MFA Students

FIRST YEAR

Josie Abugov, Fiction

Nain Christopherson, Poetry

Virginia Kane, Poetry

Virginia Kane is a poet from Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Prairie Schooner, Them, Muzzle Magazine, The Baltimore Review, Poet Lore, and swamp pink, and has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts. For three years, she worked as a bookseller at Malaprop’s, an indie in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA in English and Women’s and Gender Studies from Kenyon College. Her poem “Love Poem Without Ambition” was recently selected by Denise Duhamel as a runner-up for the Maureen Seaton Poetry Prize from the South Florida Poetry Journal. Her poem “Whatever We Were, I Didn’t Need to Call It Love” was published in the April 2026 issue of Vagabond City Lit, and “I Didn’t Write the Poem” will be published in the Spring 2026 print issue of The Florida Review.

Ben Lee, Poetry

Sam Rhee, Fiction

CL Schneider, Fiction

SECOND Year

Ayesha Asad, Poetry

Ayesha Asad (she/her) is the author of the chapbook Waveborne (Bottlecap Press, 2022). Her poetry has been included in the 2020 Best of the Net Anthology, and her work appears or is forthcoming in AGNI, Boulevard, Mid-American Review, Tupelo Quarterly, PANK, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, and elsewhere. Her writing has been recognized with awards from UC Berkeley and UT Dallas. She is currently taking an academic leave from UC Berkeley School of Law to pursue her MFA. In her free time, she likes to dream.

Danielle Emerson, Fiction

Danielle Shandiin Emerson is a Diné writer from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Her clans are Tłaashchi’i (Red Cheek People Clan), born for Ta’neezaahníí (Tangled People Clan). Her maternal grandfather is Ashííhí (Salt People Clan), and her paternal grandfather is Táchii’nii (Red Running into the Water People Clan). She has a BA in Education Studies and Literary Arts from Brown University. Her writing centers healing, kinship, language-learning, and family.

Alexandra Green, Poetry

Alexandra Green grew up in rural Maryland. She graduated with her MDiv from Yale Divinity School, where she was the Managing Editor of the journal Letters. Her master’s thesis explored figurations of Christ and the question of divine sovereignty in the poetry of Paul Celan. She has worked as a youth minister, non-profit director, and arts advocate. Her writing is primarily interested in the endless, vital ramifications of language, of the political, of nature, and of faith. She is often drawn along by song.

Noa Greenspan, Fiction

Noa Greenspan is a writer from southeastern Virginia. She is currently working on a collection of short stories about coming of age and our relationships to place in the first part of the 21st century. Noa studied English, creative writing, and environmental studies at Princeton University and most recently worked at the Southern Environmental Law Center.

THIRD Year

Christiana Castillo, Poetry

Christiana Castillo (she/ella) is a Mexican-Brasilian-American poet, educator, cultural worker, and gardener. Her first poetry collection, Crushed Marigold, was published in 2020 by Flower Press. Her work appears in The Pinch Journal, Room Magazine, The Acentos Review, and The Detroit Metro Times. She has had residencies and fellowships with Room Project, insideOut Literary Arts, Voices of Our Nations, and Disquiet International. She holds a BA from Wayne State University and an MA in Education from the University of Michigan.

Kinsale Drake, Poetry

Kinsale Drake is a Diné writer and citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her debut poetry collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket (University of Georgia Press, 2024) was the winner of the 2023 National Poetry Series. Her work often celebrates elders, cacti, and rock ‘n’ roll. She is the founder of NDN Girls Book Club.

Yevheniia Dubrova, Fiction

Yevheniia Dubrova is from Donetsk, Ukraine. She holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College. Winner of the 2024 Lando Grant for refugee writing from the de Groot Foundation, she writes about displacement, loss, memory, and what endures. She translates fiction, poetry, and plays from Ukrainian.

Johnny Nagle, Fiction

Johnny Nagle completed his MA in Creative Writing at Queen’s University Belfast in 2023. He is currently working on a revenge/campus novel set in South County Dublin.

Lana Reeves, Poetry

Lana Reeves is a poet and composer from O’ahu, Hawai’i. She was the recipient of the 49th Parallel Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Award. Her work appears in Gulf Coast, Poetry Online, Bellingham Review, Black Warrior Review, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. She received a BA from Harvard University with a dual degree from the Berklee College of Music. She is currently a Harold Stirling Vanderbilt Fellow.

Kanchi Sharma, Fiction

Kanchi Sharma (she/they) is a fiction writer, poet, editor, creative strategist & communications specialist. She is the Russell G. Hamilton Scholar at Vanderbilt University. A Tin House ’24 alum & Kenyon Developmental Editing Fellowship ’24 finalist, Kanchi currently is the Prose Reader for Quarterly West Magazine and formerly held the same position for GASHER Press & Journal. Older versions of Kanchi’s poems appear in Live Wire, HEArt, PANK, TinySpoon. Their translation of a human-interest profile appears in PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India). Kanchi comes from a small town near Mumbai and is at work on a linked story collection and novel.