Our Students
UW-Milwaukee's community of writers is diverse. Our students don't conform to a particular demographic; rather, they come from varied backgrounds and possess a variety of life experiences. The result is a community in which this wealth of diversity creates lively, constructive interaction and collaboration.
And we do mean community. You will find that our writers help each other grow in both workshops and in their interactions outside the classroom.
Please take a moment to get to know us!
Drew Blanchard is a PhD student in Irish Studies and twentieth-century American poetry. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, Notre Dame Review, Meridian, An Sionnach and is currently the Managing Editor of the Cream City Review. He holds a BA in Journalism from the University of Iowa and an MFA in poetry from The Ohio State University. As a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Drew has been awarded a Chancellor's Graduate Student Fellowship, the Academy of American Poets Award, and the William H. Harrold Award in Poetry. He has recently presented papers at the American Conference for Irish Studies on Alice McDermott and George Bernard Shaw and presented a paper at Tulane University on the poems of Elizabeth Bishop.
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| Grad students Jay Johnson, Mike Clark, and Drew Blanchard enjoy a pint at a student/faculty reading. |
David Bowen (dbowen@uwm.edu) is a PhD student in Creative Writing. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. His work has appeared at The Literary Review, Monkeybicycle, Main Street Rag, Reconfigurations, The Salt River Review, The Convergence Review, and College English. With some dedicated and tireless friends, he also runs New American Press and MAYDAY Magazine.
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| Brittany Cavallaro |
Brittany Cavallaro (cavalla3@uwm.edu) is a PhD candidate in creative writing, working in poetry. She holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she received the David and Jean Milofsky Prize in Creative Writing. Her poetry has appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Gettysburg Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She was a finalist for the 2011 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and her awards include scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and a Chancellor's Graduate Student Fellowship from UWM.
Christi Clancy is at work on her PhD with a focus on fiction. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Hobart, the Wisconsin Academy Review, the Cream City Review, on literarymama.com and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Yabalusha Review. She won the Ellen C. Hunticut award for fiction, and her work was a finalist for the Charles Johnson award for student fiction. She won a scholarship to study with Robert Olen Butler through the San Juan Writer's Conference, and her work has been featured as a "work of the day" on the Emerging Writers Network.
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| Chris Drew |
Chris Drew (cmdrew@uwm.edu) is a PhD student interested in American regional & rural literature, Native American literature and creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Bellevue Literary Review, Big Muddy: A Journal of The Mississippi River Valley, Concho River Review, The Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association, Red Wheelbarrow andThe Sycamore Review. He is the co-editor (with Joe Rein and Dave Yost) of an anthology, Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy, due November 2011 from Continuum Books. He is currently working on his first novel, which is set in and around the coal mines of southern Indiana.
Paul Dworschack-Kinter began the program as a poet and then moved into fiction. Having come to creative writing through the school of fine arts, he continues to play with clay, paint and digital media. Currently in the PhD program, he's a blurred genre (so, too his writing). His scholarly interests revolve around mythology and magical realism with strong leanings toward Celtic Studies. He is currently working on finishing his course work, finding time to write and working on a Secret Project.
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| Ellen Elder with Professor Sheila Roberts |
Ellen Elder is a doctoral student in creative writing working in poetry and fiction. She has degrees from The University of Chicago and Miami University, where she received The Academy of American Poet's Prize. She spent her summers growing up in Ireland. Her fiction was nominated for the 2006 Best New American Voices and recent work has appeared at Exquisite Corpse (www.corpse.org) and is forthcoming at DMQ Review (www.dmqreview.com) and in the The Cento: A Collection of Collage Poems (Red Hen Press). She is co-poetry editor at Cream City Review. Her interests include confessional poetry, Modernist British and Anglo-Irish writers, memoir, and Italian and French languages. She is currently at work on a memoir.
Trent Hergenrader is a PhD student working primarily in speculative fiction. A graduate of the 2004 Clarion Writers workshop, Trent's short stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, Weird Tales, Cicada, and the UK publication Black Static. He has received honorable mentions in both The Year's Best Science Fiction and The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. His academic interests include magical realism, Native American literature, visual narratives, and the rhetoric of technology.
