EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF
ALUMNI
Brandi Bradley (F ’14) published the novel Mothers of the Missing Mermaid in April. It is available for purchase at most major booksellers. Learn more at brandibradley.com/newrelease. Brandi is a writer and teacher who lives in the great city of Atlanta. Her short stories and essays have been published in Louisiana Literature, Carve, and Nashville Review. She writes stories about family drama, crime, rowdy girls, gossip, cowboys, and flea markets. Visit her website at brandibradley.com.
Chad V. Broughman (F ’16) is the winner of The Amity Literary Prize, 2023, sponsored by Anamcara Press. The historical novel The Fall of Bellwether is set for release in winter 2024 and was shortlisted by the First Novel Prize out of London, earned finalist status in ScreenCraft’s Cinematic Novel Competition, and is currently ranked No. 2 on Coverfly’s top rated Historical Book/Manuscript projects of all-time. Additionally, his short story “Ice” (along with an accompanying podcast about the crafting of the piece and some writerly life advice) is slated for publication by Onyx Publications this summer.
Roy Burkhead (F ’04) has accepted the position of Knowledge Manager, supporting the United States Department of Energy’s Office of Scientific and Technical Information. In addition, as part of his work on his second Post-master’s Certificate in Writing Enrichment from the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, he’s been awarded a graduate assistantship. And his poem “MEMORANDUM: To Whom It May Concern” has been selected for publication in an upcoming issue of The Louisville Review. Find Roy online at https://www.rlburkhead.com/.
Cheré Coen (F ’23), who writes under the pen name of Cherie Claire, will sign her novel Ghost Fever: A Viola Valentine Mystery at 7 p.m. Tuesday, June 20, at Vintage Pizzeria in Dunwood, Georgia. She joins novelists Mike Nemeth and Fatima Henson as part of A Novel Idea’s Summer Author Showcase, an Atlanta-based author spotlight series.
Ashley Cook (SW ’14) earned a Daytime Emmy nomination in the category of “Outstanding Writing Team for a Daytime Drama Series” for her work on ABC's General Hospital. The ceremony has been postponed while the Writers Guild of America is on strike for a fair contract.
Cindy Corpier (F ’13) is delighted to share that her essay “A French Sunday” was published in the Spring 2023 issue of Good River Review.
Amy Fox-Angerer (CNF ’09) recently published Ground Guide Required, a collection of essays about her life as a female military contractor in Iraq from 2007 to 2008. Check it out on Amazon!
Quincy Gray McMichael (CNF, PrWr ’22) is pleased to be racking up the “declines”—and also to have three excerpts from her hybrid memoir-in-progress in print this season: ”Farming After Death” in Chautauqua’s Issue 20.2, ”The Enterprising Farmer” in Full Bleed’s “The Materials Issue,” and ”Sunday Drive” in Little Patuxent Review (Issue 34). Quincy’s take on poet Kelly McQuain’s terrific first full-length collection, Scrape the Velvet from Your Antlers, will appear in Still: The Journal (Issue 42) this summer. And Quincy sends a big THANK YOU to Spalding faculty member Silas House for making the time to talk for a full hour about everything from his incredible recent novel Lark Ascending to the ecosystem growing in his yard (look for their conversation soon at Woodshed). Twitter: @quincy_gray_mcm | IG: @vernal_vibe_rise | quincygraymcmichael.com/write
Matt Jaeger (F ‘03) published an essay in Patch.com in April: “Are You There, Judith? It’s Me, Matthew, Or the Time I Got an Hor D’Oeuvre from Judy Blume.”
Kaylene Johnson-Sullivan’s (CNF ’03) essay “Solace in Changing Times” appeared in the Spring 2023 edition of Wildheart magazine. The theme of the issue was “Synchronicity.” You can read the article on her website here.
Tom Pike (CNF ’07) published a book, Fools Friday: An Educator’s Journey, with Fons Vitae Publishing in May. From the publisher: “Fools Friday is the story of one man’s life as an educator, of the unique independent school he founded and led for twenty-six years, and of the hundreds of young adults who touched his life. . . . Tom Pike explores the two qualities he found equally present in his teenaged students: the carnival spirit of Fools Friday and the essential Quaker belief that each of us has the sacred within us. In teenagers, he shows, both qualities are close to the surface and can burst forth at any moment. The goal of education, he argues, is to find a way to let this happen while initiating young adults into a world that forbids both.”
Jamey Temple (F ’07) was promoted to full Professor of English at University of the Cumberlands. This past academic year, she was also named Honored Female Professor by the SGA. Her recent publications include an essay titled “Notes from a Writing Teacher: One Final Lesson” on Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog and her 2022 Multimedia Essay Prize finalist piece “What Can’t Be Explained Through Pictograms” at Fourth Genre. Her poetry chapbook Meeting Point was also named a finalist in Wavelengths Chapbook Contest. In addition, three micro essays appeared in Hypertext Magazine’s 2023 spring/summer issue. Find her at jameytemple.com.
FACULTY & STAFF
Larry Brenner (TVSS) and Andie Redwine’s (SW ’20) podcast, Once Upon a Disney, launched its fifth season on June 7. In each episode, they analyze a classic Disney movie from a screenwriter’s perspective. Visit Apple Podcasts to have a listen.
K. L. Cook (F) contributed the preface to Sorry Men, Naslund-Mann MFA alum Rebecca Browder’s (F ’12) posthumous collection of short stories and essay about Southern literature.
