Alumni Information

Recent News

Alissa M. Barr’s (’25) poem, “Ambulance Ride-Along Through a Maternity Care Desert,” appeared in Frozen Sea. She has two poems forthcoming in West Branch. Alissa also made the Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship shortlist.

Nathan Blum’s (’25) short story “Outcomes” was published in The New Yorker in October 2025. His story “Here Now” was published in the Spring 2025 issue of Ploughshares and he has a story forthcoming in New England Review. He was recently nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Award, named a finalist for the Tickner Fellowship, and was awarded a Staff Scholarship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Carson Colenbaugh (’25) has poems forthcoming in The Atlantic, The Southern Review, and Terrain.org. 

Danny Perez’s (’23) Kenyon Review story, “Block Party,” was selected for the Pushcart Prize and appeared in the 2025 print anthology.

Michael Sarnowski’s (’09) book, A New Way of Seeing: Distance and Traumatic Memory in the Poetry of World War II was published by LSU Press in June 2025. Pick up your copy at a local bookstore or visit the Vanderbilt Bookstore today!

Alumni Stories

EDGAR KUNZ ’15 (POETRY)

Edgar Kunz is the author of two poetry collections: Fixer, published by Ecco in 2023 and named a New York Times Editors’ Choice book, and Tap Out, published by Ecco in 2019. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, APR, and Oxford American. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.

anders carlson-wee ’15 (POETRY)

Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of Disease of Kings, out now from W.W. Norton. He is also the author of The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), a New York Public Library Book Group Selection, and Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015), winner of the Frost Place Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Washington Post, Harvard Review, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, The Sun, The Southern Review, and many other publications. The recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Poets & Writers, the Camargo Foundation, Bread Loaf, Sewanee, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, he is the winner of the Poetry International Prize.

Destiny O. Birdsong ’09 (Poetry)

In October 2020, Destiny O. Birdsong released her first book of poetry, Negotiations (Tin House, 2020), a collection described as “a series of love letters to black women who are often singled out for abuse and assault, silencing and tokenism, fetishization and cultural appropriation in ways that throw the rock, then hide the hand.” An award-winning poet, fiction writer, and essayist, Destiny sold her first novel Dream Girls at auction to Grand Central Publishing.

Cara Dees ’14 (Poetry)

Cara Dees’ debut poetry collection, Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland (Barrow Street, 2019), was selected for the 2018 Barrow Street Book Prize by Ada Limón, who describes the book in this way: “Navigating a landscape of loss with language that is both lyrically charged and freshly brutal, Cara Dees has given us a first book that is unexpected and burning with life.”  Cara is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Cincinnati.

Tiana Clark ’17 (Poetry)

Tiana Clark was named a finalist for both the National Book Award and the New England Book Award for her latest poetry collection, Scorched Earth, which was published in March 2025. Winner of the 2020 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, she is also the author of I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016). Tiana, who has published poems in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review and elsewhere, continues creating poetry while teaching creative writing.

rita bullwinkel ’16 (Fiction)

Rita Bullwinkel is the author of Headshot (2024), which was longlisted for The Booker Prize 2024 and has been featured in The New York Times, Vulture, The Atlantic, The Guardian, NPR, and on National Public Radio. The New York Times notes it as one of ‘The Best Books of 2024,’ while The Atlantic calls it “brilliant.” Former U.S. President Barack Obama even included it on his 2024 Summer Reading List.

Her debut novel Belly Up (2016) garnered a 2022 Whiting Award. Bullwinkel’s writing has also been published in Tin House, the White Review, ZYZZYVA, Conjunctions, BOMB, Vice, NOON, and Guernica. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from MacDowell, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Hawthornden Castle and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Currently, Bullwinkel is an Editor at Large for McSweeney’s, the Deputy Editor of The Believer, a Contributing Editor for NOON, and the creator of Oral Florist. She is an Assistant Professor of English at University of San Francisco.

