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: 2022-2023 news, 2021-2022 news; 2020 & earlier. Please also visit our UWM creative writing program bookshelf.
Seth Copeland (PhD, 2024) has work forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly.
Current doctoral students Rebecca Baumann and Sean Enfield have work in issue 50.1 of Black Warrior Review.
Katie Witt (PhD in progress) published an essay in The War Horse.
Jessica Drake Thomas (PhD in progress) has a new novel out: Hollow Girls (Cemetery Dance).
JT Lachausse (PhD in progress) has two poems in the March 2024 edition of Poetry.
Ching-In Chen (PhD, 2015) has been named 2024 Poet Laureate of the city of Redmond, Washington.
The Library of Michigan named two books by UWM authors to its annual Michigan Notable Books list: Dearborn by Ghassan Zeineddine (PhD, 2016) and Enough to Lose by Raymond Deeren (PhD, 2022).
Tasneem Jassar (BA, 2023) has been awarded the 2023–24 Milwaukee Emerging Poet Fellowship in the Practice category from Woodland Pattern Book Center.
Ae Hee Lee (PhD, 2021), whose full-length poetry collection, Asterism, was selected by John Murillo for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, will launch the book in February 2024. She writes, “this collection of poems contemplates the wonders and challenges of migration, questioning enactments of fixed and exclusive belonging. Ultimately, my hope for this book is that it will resonate with anyone who needs to hear that transnational, polycentric lives have a place in this world.”
Holy American Burnout! (Split Lip Press), by current PhD student Sean Enfield, received a starred review in Kirkus, which called the book a “tour-de-force collection of essays on issues surrounding race, education, and American history.”
An essay by Danielle Harms (PhD in progress), “Revision Notes Regarding the Fish in the Water,” which appeared in New Letters in 2022, was named a “notable essay” by Best American Essays 2023.
The Necessity of Wildfire, a new poetry collection by Caitlin Scarano (PhD, 2018) won both the 2023 Pacific Northwest Book Award for poetry and the Wren Poetry Prize selected by Ada Limón.
Congratulations to current PhD student Lee Kathryn Hodge on the publication of her poetry collection, We Make Shapes from Shapes, with Bent Paddle Press.
Ghassan Zeineddine (PhD, 2016) was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, discussing his first book, Dearborn, with longtime NPR arts desk reporter Neda Ulaby.
Congratulations to RS Deeren (PhD, 2022), on the publication of his first book of short stories, Enough to Lose, with Wayne State UP. Dr. Deeren teaches at Austin Peay State University, where he is fiction editor of Zone 3.
Josh Rank (BA, 2009) has published his first novel, The Present is Past, with Unsolicited Press.
Danielle Harms (PhD in progress) has a piece, “Strawberry Tongue” in Short Reads.
Ann-Marie Blanchard (PhD, 2018) won the 2023 Missouri Review fiction prize. Her story, “Trouble Will Find You,” was selected from a field of 1000 entries. Her poetry manuscript, Homebake, was shortlisted for the Black River Chapbook Competition (2022), The New Michigan Press / DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest (2023), and was a finalist in the Black Lawrence Immigrant Writing Series (2022). She was also recently named a 2024 Arist in Residence at Bundanon, “the largest program of its kind in Australia” which supports “visual and performing arts, literature, science, dance and music.”