Updates from BA Alumni

Undergraduate Program Menu

Got something to post? We'd love to hear from you! Please send your news to Eric Goodman.

Dana Masden

2005

"I’m in the MFA program at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins. Here, people drive terribly, drink fresher beer and spend their lives in pursuit of a wide array of outdoor sports. (How often have I heard, ‘what do you mean you don't own a bike?’) So far, I’ve been white water rafting, climbed a 14,000 foot mountain and camped in the Rockies. School starts in a week or so."

Amy Smethurst

2004

During Amy's undergraduate years, she worked as an assistant editor at F & W Publication's "Watercolor Magic." Realizing a nine to five editing job was not in her future, she joined Peace Corps immediately after graduation and was sent overseas. She now lives in Zhytomyr, Ukraine and can be found covered in chalk, teaching English at local Gymnasium #3. Since living in Ukraine, she has witnessed the Orange Revolution, started learning two languages, has become an avid rock climber, and has had adventures in daily living that enrich her life and her writing.

Jeremy Hauck

2003

I'm a general assignment reporter/editor at The Logan Daily News, Logan, OH (45 miles southeast of Columbus). Circulation about 7,000, so it's a very small paper. Having recently been accepted to the Caledonian School in Prague, I'm planning to teach ESL to Czechs this fall with another Miami alum.

Contact: jeremyhauck@hotmail.com.

Laura Portalupi

2002

After graduating from Miami, Laura taught English in Ghana and France and worked as an editorial assistant at an educational publishing service. Currently she is an M.F.A. candidate in poetry at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where she also works for the Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP).

Josh Greenberg

2002

Josh traveled to New Zealand on a Fulbright Fellowship in Creative Writing, did as much trout fishing as possible, trekked and wrote. He received an M.F.A. from Victoria University of Wellington, NZ. His first novel, A Man Who Eats The Heart, was published by Victoria University Press, Wellington, NZ. He is working on a second tentatively titled My Redemption. He's married, lives in northern Michigan and works as a fishing guide.

Griffin House

2002

Griffin House graduated in 2002 and is now based in Nashville. Since he left Miami, Griffin has devoted himself full-time to his music. His albums include Uplands and Lost and Found, which came out in the US and Canada in 2004, and which will appear in the UK in May 2005. His music has been featured on the WB’s Everwood. In the last year he has been on tour and has played over 200 shows.

Much more info can be found at http://www.griffinhousemusic.com

Jill Finnessy

2001

Jill Finnessy graduated in 2001 with a double major in Creative Writing and Mass Communications. She enrolled in a Masters program in Education, and took off for Poland where she taught English for two years. She returned to the States with her M.Ed. and has since obtained an Ohio license to teach high school English. She’s just finished her student teaching and will teach sophomores and seniors beginning in fall 2005 at Milford High School in Cincinnati. She still thinks every day about her writing.

Julie Hucke

2001

Julie Hucke graduated in 2001 and went to work at an elementary school assisting in a classroom for handicapped preschoolers. The following year, she was transferred to work with a handicapped eight-year-old boy who she taught to read. She now works as a proofreader for a Cincinnati marketing firm. She married a deputy sheriff in June of '04; they live in the Cincinnati suburbs with three rowdy dogs. She is looking for an agent for her first novel.

Robert Mentzer

2001

Robert Mentzer graduated in 2001 and has not set foot inside a schoolhouse since. He spent a year in the AmeriCorps VISTA program working for an adult literacy agency in Columbus, Ohio, and continued to work for that agency for a couple of years as a program coordinator. His stories and a poem have been published in Berkeley Fiction Review, Black Warrior Review, Post Road Magazine, Rhino and Sycamore Review. He has also contributed music writing to the weekly Columbus Alive pretty steadily for over two years, covering hip-hop and electronic music. Since moving to Chicago last fall, he’s published two longish pieces of music criticism in the Chicago Reader, as well as a book review for Stop Smiling Magazine's web site He is at all times impeccably dressed in tailored suits, Italian sunglasses and white dress shoes, and finds it hard to leave the house without being mobbed by paparazzi and rabid autograph-seekers.

Hugh Sheehy

2001

Hugh Sheehy graduated from Miami in 2001. He’s currently working toward an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. His stories are forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review, The New Orleans Review, and 14 Hills. He’s won a departmental award for his fiction at Alabama, and one of his stories was awarded Honorable Mention in the Atlantic Monthly's national Fiction contest in April 2005. Since he left Miami he’s read a lot of books, written a lot of short stories, traveled in Central America, taught Freshman English, worked on a surf rescue unit on Cape Hatteras National Seashore, and eaten as much sushi as possible.

