Omnium Gatherum: Alumni & Teaching Staff News

His debut novel Bark On is will be available through Driftwood Press in February, 2023.

She has published a debut children’s picture book, Leo + Lea (Scholastic, illustrated by Kenard Pak, August 2022). Leo + Lea is a celebration of math, friendship, and different ways of seeing and being in the world. The words and illustrations follow a math pattern called the Fibonacci sequence (a pattern often found in nature), creating a beautiful metaphor for our connection to each other and the natural world.

Her personal essay, Double Negative, won the Split/Lip Press CNF chapbook contest and is forthcoming March 15, 2022. It is available for preorder starting on February 15.

Martina Clark’s memoir, My Unexpected Life: An International Memoir of Two Pandemics, HIV and COVID-19, is being published by Northampton House Press and comes out October 5th, 2021. This memoir was her workshop piece in 2013.

Swathi Desai’s short story, “A Girl, Almost Ten”, was featured in the May 2021 issue of Faultline. https://issuu.com/faultlinejournal/docs/faultline30printfinal

His essay “Places of Worship” appeared in Penmen Review on June 11, 2021. His essay “One Year After the Break-in” was published by Eclectica Magazine Vol.25, No.3 (July/August 2021).

His short story “The Saint” was published online in the summer 2021 issue of Baltimore Review, and will be included in the magazine’s annual print anthology. Also published online is an audio recording (check the horizontal black bar at the bottom of the screen) of Gaitonde reading his story, with music by Lydian Nadhaswaram.

Her first novel, Italian Love Cake (Bordighera Press, 2021), about a young Italian American woman struggling to save her family’s store on the eve of WWII, will be translated into French and published by Éditions Anne Carrière, Spring 2022.

Her latest book, Face, A Memoir (January 2021, Saddle Road Press), was shortlisted for the 2021 Eric M. Hoffer Book Award grand prize, and won honorable mention in the memoir category. Her essat, “Skin Craft,” which is about her relationship with her surgeon and derived from the book, was shortlisted for the Fish Publishing Short Memoir Prize, and is in the latest edition of Reed Magazine.

Her short story “Outside the Mayan” recently appeared in Story Issue 10.

His story “The Ferry and the Road” appeared in the April 2021 issue of Story. An excerpt of this story was workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2017.

He has signed an agreement with Los Angeles based publisher Mystic Boxing Commission. His debut novel, A Kiss Away, will be released Fall, 2021.

Her historical novel, Prospects of a Woman, published in October, 2020 from She Writes Press, has won 7 awards: 2021 IPPY Awards Gold Winner in Best Regional Fiction-West-Pacific, 2021 Independent Press Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in Regional Fiction, 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist in First Novel, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Western Fiction, 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Regional Fiction: West, and 2021 National Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Book Interior Design: Fiction.

Her essay “Dancing on the Blade” won the San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press Literary Award in Nonfiction and appears in the spring 2021 issue of Under the Sun.

Her short story “Patroness” appears in the latest issue of Pacifica Literary Review.

She has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2021-2022 to work on a book she is calling The Neuroscience of Craft. The book will analyze contemporary fiction-writers’ techniques for helping readers to blend senses in their imaginations.

Her short story “What Consumes You” won the 2020 Greensboro Review Robert Watson Literary Prize and appears in the Spring 2021 issue, as well as online.

His newest book, Street Stories, a street photography monograph, will be published by Poltroon Press in May, 2021.

A chapter from her memoir-in-progress was published in the February 2021 issue of Travel + Leisure.

Ron Nyren’s novel The Book of Lost Light was the finalist for the 2020 David J. Langum, Sr. Prize in American Historical Fiction.

His short story ‘The Worth of a Miracle’ was a finalist in The George Floyd Short Story Competition conducted by the Nottingham Writers Studio, Nottingham, England. His story, along with stories of other winners and finalists, have been published in the anthology Black Lives, in the United Kingdom, available as print and Kindle editions.

Her short story won the Elizabeth Sloane Tyler Memorial Award from Woven Tale Press, judged by Ann Beattie, and appeared in the 2019 issue of Woven Tale magazine.

