M.F.A. in Writing Program/Current Students & Graduates

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MFA Student Success Stories

March 2013: Congratulations to David Bersell, who has been awarded the much coveted nonfiction scholarship to the Tin House Writer's Workshop this summer. David will spend the week working with Cheryl Strayed, author of the memoir Wild and the Rumpus column Dear Sugar. Quite the coup for David and well deserved.

January 2013: Emily Robbins Bradley, MFA nonfiction alum, was hired at the New Hampshire Institute of Art as their "Instruction and Reference Specialist" in their college library.  She also teaches  composition there.  She had a short essay featured on the video series "In Place" which is part of the larger online journal "Extracts: Daily Dose of Lit."

January, 2013: Kristina Reardon, MFA fiction alum, was awarded the 2012 Aetna Works-in-Progress Grant for a short story collection, awarded by the UConn Department of English.  She was also awarded the 2012 Tinker Foundation Pre-Dissertation grant to translate fiction in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  Her translations of the short story "The Surprise" by Lili Potpara (from the Slovenian) & "The Vision" by Carmen Boullosa (from the Spanish) are published in World Literature Today (September 2012).  She also has an essay on literary translation published on WLT's "Translation Tuesday" blog.  Both links cane be found below. 

http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/2012/september/surprise-lili-potpara#.UOyrCOTAfbM
http://www.worldliteraturetoday.com/writing-left-hand-kristina-zdravic-reardon#.UOyrXuTAfbM

January, 2013: Dustin Martin, MFA fiction alum, was hired as a staff assistant to the Donor Relations team for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

January, 2013: Sarah Stickney, MFA poetry alum, has publications in Rhino, and Portland Review.  In October she acted as a simultaneous French interpreter for the Megaflorestais international forestry conference.  She was recently hired as a tenure-track professor at St. John's College in Annapolis.

January, 2013: Alan Schulte, MFA nonfiction alum, landed a position as Visiting Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of the Wensberg Writing Center at Franklin Pierce University. He has also been assigned as Faculty Adviser of Nevermore, the University's Literary Journal.

January, 2013: Edward Manzi, MFA poetry alum, had poems published in Brush Fire, Paper Nautilus, and The Bakery.  He also had a poem nominated for the Pushcart Award.

November, 2012: Jennifer Latson, a 3rd-year MFA in nonfiction candidate, has a BIG story in the Nov/Dec issue of Yankee magazine. The subject: Tuttle's farm in Dover, told from Lucy Tuttle's point of view. The story began in an essay writing workshop, was revised in Sue Hertz's people and place workshop last spring and sent to Yankee in the summer.  They loved it!

August, 2012: Tim Horvath, MFA alum, landed a full-time teaching gig at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. He also just published his latest, a collection of short fiction called Understories.

June, 2012: Rose Whitmore, a fiction MFA who will graduate in May '13, has THREE success stories! Her short story "The Queen of Pacific Tides" will be published in the summer issue of The Missouri Review and her essay "The Lost Coast" will appear in Fourth Genre. Rose has also been accepted to the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference this summer. Nonfiction MFA Jennifer Duffy has also been accepted to Bread Loaf.

June, 2012: Jennifer Latson, a nonfiction MFA who will graduate in May '13, will publish "Blood Ties to the Land," a nonfiction narrative about Tuttle's Farm in Dover told through 67-year-old Lucy Tuttle's point of view, in the December issue of Yankee Magazine.

June, 2012: Alan Schulte, a nonfiction MFA who graduated in December '11, has published his essay "The Point of Failure" in the online journal Junklit.

April, 2011: Ryan Flaherty, MFA '10, has published a new book of poetry, What's This, Bombardier? He also has a poem featured on BOMBlog Word Choice.

February, 2011: Kristina Reardon's (MFA Dec. 2010) essay White Goddess Ghosts will be published in the Montreal Review. Kristina wrote the piece for her UNH travel writing class last summer in Cambridge, England.

February, 2011: Bryan Parys (MFA ’10) won a Fair Trade essay contest, which awarded him $2,000 in fair trade goods. He was also named a contributing scholar for a new online publication called State of Formation. Most recently his article “Superman of the House” was published by the Gooden Men Project Magazine.

