Life of a Writer: October 2025

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

Students

Morrow Dowdle (P) was nominated for Best of the Net 2025 by Sky Island Journal for their poem “I No Longer Want to Be Heartsick.”

Gratton Hicks (F) is coming down the stretch on his third book and first adult novel, Mere Images . . . . . . of Lucky. The novel has just crossed the eighty-thousand-word count. He has planned extensive editing and feedback for the coming year. The novel is the first of three planned in the modern-day Mafioso crime thriller.

Faculty & Staff

Dianne Aprile (Faculty, CNF) will be awarded the first Martha Buser Spirit Award on October 17 at Bellarmine University’s Cralle Hall. Author Kathleen Norris (Dakota, The Cloister Walk) will speak at the free event, starting at 7 p.m. In September, Dianne hosted an interview at her home with local writer Pat Owen, who read from her new poetry collection The Crossroads.

Whitney Collins (Faculty, F ’18) has prose forthcoming this fall in literary journals The Pinch and Booth. In October, she is also a featured author for Boise State’s Hemingway Center Reading Series in Boise, Idaho, and Michler’s Last Monday Reading Series in Lexington, Kentucky. Instagram: @whitneycollins Website: www.whitneycollins.com

Debra Kang Dean’s (Faculty, P) “Postcards in the Style of Renku” has been accepted for inclusion in Visiting Joni: Poems Inspired by the Life & Work of Joni Mitchell, edited by Debra Marquart, Alan Davis, and Thom Tammaro. She served as one of the guest poetry editors for the forthcoming fall issue of The Louisville Review.

Kathleen Driskell (Chair, Naslund-Mann School) recently traveled to Vietnam with Spalding MFA students and alumni. The trip was illuminated by the book-in-common The Mountains Sing, a 2020 historical novel by Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai recommended by administrative director Karen Mann. On October 8, Kathleen’s poem “Six Hours Lost, Land Between the Lakes,” was featured on The Slowdown, a daily podcast which features the work of contemporary poets and is sponsored by The Poetry Foundation. As part of Kathleen’s duties in her role as current Kentucky Poet Laureate, she has launched a podcast called The Kentucky Writer’s Notebook, which presents work by Kentucky poets, news of important literary events happening around the Commonwealth, and a bit of musing on the practice of writing. The Kentucky Writers Notebook can be found at kathleendriskell.com and other streaming platforms. She recently was in conversation with Silas House at Spalding, an event sponsored by Carmichael’s Bookstore, to discuss Silas’s new book of poems All These Ghosts. On November 1, Kathleen and Silas will appear together as keynote speakers at the Kentucky State Poetry Society Conference, which takes place in conjunction with the Kentucky Book Festival at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington; Silas and Kathleen will discuss their most current books of poetry with Katerina Stoykova. In early October, she presented a revision workshop for KSPS, and she presented a workshop “Walk and Write with the Kentucky Poet Laureate” at Beckley Creek Park, part of the Parklands in Louisville. She took participants for a hike on Black Willow Trail, and then the group came back to the education center to write poems based on that experience. In October, she also read with Eva Alcaraz-Monje (Lexington Youth Poet Laureate) and Esme Morris (Kentucky Youth Poet Laureate), in a program called “A Commonwealth of Poets” at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington. Kathleen also visited Paul Blazer High School in Ashland, Kentucky, to talk with students about her work and the state of literature in Kentucky. On October 31, she visits the School for the Creative and Performing Arts at Bluegrass (SCAPA) in Lexington.

Lynnell Edwards, Associate Programs Director,  is pleased to share three new poems recently published in Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature.

Nathan Gower (Faculty, F) presented on a panel and read from his novel The Act of Disappearing at the annual Punch Bucket Literary Festival in Asheville, North Carolina, on September 20. His short story "The Rabbit Nest" was published in the "Animalia" issue of the Bellevue Literary Review in September, and he is scheduled to participate in a Zoom reading hosted by the journal to celebrate the launch of the issue on October 23. Additionally, an excerpt from his novel manuscript Don't Go Unless You Mean It was published in September in Porchlight: A Journal of Southern LIt. Finally, he will be on faculty at the upcoming 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. 