His book, Reagan’s Cowboys: Inside the 1984 Reelection Campaign’s Secret Operation Against Geraldine Ferraro, (McFarland 2020) has been optioned by a major television network for a forthcoming series.

Her short story “Anything You Ask Me To”, was a finalist in the Nimrod Literary Awards and appears in the Fall/ Winter 2020 issue.

Her short story “Fatherhood” appears online in the December 2020 issue of Hobart.

His two-part multimedia essay “Ode to Beethoven” (illustrated, with embedded videos) to mark the 250th birth anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven, was published by Serenade magazine.

His essay “The Milk in Many Lands” appeared in the 2020 issue (No: 3) of the literary magazine, Stonecrop.

Jenn Alandy Trahan’s short story, “The Freak Winds Up Again,” is the November 2020 issue (#271) of One Story.

Her first collection of poetry, Manhattan My Ass, You’re in Oakland, will be published by EquiDistance Press in December, 2020.

Her essay “Walking with Birds,” published in Boulevard, fall 2019, made the Notables of Best American Essays of 2020.

Her short story “Lady: Part I” appears in the November 2020 issue of the literary magazine Orca.

Her piece about her family’s deliberations over what to do about her father’s Michigan mail-in ballot when it arrived one day after he died in September 2020 appeared in The Washington Post. Her piece about Jane Hirshfield’s latest collection, Ledger, was featured in Orion and Wild Hope earlier this year.

She judged the 2020 High Plains Book Award for Fiction (winner: Joe Wilkins’ Fall Back Down When I Die). She taught workshops for Hampton Roads Convergence of Writers and the Brandeis National Committee. And she was recently interviewed by Sean Murphy, Executive Director of 1455 Literary Arts, about books, the writing process, and more.

His book-length poem, Azorean Suite/ Suite Açoriana, was published in a bilingual (English/Portuguese) edition by Letras Lavadas in October, 2020.

His novel, Fortnight on Maxwell Street, recipient of the Eric Hoffer Award for the best general fiction book of 2018, has been released as an audiobook performed by Chicago voice and stage actor Doug MacKechnie. The novel is a reluctant hero’s journey of fear and courage set in Chicago in the spring of 1968. 24-year-old medical student Nick Weissman spends two weeks delivering babies in the kitchens and bedrooms of the inner-city’s slum tenements. Over his head medically, and unprotected in one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, his character and resourcefulness are tested in the extreme when a national tragedy intervenes.

His essay “The Hardy Girls” appeared in the 2020 spring/summer issue of Maryland Literary Review. His Essay “My Father and Me Too” was published in Green Hills Literary Lantern’s GHLL XXXI (2020).

Her novel, Away to Stay, will be published by Regal House Press in September, 2021.

His chapbook, The View from January, was published by Kelsay Books in January, 2020.

Her short story, “Sagrada Familia,” (workshopped at the Community of Writers Summer Workshop in ’17) was featured as ‘Story of The Week’ at Narrative Magazine and appeared in the Fall 2020 issue. Other stories by Holiday are upcoming in the Fall 2020 issue of Ploughshares and the Spring 2021 issue of American Short Fiction.

A translation of his novel, The Splendid City, to Spanish by Chilean novelist, Jaime Collyer, will be published on December 1, 2020.

Her essay “What Would You Call It?” appears online at North American Review.

His short story “A Trip to the Store: A Memoir” appears in VOICES 2020, a themed issue of Dreams, Desires & Delusions from Cold River Press.

His short story, “The Storyteller,” recently appeared on The Baffler.

Her essay, “Restoration,” was published by Entropy Magazine.

His novel, Toxic Spirits (Calumet Editions, 2019), set in Thailand, is now being translated into multiple languages. Reviews have included “A complex and enthralling international intrigue with a treasure of remarkable detail” (Frederick Barthelme) and “Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes” (Kirkus).

His essay “Lydian Nadhaswaram: From Musician to Actor – and Back” (on a child music prodigy in India making his movie debut) was published in Serenade magazine on Sep 3, 2020.

