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Creative Writing

Our Creative Writing Alumni - Their Accomplishments

(in alphabetical order by last name)

Will Allison

MFA Spring 1996

Will Allison's first novel, What You Have Left (Free Press/Simon & Schuster), is due out in June 2007, and a second novel is forthcoming from Free Press as well. His short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, One Story, Kenyon Review, Cincinnati Review, Atlanta Magazine, Shenandoah, American Short Fiction, Florida Review, and elsewhere and were cited in The Best American Short Stories 2005 (edited by Michael Chabon) and 2006 Pushcart Prize XXX: Best of the Small Presses. A staff member at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, he is the recipient of grants and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Indiana Arts Commission, Arts Council of Indianapolis, and Ohio Arts Council. He also served as executive editor of Story, editor of Novel & Short Story Writer's Market, and editor-at-large of Zoetrope: All-Story.

Rebecca Barry

MFA Spring 2004

Rebecca Barry's nonfiction has appeared in places such as The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post Magazine, Organic Style, Real Simple, and The Best American Travel Writing. Her fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Tin House, Mid American Review, and The Best New American Voices. Her first book, Later, At The Bar, a novel in stories (Simon and Schuster, May 2007) was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 2007. A series of love stories that mostly go wrong, the book follows a group of barflies who frequent the same bar in a small town in upstate New York, among them an advice columnist who pays no attention to her own rules, an ex-con and his on-again off-again affair with his sometimes wife, and a school bus driver who has her own secrets. Rebecca currently lives in Trumansburg, New York with her husband and two sons.

Erica Beeney

MFA Summer 2006

Erica Beeney grew up in Colorado, attended Bard College, then worked in film and television production in New York City. In 2002, while a student at OSU, she won a screenwriting contest sponsored by Miramax. Her movie The Battle of Shaker Heights, was subsequently produced and was the subject of the Project Greenlight TV show on HBO. Since then she has written for other film and television production companies and lived in New York and LA. She completed her thesis requirements for her MFA in the Summer of 2006.

Erin Belieu

MFA Winter 2000

Books by Belieu: Infanta and One Above & One Below.

Her first book, Infanta, was selected by Hayden Carruth for the National Poetry Series and was named one of the ten best books of 1995 by Library Journal, Washington Post Book World, and the National Book Critics' Circle. Her second collection, One Above and One Below, won the Ohioana Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award. Her poems have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Slate, Nerve, The Yale Review, TriQuarterly, Ploughshares, The New York Times, and others. She previously served as managing editor of AGNI. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University where she specializes in poetry.

Chris Coake

MFA Autumn 2004

Christopher Coake, a native Hoosier, received his MA in creative writing from Miami University of Ohio and his MFA in fiction from Ohio State University. His short fiction has appeared in journals such as The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Epoch, and Five Points, and has been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2004. His first book, a collection of short stories titled We're in Trouble, was released in 2005 by Harcourt. He is currently working on a novel that examines a century in the history of a gold mining town in Colorado. Christopher is an Assistant Professor of English at University of Nevada at Reno.

"One of the most difficult things a serious writer can do is look unflinchingly at the darkest moments of our lives and still create the deep sense of order and the dark beauty that are the hallmarks of art. Christopher Coake does this brilliantly. WE'RE IN TROUBLE is a dazzling work by a mature artist, and the fact that this is a first book of fiction is downright astonishing. This is a truly impressive debut by an important young writer."

— Robert Olen Butler

Jenny Crusie

MFA Summer 1997

Jenny Crusie was born in Wapakoneta, a small Ohio town on the banks of the Auglaize River. She became a romance novelist after researching the impact of gender on narrative strategies. Crusie is the author of fifteen novels, including Getting Rid of Bradley, which won the RWA Rita Award for Best Short Contemporary. She has also written a book of literary criticism, edited two essay collections, and contributed over thirty essays to magazines and anthologies. In addition to her MFA in fiction, she holds a master’s degree in professional writing and women’s literature, and a bachelor’s degree in art education. Her solo novels continue to explore women's journeys, especially issues dealing with relationships, friendships, community, and creativity.

Erica Dawson

MFA Spring 2006

Erica Dawson was born in Columbia, MD in 1979. Majoring in the Writing Seminars, she received her BA with departmental honors from Johns Hopkins University in 2001. After earning her Master of Fine Arts from Ohio State University in 2006, she moved south to University of Cincinnati where she is pursuing a PhD in English and Comparative Literature as the Elliston Fellow in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Blackbird, Sewanee Theological Review, Southwest Review, and Virginia Quarterly Review. Her first book of poems, Big-Eyed Afraid, winner of the 2006 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, was published by Waywiser Press in the US and UK in November 2007.

Marcia Douglas

MFA Spring 1993

Electricity Comes To Cocoa Bottom book cover.