Annie Kafoure

2001

Annie Kafoure graduated from Miami in December 2001 and moved to Oxford, England in 2002 to study English at Oriel College, Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She completed the B.A. in English Language and Literature in June 2004 and remained at Oxford University to undertake graduate study in early modern English literature with a research interest in Elizabethan and Jacobean Catholic writing. She was married to a fellow Oxford postgrad, Jolyon Parish, in April 2005. In June 2005, after she completes her M.St. degree, she and her husband will move to Portsmouth, England, where she will begin teaching English at Portsmouth Grammar School in September.

Elizabeth Kiser Polen I

1999

Elizabeth Kiser Polen I graduated in 1999. From 1999 to 2005 she worked at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University as a technical editor on the Flora of North America project, a 30-volume work, which coordinates the research and efforts of botanists worldwide to provide a comprehensive account of all plant species in North America north of Mexico. She edited manuscripts and prepared them for publication, as well as serving as editor of the project's biannual newsletter. Currently she does freelance editing for Fat Plum, a Pittsburgh-based group that offers professional editing and consulting services to writers. She has participated in several writing workshops through the group. Last summer she attended the Columbus Writer's Conference, and has been part of a local writer's group for about four years. She’s working on a children’s novel. She’s married and is the mother of two children.

Scott Hess

1989

Scott Hess has been the manager of a frozen yogurt store in Detroit, and after moving to Chicago, at technical manual proofreader, a consulting firm marketer, and a global mousepad marketer. Finally, after years of such character-building sidesteps, Scott found his way to a mildly glamorous job at RollingStone.com at the height of the Internet boom. He served there for three years as the V.P./Content. As the dot-com bubble grew wobbly, Scott launched his own boutique marketing consultancy, dedicated to helping clients communicate and sell more effectively. Devoid of stress, Scott attended countless Cubs games, stopped smoking, gave up meat, and procreated. After three years of this paralyzing freedom and happiness, Scott jumped onboard Teenage Research Unlimited (TRU), the preeminent market research firm focused on American teenagers, where he remains today. His recent clients include MTV, Harley-Davidson, Nike, and the writers of General Hospital, All My Children, and One Life to Live.

Scott has been married to fellow Miami alum Eileen (Nisky) Hess since 1992, during which time they've rescued two large Airedale Terriers and created and nurtured two human babies (Charles John and Michael Lee). He writes an almost-daily blog at http://blindcamel.blogspot.com.

Kathryn Jung

1998

Kathryn Jung graduated in 1998. She attended NYU's Summer Publishing Institute and began working as a Subsidiary Rights Assistant at St. Martin's Press in New York. Looking for a more fast-paced challenge, she moved to Lowe Lintas and Partners, an advertising agency, as an account manager for a division of General Motors. She became more and more interested in the ways in which technology was shaping the way people worked. After leading a project where she and her team built an extranet for their client, she attended the London School of Economics where she received an MSc in New Media, Information and Society in 2002. She now works in New York for a division of Monster.com as an Interactive Project , organizing and overseeing web development.

Amy Ratto

1998

Amy Ratto graduated in 1998. After meandering around in various publishing and writing jobs, she came to the University of Montana where she got an M.F.A. in poetry and an M.A. in Literature. She currently teaches English at the University of Montana and does freelance work for Barnes and Noble, Poet's Market, Writer's Digest and others. Her poems are slowly starting to appear in literary journals, and her chapbook "Bread and Water Body" won the University Prize at Montana in 2004. She’s married and has one daughter who is 2 1/2 and another child due at the end of May.

Erica Bernheim

1997

Erica Bernheim got her B.A. in English/Creative Writing in 1997. She went on to do an Independent study of "Time, History, and Tradition in Italian and British Women Writers" at Selwyn College, in Cambridge. In 1999 she obtained an M.F.A from Iowa Writers' Workshop (where she was also a Teaching Writing Fellow).

Bernheim's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in: Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, Volt, the Canary, Court Green, Bridge, Backwards City Review and others, and she writes poetry reviews for Bridge.

Bernheim has received two Pushcart nominations; taught poetry workshops at Lost State Writers' Conference; and has done extensive freelance work. She is currently finishing work on a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago where she also teaches literature, poetry and writing.

Rich Housh

1997

Rich Housh graduated in 1997 with a B.A. in Creative Writing and a minor in Film Studies. He thinks it is very silly to refer to himself in the third person, so I won't. I lived and worked in Columbus, Ohio at the public library until 2002. I then moved to Bristol, England where I received my M.A. in Film Studies and European Cinema at the University of the West of England. I am starting the Ph.D. in Film Studies program at the University of Kansas this coming Fall (2005). I have kept the same house plant alive for upwards of five years.

Rajiv Joseph

1996

Rajiv Joseph graduated in 1996. He was in the Peace Corps in Senegal from 1997-2000. Upon returning to the States, he settled in New York, and in 2004 received his MFA in Playwriting from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. His play Huck & Holden was produced Off-Broadway at the Cherry Lane Theatre in Spring of 2005. He lives in NYC and teaches expository writing at NYU. He’s a 2005 Dramatists Guild Fellow.

