2017

2017 Graduate Student Accomplishments

Austin Allen’s first poetry collection, Pleasures of the Game, won the 11th Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and was published by The Waywiser Press. The official launch reading took place at the Folger Shakespeare Library. He published poems in 32 Poems and Literary Matters and two essays on the Poetry Foundation website. He appeared on the Poetry Off the Shelf podcast to discuss one of these essays.

Ashley Anderson published essays in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and SFWP Quarterly. She was a finalist for the 2016 Ohioana Library Association's Walter Ramsey Marvin Grant. She presented at The Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900 and participated in an off-site reading at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference.

José Angel Araguz published two chapbooks, The Book of Flight (Essay Press) and The Divorce Suite (Red Bird Chapbooks). He published poems in Borderlands, Poet Lore, Carve, Crab Creek Review, and RHINO Poetry, and book reviews in The Volta Blog, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and Fjords Review. He has a story forthcoming in The Windward Review and a poem written in Spanish forthcoming in Entropy. He gave readings at Del Mar College, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Author’s Day, and Foy H. Moody High School. He won an Academy of American Poets Prize, served as the Visiting Writer for Adelphi University’s Alice Hoffman Young Writer’s Retreat, and participated in his second CantoMundo conference. He continues to run the poetry blog The Friday Influence. 

Michael H. Auterson presented at the Miami University English Graduate Student Symposium and published a review in Western American Literature. He has been accepted for the 2017 Rhetoric Society of American Summer Institute held at Indiana University.

Andrew Bales published an interactive poem in DIAGRAM. His project “American Lynching” received 2nd place in the National Endowment for the Humanities Chronicling America Data Challenge. He presented this project at the 2016 National Digital Newspaper Program meeting in Washington, D.C.

Hannah Barker interned as a writer/editor in the Office of Marketing and Communications at Xavier University.

Kelly Blewett's work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Peitho, CEA Critic, Writing on the Edge, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She was a sponsored participant in the 2016 Dartmouth Summer Institute for Writing Research, where she presented at the conference College Writing since 1966. She will present at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the Children's Literature Association Conference this spring. She was awarded a research grant from Taft and is a Graduate Student Fellow of the Graduate School. She serves as an editorial assistant at the journal Composition Studies, contributes interviews and reviews to WVXU's "Around Cincinnati," and reviews new titles monthly for BookPage.

Christiane Boehr will present a paper at the Conference on College Composition and Communication this spring. She was nominated for a Boyce Excellence in Teaching Award and a Dean’s Fellowship Award.

Julialicia Case’s writing was published in The Chattahoochee Review and is forthcoming in The Writer’s Chronicle. One of her stories was a finalist for the Lamar York Prize, and one of her essays won the UC Bicentennial Essay Contest in the student category.

Emily Rose Cole’s chapbook, Love & a Loaded Gun, won Minerva Rising's "Dare to Be" chapbook contest and will be published next year. She was a finalist for contests administered by Arts & Letters, The Fairy Tale Review, Sycamore Review, So to Speak, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Smartish Pace, and she received an Honorable Mention from Press 53's Prime Number Poetry Prize. She published poems in

Yemassee, Phoebe Journal, The Pinch, THRUSH Poetry Journal, BOAAT Journal, and Luna Luna Magazine. She also published nonfiction in Luna Luna Magazine. 

Chris Collins’ book of poems, My American Night, won the Georgia Poetry Prize and will be published by the University of Georgia Press in 2018. He presented at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference.

Caitlin Doyle’s work recently appeared or is forthcoming in The New Criterion, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Golden Shovel Anthology (University of Arkansas Press), and the PoetryNow Series through the Poetry Foundation. She held a Yaddo Colony Fellowship and one of her poems was featured in the PBS NewsHour Poetry Series.

Samantha Edmonds published stories in Midwestern Gothic and Pleiades, and has stories forthcoming in  Indiana Review and in an anthology from SFWP (Santa Fe Writers Project) Quarterly. She presented at

the Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and the Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture. She was awarded a 2017 GSGA Research Fellowship.

James Ellenberger’s work appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Painted Bride Quarterly, and the anthology The Dead Animal Handbook. One of his poems was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Joey Ferraro attended the 2016 Project Narrative Summer Institute. He has a review forthcoming in the John Updike Review, and is working with Professor James Schiff on a volume of John Updike’s correspondence.

