Announcing Naslund-Mann’s New Associate Programs Director, Whitney Collins

June 3, 2026

by Kathleen Driskell, Chair

On behalf of our Naslund-Mann leadership team, faculty, students, and alumni, I am delighted to announce that on July 1, 2026, Whitney Collins will assume new duties as the Associate Programs Director for the School of Writing. Whitney will take over the duties of advisor to all Naslund-Mann graduate students and will serve as direct supervisor to all faculty members in the School of Writing, as well as continuing in her current role as a member of the fiction faculty. I couldn’t be happier to have Whitney in this new role. She’s a marvelous, award-winning fiction writer, active in the literary community and publishing world, and is, most importantly, a gifted teacher focused on doing all she can to help students succeed.

Whitney says, “I'm thrilled to accept the position of Associate Director of Spalding University's Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. I've been fortunate to experience this exceptional program as a student, alum, and faculty member, and I now look forward to enthusiastically serving in an administrative capacity. Naslund-Mann is second to none in terms of its close-knit community, high-quality instruction, and award-winning output; it's a rare and remarkable blend of rigor and warmth. On top of that, to work for the first certified compassionate university in the world is a beyond an honor."

Whitney Collins is the author of Ricky & Other Love Stories (Sarabande, 2024) and Big Bad (Sarabande, 2021), which won the 2019 Mary McCarthy Prize, a 2021 Bronze INDIES, and a 2022 Gold IPPY. She is the recipient of a Best American Short Stories 2022 Distinguished Story, a 2020 Pushcart Prize, and a 2020 Pushcart Prize Special Mention, and she won the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize and the 2021 ProForma Contest. Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, Gulf Coast, Book of the Month Club’s literary magazine Volume 0, and The Best Small Fictions 2022, among others.

Whitney will be stepping into the position currently held by Lynnell Edwards, who after eight years of service in this role, is retiring from the position of Associate Programs Director at the end of June. For the past eight years, Lynnell has been an effective and compassionate leader for the School of Writing, and we’re pleased that she will continue to serve as a poetry mentor.

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Kathleen Driskell, current Kentucky Poet Laureate, is the Chair of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing and Professor of Creative Writing. She is an award-winning poet and essayist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, Rattle, Southern Review, Shenandoah, and other magazines. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Goat-Footed Gods and The Vine Temple (both from Carnegie Mellon University Press), and Next Door to the Dead (University Press of Kentucky), winner of the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. Her collection Seed Across Snow (Red Hen Press) was named a Poetry Foundation Bestseller. Her essay “Church of the Goat Man” was included in the anthology 2025 Pushcart Prize XLIX: Best of the Small Presses. She served as Chair of the Board of Directors of AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, from 2019 to 2022.