The Creative Writing Program is proud to celebrate the many successes of students past and present.
See below for our current news, and these pages for news from prior years: 2023–2024 news, 2022-2023 news, 2021-2022 news; 2020 & earlier. Please also visit our UWM creative writing program bookshelf.
Congratulations to LG Sebayan (PhD in progress), whose poem,“For the Indigenous Girl in Fig. 7” won honorable mention in the 2025 AWP Intro Journals Project competition.
Congratulations to Nancy Nguyen (PhD in progress), whose story, “Breach,” won the Passages North Waasnode Fiction Prize, selected by María Alejandra Barrios. It appears in issue 46.
Katie Visser (BA 2009, MA, 2012) is the co-founder and co-host of a monthly variety hour called “The Non-Fiction Show” in Los Angeles and was the subject of a recent profile in L&S In Focus.
Congratulations to Su Cho (PhD, 2021) and Canese Jarboe (PhD, 2024), who have both been named 2025 NEA Fellows in Poetry. Cho will join Vanderbilt University’s MFA program as an assistant professor in fall 2025; Jarboe published their collection Sissy (Garden-Door Press) in 2024 and was also a 2024 Tallgrass Artist-in-Residence.
Mark Wisniewski (MA, 2017) is senior lecturer in English at Vanderbilt University.
Congratulations to Jessica Lynn Drake-Thomas (PhD in progress) whose novella, Hollow Girls, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.
Poetry faculty emerita and alumna Brenda Cárdenas was named Wisconsin Poet Laureate in December, 2024. Her two-year term starts January 15, 2025.
Kyle Battle (’19, BA Economics and English) is the writer of “The Dead Memoirs,” a musical hip-hopera based on the novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis. On Nov. 11, the show debuted at the sold-out Dormouse Theatre in Kalamazoo, Michigan to an enthusiastic audience. More details here.
Brookes Moody (PhD, 2021) will see her debut poetry collection, Astral Weeks, Etc., published by Finishing Line Press on March 14, 2025
Tyler Odeneal (BA, 2019) has a new story, “Move,” out in Unwoven.
Congratulations to Jessica Lynn (BA, 2009), whose novella, Eye of a Needle, was published this past summer by Hell Hare House Short Reads.
Jenny Benjamin (MA, 1997) has a new chapbook out, Painted Women in the Walls, from Finishing Line Press.
Joshua Hren (BA, MA, PhD, 2011) has published his eleventh book, a novel, Blue Walls Falling Down.
LG Sebayan (PhD in progress) has a poem, “Sneakerhead Wife,” in the latest Calyx Journal.
Gabriel Mundo (PhD in progress) has an essay, “Margarita Night,” forthcoming in Black Warrior Review.
Congratulations to Matthew Wamser (BA, 2018), who was named one of this year’s fellows at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.
Seth Copeland (PhD, 2024) will join the faculty at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater this fall.
Congratulations to Ching-In Chen (PhD, 2015) on receiving a $50,000 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets!