Life of a Writer: July 2026

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

Students

Raluca Comanelea (F) published a prose piece titled “Gravity,” which is featured in the Summer 2026 Issue of Chestnut Review. Another of her short stories, “Tata,” will be featured in the online edition of The Hemlock Journal.

A. E. Costello (W4CYA) has published a series of short stories on her Substack Tell Your Story. Her young adult paranormal novel The Other Side was recently re-published through Draft2Digital and is available on multiple bookseller platforms, including Barnes & Noble, Amazon and Apple Books, in formats physical, e-book and audible. Check her linktree to find her online.

Emily Persichetti Schuster (P) will have her poem “As a Hummingbird” published in the August issue of The Bluebird Word. Two of her poems, “The Nightmare” and “Cancer,” appeared in Beautiful and Terrifying: Tales and Visions from the Edge of the Uncanny (Elderfly Press, 2026), available in paperback and on Kindle. Follow Emily on Instagram @empschuster_creative.

Aspen Pleasant (F) had their short story, “Trying to Be a Girl,” published in Stone of Madness Press and a microfiction called “Brooklyn Bridge” published in Vine Leaves Press. The opening pages of their novel, Love as a Portal, placed as a finalist in the 2026 SunSpot Lit Inception Contest.

Nettie Reynolds (CNF) published her essay “What Coffee Is For” in Braided Way Magazine. 

Emily Samples’s (P) poem “Persistence of Time,” in response to the theme “Time Travel,” placed second in Writers’ Hour Magazine’s pop-up 24-Hour Writing Contest.

Chuck Zumbrun (P) published his micro-memoir “Pinned” in the May edition of Five Minutes. 

Faculty & Staff

Dianne Aprile (faculty, CNF) led a four-day writing workshop this summer on the Oregon coast. Dianne has led these writers in person in Seattle, elsewhere in Washington state, in Louisville and on Zoom. Two members of the group were MFA students at Spalding (Joan McBride and Marie Ruf.)

Beth Ann Bauman’s (faculty, W4CYA) middle-grade novel Georgie in Deep, about a girl who inherits the family submarine, sold at auction to Sarah Barley Books, a new imprint at Simon & Schuster.

Whitney Collins (associate program director, faculty, F) has stories forthcoming in The Tampa Review and Electric Literature. Recently, she served as guest editor of Chatterbox! and chose a magical realism story by Roberto Bayeto, translated by Monica Louzon.

Kathleen Driskell (Chair, faculty, P), in her role as Kentucky Poet Laureate, continued to visit communities across Kentucky in late spring through mid-summer. She gave remarks on Kentucky Writer’s Day, April 24, at the Kentucky History Museum and later read with former Kentucky Poets Laureate at Paul Sawyier Library, both in Frankfort; May 8 – 10, she convened “Postcards from Pine Mountain,” a writers’ workshop and retreat at Pine Mountain State Resort Park; and on May 13, she was the opening speaker at the Henderson Hospitality Summit, a one-day conference of 800 community members and stakeholders from around Henderson. On June 17, she led a workshop for the Governor’s School for the Arts and Northern Kentucky University, and on July 13, she was a convocation speaker for the Governor’s Scholars Program at Morehead State University. She has been invited by the Academy of American Poets to read with other poets laureate at the 2026 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, August 22. On August 29, she gives a talk and reading at the Hopkinsville County Library. Her poem “Mystery, Panther Mountain Path,” appears soon in Appalachian Review.

Lynnell Edwards’s (faculty, P) poem “Native Grass” was recently featured on The Slowdown.  Listen to host Maggie Smith share it.

Nathan Gower (faculty, F) will give a public reading at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn on July 22 as part of the Les Bleus Literary Salon. He’s also been invited to give a keynote reading at the Making Lit conference hosted by Taylor University in the upcoming academic year.

Roy Hoffman (faculty, F, CNF) led an audience discussion of the Israeli movie Soda, screened at the Mobile, Alabama, Jewish Film Festival. As prose writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution, in New York State, Aug. 1 – 8, Roy will lead a writing workshop, “All Our Voices,” the theme of Week 6 being “America at 250.”

Erin Keane (faculty, CNF, P) has poems forthcoming in North American Review, Indianapolis Review, Solid State, and the new journal Forget Cool. In August, she will spend a week as an Artist in Residence at the Loretto Motherhouse, through a partnership between the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Sisters of Loretto to support feminist social change artists in Kentucky. 

Since joining the poetry faculty at Spalding, Jennie Malboeuf’s (faculty, P) poem “The Bible Isn’t Kind to Dogs” was featured in New England Review (link below), and her poem “if only” was published by The Southern Review. She has poems forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal (“Kite Flying” and “Arboretum”), Poetry Northwest (“Theory of Mind” and “Vespers, Recovery, Ode to the Castleback Orbweaver”), and Alaska Quarterly Review (“Night Sky”). 

