Alumni Information

Carson Colenbaugh (’25) published “Love Song Set to a Tune of Gathering” in the Atlantic, “Approaching Pine Mountain” and “A Ball Game” in Appalachian Places, and “Love Song Scrawled at Shaking Rock” in Shore Poetry. 

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

Selected Highlights

Alissa M. Barr‘s (’25) poeTRY

Alissa M. Barr‘s poem “Ambulance Ride-Along Through a Maternity Care Desert” appeared in Frozen Sea. Her poems “Yield Strength” and “The Possible Music of Doubt” were in West Branch. Fellowship. Her work has also appeared in Poet Lore, Muzzle Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe and Sewanee Writers’ Conference Tennessee Williams scholarships.​ Alissa was shortlisted for a Fine Arts Work Center.

Nathan Blum (’25) FICTION

Nathan Blum‘s short story “Outcomes” was published in the New Yorker in October 2025. His story “Here Now” was published in Ploughshares in 2025, and “Water Tower” appeared in the New England Review. He was nominated for the PEN/Robert J. Dau Award, named a finalist for the Tickner Fellowship, and awarded a Staff Scholarship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

EDGAR KUNZ ’15 (POETRY)

Edgar Kunz is the author of two books: Fixer and Tap Out, both published by HarperCollins. He has been an NEA Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Casa Ecco Fellow, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Recent poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Oxford American, and American Poetry Review. He splits his time between Baltimore and Richmond, where he teaches in the MFA program at VCU. He is working on a book about growing up in a medieval anachronist society.

anders carlson-wee ’15 (POETRY)

Anders Carlson-Wee is the author of Disease of Kings, published by W.W. Norton (2025). He penned The Low Passions (W.W. Norton, 2019), which was 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, Washington Post, Harvard Review, BuzzFeed, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Virginia Quarterly Review, Sun, Southern Review, and many others. 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)

Destiny O. Birdsong is a Louisiana-born poet, fiction writer, and essayist. She published Negotiations at Tin House in 2020. She has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Callaloo, Jack Jones Literary Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, and won the Academy of American Poets Prize, Naugatuck River Review’s Narrative Poetry Contest, and Meridian’s “Borders” Contest in Poetry. She earned both her MFA and PhD from Vanderbilt University and lives and works in Nashville, Tennessee.

Cara Dees ’14 (Poetry)

Cara Dees‘ debut poetry collection Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland (Barrow Street) was selected for the 2018 Barrow Street Book Prize by Ada Limón, who describes the book: “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 received a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Cincinnati and is an assistant professor of English at Belmont University.

Tiana Clark ’17 (Poetry)

Tiana Clark was named a finalist for both the National Book Award and the New England Book Award for her 2025 poetry collection Scorched Earth (Simon & Schuster). 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), winner of the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize, and Equilibrium (Bull City Press). Tiana’s work has appeared in the New Yorker, Atlantic, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review, among others.

rita bullwinkel ’16 (Fiction)

Rita Bullwinkel is the author of Headshot (Penguins Books), which was longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize and has been featured inNew York Times, Vulture, Atlantic, Guardian, andNPR. The New York Times named it one of “The Best Books of 2024,” while the Atlantic called it “brilliant.” President Obama included it on his 2024 Summer Reading List. Rita’s debut novel Belly Up (Strange Object) 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, deputy editor of The Believer, 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), which NPR called a “novel best read slowly, so one can savor the resonance and originality Han wrings from the quotidian.” 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 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 is a professor of the practice in English at Tufts University.

claire jiménez ’14 (Fiction)

Matthew Baker ’12 (Fiction)

Matthew Baker‘s third book of fiction, Why Visit America (Henry Holt & Co), which the New York Times called “satirical and comedic… The premises of the stories in Why Visit America are increasingly inventive and clever, often featuring some sort of reversal to our current social order, offering up allegorical commentary on who we are as Americans.” He has also published a graphic novel The Sentence (Dzanc Books) and the collection Hybrid Creatures (LSU Press). Founding editor of the Nashville Review, Matt has sold stories to Amazon, Netflix, and FX. Variety has called him one of “ten storytellers to watch.”

A Selection of 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 (Strange Object, 2016)

Anders-Carlson Wee (’15)

• Disease of Kings (W. W. Norton & Co., 2023)
• The Low Passions (W. W. Norton & Co., 2019)
• Dynamite (Bull City Press, 2015)

Bryn Chancellor (’09)

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

Tiana Clark (’17)

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

Lee Connell (’14)

• The Party Upstairs (Penguin Press)

Melissa Cundieff (’12)

• Darling Nova (Autumn House Press)
• Futures with Your Ghost (Finishing Line Press, 2014)

Cara Dees (’13)

• Exorcism Lessons in the Heartland (Barrow Street Press)

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)
• Commemoration (Finishing Line Press, 2012)

Carlina Duan (’20)

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

Alina Grabowski (’19)

• Women and Children First (SJP Lit)

Zachary Greenberg (’11)

• Scarlight (Ravenna Press, 2014)

Simon Han (’15)

• Nights When Nothing Happened (Riverhead Books, 2021)

Claire Jiménez (’13)

• What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez (Grand Central, 2024)
• Staten Island Stories (Johns Hopkins Press, 2019)

Kendra DeColo Korine (’11)

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

Edgar Kunz (’14)

• Fixer (Ecco Press)
• Tap Out (Ecco Press)

Susanna Kwan (’11)

• Awake in the Floating City (Pantheon Books)

Max McDonough (’17)

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

Kelsey Norris (’17)

• House Gone Quiet (Scribner)

Kiyoko Reidy (’22)

• Black Holes and Their Feeding Habits (Terrapin Books)

Michael Sarnowski (’09)

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

Sophia Stid (’19)

• But For I Am a Woman (Host Publications)

MFA Alumni

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