Life of a Writer: August 2025

EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF

Students

Colleen Alles’s (MFA, P) short story collection Close to a Flame (Cornerstone Press, 2025) was named a finalist in the Short Stories category of the 19th annual National Indie Excellence Awards.

Victoria Chatfield (MFA, F), writing as V. A. Vazquez, sold her debut novel, at auction, in a two-book deal, to Scout Press/Simon & Schuster. The Death Row Club will be published in Summer 2026. Find her on Instagram @vavazquezwrites.

Kenneth L. Chumbley (MFA, F) is editing a monthly newsletter for Crosslines Community Outreach, Springfield, Missouri, where he serves as chaplain. He is a member of the Messaging Committee of the Greene County (MO) Democratic Party Central Committee, of which he is a member. He is engaged in various pro-democracy writing projects.

Michael Fitzer (MFA, SW) produced and directed the short film “Nub City,” written by and starring Nick Hulstine (MFA, PW ’22), and co-starring Terry Tocantins (MFA, PW ’22). The film has been submitted for competition at several festivals, including the Austin Film Festival, the Leeds International Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival.

Faculty & Staff

Dianne Aprile (CNF) has been chosen as the first recipient of the Martha Buser Award, named for the late educator, author, and Ursuline nun who died last year. Dianne will speak about Buser, who was her high school teacher and mentor, at a public celebration at Bellarmine University’s Crawley Theatre, at 7:00 p.m. on October 17. Author Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) will give an address at the event, and Louisville documentary filmmaker Morgan Atkinson will present his new film, “In the Company of Change,” highlighting Buser’s spiritual journey with the Ursulines.

“Six Hours Lost, Land Between the Lakes,” a poem from Kathleen Driskell’s (P) latest collection Goat-Footed Gods, will be featured soon on The Slowdown. She recorded her collection Next Door to the Dead for Kentucky Talking Books, which makes texts available to readers with disabilities. She was interviewed on various media programs, most recently “Kentucky Writers’ Roundtable”  (WLEX Radio) and “Open Studio” (WUKY Radio), and she read at The Table series in Lexington, Kentucky, with friend and fellow poet Tom Hunley on August 6. On August 9 at 11:00 a.m. Eastern, she presents a virtual talk, “The Italian Sonnet and Its Enduring Flexibility,” part of a three-part Kentucky Poet Laureate Craft Talk series, through the Kentucky State Poetry Society. Suggested donations benefit KSPS. On September 11, Carmichael’s Bookstore has asked her to be in conversation with Silas House to talk about his debut poetry collection, All These Ghosts; that event takes place in the Troutman Lectorium in the Egan Leadership Center at Spalding University. In October, she looks forward to launching her program “Walk and Write with the Kentucky Poet Laureate,” at Beckley Creek Park, near her home, with hopes of taking this workshop into other Kentucky parks.  

Roy Hoffman’s (F, CNF) essay “Farewell to the Family Store” appeared in the Washington Post on July 14.

HoffmanFarewellStoreWaPoPDF.pdf

Download PDF • 3.39MB

Robin Lippincott (F, CNF) is thrilled that his short piece on Joni Mitchell has been accepted for inclusion in the forthcoming anthology Visiting Joni: Poems Inspired by the Life & Work of Joni Mitchell, edited by Debra Marquart, Alan Davis, and Thom Tammaro. Other titles in the series have focused on Bob Dylan, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and William Carlos Williams.

Karen Mann (Administrative Director) recently presented a virtual information session on “Is an MFA Right for You?” for Writing Height Writers’ Association in Northern Colorado. Her reading list for this month included Nancy McCabe’s new middle-grade book Fires Burning Underground. She just started Lee Martin’s latest book, The Evening Shades. Karen reads for five book clubs and posts book reviews on Instagram and other platforms @karenmannedits.

Nancy McCabe’s (F, CNF) title at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford shifts to emeritus professor as she retires from undergraduate teaching. She is still mentoring for Spalding and teaching courses for other organizations, most recently for Muse Writing and Creative Support and Craft Talks. She also recently taught a workshop sponsored by the U of Pittsburgh School of Social Work and Bradford (Pennsylvania) CASA. Nancy is working on a craft book, Creating Some Measure of Beauty: The Healing Power of the Artful Essay, which is under contract with the University of New Mexico Press, and doing appearances related to her middle-grade novel Fires Burning Underground, released in April, including an event in Amherst, Massachusetts, in July and upcoming events in Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York.

Recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications: essays in Under the Sun, Catamaran, and the anthologies Every Mother’s Daughter and You Are Here; poems in Nine Mile, Northern Appalachian Review, and ELJ. She’s done guest articles and interviews related to Fires Burning Underground for School Library Journal Teen Librarian’s Toolkit, Littsburgh, and Chalk and Dust: The Podcast for Teachers Who Write and Writers Who Teach, among others; craft essays for The Brevity Blog, and book reviews for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette and Belt Magazine. She also recently conducted a live interview with Laura Ingalls Wilder scholar Pamela Smith Hill on the Little House on the Prairie Facebook page. In addition, in March while traveling in Korea, she visited a class at GMU Korea to talk about her work.

Lesléa Newman (W4CYA) has been doing a lot of guest teaching this summer! She taught at the Southampton Children’s Literature Conference, the Society of Children’s Book Writers Annual Virtual Summer Conference, and the PJ Library Summer Camp, held on the Highlights Foundation campus. She is proud to represent the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing wherever she goes!

