Some Alumni & Alumnae of MFA@FLA
MFA@FLA has many distinguished graduates. Space restrictions prevent listing our many graduates with serial publications here (please see our Newsletter for serial publications). The restricted list below includes only our graduates since circa 1980 who have published at least one book, or who have held major fellowships or residencies, or who hold important positions in publishing.
Fiction
Chris Adrian
(BA, 1993)
Gob’s Grief (Broadway, 2001).
Jay Atkinson
(MA, 1982)
City in Amber (Livingston Press, 2007). Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective (Crown Publishers, 2005). Ice Time (Crown Publishers, 2001), Publisher’s Weekly Notable Book of the Year. Winner of the Boston Magazine Fiction Prize. Caveman Politics (Breakaway Books, 1997), Barnes & Noble/Discover Great New Writers selection. Stories in Shenandoah, Crescent Review, Chattahootchee Review, West Branch, Pacific Review. Essays and opinion in The New York Times, Boston Globe, Boston Herald, Newsday, Portland Oregonian, Men’s Health, Runner’s World, Poets & Writers; syndicated by The New York Times.
Chris Bachelder
(MFA, 2002)
U.S.! (Bloomsbury, 2006). Lessons in Virtual Tour Photography (McSweeney’s e-book, 2004); Bear v. Shark (Scribner, 2001). Stories and essays in Harper’s, The Oxford American, The Believer, McSweeney’s, Mother Jones, The Cincinnati Review, The Mississippi Review. Assistant Professor, Colorado College.
Bill Beverly
(MFA, 1991)
On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover’s America (Mississippi, 2003). Contributing editor to 32 Poems Magazine. Assistant professor, Trinity College; creative writing faculty, George Washington University.
Wendy Brenner
(MFA, 1991)
Phone Calls from the Dead (Algonquin, 2001); Large Animals in Everyday Life (Georgia, 1996; Norton, 1997), winner of the Flannery OConnor Award. Stories in Story, Ploughshares, Mississippi Review, Oxford American, New England Review, New Stories from the South. Winner of the AWP Intro Award and the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award, and an NEA Fellowship. Associate Professor in the MFA program at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.
Kevin Canty
(MA, 1990)
Winslow in Love (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2005); Honeymoon and Other Stories (Doubleday, 2001); Nine Below Zero (Doubleday, 1999); Into the Great Wide Open (Doubleday, 1997); A Stranger in This World (Doubleday, 1994). Stories in The New Yorker, Esquire, Story, Missouri Review, GQ and Tin House. Essays in Vogue, The New York Times, Sophisticated Traveler, Details. Winner of the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award. Associate Professor in the MFA program at the University of Montana.
Peter Christopher
(MFA, 1996)
Campfires of the Dead (Knopf, 1989). Stories in Raritan, The Antioch Review, American Literary Review, New Letters, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Associate Professor of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University.
Charlie Geer
(MFA, 2001)
Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-day Charleston (River City Publishing, 2005). Fiction in Tin House and Bloomsbury Magazine; nonfiction The Sun and The Southern Review.
Noy Holland
(MFA, 1994)
What Begins With Bird (Fiction Collective Two, 2005); Spectacle of the Body (Knopf, 1994). Stories in Ploughshares, The Quarterly, Glimmer Train, Conjunctions, Noon, and Open City. Winner of a Bread Loaf fellowship, a grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and an NEA fellowship. Administers Writers in the Schools for western Massachusetts. Past Director of Creative Writing, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Writer in Residence at Phillips Andover.
Victoria Lancelotta
(MFA, 1994)
Far (Counterpoint, 2003); Here in the World (Counterpoint, 2000). Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.
Margaret Luongo
(MFA, 2001)
Stories in Tin House, Jane, Kalliope, The Montserrat Review, Fence, and Pushcart Prize XXVIII: Best of the Small Presses. Assistant Professor of English at Miami University of Ohio.
Mike Magnuson
(MFA, 1997)
Heft on Wheels (Harmony, June 2004); Lummox: The Evolution of a Man (HarperCollins, 2002); The Fire Gospels (HarperCollins, 1998); The Right Man For the Job (HarperCollins, 1997). The Right Man For the Job was cited by Library Journal as one of the best books of 1997. Stories and articles in Esquire and GQ. Contributing writer with Bicycling magazine. Associate Professor and past Director of the MFA program at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Sam Michel
(MFA, 1994)
Under the Light (Knopf, 1991). Writer in Residence at Phillips Andover and Visiting Lecturer at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Fiction in Epoch and Massachusetts Review.
Kevin Moffett
(BA, 1996; MFA pending)
Permanent Visitors (University of Iowa Press, 2006). Fiction in McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, The Chicago Tribune, and StoryQuarterly; non-fiction in The Believer and The Guardian (U.K.). Recipient of The Nelson Algren Award for Short Fiction, The Iowa Short Fiction Award, and a Pushcart Prize Nomination. Contributing editor at Funworld Magazine; visiting writer-in-residence at Coe College.
