![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/vu-cas\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2026\/06\/11151705\/44819a3d-eeff-4697-9b34-952a40b744f8.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJosie Abugov is a writer from Los Angeles. Winner of the PEN\/Robert J. Dau Story Prize, her work has been published in The Sewanee Review, Kweli Journal, and Book of the Month\u2019s Volume 0. She most recently worked as an environmental reporter at The Times-Picayune\/NOLA.com, where she reported on data centers, coastal land loss, and industrial pollution. She graduated with a degree in Social Studies and Gender Studies from Harvard College, where she won a Thomas T. Hoopes Prize and the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Prize.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ben Lee is a writer from Minnesota. He earned a bachelor\u2019s in Romance Languages and Literatures and Government from Harvard University and a master\u2019s in Sumiller\u00eda y Enomarketing from the Basque Culinary Center. His undergraduate and graduate research explored the role of literary devices in wine’s production and marketing. In 2024, the Blue Earth Review named him as the Minnesota BIPOC Emerging Writer in Poetry. Prior to Vanderbilt, he worked in fast-moving consumer goods.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Sam Rhee grew up in Virginia and majored in English and physics at Harvard. He often writes about disgust, enchantment, and the sea.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n CL Schneider is a Russell G. Hamilton Scholar. She received her BA in creative writing from Ohio State University. Her writing can be found at the intersection of girlhood, punk music, and Appalachia. Ohio will forever be her home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Christiana Castillo (she\/ella) is a Mexican-Brasilian-American poet, educator, cultural worker, and gardener. Her first poetry collection, Crushed Marigold<\/em><\/a>, was published in 2020 by Flower Press. Her work appears in The Pinch Journal<\/em>, Room Magazine<\/em>, The Acentos Review<\/em>, and The Detroit Metro Times<\/em>. 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" FIRST YEAR Josie Abugov, Fiction Josie Abugov is a writer from Los Angeles. Winner of the PEN\/Robert J. Dau Story Prize, her work has been published in The Sewanee Review, Kweli Journal, and Book of the Month\u2019s Volume 0. She most recently worked as an environmental reporter at The Times-Picayune\/NOLA.com, where she reported on data…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":7292,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"page-headline-img.php","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473"}],"version-history":[{"count":52,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7186,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/473\/revisions\/7186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/as.vanderbilt.edu\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Nain Christopherson, Poetry<\/span><\/h2>\n
Nain Christopherson is from Salt Lake City, where she taught high school for five years before joining the MFA program at\u00a0Va<\/span>nderbilt. She holds a BA in English Teaching and an M.Ed. in Literacy Education, both from the University of Utah. Her work has been featured in\u00a0Voicemail Poems<\/i>,\u00a0SUNHOUSE<\/i>, and\u00a0The Shore<\/i>, and was a finalist for the 2025 Best of the Net Anthology in Poetry. She also co-edits\u00a0The Garlic Press<\/i>, an online literary magazine.<\/p>\nVirginia Kane, Poetry<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Virginia Kane is from Alexandria, Virginia. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal<\/em>, Prairie Schooner<\/em>, Them<\/em>, Muzzle Magazine, The Baltimore Review, Poet Lore, and swamp pink<\/em>, and has received support from Sundress Academy for the Arts. For three years, she worked as a bookseller at Malaprop\u2019s, an indie in Asheville, North Carolina. She holds a BA in English and Women\u2019s and Gender Studies from Kenyon College.<\/p>\nBen Lee, Poetry<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSam Rhee, Fiction<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nCL Schneider, Fiction<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nSECOND Year<\/h5>\n
Ayesha Asad, Poetry<\/h2>\n
Ayesha Asad (she\/her) is the author of the chapbook Waveborne\u00a0<\/em>(Bottlecap Press, 2022). Her poetry has been included in the 2020\u00a0Best of the Net Anthology,\u00a0<\/em>and her work appears or is forthcoming in\u00a0AGNI<\/em>,\u00a0Boulevard,\u00a0<\/em>Mid-American Review<\/em>, Tupelo Quarterly, PANK,\u00a0<\/em>Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\nDanielle Emerson, Fiction<\/h2>\n
Danielle Shandiin Emerson is a Din\u00e9 writer from Shiprock, New Mexico on the Navajo Nation. Her clans are T\u0142aashchi\u2019i (Red Cheek People Clan), born for Ta\u2019neezaahn\u00ed\u00ed (Tangled People Clan). Her maternal grandfather is Ash\u00ed\u00edh\u00ed (Salt People Clan), and her paternal grandfather is T\u00e1chii\u2019nii (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.<\/p>\nAlexandra Green, Poetry<\/h2>\n
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. <\/em>Her master\u2019s 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.<\/p>\nNoa Greenspan, Fiction<\/h2>\n
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.<\/p>\nTHIRD Year<\/h5>\n
Christiana Castillo, Poetry<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\nKinsale Drake, Poetry<\/h2>\n
<\/a>Kinsale Drake is a Din\u00e9 writer and citizen of the Navajo Nation. Her debut poetry collection The Sky Was Once a Dark Blanket<\/em><\/a> (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<\/a>.<\/p>\nYevheniia Dubrova, Fiction<\/h2>\n
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.<\/p>\nJohnny Nagle, Fiction<\/h2>\n
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.<\/p>\nLana Reeves, Poetry<\/h2>\n
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<\/em>, Poetry Online<\/em>, Bellingham Review<\/em>, Black Warrior Review<\/em>, and elsewhere. Her writing has been supported by the Kenyon Review<\/em> 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.<\/p>\nKanchi Sharma, Fiction<\/h2>\n
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 <\/em>and formerly held the same position for\u00a0GASHER Press & Journal<\/em>. Older versions of Kanchi’s poems appear in Live Wire<\/em>, HEArt, PANK,<\/em>\u00a0TinySpoon<\/em>. Their translation of a human-interest profile appears in PARI<\/em> (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.<\/p>\n