Karen Mann (co-founder and administrative director) was delighted to be able to participate in the summer virtual residency. She was happy to greet students, faculty, and alums via Zoom! She also took part in the discussions of the full-length manuscript workshop, led by Nancy McCabe. Karen enjoyed reading manuscripts by new graduate Colleen Alles, current student Kelley McVay, and alums Andrea Custer, Kimm Stammen, and Bridgette Portman.

Lesléa Newman (faculty, W4CYA) is happy to announce that her new board book, Bless the World, illustrated by Noa Mishkin and published by PJ Publishing, was released on July 1. This lyrical board book celebrates small, everyday moments as a family moves through their day from morning to night, appreciating each other and the world around them.

Danica Novgorodoff (faculty, F, W4CYA) published the nonfiction graphic novel A Better World Is Possible: Global Youth Confront the Climate Crisis in March, in collaboration with journalist Meera Subramanian. It was awarded the Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Award. Danica will be presenting at the Brooklyn Book Festival in September. See her work at https://www.danicanovgorodoff.com.

Katy Yocom (associate director, MFA F ’03) co-directs, with Amy Foos Kapoor (W4CYA ’18), the Voice & Vision reading series at 21c Museum Hotel. The series is now in its thirteenth season. Katy and Amy will co-host the August edition, a celebration of new works featuring screenwriting faculty member (and MFA alum) Bruce Marshall Romans (Spider-Noir), at 6 p.m. Thursday, August 20, at 21c. Please join us!

Alumni

On Thursday, July 9, Colleen Alles (MFA, P ’26) launched her new poetry collection, Luminescence in Season (Meadowlark Press), with fellow Michigan poet Eric Greinke at Fountain Street Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. More info about Luminescence in Season can be found at www.ColleenAlles.com.

In October, Donna Gay Anderson (MFA, PW ’18) will direct the inaugural production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder in the new Vonnie Borden Theatre at Southeastern Louisiana University. The theatre, which was heavily damaged by Hurricane Ida, is finally repaired, upgraded, and ready to reopen. When the theater originally opened in 1971, Our Town was chosen as the first play to be presented in that space. Coming full circle fifty-five years later, it will again showcase this iconic American play. Donna Gay has written and directed many productions over the years, and she is downright giddy to take on one of the greatest American plays ever written. On a side note, the theatre department at SLU was founded in 1946 by Donna Gay’s mother. For this Spalding graduate, this directing opportunity is multifaceted and for all of it, she is grateful.

Deborah Begel (MFA, CNF/PW ’06) retires from a quarter century of teaching English, Composition, Creative Writing and Podcasting in May. She is currently shepherding students through the process of producing ten-minute profiles of two Artists-in-Residence at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe. She will continue to host Classical Explorations every other Sunday afternoon on KSFR.org, and she looks forward to having more time to write, read, produce audio features and documentaries, and travel. She comments, “Hello world. Here I come!”

Laura Candler (MFA, P ’26) won the Poet’s Corner 2026 Chapbook competition, judged by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Her chapbook Common Name will be published this fall and is now available for pre-order at https://www.toadhalleditions.ink/books. The book is a collection of lyric poems exploring motherhood, identity, and the greater than human world. Candler devotes poems to single species like the Tennessee Cave Salamander and American Persimmon, while also marveling at the humorous language of her children and their fleeting youth. With seriousness and play, tenderness and urgency, this collection interrogates what it means to both assert and accept a sense of self during a time of personal and ecological transformation.

Susan-Sojourna Collier (MFA, SW ’13) is Assistant Arts Professor in Undergraduate Film & Television at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. She recently made her directing debut with the short film “Striking Threads: The Atlanta Washing Society.”

Jeffrey Fischer-Smith (MFA, PW ’17) was accepted into the Stage One Andrew Treagus West End Workshop in London. The workshop provides a comprehensive introduction into the commercial theatre industry. Jeffrey continues to develop Smalltown Boy: The New Wave Musical. He has also been accepted as a Full Member of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain. The WGGB is the trade union for professional writers in the UK working in TV, film, theatre, audio, books, poetry, comedy, animation and videogames. 

Lauren Harr (MFA, Fiction ’16) is celebrating ten years of her business, Gold Leaf Literary Services. Gold Leaf is a publicity, marketing, education, and consultation business founded in 2016 and built out of Lauren and her business partner’s love of books and the people who make and sell them. She also recently finished a three-year term running a spring writing residency at Arrowmont School of Arts & Crafts in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, and is slooooowly writing her first novel.