Michael Newirth
(MFA, 1995)
Fiction Editor, Bridge Magazine. Essays and stories in The Baffler, Open City, Chicago Reader, Pushcart Prize XXII, Boob Jubilee: The Cultural Politics of the New Economy, and elsewhere. Lecturer in writing at University of Illinois and Chicago and in the MCW program at Northwestern’s School of Continuing Studies.
Imad Rahman
(MFA, 2001)
I Dream of Microwaves (FS&G, 2004). Wisconsin Fellowship.
Paul Reyes
(MFA, 1997)
Former assistant editor at Harper’s Magazine; senior editor at The Oxford American.
Richard Schmitt
(BA, 1995)
The Aerialist (Overlook Press, 2000). Assistant Professor at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Russ Schneider
(MA, 1986)
Siege (Doubleday, 2003); Gotterdammerung: Germany’s Last Stand in the East (Eastern Front Books, 1998); Demyansk (Neue Paradies Verlag, 1995); Madness Without End (Neue Paradies Verlag, 1994).
Richard K. Weems
(MFA, 1993)
Anything He Wants (Spire, 2006); The Need for Character (Revelever, 2004). Fiction in North American Review, Gettysburg Review, Other Voices, The Mississippi Review, The Beloit Fiction Journal. Director of the Creative Writing Division of the New Jersey Governor’s School of the Arts.
Kevin Wilson
(MFA, 2004)
Fiction in Ploughshares, One Story, Greensboro Review, Carolina Quarterly, New Stories from the South 2005. Resident at McDowell Colony, 2004. As Creative Writing Administrator at the University of the South, manages Sewanee Writers’ Conference, teaches fiction workshops, and edits the Sewanee Writers’ Series.
Poetry
Eve Adamson
(MFA, 1991)
Recent books: Mediterranean Women Stay Slim Too: Eating to be Sexy, Fit & Fabulous (HarperCollins, 2006); HarperEssentials Beer Guide (HarperEssentials, 2006); The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Natural Magick (recipe writer) (Alpha Books, 2005); Cooking Basics for Dummies, 3rd edition rev. (John Wiley, 2005); Adopting a Pet for Dummies (John Wiley, 2005); The Golden Retriever (TFH, 2005). CD: The Dick Watson Trio, Live at the Lighthouse III featuring Eve Adamson. Lives and works as a freelance writer and jazz singer in Iowa City.
Deborah Ager
(MFA, 1997)
Editor of 32 Poems magazine. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Poems in The Georgia Review, The Bloomsbury Review, Quarterly West, Gargoyle Magazine, New England Review, and American Literary Review.
Joe Bolton
(MA, 1988)
The Last Nostalgia: Poems 19821990, ed. by Donald Justice (Arkansas, 1999); Days of Summer Gone (Galileo, 1990). Poems in The New Criterion, The New Republic, North American Review, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Yale Review.
William Bowers
(MFA, 1999)
All We Read Is Freaks (Harcourt, 2007). Essays and criticism in Magnet, The Oxford American, Pitchforkmedia.com, No Depression, and in an anthology of critical perspectives of Eminem called White Noise.
Carin Besser
(MFA, 1996)
Fiction editor at The New Yorker.
Geoffrey Brock
(MFA, 1998)
Weighing Light (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), winner of the 2004 New Criterion Poetry Prize. Translator of Skylark Farm, by Antonia Arslan (Knopf, 2006), The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco (Harcourt, 2005); K., by Roberto Calasso (Knopf, 2005); and Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930–1950, by Cesare Pavese (Copper Canyon, 2002). Disaffections received Pen USA’s Translation Award and the MLA’s Lois Roth Translation Award and was named one of the “Best Books of 2003” by the Los Angeles Times. Poems and translations in Poetry, Paris Review, Southern Review, The New Republic, and The New Yorker. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Millay Colony, and the American Academy in Rome. Fellowships from the Academy of American Poets (Raiziss/de Palchi Translation Fellowship), the Florida Arts Council, the American Antiquarian Society, Stanford University (Wallace Stegner Fellowship), the National Endowment for the Arts, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. On the faculty of the Programs in Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Arkansas.
David Caplan
(MFA, 1994)
Poetic Form: An Introduction (Longman, 2005); Questions of Possibility: Contemporary Poetry and Poetic Form (Oxford, 2004). Essays in Virginia Quarterly Review, Antioch Review, and New Literary History. Assistant Professor at Ohio Wesleyan University.
Rick Chess
(MA, 1984)
Chair in the Desert (University of Tampa Press 2000); Tekiah (University of Georgia 1994; reissued by University of Tampa Press, 2000). Professor of literature and language at UNC-Asheville. Director of UNCA’s Center for Jewish Studies.
Geri Doran
(MFA, 1995)
Winner of the 2004 Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets, for Resin (LSU, 2005). The 2005–2006 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholar; Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford (2001–2003); recipient of fellowships and scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Literary Arts, the Millay Colony for the Arts, and the Sewanee Writers’Conference. Poems in The New Republic, The Atlantic Monthly, New England Review, TriQuarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, 32 Poems, and elsewhere.