Her short story, “The Big Men”, appears in the June 30th, 2020 issue of Prometheus Dreaming.

Her essay “Destination: Okay” will be featured in a new anthology What We Didn’t Expect: Personal Stories about Premature Birth, due out November, 2020, from Melville House and available now for pre-orders. Subject matter from this essay—specifically the science of language acquisition— was originally workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2011.

She was recently honored as a 2020 Bainbridge Resident for The Seventh Wave, where her latest essay, “Foreign Domestic” is featured in their 11th Issue.

Her novel, Faces of War, has been selected as a finalist in the Women’s Fiction Writers Association’s 2020 RISING STAR Award for Unpublished Women’s Fiction.

Her piece on “Autism in the Time of Covid” was published in Statorec, as part of a 31-author series on the Pandemic – so that we won’t forget.

His short story “At Home and Away,” set against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent memory, the Sri Lanka civil war, was published in the Spring/Summer 2020 issue of Epiphany.

Her short story, “The Duck Walk” appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Phoebe Journal.

She has an essay up on the Broad Street Blog. 

Her essay “Walking with Birds” was published in the Fall 2019 issue of Boulevard.

She recently received 2 gold medals from the NATJA Travel Media Awards. “Painting the Next Chapter,” published in Adventure Journal won gold in Lifestyle, Personality & Profiles and “What It’s Like to Break Bread in the Desert” in Saveur Magazine won gold in Family Travel.

Her short story, “Sand and Salt,” from which she began the novel chapter she workshopped at the Community of Writers, was published in the anthology, Furious Gravity in May, 2020. She also published another short story, “As Far Away,” in Gargoyle issue 71.

She has an essay in the upcoming anthology, Alone Together: Love, Grief, and Comfort During the Time of COVID-19, published by Central Avenue. All net profits will be donated to The Book Industry Charitable Foundation, helping indie booksellers in need.

He was a finalist in The Chautauqua Institution’s 2020 Janus Prize “for daring formal and aesthetic innovations that upset and reorder readers’ imaginations.”

She was recently awarded a Nautilus Award (Silver) for her book Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons. With a Kirkus starred review, it was also listed as one of the “best books of 2019” by Bookworm and Stanford Medicine, as well as the #1 book in public health by BookAuthority.

Her personal essay “Wanting Warhol: My Connections to Andy Warhol” appears in the June 2020 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader.

His short story “Kismet” was published in Pembroke Magazine, Issue No 52, 2020.

Her debut novel, Bone Broth, will be published in spring 2021 by Hidden Timber Books.

She was recently awarded the Nautilus Book Award for her book Camel Crazy: A Quest for Miracles in the Mysterious World of Camels. 

His book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was recently awarded the First Literary Prize from Letras Lavadas, in conjunction with PEN Azores.

Her short story, “The Runaway,” appeared in The Broadkill Review, January – February 2020 issue. An essay, “How I Lost My Vegan,” appeared in the February 2020 issue of Literary Veganism; Editions Bibliotekos.

Her novel, Italian Love Cake, will be published by Bordighera Press, April 2021. Italy and America collide in this story of feminism and political awakening in late 1930’s America.

Her novel Bee Music was purchased at auction by Dutton for publication in 2021. The novel chronicles the story of three lonely residents in a rural Oregon town, each struggling to deal with one of life’s curveballs — a teenager who has just become paraplegic after a freak accident, a middle-aged widow suffering from panic attacks, and a young man with social anxiety — who come together on a local honeybee farm where they find surprising friendship, healing and maybe even a second chance. Eileen is the author of How to be a Sister: A Love Story with a Twist of Autism and has written for PsychologyToday.com, The Oregonian and Creative Nonfiction Magazine (forthcoming).

Nonfiction fragmentologist Susan Starbird launched the fifth issue of Susan The Magazine, with the theme of Varmints. Prior issues focused on water, women, work, and cars. All are available from Amazon, findable if you search the author’s name.

