DEPARTMENT OF CREATIVE WRITING News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Melissa Crowe received the 2020 Nina Riggs Poetry Award Honorable Mention. Her poem "Little Deprivation in the Big North Woods" appeared in the July/August issue of Poetry Magazine. Her poem "Epithalamium with Inventory" appeared in the July issue of Thrush.

photo credit Amrinder Grewal. Sep 2020. Wilmington, NC

Sayantani Dasgupta has creative nonfiction essays forthcoming in:

• The Arkansas International (“The Church of Santa Maria Nuova.” A braided essay on medieval Italian art versus Indian art; Yashodhara, the wife of the Buddha; and visibility in Bangladesh.)

• Pangyrus (“Three Gazes of Attention.” A segmented essay on three kinds of attention in a university town.)

• Sweet Literary (“On a Sunday Afternoon in Italy.” A flash essay on food, homesickness, loneliness, and self-love in Italy.)

Also forthcoming, interviews of authors Sumana Roy and Sejal Shah conducted by Dasgupta for Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies.

David Gessner celebrated the launch of his latest book, Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness, with a virtual cocktail party, kicking off our Fall 2020 Virtual Event Series.

Several nice book reviews have been published, appearing in The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, and Datebook: San Francisco Chronicle.

Read an excerpt from the book in Outside here, and David’s op-ed in The Hill, here.

David Gessner has a new article in The American Scholar, “Taking Down Teddy,” and an op-ed in The Washington Post.

Publishing faculty member Anna Lena Phillips Bell’s poetry chapbook Smaller Songs released with St Brigid Press, and was celebrated with a musical reading in September. Read more about the letterpress production of Smaller Songs at uncw.edu/writers/news/phillips-bell-book-release-september-2020.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

MFA student Michael Colbert’s story “Mary Has Been Quitting Her Job” appears with Maudlin House. His story “Deadland,” about ghosts and paradise, appears with Columbia Journal.

MFA student Cassie Mannes Murray has been promoted to associate agent at Howland Literary. Read more about her journey in publishing at uncw.edu/writers/news/cassie-mannes-murray-literary-agent-december-2019.

MFA student Andy Keys Meyer’s poem “Sonnet for Spirits” is published in Issue 7 of The Shore. He joins MFA coordinator Melissa Crowe—her poems “America you’re breaking” and “I cry each time we say goodbye because I know I’m always sending you to war” also appear in Issue 7!

Her first published piece of nonfiction, MFA student Jessica Nirvana Ram’s essay “Bigger Than My Bones” appears with Memoir Mixtapes. Jess’ poem “Astral Ashes” is published with Glass: A Journal of Poetry; hear her read it at glass-poetry.com/journal/2020/august/ram-astral.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

MFA student Jamie Tews’ essay “To Build a Floor”—about home repair in Appalachia, eating disorders, and family—was published in the summer issue of the Chestnut Review.

MFA student Ryleigh Wann’s poem “Elegy with Spanish Moss” appears with Kissing Dynamite. Her poem “When I Say My Depression” appears with Emerge Literary Journal.

MFA student Tyler Anne Whichard’s piece “The God I Pray To” is featured with Hobart Pulp. Tyler Whichard is the Founding Editor, Fiction Editor, and Visual Arts Editor of Semicolon literary magazine.

This fall, Alexis Garrett (BFA ’17) begins studies in fiction writing in the MFA program at Portland State University.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Rebekkah Leigh LaBlue’s (BFA ’19) poem “What It Is and Where You Find It”—an ode to the north end sand flat of Wrightsville Beach, hurricane season, and marsh birds—appears with Black Warrior Review.

Fairley Lloyd (BFA ’20) has been hired as a technical writer at nCino, a Wilmington-based technology company that specializes in banking. Fairley joins numerous BFA and MFA alumni working as technical writers at nCino.

Bethany Nuckolls (BFA ’08) won third place in the Institute of Children's Literature Bedtime Picture Book Contest for her lyrical manuscript, Little Witches Must Go To Bed. Her short story “Hot Days Are For Listening” is published in the summer 2020 issue of Sixfold. Bethany Nuckolls teaches English as a Second Language at Central Piedmont Community College.

