Our Alumni - Their Accomplishments
Michael McClelland, Ph.D., Creative Writing - Already hailed by Publishers Weekly as an “up-and-coming mystery writer” following the success of his first novel, Oyster Blues, Michael McClelland, Wittenberg University assistant professor of English, has again captured the attention of critics with his latest release, Tattoo Blues, a witty crime novel set in Cedar Key, Fla.
Brigitte Byrd, Ph.D. 2003 - She is the author of three collections of poems: Song of a Living Room, (Ahsahta, 2009), The Dazzling Land (Black Zinnias, 2008) and Fence Above the Sea (Ahsahta, 2005). She is currenly an Associate Professor of English at Clayton State University, where she teaches creative writing.
David Bottoms, Ph.D. 1982 - Robert Penn Warren selected David Bottoms's first collection, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, for the 1979 Walt Whitman Award. His recent work includes Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems and the novel Easter Weekend. He is a Professor of English at Georgia State University and the State Poet Laureate for Georgia.
Heather Sellers, Ph.D. 1992 - Heather is the author of three volumes of poetry, Your Whole Life, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses,and The Boys I Borrow, a collection of stories, Georgia Underwater, which won a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Award, and Two books for writers, Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter. Her textbook for the multi-genre creative writing clasroom, The Practice of Creative Writing from Bedford/St Martins is in its second edition. Sellers has been a member of the Hope College faculty since 1995, and is a full professor of English. Her memoir, You Don't Look Like Anyone I Know is out from Riverhead Books (Penguin) in October 2010. She's at work on a collection of essays.
Pamela Ball, MA 1988 - Pam Ball is haole, born and raised on Oahu of American parents. Both of her novels, i>Lava and The Floating City, are set in Hawaii. She is the winner of numerous writing awards, including the Hemingway Short Fiction Award.
Jesse Lee Kercheval, BA 1983 - Poet, essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of seven books, including Dog Angel, The Museum of Happiness, Space: A Memoir, and Building Fiction: How to Develop Plot and Structure. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin where she directs the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.
Tom Hunley, Ph.D. 2003 - Tom is an assistant professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books (www.steeltoebooks.com). Since leaving FSU, he has had three poetry books published: The Tongue (Wind Publications 2004), Still, There's a Glimmer (WordTech Editions 2004), and My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove Press 2005). His book of essays, Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach, forthcoming from Multilingual Matters LTD. 2007, has been excerpted in The Writer's Chronicle.
Rita Mae Reese, M.A. 2003 - Rita has won two AWP Intro Journals Project awards and a Discovery/The Nation award. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Verse Daily, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. She is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction and is working on a novel.
Russ Franklin, Ph.D. 2000 - Russ is a Wallace Stegner and a Truman Capote fellow in fiction at Stanford University. His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, and Greensboro Review. He is a winner of the Quarterly West, novella competition. His short story "Night Flying" is anthologized in Air Fare: Stories, Poems and Essays on Flight.
Kim Garcia, M.A. 1996 - Kim Garcia is the recipient of an AWP Intro Writing Award, a Hambidge Fellowship and an Oregon Individual Artist Grant. Her poetry collection Madonna Magdalene was published by Turning Point Books in the fall of 2006. Her work has appeared in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Atlanta Review, Rosebud, Nimrod, Cimarron Review, Mississippi Review, Brightleaf, Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops, Negative Capability, and Lullwater Review. She currently teaches creative writing at Boston College.
Stephen Graham Jones, Ph.D. 1998 - Stephen’s dissertation was his first novel, The Fast Red Road, followed by the books, All the Beautiful Sinners, The Bird is Gone, Bleed Into Me: A Book of Stories, Demon Theory and upcoming in 2008, the novel Ledfeather. His over ninety stories have appeared everywhere, from Writing Fiction to The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror. A past NEA Fellow, Texas Writers League Fellow, and winner of the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Fiction, Stephen is currently an Associate Professor of English at Texas Tech University, where he's twice won a President's Book Award. He was the first tribal member to earn a graduate degree from FSU in thirty-three years.
Jack Wang, Ph.D. 2006 - Jack is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College in New York, where he teaches advanced fiction writing, personal essay, writing the short novel, and the history and theory of the novel. He recently attended the Sewanee Writers' Conference and is currently at work on a novel.
Susanna Childress, Ph. D. - Susanna Childress won the Brittingham Poetry Prize for her collection, Jagged with Love (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), chosen by Billy Collins.
Denise Du Vernay, M.A. 2002 - Karma Waltonen, M.A. 2001 (Ph.D. UC Davis) - Denise and Karma have co-written a book called The Simpsons in the Classroom: Embiggening the Learning Experience with the Wisdom of Springfield (McFarland, 2010). The authors, both of whom have been teaching The Simpsons for over a decade, share exercises, prompts, and even syllabi that have proven successful in their own courses. Denise teaches humanities, speech, and writing at the Milwaukee School of Engineering in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Karma is a lecturer at the University of California Davis.
Lucinda Vickers, Ph.D. 1997 - In 2007, Lu published both her novel, Breathing Underwater (Alyson Books) and a nonfiction book, Weeki Wachee, City of Mermaids: A History of One of Florida’s Oldest Roadside Attractions.(University Press of Florida). Another book, Cypress Gardens, America’s Tropical Wonderland: How Dick Pope Invented Florida (UPF) is due out in the fall of 2010. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Salon, Apalachee Review, Saw Palm and various other journals. She has been awarded three Florida Individual Artist’s Fellowships for fiction.