David Kajganich

1992

David Kajganich graduated in 1992. He attended the Iowa Writer's Workshop from which he received an MFA. He has held a fellowship from the University of Iowa and residencies in fiction from St. Albans in Washington, D.C. and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Iowa, St. Alban’s and Miami and has also worked as a writer for Prudential Investments and as Lead Instructor and Course Director for Outward Bound. He is currently a screenwriter with projects at Warner Brothers, Focus Features, Universal, and Paramount. His current project is a remake of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" which is in pre-production and is scheduled to be released in spring 2006.

m loncar

1993

m loncar, class of 1992, has sent in the following update:

MFA from the University of Michigan in 1995, then taught 4 years as a lecturer in the Department of English and Program in Film and Video Studies. Won Bakeless prize and published book of poems 66 galaxie (UPNE) in 1998. While in Michigan, also completed two short films "hey locked boy (12 min)" and "if they hang you (good morning angel) (42 min)" and was chief editor of the exhibition catalogue The Orchid Pavilion Gallery: Chinese Painting at the University of Michigan Museum of Art (University of Washington Press).

Have been living in Taiwan for the last 4 years, studying Chinese, traveling and filming around Asia, and teaching American literature, drama, and film at Aletheia University in Tamshui, Taipei, Taiwan. Have been busy working on new poetry manuscript viola (vs. the 36 chambers of shaolin), new film project the pleasures of the fish in the hao river, and writing, recording, and playing in the Taipei band the diamond vehicles. Website to come (hopefully) in near future.

Stephen Guinan

1991

Stephen Guinan graduated in 1991. After Miami, he taught English at Chaing Mai University in Chiang Mai, Thailand, then returned to Ohio to get an M.F.A. at Ohio State. His stories have appeared in The Heartlands Today, The Chiron Review, Oasis, Passages North, The South Carolina Review, and The Massachusetts Review. In January 2005 he was awarded an Individual Artists Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council for a novel-in-progress. He also got married, had children, and bought a house in the suburbs. He’s currently teaching high school English and coaching baseball at Columbus Torah Academy in Columbus, OH.

Eric Shively

1991

Eric Shively graduated in 1991, has taken graduate classes in Computer Science, and has worked as a technical writer, editor, and software tester. He started writing and recording songs in late 1999, and is about to release his fourth album on an indie label. In 2001 he began a second career as touring drummer, and recording engineer/producer. In June he will quit his courier job, fix up and sell his house and hopefully build a new small house where he can record more and work less. http://www.ericshively.com

Paul Schuytema

1990

Paul Schuytema graduated in 1990. He received his M.F.A. in Fiction from the University of North Carolina/Greensboro in 1992. He’s had five science fiction stories published and has been working as a freelance journalist (with a technology focus) with over 150 articles in print. He’s also written a dozen technology and game strategy books; his latest, "Game Programming with Lua" is due out in June. He’s worked and taught at Monmouth College, worked as a game producer (in both Chicago and Dallas), writing, producing and directing MechWarrior 3 and Prey), and is the founder and CEO of Magic Lantern Productions, a gaming company which has published 21 games, including the office Survivor game. He’s married and has two daughters.

Margaret Peterson Haddix

1986

Margaret Peterson Haddix graduated from Miami in 1986. For about five years, she worked in newspaper journalism, mostly as a reporter for the Indianapolis News. Then she had brief stints in various part-time jobs—freelance business writing, substitute teaching, teaching at the community college level—while writing and trying to get her fiction published. Her first novel, Running Out of Time, was published in 1995; her seventeenth, Among the Enemy, is due out in June 2005. She’s now writing full-time. All her books have been published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, and they range from early chapter books for ages 6-9, to young adult novels on a variety of topics.

Dan Prazer

Dan Prazer writes:

“I was accepted into the Art Institute of Chicago and Columbia College Chicago's fiction writing departments, and I'll be moving up to begin at Columbia in the fall. It looks exciting, if only for the city. In the meantime, the intrepid journalism goes onto the back burner.

“I’ve been covering the murder of an off-duty police officer for the past week, and went to a funeral for a 20-year-old soldier killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq today [for the Chillicothe Gazette]. While the adrenaline has been pumping as I run from lead to lead, it will be nice to have some time away from the rat race.”

Jill L. Carpenter

Jill L. Carpenter, former student, writes:

“I am on my second contract teaching TEFL in Seoul, South Korea. I am also learning to speak and read Korean. I do and sometimes sell artwork but the most exciting event in my current life is my upcoming book — The Long Gray Way Home. It should be available by January, 2006 though it seems like it has taken forever to finish it. This book is short stories. I am getting my $1 advance on my book framed.”