Jeremy Paden (P, T) will have published three books by the end of summer 2025. His translation of Mario Meléndez’s Waiting for Perec won the open contest, full-length manuscript publication prize from Action, Spectacle. Katie Farris has said the translation delivers “a world that feels as real and timeless in English as stones.” He has also translated Christopher Amador’s Parradise of (a) Solemn Simpleton(e), which won the 3rd International Poetry Prize from Nueva York Poetry Press. And his own full-length collection of poems, how to recognize god’s chosen, will be available mid-August from Accents Publishing.

Karen Salyer McElmurray (CNF, F) has been traveling with her new book. Appearances include visiting writer (reading and workshop) at Pat Conroy Center, Beaufort, South Carolina; Boyle Lecture at Springhill College, Mobile, Alabama; Visiting Writer/Reading Series, West Virginia Wesleyan College; three panels at Appalachian Studies Association 2025 Conference, Cookeville, Tennessee; Reading Series (and classes), visiting writer, University of South Dakota, Vermillion; West Virginia Writer’s Workshop 2025, Ripley; guest, Zona Rosa Writers, Savannah, Georgia; faculty, Ironwood Writer’s Conference 2025, Hindman, Kentucky; and faculty, Appalachian Writer’s Workshop, Hindman, Kentucky.

Maggie Smith (P) is the new host of The Slowdown podcast. Her latest book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life (Washington Square Press, 2025).

Alumni

Elana Gartner (MFA, PW ’21) is having a virtual reading of her play Pilar’s Brother through Transformation Theatre on Tuesday, August 12, at 7:00 p.m. ET / 4:00 p.m. PT. Info and tickets available. In October, Elana’s play Because of Beth will be published by Next Stage Press. It is available for pre-order. Elana’s ten-minute play “Tag on Toe” was accepted to the Midwest Dramatists Conference for October 2025.

Taylor Riley Geiser (MFA, CNF ’19) will defend her dissertation in early August to receive her PhD in Composition and Rhetoric from the University of Louisville. In the fall, she is joining the English Department faculty at the Fayetteville State University as an Assistant Professor.

Karen George (MFA, F ’09) won Inscape Journal’s ode poetry contest with “Ode to Edges” and had poems published in Tipton Poetry Journal and Verse-Virtual. Her poems are part of a collaborative ekphrastic poetry chapbook created with Donelle Dreese, Nancy K. Jentsch, and Taunja Thomson: Delight is a Field, from Shanti Arts, published in July. She was a featured reader in March at Roebling Books, Newport, Kentucky; in April at Poetry at Sitwell’s in Cincinnati, Ohio; in June at Poetry at the Table in Lexington, Kentucky, and Poetry at Hayner: A Mosaic of Voices in Troy, Ohio—reading from her ekphrastic collection of poetry, Caught in the Trembling Net, published in August 2024.

Nathan Gower (MFA, F ’08) has been invited to read from his novel The Act of Disappearing at the annual Punch Bucket Literary Festival in Asheville, North Carolina (September 19 – 20). Additionally, he has been invited to participate at the North Carolina Writer’s Network Fall Conference in Wrightsville Beach (November 7 – 9), where he will give a reading and teach a craft class on building tension in short narrative prose. Finally, his short story “The Rabbit Nest” is forthcoming in the “Animalia” theme issue of the Bellevue Literary Review, scheduled for publication in Fall 2025. You can follow him on Instagram @nathan_gower_ or get periodic updates posted on his website: https://www.nathangower.com/.

Amina S. McIntyre (MFA, PW ’09) had her play How to Make a Home produced by Out of Hand Theatre and is a recipient of the 2025 Tanne Foundation Award. Find Amina at https://www.ladylovesherpen.com/.

AshleyRose Sullivan (MFA, F ’10), writing as Archer Sullivan, is touring with her debut novel, The Witch’s Orchard (Macmillan, 2025). The gothic-horror story-murder mystery has been praised in BookPage (starred review), Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. The first leg of her book tour includes appearances in Louisville, Lexington, and Cincinnati:

• August 11, 5:00 p.m. Mountain Time, virtual pre-launch conversation on YouTube

• August 12, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, official launch party, Louisville, with J. H. Markert at 3rd Turn Brewing, hosted by Carmichael’s Bookstore

• August 13, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, Joseph-Beth Books in Lexington with Wes Brown

• August 14, 7:00 p.m., Joseph-Beth Books in Cincinnati

Other events will follow.

Colleen Wells (MFA, F ’10) has published a poem, “A Party of Five Becomes Two,” in the Paddock Review. The poem is from her forthcoming poetry chapbook titled Around the Bend (Finishing Line Press, October 2025). In March, Colleen began a new journey of working in life enrichment in a memory care facility in Bloomington, Indiana, where she uses her certification in TimeSlips storytelling to prompt writing stories and facilitates poetry circles, merging her passion for both service and words.

Kylie Yockey (MAW, F ’22) is the new editor-in-chief of the online literary arts journal Blood Tree Literature, which just published its first-ever print magazine in July. Blood Tree Issue 15 showcases poetry, fiction, nonfiction, hybrid writing, and art from ninety past contributors and features visual art from the founding editor, Lee Reid. Print copies and an ebook version are available for purchase.