Lisa Hockstein’s (MAW, F ’22) short story “Lockers” appeared in the Spring 2026 issue of New Croton Review.

Teddy Jones (MFA, F ’12) received the Sarton Award for Historical Fiction from Story Circle Network, an organization that encourages and promotes writing by women about women. Her winning novel was A Family of Good Women published by Stoney Creek Publishing. She won’t forget this award because part of the prize was this beautiful plaque, which now occupies one of her bookshelves. Thank you to Spalding’s MFA in Writing program for preparing her to write fiction!

Andrea Kilpatrick’s (MFA, W4CYA '18) debut middle-grade fantasy novel, Luminos, will be published this fall by Middleton Books. The story follows twelve-year-old Kaia, whose painting becomes a doorway to Luminos—the hidden source of creativity on Earth—where light and imagination are beginning to fade. At heart, it is a portal-fantasy adventure about creativity, courage, belonging, and the stories children tell themselves about who they are and what they are capable of becoming.

JoAnne Lehman (MFA, CNF ’21), having decided to drop out of the litmag-submissions rat race, has started a Substack publication called Read It or Not, where each Monday she publishes a CNF or hybrid piece. Sometimes it’s something originally published in a lit mag; sometimes it’s a piece rejected so many times she decided to take matters into her own self-publishing hands; and sometimes it’s something relatively unpolished. Check out the offerings.

Sherry McCaulley Palmer (MFA, CNF ’12) recently published The Preacher Takes a Wife: Better Call the Prayer Chain, a humorous memoir about discovering that marrying a preacher was the easy part. Nobody bothered to explain the rest of it. Filled with church life, family stories, faith, and plenty of laughter, the book also includes a discussion guide for book clubs and church groups. Readers can learn more at the publisher’s website or find the book on Amazon. She also invites fellow alumni to visit The Hallelujah Holler on Facebook and her website. Sherry extends heartfelt thanks to CNF faculty member Nancy McCabe for writing the back-cover blurb.

Angie Mimms (MFA, CNF ’15) received an honorable mention in the Kentucky State Poetry Society’s 2025 Chaffin/Kash Poetry Prize for “Up in the Air.” It was published in KSPS’s Pegasus poetry journal in Fall 2025. Her poem “Epilepsy Grammar Lesson” was published in the Winter 2025 issue of Untelling, and “Morning News, or Love Poem for My Husband” was published in the Spring 2026 issue of The Louisville Review.

Marilyn Moss Rockefeller (MFA, CNF ’09) recently published her latest collection of memoir essays, Time Is the Substance. A love letter to a long life lived on Bald Mountain, it is also a celebration of what growing old with grace can feel like. The stories go back in time to see how we grow into ourselves and become the people we are. This is not a book of regret or nostalgia, but instead a luminous story of hard-earned wisdom. If there’s one prevailing piece of wisdom in the book it’s the idea of acceptance—of slowing down and experiencing grief and not surrendering. A book trailer, narrated by Marilyn, can be viewed on her website, where all her books are available for purchase. Time Is the Substance can also be purchased on Amazon and from independent booksellers nationwide. At present, she is working on Final Act, a novella.

Joy Neighbors’s (MFA, PW/CNF ’20) latest book, Spring Grove Cemetery and Arboretum, A Step Back in Time, published by Sutton Publishing, hit bookshelves in May. The book explores the history and imagery of Cincinnati’s largest cemetery, where politicians, artists, Olympic medalists, beer barons, and sixteen “infamous women” rest. The book is available in bookstores and online.

An excerpt from Rick Neumayer’s (MFA, F ’14) novel-in-progress, The Sword Is Also Mighty, will be published in the fall issue of Trajectory, which also recently published Rick’s essay, “How to Write a Page-Turner.” Sword is Rick’s fifth published book-length work of fiction and a prequel to his debut novel, Journeyman (2020). Rick’s other published novels include Hotwalker (2021) and The Little Green Men Murders (2024). His short story collection, Three Foggy Mornings, was published in 2025. Three of Rick’s full-length Broadway-style musical collaborations have been produced. He served as a judge for the 2026 Bluegrass Writers Coalition’s Kentucky Visions Short Story Contest. Find out more at rickneumayer.com.

Dr. Taylor Riley Geiser (MFA, CNF ’19) has been named Composition Director at Fayetteville State University, where she is an Adjunct Assistant Professor of English. She will have a book review published in Composition Studies in the fall titled “Parenting While PhDing: Surviving and Improving the Working Conditions of Graduate Student Parents.”

