Chicago. A full production of “Alone Apart” will take place in Fall 2011 at the Chicago Fringe Festival. Also, an independent short film based on his play “Of Apocalypse and Cappuccino” was made in 2006, so he (bafflingly) somehow has an IMDB entry.
Stacy Cartledge
Stacy Cartledge’s Writing the Space Between was published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2009.
Christopher Coake
Christopher Coake, who received his M.A. in Fiction from Miami, returned in spring 2005 as the creative writing judge and is now an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, was named the 2006 winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Fellowship for Writers.
Ashley Colley
Ashley Colley is completing her M.F.A. in poetry at the University of Iowa.
Meagan Edwards
Megan Edwards’ short story “The Jungle” was published in Mobius: The Journal of Social Change.
Eugene Gloria
Eugene Gloria (MA 1990) published his second book of poems, Hoodlum Birds (Penguin) in March, 2006. In April, he gave a reading co-sponsored by Kundiman and the Academy of American Poets, at Verlaine in New York City. Also in April, Hoodlum Birds was reviewed in “Poet’s Choice,” Robert Pinsky’s column in the Washington Post. Gloria has been named the 2006-2008 Richard W. Peck Chair in Creative Writing at DePauw University, where he is an associate professor of English.
Dorothy Maxwell Goepel
Dorothy, who received an M.A. in 2004, was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2009 for creative nonfiction work of exceptional merit. The work submitted is a collection of remembrances of her deceased mother and father, whom she remembers as a walking contrast in ethnicity and culture, as well as the place of her youth, a Mexican American neighborhood on the West Side of San Antonio, Texas. Since graduating from Miami, Dorothy has worked as a part-time instructor, most recently in the English Department at Northern Kentucky University, and since 2008 as a substitute Spanish teacher at Mount Notre Dame High School. A member of the Air Force Reserve, she served as acting superintendent of the 20th Fighter Wing Public Affairs Office, Shaw Air Force Base, Sumter, S.C., from Jan. 26 to March 27, 2009.
Ramon Jones
“It’s been a unique experience, living in the Land of Enchantment and the city of Clovis, which has a population of about 35,000. It reminds me of another state I’m familiar with—West Virginia—only without the mountains. The workload where I teach (Clovis Community College) is trying at times (five comp classes a semester) but I get to teach lit classes and I’ve started a creative writing group on campus called Ink Blots, so those things make life bearable, along with making a positive impact on a student’s life. In between, I work on my novel, which I hope to see in print sometime before I die. I miss Mother Miami—I had been associated with the university from the ages of fifteen to thirty—and all of the wonderful instructors and staff I met there, but you have to fly the coop sometime, right? People here often ask me why I came here and I tell them that sometimes you go where you’re needed.”
Sara Kaplan
Sara Kaplan is teaching English and Creative Writing at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. Her book Touring West of the Mississippi was published in 2010 by Finishing Line Press in Georgetown, Kentucky.
Jacqueline Kari
Jacqueline Kari has published translations in recent issues of the Cambridge Literary Review and Lana Turner. Her review of The Body, by Jenny Boully, appeared at Cow Heavy Books.
Justin Katko
Justin Katko is writing a dissertation on the poetry of Edward Dorn at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. His poetry has been appearing widely in journals and in the chapbooks Praxis Etudes (Grasp Press, 2009) and Finite Love (Critical Documents, 2010; see http://www.plantarchy.us/home.html). His essays on J. H. Prynne, Dorn, and others have been appearing in magazines including The Glossator.
Evan Kuhlman
“…my first novel, Wolf Boy, which I started while at Miami in Keith Banner’s fiction workshop, is out and available at the major booksellers like Borders and Barnes & Noble, and maybe some smaller ones. It’s something kind of different, a novel and graphic novel in one. If you get the chance to check it out I’d appreciate any feedback. I also have a website where you can read excerpts and see sample illustrations: http://wolfboynovel.com. If you have any questions, like about finding representation, etc., fire away!”
Matt Kunkelman
Matt Kunkleman published a collection of prose poems titled The Ledger of Weights and Measures (Road Stone Press) in 2010.
Michelle Lawrence
Michelle Lawrence’s short stories have been published in Blue Five Notebook, Fawlt Magazine, Stone’s Throw Magazine, and Identity Theory. She co-edited the anthology Under Our Skin: Literature of Breast Cancer.
Rachel Levy
Rachel Levy recently had a short story published in the online journal Smokelong Quarterly. She’s working on her MFA at University of Colorado, Boulder.
Jordan McMullin
“I am currently working toward an M.F.A. degree in fiction at the University of Maryland. I am forever grateful for my time at Miami University. I learned more in two years than I would have thought possible, and I entered the M.F.A. program with a strong sense of myself as a writer.
“Miami University draws talented, committed writers to its M.A. program, and its dedicated faculty inspires them to become ever more thoughtful producers and critics of literature. Being a writer at Miami means more than rigorous workshops and literature classes; it means participating in a real community of artists and learners.”
Bethany Pierce
While completing a master’s degree in Creative Writing at Miami University, Bethany Pierce published her first novel, Feeling for Bones; Publishers Weekly named the novel one of the Best Books of 2007. After teaching at the university for two years, Bethany relocated to Charlottesville, Virginia where she continues to write and paint as a member of The McGuffey Art Center. Her second novel, Amy Inspired, was published in September of 2010.
Brian Seidman
Brian Seidman, who received his M.A. in 2003, will have a short story published by Simon & Schuster in their Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Volume 10 anthology. The book will be available in bookstores nationwide during the summer of 2007. Since Miami, he reports, “I’ve been working as the managing editor of NewSouth Books, a civil-rights focused trade publisher in Montgomery, Alabama. I’ve been thankful that I haven’t had to dig my car out of the snow as much down south, though it does get awful hot in the summertime.”
Daniel Staniforth
Daniel Staniforth, an M.A. in literature who worked with several creative writing faculty, published a collection of his poems, Weaver in the Sluices, with Skylight Press in 2010. Dan is working at Naropa University.
Jen Stockdale
Jen Stockdale has published two chapbooks, Kid Fingers (Wheelchair Party) and Now Puppy Teeth (What to Us), and has published poems in The Other Room, Alice Blue, The Carolina Quarterly, Hot Metal Bridge, Salt Hill and elsewhere.
Brett Strickland
Brett Strickland published a review of Yusuf Komunyakaa's Warhorses in Jacket.