Tell Me Every Lie by Ellen Hagan (Faculty, W4CYA) and her partner David Flores hit the shelves in June 2025 and they recently finished a tour in Kentucky that included stops at Foxing Books, Carmichael's Bookstore, Byway Books, the Nelson County Public Library and 21c. They have each written essays for Teen Librarian Toolbox and are thrilled to share this new two-voice novel with you all! Watch a short trailer here.  

Roy Hoffman (Faculty, CNF, Fiction) is profiled in “The Bay as Muse” in the Fall ’25 issue of Currents, a magazine of the environmental advocacy group Mobile Baykeepers. As a guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Alabama Writers Cooperative in September, he lectured on writing an involving and compelling first page and critiqued first pages submitted by participants.

Angela Jackson-Brown (Faculty, Fiction) was recently awarded tenure by the Board of Directors at Indiana University. In July, she was appointed Director of Creative Writing, where she continues to contribute as a faculty member in the creative writing program. In addition to her academic achievements, her poem “Crazy” will be published in The Louisville Review (Issue 97).

Erin Keane (Faculty, P, CNF) was a special guest on the final episode of “That’s a Wrap,” the companion podcast to author Kevin Smokler’s new book, Break the Frame: Conversations with Women Filmmakers, discussing many films by women directors featured in Kevin’s book. Her 2014 book of poems, Demolition of the Promised Land, has been reissued by Typecast Publishing and is now available on Amazon.

Lee Martin, (Faculty, F, CNF) taught a novel workshop at the Vermont College of Fine Arts Postgraduate Writers’ Conference in August.

Lesléa Newman’s (Faculty, W4CYA) essay, “Yom Kippur with My 87-Year-Old Dad” was published as part of a series called “On Being Jewish Now.” Lesléa is also proud to announce that her picture book, Joyful Song: A Naming Story, illustrated by Susan Gal and published by Levine/Querido, was long listed for the 2025 Massachusetts Book Award.

Katy Yocom (associate director of communications and alumni relations, F ’03) traveled in September with Kathleen Driskell and an adventurous group of students and alumni to Vietnam. She’s already dreaming about a return visit. In the meantime, she continues to offer developmental editing services for fiction and creative nonfiction manuscripts.

Alumni

Roy Burkhead’s (F ’04) CNF piece “Launched into uncertainty after 9/11, now a destination on America’s literary map: The Sena Jeter Naslund-Karen Mann Graduate School of Writing” appeared in September on his Substack publication, The Old Man and the Manuscript. In addition, Roy has been nominated for the Faculty Award for Part-Time Teaching at Western Kentucky University, where’s he’s an adjunct teaching Introduction to Literature during the current semester. Find Roy online at https://royburkhead.substack.com/ 

Holly Gleason took her second Criticism of Music Award (along with three others) at the Los Angeles Press Clubs' annual awards. She also won the National Podcast Award at the Gracies, which honors women in the media, for co-writing "The Boar's Nest: Sue Brewer & the Birth of Outlaw Country." But the big news hits Nov. 4 when HEART LIFE MUSIC (William Morrow) is published. Co-authored with 2025 Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Kenny Chesney, the book traces his creative and personal journey from East Tennessee to the biggest stadiums, encounters and friendships with Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Sammy Hagar, Joe Walsh and Jimmy Buffett and collaborations with the Wailers, Grace Potter, Uncle Kracker, Dave Matthews, plus co-producing a Willie Nelson album. Capturing a Nashville that has since been paved over by the tourist trappings, it's an honest portrait of a place where authentic humanity created the music that defined coming of age, working people and not just the South, but people living beyond the media centers.

Bill Goodman (CNF ’13) is celebrating 10 years as executive director of the Kentucky Humanities Kentucky Book Festival Oct. 27th-Nov. 1 at Joseph Beth Booksellers in Lexington. This year’s festival features a celebration of Wendell Berry’s new novel, Marce Catlett: The Force of a Story, S. D. (Silas) House and his mystery thriller Dead Man Blues, A Way with Words podcast hosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and The Happiness Project author and podcaster Gretchen Rubin. On Nov. 1, 150 authors and poets will be available for stage presentations, conversations with patrons, and book signing. Please join us Oct. 27 through Nov. 1—details at https://kybookfestival.org/.