Jerry Harp
(MFA,1991)
Urban Flowers, Concrete Plains (Salt Publishing, 2005); Creature (Salt Publishing, 2003). Poems in the Iowa Review, Notre Dame Review, and Pleiades. Co-editor of a collection of essays about contemporary poetry, A Poetry Criticism Reader (University of Iowa Press, forthcoming). Teaches in the English Department at Kenyon College.
Noelle Kocot (Tomblin)
(MFA, 1995)
Home of the Cubit Idea (Wave Books, formerly Verse Press, 2008); Poem for the End of Time and Other Poems (Wave Books, 2006); The Raving Fortune (Four Way Books, 2004); 4 (Four Way Books, 2001), winner of the Levis Prize. Recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a grant from The Fund for Poetry. Poems in Best American Poetry 2001, New American Writing, The Iowa Review, Fence, Another Chicago Magazine, and the American Poetry Review, from which in 1997 she received the first annual S.J. Marks Memorial Prize.
Randall Mann
(MFA, 1997)
Complaint in the Garden (Zoo Press, 2004). Winner of
the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry for a First Book.
Poems in the Kenyon Review, New Republic, Paris
Review, Poetry, Salmagundi, and
the textbook Writing Poems (Longman, 2004).
Visting Professor of Creative Writing at University of Missouri-Kansas
City. Advisory Editor of New Letters. Co-editor of One Sentence Review.
Donald Morrill
(MA, 1985)
The Untouched Minutes ( University of Nebraska Press, 2004), winner of the 2004 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Award. Sounding for Cool (Michigan State University Press, 2002), nonfiction. A Stranger’s Neighborhood (Duquesne University Press, 1998) and Sounding for Cool (Michigan State University Press, 2002), non-fiction; At the Bottom of the Sky (Mid-List Press, 1998), poetry. Poetry in North American Review, New England Review, The Kenyon Review, Crab Orchard Review, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner; winner of the Mid-List First Series Award and the Community Residency Award from the Writer’s Voice Project of the national YMCA. Nonfiction in Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, Southwest Review, Fourth Genre, Manoa, Five Points, Grand Tour, Bellingham Review, Another Chicago Magazine; winner of The Missouri Review Editors’ Prize for Nonfiction. Fulbright Fellowship; anthologized in The Art of Creative Nonfiction (John Wiley & Sons, 1997). Professor at the University of Tampa.
John Poch
(MFA, 1997)
Ghost Towns of the Enchanted Circle (Flying Horse Editions, 2006); The Essential Hockey Haiku, with Chad Davidson (St. Martin’s Press, 2006); Poems (Orchises Press, 2004); In Defense of the Fall (Trilobite Press, 2000). Poems in Ploughshares, Paris Review, The New Republic, Yale Review, Agni, and many other literary magazines. The Colgate University Creative Writing Fellow from 2000–2001 and a recipient of the “Discovery”/The Nation Prize in 1998. Residencies at the MacDowell Colony, The Saltonstall Foundation, and Blue Mountain Center. Teaches creative writing at Texas Tech University and is the editor of 32 Poems magazine.
Dan Rifenburgh
(MA, 1986)
Advent (Waywiser Press & Dufour Editions, 2002).
Winner of the Texas Institute of Letters Natalie Ornish Award for
First Book of Poetry. Texas Institute of Letters 2004–05 Dobie-Paisano
Fellow. Tennessee Williams Poetry Scholar at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference.
Participant in the National Endowment For The Arts Operation Homecoming.
Judge for the Texas Institute of Letters’ Smith Award for Best Book
of Poetry of The Year.
Ralph Savarese
More: Autism, Adoption, and the Politics of Hope (Other Press, 2005). Poems, essays, translations, and literary criticism in American Poetry Review, Sewanee Review, Seneca Review, Modern Poetry in Translation, New England Review, Another Chicago Magazine, New York Times, Prose Studies, Leviathan, and A/B: Autobiography. Winner of the Hennig Cohen Prize for the best scholarly essay on Herman Melville for the year 2003, and a chapter from his forthcoming book was selected by Robert Atwan and Louis Mennand as a “notable essay” for 2004 (in the Best American Essays series). Assistant professor of 20th-Century American literature and creative writing at Grinnell College.
C. Dale Young
(MFA, 1993)
The Second Person (Four Way Books, 2007); The Day Underneath the Day (TriQuarterly Books, 2001). Poems in The New Republic, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, The Best American Poetry 1996. Recipient of the Grolier Prize, a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Poetry at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Stanley P. Young Fellowship in Poetry at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Faculty for the 2004 Catskill Poetry Conference. Poetry Editor of New England Review.
Lauren Wilcox
(MFA, 2001)
Former associate editor at The Oxford American, now freelancing for the Washington Post Magazine and the Smithsonian Magazine.