November, 2010: Ryan Flaherty, MFA ’10, has three poems in POOL: http://www.poolpoetry.com/, had a poem featured on Verse Daily: http://www.versedaily.org/2010/conditionals.shtml and an essay published in Columbia:
http://columbiajournal.org/.

November, 2010: The World after Czeslaw Milosz, a chapbook by Maria Chelko, MFA ’10, won the 2010 Dream Horse Press National Chapbook Contest. Dream Horse Press will publish the book in the Spring/Summer of 2011.

May, 2010: Marla Cinilia was awarded a Bread Loaf Writers Conference scholarship based on the merit shown in her fiction. Only 12 spots are available for the conference, chosen from a pool of hundreds nation-wide.

May, 2010: Kristina Reardon and Sarah Stickney have received prestigious Fulbright Scholarships that will provide them support to conduct research abroad during the 2010-11 academic year. Learn more.

February, 2010: Amy VanHaren, a member of the MFA’s first graduating class in 2007, recently published her piece “Rescue on the Ridge” in AMCOutdoors. While Amy is not working on the book from which this piece is excerpted, she is using her writing skills as the social media manager at Stonyfield Farm, one of the nation’s leaders in organic agriculture and retail dairy products

February, 2010: MFA nonfiction writer Nathan Webster has had his thesis accepted for publication by The Truth About The Fact: International Journal of Literary Nonfiction (Loyola Marymount University, LA). "Suspicions, After Curfew" is slated for publication in the Spring 2010, Volume V Number I issue. Here’s what the editors wrote to Nathan: "We received hundreds of submissions from the international literary community, including impressive narratives about life in South Africa, Sri Lanka, China, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. Your work was one of only 21 pieces selected."

February, 2010: Jason Tandon, MFA ’07, was pleased that Garrison Keillor read one of his poems from his book Give Over the Heckler and Everyone Gets Hurt on The Writer’s Almanac.

February, 2010: Emily Robbins, MFA ’11, published her essay “The Way Home” in the Northern New England Review, Volume 31.

January, 2010: MFA nonfiction writer Ryan Flaherty recently published two chapbooks, Live, from the Delay and Novas. He also has poems coming out this spring in three journals: Colorado Review, Ninth Letter, and Handsome. He has also been awarded PEN New England's Discovery Award in Poetry. Each year, established authors sponsor newcomers in their field and this year poet Peter Covino selected Ryan and will introduce him at the 31st Annual Discovery celebration. The award is based on the promise of the discoveree’s potential.

October, 2009: MFA student Bryan Parys published "The Last Word or, The Eternal Present Tense" in The (Non)fiction 500 section of the journal Like Water Burning.

September, 2009: MFA alum Brian Wilkins '06G, '09G is a poet; his former college roommate, Ian Terrell, is a Web developer. Together, they've created a literary magazine for the iPhone, which plays an audio recording of a poem, essay, or short story as the reader scrolls along with the text. "The best part about poetry or any literature really is going to a reading and getting to hear the author's voice," says Wilkins. The first issue of "Scarab" includes a poem by Charles Simic, UNH professor emeritus. Read the story

June, 2009: MFA fiction writer Kristina Reardon, who will enter her second year in the program this fall, has published two stories, "Easter 1941" and "A Bit of Kindness," in the New Voices section of the summer edition of the Newport Review: http://www.newportreview.org/?new-voices/kreardon.html. Kristina has also won a scholarship from the Centre for Slovene at the University of Ljubljana and will spend the month of July there this summer researching material for her thesis manuscript.

February, 2009: MFA poet Maria Barron won the 2009 LUMINA Poetry contest. LUMINA is a literary journal published by Sarah Lawrence College. The contest was judged by poet, Ilya Kaminsky. Maria's poems placed both first and second, earning Maria the invitation to read at Sarah Lawrence in April. 

February, 2009: MFA poet Mark Gosztyla crossed genre lines into nonfiction when he stumbled into a story about two 50-year-old unsolved murders in Somersworth, NH. For over a year Mark pursued the mysterious deaths, both on his own and in nonfiction workshops, publishing a series in Foster's Daily Democrat in June of '08. That series, titled “Shame and Silence,” won first place “for highest achievement in investigative reporting” in New England Press Association’s 2008 Annual Better Newspaper Contest.