His flash fiction piece, “The Assimilation of Boyboy Santos” (originally published in Lost Balloon magazine), was selected for inclusion in the Best Small Fictions 2020 anthology.

Her short story “A Man at the End of the Hallway” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It was published in Scoundrel Time, in October 2019.

Her two short stories were recently awarded gold medals at the NATJA Travel Media Awards in the Family Travel and Profile categories.

Her new children’s book, An Ordinary Day, was published in March, 2020, by Beach Lane Books.

His new novel, The Mighty Oak, will be out in September 2020 from Blackstone Publishing.

His essay “The Fairest of the Fair” appeared in Streetlight Magazine.

His short story, “The Citron Tree,” will appear in the Spring 2020 issue of The McNeese Review.

Her seventh novel, Angel Mountain, has been contracted to be published by Wipf and Stock Publishers in 2020. Set on Mount Diablo in the present day, the story involves a holy hermit, a Holocaust survivor, a literary librarian, and a faithful geneticist who meet in a world of earthquake, fire, and mob violence. Themes include human dignity and free speech, history and memory, faith and science.

His essay collection, Points of Light, won the 2019 Tamaqua Award from Hidden River Arts Press.

Her essay “Alexandria Melodies” about Alexandria, Egypt and its writers was published in the  Los Angeles Review of Books in December, 2019.

His short story, “Bridge of the Hallelujahs”, appeared in the autumn 2019 issue of Orca, and was nominated for a Pushcart prize.

His book of short fiction, Bank Run, has been published by Ascent Literary Journal. This is part of the same novel-in-progress he workshopped at the Community of Writers in 2018.

Her short stories have won the first, third and fourth Strands International short story competitions.

Her novel Miami in Virgo was published by Woodbine Odyssey in October, 2019.

Her short story, “Into a Neat Line,” was a finalist in Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Contest. Her novel, Shooting Rockets at The Moon, was a finalist in the Pirate’s Alley William Faulkner Society’s 2019 Novel-in-Progress category.

Her short story “The Ghost Rider,” workshopped at the Community of Writers, took the editor’s choice award for Carve Magazine’s Raymond Carver short story contest and appears alongside an interview in the 2019 fall issue of Carve.

His short story “Is Someone Going to Say Something to the Woman Crying on BART?” will appear in the Winter 2019 issue of ZYZZYVA.

Her new book, The Deoliwallahs, will be published by Pan Macmillan India in December. It is a non-fiction account of her family and the stories of several Chinese Indians who were interned after the war between India and China in 1962.

Her chapbook of poems, Interstate, was recently published by from Dancing Girl Press.

An excerpt from her memoir entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein” appears in the Fall 2019 Volume IX issue of Label Me Latina/o.

Her memoir-in-flash, A Prayer Answered, was in Signs, a special themed issue of Jellyfish Review: September 2019. Her story “Tu-an Ju” was in the Otherworld/Underworld of University of Hawai’i – Manoa’s e-zine vice-versa. Her story “Things She Can Take” was in the Prairie Schooner Winter 2018 special issue on Opioids.

The 70th Anniversary Edition of her SKADE Award-Winning book, Squaw Valley & Alpine Meadows: Tales from Two Valleys, was published in October, 2019.

His newest book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, was published by Homebound Publications as part of its Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.

His essay, “Gandhi and the Mantle of the Mahatma” written to mark Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary (October 2nd) was published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, New York.

His essay collection, Outlier Heart: Essays From My Life As An Immortalist, was published by IFERS Press.

His essay, “The Incredible Shrinking Sentence,” was recently published in the Fall 2019 issue of The Threepenny Review.

Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published by University of Iowa Press in October, 2019.

She was recently named one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” honorees, a prize that aims to “recognize young, debut fiction writers whose work promised to leave a lasting impression on the literary landscape.” Her debut novel, Happy Like This, will be published on October 15, 2019 from University of Iowa Press.

Her essay “Pojangmacha People” recently won an emerging writers contest at Ploughshares. She brought a version of this essay to the Writers Workshop this past summer.