In May, Kathleen Driskell, Chair of the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, presented “How to Get Published,” a session open to the community at the Louisville Free Public Library’s annual How-to Festival. She also participated and read at Louisville’s Mini Book Fair at the Logan Street Market, organized by U of L colleague Sarah Anne Strickley. Three of her poems are in contract and will be reprinted in the fifteenth edition of Women Speak, an anthology from Women of Appalachia Project. Kathleen’s poems “Poem for Grown Children,” “Why I Mother You the Way I Do,” and “Wedding Ring” are being translated to Hebrew by Israeli poet Ravit Lichtenberg, and her poem “Collapse” will appear in the next Water-Stone Review, a publication of Hamline University’s MFA program. On May 29, her interview with Katerina Stoykova aired on Accents Radio on WUKY, Lexington. Her latest book, The Vine Temple, published in February 2023 with Carnegie Mellon University Press, went into a second printing in April.
Earlier this year, Silas House (F) was awarded the Southern Book Prize and the Nautilus Book Award, Gold, for his novel Lark Ascending. In April, he was inducted as the Poet Laureate of Kentucky by Governor Andy Beshear. In May, his short story “Foxgloves” was published in The Arkansas International. In June, he published a feature, “Jason Isbell is Finding His Purpose,” in Time. Over the last few weeks House has presented at Canisius College, Eastern Kentucky University, the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church (Louisville), the South Word Literary Conference, and at several libraries and schools. His novel Lark Ascending is out everywhere. Buy here. Writing in The Washington Post, Literary Hub, The Atlantic, Time, The New York Times, Garden & Gun, The Bitter Southerner, and The Advocate.
Angela Jackson-Brown (F) was a speaker at the 17th annual Kentucky Women’s Book Festival on February 4. On March 25, she was on the fiction panel at the SOKY Book Fest. Angela did a reading and presented a paper at the MELUS Conference in Indianapolis, called “An Intersectional and Autoethnographic Approach to Exploring What It Means to Be a Transplanted Southerner Living in the Midwest.” On May 16, Angela was awarded the 2023 Black Authors Matter TV Award (Historical Fiction) courtesy of the National Black Book Festival. Angela also delivered the keynote address at the 2023 Books in Progress Conference in Lexington, Kentucky, on June 2.
Erin Keane (CNF/P) recently read from her debut memoir, Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me, for the Must Love Memoir reading series at the Gin Mill in New York and guest-hosted the June edition of Voice & Vision, the reading series sponsored by the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, The Louisville Review, and 21C Museum Hotel. Keane has three poems in the new Sarabande Books anthology Once a City Said: A Louisville Poets Anthology, edited by Joy Priest, and only one is about Colonel Sanders.
Jason Kyle Howard (CNF) recently appeared at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival and taught a class on sense of place for the Kentucky Writers’ Conference. In recent months, he has contributed two pieces of political commentary to Salon: one on how the media should cover a Trump indictment and another on the Kentucky governor’s race. His feature on legendary country singer Tanya Tucker appeared in Oxford American’s annual music issue and made the case for Tucker’s long-overdue induction into the Country Music Hall of Fame—an oversight, the organization announced a few months later, that will be corrected this year. Howard’s interview with memoirist and Washington Post reporter Casey Parks about her acclaimed book Diary of a Misfit: A Memoir and Mystery also appeared in OA. At the moment he is working on commentary for The New Republic.
Lee Martin (F/CNF) just finished teaching at the West Virginia Writers’ Conference in Ripley, West Virginia. He’ll be teaching a novel workshop at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, August 7-13.
Nancy McCabe’s (F/CNF) young adult novel Vaulting through Time will be officially launched July 25 at the Bradford Area Public Library. It can be pre-ordered here. Her essay “That Good Night” appeared in Belt Magazine in May. Her sestina “Looking for Mt. Fuji” and her essay “Stuck Together” appeared in the winter issue of Chautauqua. She is offering an online course on story structure through Muse Writing and an eight-week course on therapeutic writing, The Healing Power of the Artful Essay, at Craft Talks. She has given recent talks for the Laura Ingalls Wilder Legacy and Research Associations Virtual Literaries and at the DePaul Pop Culture Conference, “A Celebration of Time Travel.”
Lesléa Newman (W4CYA faculty) was interviewed for Picture Book Buzz, and her new book “The Babka Sisters” was reviewed for Perfect Picture Book Friday. She was also thrilled that a book of hers was a recent Jeopardy clue!
Greg Pape’s (P) new book of poems, A Field of First Things, will be published in November by Accents Publishing. He recently took part in a memorial tribute to Frederick Smock, former Kentucky Poet Laureate, at the Paul Sawyier Public Library in Frankfort, Kentucky. This summer, Greg will be writing poems and working on a memoir.
Karen Salyer McElmurray (F/CNF) recently had a book of essays, Long Ride Home, accepted for publication by University Press of Kentucky. She led workshops and read at the Lincoln Memorial University Literary Festival, June 8-9. And she will be part of the Hindman Settlement School workshop, Ironwood, for young writers June 18-23.
Neela Vaswani (F/CNF/WC4YA) spent the spring working on a number of visiting-writer teaching gigs from Ethical Culture Fieldston School in NYC to Berea College in Kentucky. Via Zoom, she has been leading BIPOC affinity group meditation classes and visiting middle schools and high schools in the Midwest, California, and Texas. She recently narrated the audio book My Blue Skin Lover by Monona Wali. She is currently working on a few picture books, a novel, and a personal essay.
Katy Yocom, Associate Director (F ’03), contributed an essay on writerly friendships to “How We Spend Our Days,” a blog by Cynthia Newberry Martin, author of Love Like This and other novels. The post goes live on July 1.
Sam Zalutsky (SW) is excited to be developing a new horror script, Colonial Dreams, or Sueños Coloniales, set at a “haunted hacienda,” in Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. For the third year in a row, he will be teaching the class Storytelling Strategies to first-year film students at NYU Tisch School of the Arts.