Lauren White (BFA ’20) has been hired as a technical writer at Orlando, Florida-based JHT Incorporated, which develops training programs for the Department of Defense.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Three alumni were finalists in the 2020 Hudson Prize from Black Lawrence Press:

• Fiction Finalist | “Artificial Blue” by Joe Worthen (MFA ’14)

• Poetry Finalist | “Exceeds Us” by Leah Poole Osowski (MFA ’14)

• Poetry Semi-Finalist | “The Midwestern Book of the Dead” by Regina DiPerna (MFA ’13)

Brent Canle’s (MFA ’18) flash fiction piece “The Librarian” is featured with Cease Cows. Brent is an English Instructor at Pamlico Community College.

Morgan Davis’s (MFA ’18) piece "A Visiting Poet" was shortlisted for The Master's Review 2020 Flash Fiction Contest, and her first published short story "To Keep the Ghosts Away" is forthcoming in the next issue of storySouth.

Alexa Doran (MFA ’15) won the 2020 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for her manuscript, DM Me, Mother Darling, for which she will receive $1000 and publication in 2021 with Bauhan Publishing. Alexa Doran is the author of the poetry chapbook, Nightsink, Faucet Me a Lullaby.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Adam Gnuse’s (MFA ’19) story, “Rivals,” about two miserable nemeses looking to get even, is published in Gulf Coast Journal (issue 33.1).

Dina Greenberg’s (MFA ’15) humor piece “Hi, This is Your Neighbor” appears with Scoundrel Time.

Summer D. Hammond’s (MFA ’19) short story “Blue Suitcase” appears with Sad Girls Club online literary magazine.

Madeline Hanley’s (MFA ’19) flash fiction piece “Ignatius and I” is featured with Cease Cows.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Shawna Kenney (MFA ’07) has a new little essay, “Pandemic Pie,” up on PEN America's Writers Who Cook series.

Keith Kopka’s (MFA ’11) poetry book Count Four—winner of the 2019 Tampa Review Prize—is now available in a pre-order special, in advance of the October 15 release. utampapress.org/product/a-special-pre-publication-offer

C.J. Pendergast's (MFA '18) essay, "Letters From An Artificial Island," is in the second issue of Ember Chasm Review. Read it here (p. 61). His prose poem, "It's All Contagious," was published by Oddball Magazine.

Aurora Shimshak’s (MFA ’18) essay "Woodswomen" appeared in the Winter/Spring 2020 issue of The Southampton Review, and her flash essay "Ice Cave, Late March" was published in The Common's Dispatches series in August. Look for her poetry forthcoming in New Ohio Review, The Pinch, and Salamander.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Becca Spiegel (MFA ’20) has contracted with Milkweed Editions for publication of her debut book—her thesis manuscript, Without Her.

Matt Stephenson (MFA ’20) will have a flash fiction piece called “The Sears-Roebuck Catalogue” featured in the October issue of The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. In addition, another fiction piece, “The Hollering,” was named a finalist in the inaugural Haunt Season Writing Competition. Awards will be presented to the winner and two finalists during Carnival of Darkness: The Haunted Pamlico Film Festival on Oct. 10 at Raised in a Barn Farm in Chocowinity, NC.

Caitlyn Rae Taylor’s (MFA ’18) short story “Lifespan of the Fathead Minnow,” published earlier this year, has been nominated by Pacifica Literary Review for Best of the Net.

Matt Thies (MFA ’20), outgoing managing editor and former designer of Chautauqua literary journal, was featured in this nice blog post: chautauquajournal.wixsite.com/website/post/saying-goodbye-and-best-wishes. Matt Thies is the vocalist of hard rock band Open Wire.

News & Accolades – 2020.Q3 (JUL, AUG, SEP)

Carson Vaughan’s (MFA ’14) debut book Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream was chosen as the 2020 Nebraska Book Award winner for Nonfiction Investigative Journalism.

Playwright Ethan Warren’s (’14) play Fast Young Beautiful: A Myth in Two Acts, which tells the story of the last year of James Dean's life, is now available in paperback. Ethan shares, “It's not like anything I've ever done before, taking storytelling cues primarily from The Great Gatsby and using expressionist movement and found text elements to try and paint a broader image of midcentury America.” See production photos from the play, here.

Emily Paige Wilson’s (MFA ’16) poems "Appropriate Poisons for a Nursery" and "Japanese Umbrella Pine" are forthcoming in Birdcoat Quarterly, and her poem "Christening" was a semifinalist in the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Contest. Emily has a personal essay [edited by Lauren Krouse (MFA ’18)] in Women’s Health magazine, sharing how health anxiety inspired her latest chapbook. Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods is now available.

Philip Gerard is a feature writer for Our State magazine, covering a new installment of the Decades Series each month with an article about the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s. See more at ourstate.com/topics/arts-culture/history/decades-series.