Recent Student Publications and Awards

Congratulations to Christian Moody and Jamie Poissant, who have both had stories selected for next year’s prestigious Best New American Voices anthology from Houghton Mifflin. More than 150 writing programs and 50 to 100 conferences make nominations each year, and only fourteen or fifteen stories are chosen per year for the anthology. To have two of that select number come from UC is really remarkable, and yet another testament to our graduate students.

Pick up a copy of Christian’s “Horusville” and Jamie’s “Lizard Man.”  

Our own Caki Wilkinson has two sharp and lively poems in the December issue of Poetry as part of their feature on this year's Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellows.  Congratulations are in order.

Darrin Doyle, who earned his PhD here in 2006, has TWO novels forthcoming now: LSU Press will bring out Revenge of the Teacher’s Pet next April, and in 2010 The Girl Who Ate Kalamazoo will be released by St. Martin’s. Darrin is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English (Fiction-Writing) at Kansas State University.

Congratulations to our incoming Ph.D. student Morgan Frank.  Her poem "Rescue" was chosen for the annual Best New Poets anthology, edited this year by Mark Strand.  "Rescue" appeared originally in the on-line journal Guernica.  It's a powerful and evocative piece of work.   The anthology will be out in October, but you can get an advanced look at "Rescue" here.

Congratulations are in order for our own Caki Wilkinson who has won a 2008 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship from The Poetry Foundation, publishers of Poetry magazine.  Five fellows are chosen through national competition; each receives $15,000 "to encourage the further study and writing of poetry"--encouraging indeed! More details at the Poetry Foundation site.

This month’s issue of The Atlantic Monthly includes “The Bower Bird,” a poem by Caki Wilkinson, who has just finished up her first year in our PhD program.  Caki’s poem won The Atlantic’s 2007 Student Writing Contest first prize, and it’s available here. Congratulations to Caki!

Congratulations are in order! Michael Rerick was chosen by Thylias Moss as winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. His manuscript, In Ways Impossible to Fold, will be published in the spring.

Congratulations to doctoral student Michael Rerick! His new chapbook X-RAY is just out. You can check it out here.

Congratulations to Byron Bailey, winner of the Boyce Teaching Award in the graduate student category!

Doctoral student Christian Moody’s short story “In the Middle of the Woods” has been selected for the upcoming Best American Fantasy prize anthology.  Congrats to Christian!

Congratulations to graduate student Kristi Maxwell! She was selected as a winner of the URC Summer Graduate Fellowship. She has also been awarded the Neff Fellowship for the outstanding woman graduate student in the Arts & Sciences for 2008-09!

Congratulations to doctoral students George Potter, Charlie Green, and Joshua Butts! All three were selected as winners of the Charles Phelps Taft Dissertation Fellowship for 2008-09!

Congratulations to our own Caki Wilkinson for a poem chosen as feature of the month by the website Verse Daily. Check it out here.

Congrats to third-year PhD student George Potter, who has received a Fulbright grant for 2009. He will be researching theatric representations of American foreign policy in Cairo, Egypt.

Congratulations to second-year doctoral student Jillian Weise, who just received a Fulbright grant-- she'll be spending 2009 in Argentina writing!

Peter Grimes's story "Toadman" has won a highly competitive and sought after AWP Intro award. Peter was one of the three winners; "Toadman" will be published in Hayden's Ferry Review. Congratulations, Peter!

More good news! Congratulations to second-year MA student Bo McGuire, who just received a Rogers fellowship (the top award for creative writers) from the University of Arizona's MFA program. Hooray, Bo!

What's a great present for someone about to defend her dissertation? For Liz Tilton, it was the Wick Chapbook Prize, which she earned for her poetry collection titled Salt. Read the story about Liz's prize-winning collection.

Graduate student Kristi Maxwell's second book of poems, Hush Sessions, has been accepted for publication by Saturnalia Press. Her first book, Realm 64, is forthcoming early next year from Ahsahta.

Jamie Poissant, a first-year PhD student, has a story in the 2008 Best New American Voices, edited by Richard Bausch. The book was released by Harcourt and is now in bookstores; Jamie's story is "Venn Diagram." Jamie and others in the anthology read in fall 2007 at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tenn. Jamie also won the 2007 Playboy College Fiction Contest, a $3,000 prize, for his story "Lizard Man." The September 2007 McMicken Monthly featured a profile on him. "Lizard Man" can be found in the October 2007 issue of Playboy.