Mervyn Seivwright (MFA, P ’19) recently celebrated a personal goal and milestone. With a selection from The Headlight Review published July 7, he has had 147 poems selected by 100 /different literary journals and anthologies from fifteen countries. He started on this path in October 2018, while working on an MFA in Writing at Spalding’s Naslund-Mann School. He credits the program with providing the tools and the confidence on this path. Eight years with 1,596 rejections, battling emotions, and not taking a path of easy wins. Mervyn says, “It is good to have goals that make us grind, never give up, and create fuel to fight for.”

Graham Shelby (MFA, CNF ’10) recently visited France, where he shared his documentary City of Ali with student and public audiences at Sciences Po (Institute of Political Studies) in Le Havre and at the National Conservatory for Arts and Crafts in Paris. He also did a presentation on Muhammad Ali’s legacy for young professionals who work to create community impact as members of the Global Shapers Community Paris Hub. In addition, Graham participated virtually a City of Ali screening in Newcastle, U.K., and shared the film on campus at the University of Louisville and University of Kentucky.

Melissa Shepherd’s (MFA, P ’26) poems “Copenhagen, call of the void” and “I Sing the Belly Elastic” appeared in the summer issue of Twin Bird Review. Her poem “Placeholder” will appear in the fall issue of Thimble Literary Magazine.  

Elizabeth Slade (MFA, F ’07) was invited to bring her book, Momentum: Montessori, a Life in Motion, to the American Library Association’s Annual Conference in Chicago, where she signed books, was interviewed for a podcast, and thoroughly enjoyed being with so many librarians.

Amy Speace’s (MFA, P ’24) debut poetry collection, The Cardinals, comes out in September from Red Hen Press. At 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, September 2, she appears at Parnassus Books in Nashville with Didi Jackson. An award-winning Americana folk singer, Amy will tour this fall with a new show, The Cardinals Tour: Songs and Stories and Poems.

Terry Tocantins (MFA, PW ’22) is a resident playwright at American Legacy Theatre in Cincinnati.

The New York Quarterly published Marc Tretin’s (MFA, P ’19) second book of poetry, Homemade Egyptian Gods. NYQ also published his first book of poems, Pink Mattress. They are both listed on Amazon.

Lori Tucker-Sullivan (MFA, CNF ’11) published an essay at Open Secrets Magazine, about life with a neurodivergent husband and son. It is a part of the memoir she’s currently querying to agents. She also published a piece about her recent cancer experience with HuffPost.

Photo credit: Ann Dean

Michelle Tyrene Johnson (MFA, PW ’22) was profiled in Crimson & Blue, the alumni magazine of the University of Kansas, in “Lifting every voice: Michelle Tyrene Johnson champions social justice from the page and the stage.” She recently was a resident playwright at the First Look Buffalo Theatre Company. She is the host of the podcast “Race Unwrapped” at Louisville Public Media. Louisville Public Media’s “How Clean Is Our Air?” (for which Michelle was lead producer) recently won first place, interview program, at the Public Media Journalists Association. And “Discovering Lexington,” the umbrella project that included Michelle’s short radio play “Benjamin’s Victory” about R.C.O. Benjamin, won the 2026 Kentucky History Award for Digital Media. Beginning in October, the radio play will live as an exhibit at the Lexington (Ky.) History Museum.

In August, Melanie Weldon-Soiset (MFA, P ’24) will participate in the fully funded, six-day “Grounded by Place/Growing through Time” writing residency with poet Camille Dungy and eight other participants at the Collegeville Institute in Collegeville, Minnesota.

In May, Michele Zakis’s (MFA, W4CYA ’18) article “Through the Best of Times, Through the Worst of Times: A Tale of Three Miami Beach Nightspots” was published in the 2025 edition of Tequesta: The Journal of HistoryMiami Museum." The scholarly article tells the story of the evolution, decline, and rebirth of three South Beach hotspots and the historic buildings in which they are housed. In June, Michele was awarded an EdD in Leadership from Spalding University's College of Education. While writing her capstone paper, “K-12 Teachers’ Preparedness to Provide First Aid During School-Site Emergencies,” Michele utilized the skills acquired through the MFA Program while working on both short critical essays and her culminating extended critical essay. She credits successful completion of the EdD Program, in large part, to the exemplary instruction and high expectations present in the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. 

Aimee Zaring’s (MFA, F ’05) memoir Cutting Loose: My Journey from Survival Mode to Embodied Flow was released July 14 (Atmosphere Press). It offers a somatic roadmap for reconnecting to your body’s innate wisdom, repatterning your nervous system, and reclaiming your authentic self. Cutting Loose was honored as one of a limited number of Indie books selected for inclusion in Kirkus Reviews Magazine (forthcoming Aug 15, 2026). For more info and links to purchase, visit https://www.aimeezaring.com and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.