Her book World Gone Missing: Stories is the winner of 2018 Nautilus Book Prize silver medal in fiction.

Her English-language debut Like Water and Other Stories was published by WTAW Press in September, 2019, and received a glowing review from The Moscow Times.

His essay, “Has India Had Its Stonewall Moment?” has been published on Sept 6, 2019, in The Mantle, to mark the first anniversary of the decriminalization of the LGBT community in India. June 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in New York. Gaitonde looks at both.

She won the 2019 Strands International Flash Fiction first and third competitions with her stories “Howie” and “The Library.”

Her novel Italian Love Cake will be published by Bordighera Press in Fall 2020; a personal essay, “Beneath Snowy Foothills,” appears online in the July 2019 issue of Ovunque Siamo.

Her short story collection, Happy Like This, won Iowa’s 2019 John Simmons Short Fiction Award and will be released on October 15, 2019.

Her new book, Small Silent Things, was recently published by HarperCollins.

Her short story, “They Told Us Not to Say This,” published in Harper’s Magazine in September 2018, was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2019.

Her collection of short stories, Once Removed, will be published in September, 2019, by University of Georgia Press. It recently received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.

His new book, Falling Up: A Memoir of Second Chances, is being published by Homebound Publications as part of their Little Bound Books Essay Series in September 2019.

Her newest book, The Last Train to London, a novel based on the true story of the Vienna Kindertransports and the extraordinary woman who led the rescues, will be published by HarperCollins and HarperCollins-Canada September 10, and in translation in fifteen languages.

Her 10th volume of poetry, The Wilderness: New and Selected Poems, was published in 2018, and was recently awarded a gold medal from the Benjamin Franklin Independent Book Awards. Her recent work has appeared in the The Georgia Review and The Gettysburg Review.

Her essay, “Riding Ditch”, was recently published in the Summer 2019 issue of Virginia Quarterly Review. Her short story, “Lost Gun, $1000 Reward, No Questions”, won Boulevard’s Short Fiction Contest for Emerging Writers and will appear in the Fall 2019 issue.

She featured in a July 2019 Facebook Live event “Poets in Pajamas,” sponsored by Sundress Publications.

Her essays have recently appeared in The Gold Man Review and Ruminate ( shorts). Two are in press for the Euonia Review and Boulevard.

The American Jewish Press Association is honoring Yoav Potash with a Simon Rockower Award for Best Personal Essay, for his piece titled “How I learned all Israelis are not my father,” published by J. The Jewish News of Northern California. The American Jewish Press Association bills the Rockower Awards as “the Jewish Pulitzers.”

His newest novel, The Sixth Conspirator, will be released in August 2019 by Post Hill Press.

Her documentary feature, The Golden Harvest, which she wrote and directed, debuted at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival in March, 2019, a top 10 international film festival, and was selected as “Best of the Fest” at the Minneapolis St. Paul International Film Festival in April, 2019.

Her debut picture book, Roadkill abc, was published by Xlibris Press in September, 2018.

Her story “Half Hitch” that was published in Salamander in the Summer ’18 edition has been selected for Best of Small Fictions.

Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, (HarperCollins, 2018) won the Western Writers of America Spur Award, in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award.

Her first chapter from her collection of personal essays on childcare and immigrant issues is forthcoming in the Label Me Latina/o Fall 2019 issue. The first chapter is entitled “He Imitated a Stiff-Legged Frankenstein.

His essay “Super Summer Spectacular” was reprinted in Air (A Hippocampus anthology).

Her debut memoir, What A Body Remembers: A Memoir of Sexual Assault and Its Aftermath, will be published by Rare Bird Books in June 2019.

Her story “Shadows Under Trees” is in the current issue of The Antioch Review (Volume 76, No. 4).
Karen’s essay on working with asylum seekers at the border is in the online journal Cagibi, Issue 6.

Her new book, Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons, will be released in May, 2019, from HarperCollins.

Her fifth novel, The Welsh Fasting Girl, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press on May 7, 2019.

His novella History of an Executioner won the 2019 Novella Prize from Miami University Press, and will be published in 2020.