Marcia Douglas was born in England and grew up in Jamaica. She is the author of the novels, Madam Fate (Soho, 1999) and Notes from a Writer's Book of Cures and Spells (Peepal Tree Press, 2005) as well as a collection of poetry, Electricity Comes to Cocoa Bottom (Peepal Tree Press, 1999) which received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation in the U.K.

Bill Fowler

MFA Spring 2005

Bill Fowler's first book, a travel narrative entitled The Reclaimers, will be published by University of Nebraska Press in the spring of 2008. The work recovers the history of a uranium mining ghost town in the Wyoming desert and takes a glimpse into the lives of a few residents who remain. Bill is an Ohio native with a B.S. in accounting from Taylor University and an M.F.A. in creative writing from The Ohio State University. His nonfiction has appeared in North American Review and Nevada Magazine. He is currently writing a second book, which examines the legacy of the Hare Krishna movement at an Appalachian commune. He lives in Ketchum, Idaho.

Shari Goldhagen

MFA Spring 2002

Shari Goldhagen, a native Ohioan, earned a degree in journalism from Northwestern University and an MFA in fiction from Ohio State University. While writing her first novel, Family and Other Accidents (Random House, 2006), Shari stalked celebrities for The National Enquirer, Life & Style and Celebrity Living Weekly. She has received grants from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the Ohioana Library Assocation, and her fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, Prism International, Beacon Street Review, and Wascana Review. She has also written articles for such periodicals as Complete Woman, teenStyle, Ohioana, and Restaurants and Institutions. Currently she lives, teaches, and writes in New York City.

Daniel Groves

MFA Spring 2005

Daniel Groves was born in Wakefield, RI, in 1977. He attended Johns Hopkins University and received his M.F.A. from Ohio State University in 2005. His poems have appeared in the Paris Review, Yale Review, Poetry, and elsewhere, and his first collection, The Lost Boys, is forthcoming in the VQR Poetry Series from the University of Georgia Press.

Sonya Huber

MFA Spring 2004

Sonya's nonfiction novel, Opa Nobody (a working title), will be released by University of Nebraska Press in the spring of 2008. The book traces the life story of her grandfather, a lifelong socialist and anti-Nazi activist. It combines memoir with fictionalized scenes from her grandfather 's life to form a narrative about activism, family, and tough choices. In order to complete the research for the book, Sonya received a fellowship from The Ohio State University, as well as grants from the American Council on Germany and the PEO Foundation. Sonya holds both an MA in journalism and an MFA in creative nonfiction from Ohio State. Originally from New Lenox, Illinois, she spent her twenties doing labor-movement and media-related activism and also worked as journalist and a teen counselor. She has written articles for such periodicals as Psychology Today, Labor Notes, In These Times, Columbus Monthly, The Other Paper, and Sojourner. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Fourth Genre, Kaleidoscope, and Topic. She 's currently an assistant professor at Georgia Southern University, where she teaches creative nonfiction.

Nancy Kuhl

MFA Spring 1998

Nancy Kuhl 's first full-length collection of poems, The Wife of the Left Hand, was published in 2007 by Shearsman Books; her chapbook, In the Arbor, was winner of the Wick Poetry Chapbook Prize and was published by Kent State University Press. She is co-editor of Phylum Press, a small poetry publisher. She is Associate Curator of the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

Bruce Machart

MFA Spring 1999

Bruce Machart 's novel, The Wake of Forgiveness, is forthcoming from Harcourt in 2008 and will be followed in 2009 by his collection of stories, Men in the Making. Machart 's fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Five Points, Glimmer Train, Story, One-Story, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West. His work has been cited by the Texas Institute of Letters and the Best American Short Stories series. He is currently an Associate Professor of English at North Harris College in Houston.

Kelly Magee

MFA Spring 2003

Kelly Magee's first book, a collection of short stories called Body Language, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and will be published by the University of North Texas Press. She has also received awards from AWP and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and has been twice nominated for a Pushcart. Her stories have appeared in journals such as Indiana Review, Quarterly West, Colorado Review, Crab Orchard Review, Black Warrior Review, The Cream City Review, River City, Folio, Marlboro Review, and others. She teaches at OSU-Marion and is currently at work on her first novel.

Kyle Minor

MFA Spring 2007

Kyle Minor's debut collection of short fiction, In the Devil's Territory, is due Fall 2008 from Dzanc Books. He is also editor (with Okla Elliott) of The Other Chekhov, a new selection of stories by Anton Chekhov with introductions by well-known writers. Kyle's stories, essays, and poems appear widely in literary magazines and anthologies including The Southern Review, The Gettysburg Review, and Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers. As an MFA student at Ohio State, his work was three times honored in The Atlantic Monthly's Student Writing Contest, and Random House named him one of the Best New Voices of 2006.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

MFA Spring 2000

Aimee Nezhukumatathil received her B.A. in English and her MFA in poetry and creative non-fiction at OSU. She has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and MacDowell, and is now assistant professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia. Awards include the Richard Hugo Prize from Poetry Northwest and the Boatwright Prize from Shenandoah. Recent work appears in Tin House, Prairie Schooner, FIELD, New England Review and Black Warrior Review. She is the author of the award-winning chapbook, Fishbone and her book of poems, Miracle Fruit, won the Tupelo Press Prize and the ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year Award. Her next collection, At the Drive-in Volcano (Tupelo) will be published in 2007.