Ian Golding published an essay in the anthology Monsters of Film, Fiction, and Fable: The Cultural Links Between Human and the Inhuman and a story in Puerto Del Sol.

Bernard Grant published two chapbooks, Puzzle Pieces (Paper Nautilus Press) and Fly Back at Me (Yellow Chair Press). He was awarded a June Dodge Fellowship for a 2016 summer residency at Mineral School, as well as a VSC fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center for a 2017 summer residency. His stories, essays, and flash fiction appeared in Chicago Tribune Printers Row, The Nervous Breakdown, Crab Orchard Review, Spartan, Talking Writing, Lunch Ticket, and New Delta Review. In addition, his work appeared in several anthologies, including Turn: Turn: Turn: A Season of Short-Short Stories, Braided Rivers: An Anthology of Lyric Essays, and Selected Memories: Five Years of Hippocampus Magazine. One of his stories was a finalist for the Jack Dyer Fiction Prize and the Charles Johnson Award. He gave a reading at Margin Shift in Seattle, was interviewed by Saftacast, a podcast produced by Sundress Academy for the Arts, was invited to serve as a guest editor for SmokeLong Quarterly, and was awarded a GSGA Research Fellowship.

Kevin Honold's essays are forthcoming in Fourth Genre, Louisville Review, and Image.

Rochelle Hurt's second book, In Which I Play the Runaway, was published by Barrow Street Press. She won the Greg Grummer Poetry Prize from Phoebe, as well as residency fellowships from Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Her poetry appeared or is forthcoming in American Literary Review, Greensboro Review, Hotel Amerika, Indiana Review, North American Review, and Pleiades. She served as a poetry mentor in The Adroit Journal's summer mentorship program for high school students, and currently serves as an editor at Tupelo Quarterly.

Vinamarata “Winnie” Kaur has a paper forthcoming in South Asian Popular Culture.. She received scholarships to attend the National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference, where she participated in the Association’s graduate student mentorship program and the Women of Color Leadership Project. In January 2017, she presented part of her dissertation research at the Modern Language Association Conference. She was awarded UC’s Exemplary Scholarship Award in Arts and Humanities and UC’s Outstanding International Graduate Student Award in Non-STEM Fields. In collaboration with the Academic Writing Center, she helped start the pilot writing assistance service initiative at the Health Sciences Library. She also helped lead an initiative to make Langsam Library resources readily available to online and distance-learning students.

Gwen E. Kirby's stories appeared in Ninth Letter, Mississippi Review, New Ohio Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, Hobart, and Midwestern Gothic. This summer, she will be fiction faculty at the Sewanee Young Writers' Conference and will continue to work as staff for the Sewanee Writers' Conference.

Hunter Lang presented at the Georgetown Graduate Portuguese and Hispanic Symposium.

Christina LaVecchia published an article in Composition Forum and co-authored a manuscript that is under consideration for the collection Explanation Points: Publishing in Rhetoric and Composition. W. W. Norton solicited her to review a chapter for their popular writing textbook They Say/I Say (3rd edition). She presented at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and at UC’s new Rhetoric and Composition Research Colloquium, and she served as a discussion facilitator at the Council of Writing Program Administrators Conference. In 2016, she concluded her two-year term as an elected member of the Graduate Committee of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, and she was nominated for the Boyce Excellence in Teaching Award. She continues to serve as an editorial assistant for Composition Studies.

Joan Luebering spoke to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation summit about Talking T1D: How to Communicate about Your Type 1 Diabetes, an e-book that she co-wrote with two other UC graduate students in Professional Writing. She currently teaches online service courses in technical writing, primarily for engineering students.

Hannah Mason is currently interning in public relations for the Newport Aquarium.

Jessica Masterton has an essay forthcoming in Post Road.

Sarah Rose Nordgren’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bennington Review, The Adroit Journal, Narrative Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, DIAGRAM, Pleiades, Free Verse, Two Peach, and Poetry Daily. Her essays have appeared in Kenyon Review Online and Florida Review. Her second book of poetry, Darwin’s Mother, has been accepted for publication by University of Pittsburgh Press and will appear in fall 2017. Her performance and video installation Digitized Figures premiered in Brooklyn, and, thanks to a Taft Summer Research Fellowship, she traveled to New Jersey to film a text art video. She also spent a month at the Vermont Studio Center as an Ohio Arts Council fellow. This summer, she will present her recent text video work at the NonfictioNow Conference in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Dan Paul published work in New Delta Review, Moon City Review, and Puerto del Sol. One of his stories won the 2017 Briar Cliff Fiction prize. This spring, he will present at the National Popular Culture Association Conference and the Cincinnati Romance Language Conference.