Her essay, “Orange is the No Black” was published in the September 2018 issue of Coast Magazine and online at the Orange County Register.

Her short story won the Nancy D. Hargrove Editors Prize and appears in the Summer 2018 (Sept.) issue of Jabberwock Review. Another short story was runner-up in the Barry Hannah Prize for Fiction and appears in the Winter 2019 issue of Yalobusha Review.

Her novel Weather Woman has won a Nautilus Book Award. The sequel to Weather Woman, called Sinking Islands, has just been sold and will be published in the spring of 2021. Her short story collection, Vanishing, won the 2018 Leapfrog Fiction Contest and will come out in 2020.

Her essay “The Year There Were No Mushrooms” appeared in November 2018 issue of The Goldman Review. Two pieces of flash non-fiction “The Lost Patient” and “That Which Saves Us” appeared in spring 2018 and recent 2019 issues of Ruminate.

His essay, “The Inclusion Orthodoxy,” was published in Literary Yard, his essay, “Big Art,” was published in Image Journal: Good Letters, his short play, Intermission, is being performed at Winding Road Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, and his essay “Drinking from the Air” was selected for inclusion in the Transhumanism Handbook (Springer).

His trilogy of multimedia essays on India’s 13-year-old music prodigy Lydian Nadhaswaram was published in Serenade magazine in March 2019. Lydian Nadhaswaram won the CBS international talent show The World’s Best, which had competitors from all fields of arts & entertainment from 36 countries.

She co-edited the essay collection, My Caesarean: Twenty-One Mothers on the C-Section Experience and After, which will be published by The Experiment Press on May 1, 2019.

Her new ten minute play, “Detecting Obstacles” will be produced as part of the annual “Out of Ink” Scriptworks festival in May. Nettie is currently working on her memoir as well, entitled, This is How You Start Over which details her leaving her PR career to become a spiritual death and dying chaplain.

His newest book, All Hat, was recently released from Handin Hand Publishing.

Her short story “The Winterist” won second prize in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest. This is Renee’s third appearance in the magazine; two previous stories appeared as “Stories of the Week.”

Her debut novel, The Atlas Of Reds And Blues, has been picked up abroad, and is being published by Fleet (an imprint of Little, Brown) in the UK and commonwealth countries and by Hachette India in the subcontinent.

His short story collection, Controlled Chaos, was published by Wheeler Street Press in April, 2019.

Her  biographical novel, Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance, was published in January 2019 by ACMRS/Univ of Arizona. This historical fiction dramatizes the life of Renaissance artist Sofonisba Anguissola, whose work will be a major exhibit at the Prado, Madrid in October 2019.

Her essay, “The Lonely Hours Before Supper,” was published in Meat For Tea (March 2019; V.13 (1)).

She narrated the audiobook version of her nonfiction book, Fire Monks, the story of how five Zen monks saved a California monastery from a wildfire with a combination of hard work, aplomb, and wisdom. Blackstone released the audiobook in March 2019.

His essay “Jaya He! The Story of India’s National Anthem” was published by The Mantle in January 2019. It delves into the history and controversies swirling around the anthem composed by Nobel laureate & polymath Rabindranath Tagore – and also highlights the largely hidden role of an Irish woman’s contribution to the music. You can read it here: http://www.mantlethought.org/arts-and-culture/jaya-h%C3%A9-story-india%E2%80%99s-national-anthem

His essay “Nixon for President” appeared in North Dakota Quarterly (Spring-Summer-Fall-Winter 2018). His essay “Love North of Sunset” appeared in Saint Ann’s Review (Winter 2019). His essay “The Last Honors Class” appeared in Glint Literary Journal (Winter 2018).

Her novel, The Flicker of Old Dreams, won the Western Writers of America Spur Award in the category of Best Western Contemporary Novel, and was chosen as an Honor Book for the Montana Book Award. She was additionally awarded a Hawthornden International Fellowship and will spend a month writing at the Hawthornden Castle in Midlothian, Scotland.