Catherine Pierce

MFA Spring 2003

Catherine Pierce's first full-length poetry collection, Famous Last Words, won the 2007 Saturnalia Books Poetry Prize and was released in January 2008. She is also the author of a chapbook, Animals of Habit (Kent State, 2004), a winner of the Wick Chapbook competition. Her poems appear in Slate, Ploughshares, Gulf Coast, Barrow Street, Mid-American Review, Blackbird, the anthology Best New Poets 2007, and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Mississippi State University.

Maggie Smith

MFA Spring 2003

After receiving her M.F.A. in poetry from The Ohio State University, Maggie Smith won the 2003-2004 Emerging Writer Lectureship at Gettysburg College, where she taught creative writing. She is the author of two prizewinning collections of poems, Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press, 2005) and Nesting Dolls (Pudding House, 2005). She has received two Academy of American Poets Prizes, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Ohio Arts Council, and three Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poems appear in The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Florida Review, Gulf Coast, Prairie Schooner, Crab Orchard Review, Mid-American Review, and other literary journals. Maggie and her husband currently live in Columbus, Ohio, where she continues to write, review books for the Columbus Dispatch, and serve as the associate editor for Darby Creek Publishing, a children's book press in the Dublin area.

Mary Tabor

MFA Spring 1999

Mary L. Tabor's collection of short stories entitled The Woman Who Never Cooked won Mid-List Press's First Series Award (www.midlist.org). Her fiction has recently appeared in Chautauqua Literary Journal, Image, the Mid-American Review where her story won the Sherwood Anderson Award, Chelsea, Hayden's Ferry Review where her story won the Prentice Hall Award, American Literary Review and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is currently completing a novel. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland; her post-graduate degrees are from Oberlin College (M.A., 1967) and the Ohio State University (M.F.A., 1999). She worked as a high school English teacher, then as an executive in a DC trade association (Marquis Who's Who in America, Marquis Who's Who of American Women). At age 49 when her youngest child graduated college, she signed the last tuition check, quit, and changed her life to write. She lectures regularly on writing fiction and on “starting late” at the Smithsonian's Campus-on-the-Mall.

Alumni News

Donna Jarrell (MFA Spring 2002) is the co-editor of What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology (Harvest Books, 2003) and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology (Harvest Books, 2005). She’s currently a lecturer in the English Department at Ohio State University. Her fiction won Case Western Reserve University's prestigious Kennedy Prize for Outstanding Creative Project.

Holly Goddard Jones (MFA Spring 2006) has accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of creative writing at Murray State University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, EPOCH, The Gettysburg Review, and elsewhere. She was honored with a Special Mention in Pushcart Prize XXXI: Best of the Small Presses, and her story "Life Expectancy" was selected by Edward P. Jones to appear in New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 2007. She is the winner of a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award for 2007.

Michael P. Kardos (MFA Spring 2003) has accepted a tenure-track position as assistant professor of English at Mississippi State University, where he'll be teaching creative writing. Mike is finishing his Ph.D. in English and creative writing at the University of Missouri, where he has been a creative writing fellow and an editor at The Missouri Review. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, Prism International, The Florida Review, River City, and elsewhere.

E.G. Levy (MFA Spring 2002) is assistant professor at American University. She’s the editor of Tasting Life Twice (Avon, 1995), which won the Lambda Literary Award for best fiction anthology. Her fiction has recently appeared in, among other places, The Paris Review, Gettysburg Review, North American Review, and The Missouri Review. Her nonfiction has been published in Best American Essays, The Nation, Utne Reader, Fourth Genre, Orion, and elsewhere.

Maureen Stanton (MFA Spring 2000) teaches creative nonfiction writing at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iowa Review, The Sun, American Literary Review, and River Teeth, among other literary journals, as well as several anthologies such as Best of Brevity, Best of the Sun, and Best Texas Writing. Two of her essays were listed as “Notable Essays” in Best American Essays (Houghton Mifflin, 1998, 2004). She was also the recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Ira Sukrungruang (MFA Spring 2002) is assistant professor of creative nonfiction at State University of New York-Oswego. He also co-edited What Are You Looking At? The First Fat Fiction Anthology and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology (Harvest Books). His work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Crab Orchard Review, The Indiana Review, and elsewhere.

Our students, current and former, have had their fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction appear in The Best American Essays, The Best New American Voices, The Best American Travel Writing, Tin House, Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Yale Review, Poetry, American Poetry Review, New Criterion, Field, Iowa Review, The Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, North American Review, Ploughshares, The Washington Post Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Quarterly West, Epoch, Five Points, and other notable venues.