Brenda Peynado’s writing won the Dana Award for Short Fiction and the Sycamore Review Flashcard Contest. It was named a finalist or runner up by, or received an honorable mention from, Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Contest, Indiana Review's ½ K Prize, The Masters Review Short Story Award for New Writers, American Short Fiction Prize, The Lascaux Review Prize in Short Fiction, Permafrost New Alchemy Award, Sequestrum Reprint Award, International Literary Awards Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, and the Stella Kupferberg Short Story Contest. Her stories appeared in the Georgia Review, EPOCH, The Masters Review, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Daily Science Fiction, Sycamore Review, Evansville Review, and Permafrost. She received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center.

Molly Reid’s stories appeared or are forthcoming in Gulf Coast, The Normal School, The Orison Anthology, and The Masters Review online. One of her stories received third place in the The Masters Review Contest for Emerging Writers; another received an Honorable Mention from Gulf Coast's Barthelme Prize. Her story collection was a finalist for the St. Lawrence Book Award, and she received a fellowship from Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Linwood Rumney’s first book, Abandoned Earth, won the Gival Press poetry prize and was published in October, a day before his wife, Jessica Rae Hahn, gave birth to their first child. The book was an honorable mention for the New England Book Festival Prize. He received the 2017 fellowship in creative writing from the American Antiquarian Society and a residency from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. His poems and translations appeared in Harpur Palate, Arts & Letters, Hotel Amerika, Quarter after Eight, and Painted Bride Quarterly. He graduated from the PhD program as a Taft Fellow in August, and he is now employed as writing and literature faculty at Union Institute & University in Cincinnati.

Rich Shivener became an assistant editor for Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy.

He will present papers at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and at the Computers and Writing Conference. He contributed a major feature on digital writing programs to the magazine Writer's Digest.

Emily Skaja published poems in The Adroit Journal, Blackbird, Best New Poets, Devil's Lake, Gulf Coast, jubilat, Mid-American Review, Ninth Letter, Quarterly West, and Vinyl. She wrote a craft essay about the elegy for Blackbird, and she was interviewed for Vinyl and the Prairie Schooner blog. She is the new Associate Poetry Editor of Southern Indiana Review.

Woody Skinner's debut story collection, A Thousand Distant Radios, will be published by Atelier26 Books this fall. His fiction is forthcoming in River Styx.

Alyssa Smith is currently interning as a writer and document designer for the Greater Cincinnati Civic Garden Center.

Ryan Ruff Smith published a personal essay in Subtropics and criticism in The Miami Rail and The Threepenny Review. In January 2017, the Queen City Queer Theatre Collective produced a staged reading of his play Lockdown.

Kathleen Spada will present at the Conference on College Composition and Communication this spring.

Rachel Steiger-Meister gave readings at the 37th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts and the World Fantasy Convention. She published stories in Heavy Feather Review and the feminist anthology Mosaics: A Collection of Independent Women.

Suzie VanderVorste published essays in The Lindenwood Review and Chariton Review. She presented at the Taft humanitiesNOW Conference and will present at the 2017 Louisville Conference of Literature and Culture.

Eric Van Hoose had a story shortlisted at the Masters Review, and he’ll present at the 2017 CCCC Summer Conference.

Corey Van Landingham was awarded a 2017 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship. She published a poem in The New Yorker and essays in West Branch and Gulf Coast. 

Aleashia Walton published two book reviews in Reflections Journal. This spring she will present at the Conference on College Composition and Communication and the College English Association Conference, and this summer she will attend a workshop at the Rhetoric Society of America.

Emily Warner interned for the Musculoskeletal Health Cross-Sector Program at the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health.

Heather Williams presented at the Bronte Society's Bicentenary Conference in Manchester, England. The paper she presented there is forthcoming in The Bronte Studies Journal in 2017.

Simon Workman, a Taft Dissertation Fellow for 2016-17, presented at the humanitiesNOW conference.