Lisa Groen (F ’09) loved writing about artist Mary Cassatt, her sister Lydia, and their Impressionist friends in her debut novel, The Cassatt Sisters: A Novel of Love and Art. Published by Black Rose Writing, the book is available now.

Colleen S. Harris (F ’09) won the 2025 Broken Tribe Poetry Book Award with her poetry manuscript The Discipline of Drowning (expected 2026) and signed a contract with Cynren Press for her full-length poetry collection FLARE (expected 2027) on themes of chronic illness. Her fine press limited edition full-length collection Babylon Songs is forthcoming from First Bite Press in late 2025/early 2026. She also published a full-length poetry collection, The Light Becomes Us (Main Street Rag, 2025), and two chapbooks—Toothache in the Bone (boats against the current, 2025) and The Girl and the Gifts (Bottlecap, 2025)—in summer 2025. In the past few months her poems have appeared in Berkeley Poetry Review, Sheila-Na-Gig online, Star*Line, Gone Lawn, MacQueen’s Quinterly, and Muleskinner Journal and is forthcoming from Yearling, Strange Horizons, Appalachian Journal, and Wild Roof Journal, among others.

Becky Jeeves (CNF ’25) published her essay “Thwack, Thwack, Thwack” in Dorothy Parker’s Ashes for their September themed issue, “Noise.” Find her at beckyjeeves.com.

Jane B. Jones (PW ’17) published her play “This is NOT a Teen Movie” with Playscripts. Written with high schools in mind, the play is designed for a large, flexible cast. At Golden Valley High, prom season means one thing: over-the-top prom-posals. But when news breaks that recent grads have been expelled from college for sexual misconduct, a group of students begins to question what their culture is really promoting. Led by the principal’s outspoken daughter, they launch a bold campaign to take prom back—and spark a conversation the whole school can’t ignore.

Lisa McShane (W4CYA ’15), writing under the pen name L.V. Pires, has been named the winner of the prestigious F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest for her work “January Light.” She will present a public reading of the story at the Rockville (Maryland) Memorial Library at 6 p.m. October 9. https://fitzgeraldfestival.com/

Quincy Gray McMichael (CNF, P ’22) is still nursing her brain back to health, or accepting a new way of living, or revising her expectations for focus, intelligence, and creativity. Perhaps all three. And yet: The “Arts and Faith Collective” Vita Poetica published Quincy’s poem “It Works” (an erasure of “How It Works,” from the book Alcoholics Anonymous) in the Summer 2025 issue of their journal. Quincy’s poem “Heritage” will be featured in the anthology Rooted, Resilient, Rising: Women Growing Food Across the Mountains, to be published by the University Press of Kentucky (and edited by Amy Le Ann Richardson). “Heritage” explores connection to both the land and the body and is a part of “The Unsustainable Farm”—Quincy’s memoir-forever-in-progress. Find Quincy on her website or (almost never) on X or Instagram.

Angie Mimms (CNF ’15) has joined the board of directors of Radio Eye, a nonprofit that broadcasts recordings of newspapers, magazines, and current literature for people in Kentucky who cannot read printed material. She has volunteered as a reader with the Lexington-based organization for three years and looks forward to being more involved. She also has a poem included in These Mosaics: poems from a yearlong writing challenge, published by Hindman Settlement School.

Rosemary Royston (P '09) has two poems in the most recent issue of Porchlight: A Journal of Southern Literature.

Katerina Stoykova’s (P ’09) independent press, Accents Publishing, launched in 2010, is planning an open reading period aiming to discover and select the core of their 2027 catalog. The call for submissions is as follows: “We are looking for unpublished manuscripts of every genre imaginable. We are excited to read novels, short story collections, memoirs, nonfiction, young adult, children’s books, craft books, lyrical essays, full-length poetry collections, as well as chapbooks, plus any genre in between. We are turning our focus towards growth, variety and increased geographical reach. We accept manuscripts in November and December and hope to announce our selections before the end of March 2026. In lieu of a reading fee, to have a manuscript considered, we request that you buy a recent Accents Publishing book directly from our website. Forward the receipt to accents.publishing@gmail.com and attach your manuscript in a pdf or word format and include your brief bio.”