Her debut novel, Pickle’s Progress, will be published on April 9, 2019. Recent praise from Richard Russo: “The four main characters in Pickle’s Progress seem more alive than most of the people we know in real life because their fears and desires are so nakedly exposed. That’s because their creator, Marcia Butler, possesses truly scary X-ray vision and intelligence to match.”

His short story collection, Ballad of a Slopsucker, was published by the University of New Mexico Press in February 2019.

Her debut novel If, Then is forthcoming from Random House March 12, 2019. It has been optioned by Heyday Television. She will be joining us this summer as part of our Published Alumni Reading Series.

Her story, “The Winterist” took second place in Narrative’s Fall 2018 Story Contest.

Her screenplay for her film in independent development, What We Know, which follows a sexual assault survivor as she navigates the Title IX process, is a semifinalist in the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival’s Screenplay Competition and a finalist in the 2019 Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York. The crowdfunding campaign for the film is accepting donations until mid-March on Seed & Spark.

Her debut book, The Moon Within, a middle grade novel in verse, will be released on February, 2019, by Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic. The book was called “A worthy successor to Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” in a Kirkus starred review.

He is the co-host, along with Rund Abdelfatah, of NPR’s first history podcast, Throughline.

Her essay “When Your Writing Comes Through The Ether” was published in The Superstition Review.

Her first book of short stories, Driving in Cars With Homeless Men, has won the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize, which includes a substantial cash prize and publication by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She was selected by judge Min Jin Lee.

Her short story “Carrion” will be in the spring 2019 issue of Pembroke Magazine. Her flash fiction piece “Stray” will appear in the June issue of the Jellyfish Review.

Her novel, The Naked Shopper, has been selected First Runner Up by Red Hen Press in the Quill Prose Award contest. An excerpt from The Naked Shopper was published in January 2019 in the Capra Review.

Her short story “Sweet Blood” was published in Issue 18 of SAND Journal, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

The 10th Anniversary edition of her novel, Freshwater Road, was recently named in Pacific Standard’s “A Martin Luther King Jr. Day Civil Rights Reading List.”

Her “Me, Too” dance thriller Buzz was recently sold as a TV movie to MarVista Entertainment in Los Angeles.

Dedria Humphries Barker’s creative nonfiction book, Mother of Orphans: The True and Curious Story of Irish Alice, a Colored Man’s Widow, will be published in April 2019 by 2Leaf Press (distributed by The University of Chicago Press). In which four generations of black women recall their daring 19th century white matriarch, it is the story of Barker’s great-grandmother, Alice Donlan Johnson.

Her debut novel, The Moon Within, was acquired by Nick Thomas at AALB/Scholastic. This free verse middle grade novel tells the story of 11-year-old Celi, whose life swirls with questions about her changing body, her first attraction to a boy, her best friend’s exploration of what it means to be genderfluid, and her mother’s insistence she have a Chicana moon ceremony for her first menses. Publication is slated for spring 2019; Marietta B. Zacker of the Gallt and Zacker Literary Agency negotiated the deal for North American English and Spanish rights.

She is the co-editor, along with Edie Meidav, of the new anthology Strange Attractors: Lives Changed by Chance. It will be released from the University of Massachusetts Press in March, 2019.

Her short story, Protozoa, appears in the winter 2018 issue of New England Review.

Her newest novel, The Last Train to London, will be published later this year as part of a two book deal with HarperCollins.

Her essay “On Being A Woman in America While Trying to Avoid Being Assaulted,” was recently published by The Paris Review. 

His newest book, Bookends: Collected Intros and Outros, will be published by HarperCollins in January, 2019.

His 11th book, The Splendid City, was published in February 2019.

Her newest Samuel Craddock mystery, A Risky Undertaking for Loretta Singletary, will be published in January, 2019, by Seventh Street Books.

His debut novel, The Speed of Life, was published in November, 2018, by Turning Leaf Books.

His debut poetry collection, The Case of the Six-Sided Dream, was recently published by Blue Light Press. It won the 2017 Blue Light Press Poetry Prize.