MFA IN CREATIVE WRITING     ✦     ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Alumni Publications 2022 Post-Residency

 

• The Naked Truth: Poems by J. R. Simons (Simple Simons Press)
• Streetlight Sonata: Poems by J. R. Simons (Simple Simons Press)

• "What I Did Not Yet Know" (Brevity, Fall 2022)

• American Honey: A Field Guide to Resisting Temptation (2021)
• “The Wonders of Massaman Curry,” Rock & Sling (May 2022)
• “Shelf Life,” Brevity blog (February 2022)
• “Mothers’ Top Dresser Drawers,” Brevity Magazine (January 2022)
• Interview with Ashland University English Department Chair Hilary Donatini (November 16, 2021)
• “The Name” and “Over Flyover Country,” Reformed Journal (September 2021)
• A Fake Ring, Real Temptation, and a Golden Marriage on Our American Stories, April 13, 2022
• A Field Guide to Resisting Temptation, Episode 170 on the Crappy Christian Podcast, March 30, 2022
• Featured Paragraph of the Week, The Humble Essayist, March 11, 2022
• Review at Hippocampus Magazine, January 11, 2022
• The Memoir Cafe #13: Sarah M. Wells on Marriage, Memoir & Temptation, December 20, 2021
• “Reasons to Hope: Because Love Is Patient”, Root & Vine News, December 13, 2021
• IG Live with Kate Tucker on Reasons to Hope, Root & Vine News, December 13, 2021“I Take to Drinking” excerpt from American Honey published on Salon.com, December 11, 2021

2016
Adam Gellings

• Finding Common Ground: One Octogenarian's Quest to Help our Nation Heal (2021)

 

Other Announcements

Some of our alumni accomplishments cannot be encompassed through publications alone. This section is dedicated to some of the other fun and fascinating things that our community has been up to over the years!

Ashley Bethard was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award in Non-fiction. She also won first place in the 2022 American Society of Journalists and Authors for "First-Person Essay" for "Grief Work," published in VIDA Review.

Kristin Distel graduated from Ohio University with her Ph.D. in English and a graduate certificate in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She has also accepted a position as Coordinator of Academic Coaching and First-Generation Student Success Programming at Ohio University. 

Robynne Elizabeth Miller became director of the Vision Christian Writers Conference at Mt. Hermon. She also continued as president of Inspire Christian Writers. 

Jeff Muse works for the National Park Service, where he and his wife work as rangers. They live in northern New Mexico. 

Joline Scott-Roller will be presenting a panel entitled "Writer Interrupted: The Art of Writing While Parenting" at the Inkubator conference in Cleveland this fall. She will be presenting as a member and Team Leader for Pen Parentis (out of NYC)

JR Simons has created Simple Simons Press, an independent publisher of poetry and plays. The first two offerings of the Press are The Naked Truth: Poems by J. R. Simons, six poems of which were nominated for the 2022 Pushcart compilation, and Streetlight Sonata: Poems by J. R. Simons, which took Second Place for Poetry in the 2011 Sharp Writ Awards, Honorable Mention in the Poetry category of the 20th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards (2012), and was a Poetry Finalist in the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Awards when first published by Jovialities Entertainment.

Sarah Wells is a freelance marketing content writer and also writes regularly for Root & Vine News and God Hears Her, a blog from Our Daily Bread. She lives in Ashland, Ohio, with her husband, a dozen fish, three children, two westies, and one bearded dragon named Joey.