Simon Han ’15 (Fiction)

Simon Han was born in Tianjin, China and raised in various cities in Texas. He released Nights When Nothing Happened, (Riverhead, 2020) the first novel that navigates cultural collisions in the shadows of public violence and consists of “gripping storytelling immersed in the crosscurrents that have reshaped the American landscape, from a prodigious new literary talent.” He has received praise from The New York Times and TIME Magazine. His short stories and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, Virginia Quarterly Review, Guernica, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, and the Texas Observer. Simon is the recipient of awards from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the Tulsa Artist Fellowship, and Vanderbilt University. Simon lives in the Boston area, where he teaches fiction at Tufts University.

claire jiménez ’14 (Fiction)

Matthew Baker ’12 (Fiction)

Matthew Baker released his third book of fiction, Why Visit America (Henry Holt & Co., 2020), a collection of thirteen “brilliantly illuminating, incisive, and heartbreaking” narratives featuring a community that secedes from the U.S. Founding editor of the Nashville Review, Matt has sold several stories to media companies including Amazon Studios, Netflix, and FX and now lives and writes in New York City. 

Alumni Books

Chad Abushanab (’12)

• The Last Visit (Autumn House Press, 2019)

Matthew Baker (’11)

• Why Visit America (Henry Holt and Co., 2020)
• Hybrid Creatures (LSU Press, 2018)

Rebecca Bernard (’12)

• Our Sister Who Will Not Die (Mad Creek Books, 2022)

Destiny Birdsong (’09)

• Nobody’s Magic (Grand Central Publishing, 2022)
• Negotiations (Tin House Books, 2020)

Rita Bullwinkel (’16)

• Headshot (Penguin Random House, 2025)
• Belly Up (A Strange Object, 2016)

Anders-Carlson Wee (’15)

• Disease of Kings (W. W. Norton & Co., 2023)
• The Low Passions (W. W. Norton & Co., 2020)
• Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015)

Bryn Chancellor (’09)

• Sycamore (HarperCollins, 2017)
• When Are You Coming Home? (University of Nebraska Press, 2015)

Tiana Clark (’17)

• Scorched Earth (Washington Square Press, 2025)
• I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018)
• Equilibrium (Bull City Press, 2016)

Lee Connell (’14)

• The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press, 2020)

Melissa Cundieff (’12)

• Darling Nova (Autumn House Press, 2018)

Cara Dees (’13)

• Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland (Barrow Street Press, 2019)

Kendra DeColo Korine (’11)

• I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World (BOA Editions, 2021)
• My Dinner with Ron Jeremy (Third Man Books, 2016)
• Thieves in the Afterlife (Saturnalia Books, 2014)

Lisa Dordal (’11)

• Next Time You Come Home (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)
• Water Lessons (Black Lawrence Press, 2022)
• Mosaic of the Dark (Black Lawrence Press, 2018)

Carlina Duan (’20)

• Alien Miss (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021)
• I Wore My Blackest Hair (Little A, 2017)

Alina Grabowski (’19)

• Women and Children First (SJP Lit, 2024)

Simon Han (’15)

• Nights When Nothing Happened (Riverhead Books, 2020)

Claire Jiménez (’13)

• What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2023)
• Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019)

Christopher Ketcham (’21)

• This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism, and Corruption are Ruining the American West (Penguin Random House, 2019)

Edgar Kunz (’14)

• Fixer (Ecco Press, 2023)
• Tap Out (Ecco Press, 2019)

Max McDonough (’17)

• Python with a Dog Inside It (Black Lawrence Press, 2025)

Kelsey Norris (’17)

• House Gone Quiet (Scribner, 2023)

Kiyoko Reidy (’22)

• Black Holes and Their Feeding Habits (Terrapin Books, 2025)

Michael Sarnowski (’09)

• A New Way of Seeing: Distance and Traumatic Memory in the Poetry of World War II (LSU Press, 2025)

Sophia Stid (’19)

• But For I Am a Woman (Host Publications, 2022)

MFA Alumni

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