Joshua Hren (jmhren@uwm.edu) is a PhD student whose major areas of emphasis are Religion and Literature, The Political in Philosophy and Fiction, and Conservation Writing. His stories "Everything Must Go," and "She Scarce Is" made Top-25 in the Fall 2009 and Winter 2009 "Fiction Opens" of Glimmer Train. Joshua's poems "itinerant intimacies" and "A Story in Ashes" were published in Dappled Things' Fall 2009 and Summer 2010 issues. His story, "The Porch" was published in Twisted Ink in summer of 2010. The first chapter of his novel In the Wine Press was published in Dappled Things' Fall 2010 issue. Joshua's story "Wrecking Ball" received an Honorable Mention (top 50 out of over 2000 stories) in Glimmer Train's Fall 2010 Short Story Award. The second chapter of his novel In the Wine Press is forthcoming in Dappled Things' Fall 2011 issue. His story "Wrecking Ball" is forthcoming as Editor's Choice in the November/December edition of the literary quarterly Relief. His poem "Proof of the Immortality of the Soul with Reference to Beeswax Soap" is published in Dappled Things' Fall 2011 issue. His essay "Sovereignty, Democracy and the Theology of Political Authority" is pending as a chapter of the book Scholasticism and Politics.
Joshua presented his paper, "Cloaked Kings, Revealed Brothers: The Scapegoat in Joseph and Oedipus," during the International Colloquium on Violence and Religion held at Notre Dame University in July of 2010. He presented "Sovereignty, Democracy and the Theology of Political Authority," during the Jacques Maritain International Conference on Theology and Politics held at Walsh University in October of 2010. He presented his paper "Truth and Lies in the Chestertonian Sense: Father Brown and the Fault of the Depraved Saint," during the University of St. Thomas, MN conference "Reading Across the Fault Lines: History, Politics and Literature" in May of 2011. He presented his paper, "The Sound and the Fury, Symbolizing Something: Maritain and Percy on the Paradoxical Miracle at the Limits of Language" at "Ransoming the Time," an international conference to be held at Notre Dame, Indiana in October 2011.
Elisa Karbin (ekarbin@uwm.edu) is an MA student interested in 18th and 19th century British literature, queer theory, formal poetry, baking and Oscar Wilde.
Ann Stewart McBee (stewar22@uwm.edu) is currently a PhD candidate in creative writing with a specialty in fiction at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where she also teaches introductory literature as a graduate assistant. She is editor-in-chief at UWM's literary journal, cream city review, and has published both fiction and poetry in Ellipsis, Untamed Ink, At Length and other journals. Her most recent publications include "Packer" published in Prime Number, "The Itch" published in Spittoon and "The Balsa Wood Box" published in Whistling Fire. She presented her paper "Revising the Past: Fiction and the Art of Lying" at last spring's Southwest Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association conference and will be featured in a panel presentation titled "Dispatches from the Front: Creative Work and Social Justice" at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference in 2012.
Melissa Morrow is a doctoral student in creative writing. Professionally, she is a generalist, having taught creative writing, rhetoric and composition, and professional writing. Academically, she is interested in 20th century American fiction and poetry, African American literature, graphic novels, and texts that blur genre lines. Personally, she is a devoted comic book reader, comedy addict, cinemaphile. She is currently working on her dissertation, a verse novel focused on her hometown of Dallas, Texas.
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| Elisa Neckar |
Elisa Neckar (erneckar@uwm.edu) is a Creative Writing-track Ph.D. candidate who primarily works in creative nonfiction. Her research interests lie in literary journalism, online fan communities, and young adult lit, and she presented at the Film & History conference in 2010, and the Midwest Popular Culture/American Culture Association conferences in 2010 and 2011. Elisa also teaches composition at Carroll University and Waukesha Area Technical College, and works as a book editor for a local publishing company. She was recently featured in an article in The Writer magazine about the pros and cons of creative writing graduate programs. Find her on Twitter, @erneckar.
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| Kate Olson Nesheim |
Kate Olson Nesheim (olsonke@uwm.edu) is a doctoral student and teaching assistant. Her interests include pedagogy, fiction, non-fiction, business and professional writing, and southern Africa. Her flash-fiction story entitled "I'm a Woman for Sure" has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly. She is currently working on a novel about American students in Namibia.
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| Melissa Olson |
Melissa Olson (mfolson@uwm.edu) earned degrees in English Literature and Cinema-Television at the University of Southern California, where she also worked for the Daily Trojan newspaper as a features and reviews writer, columnist, and film editor, though not all at the same time. Melissa is currently in the masters program in creative writing at UWM, where she is also an associate editor for the Cream City Review, and working on publishing her two completed novels. Melissa has been published online at Suite101.com and WomenonWriting.com, as well as the Fall 2011 edition of the International Journal of Comic Art. She is also the longtime sporadic film columnist for the Chippewa Falls Herald Telegram in her hometown. She also writes blogs on entertainment, motherhood, and writing at her website, www.melissafolson.com.
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| Joseph Rein |
Joseph Rein (jmrein@uwm.edu) is a doctoral candidate in Creative Writing (Fiction), and is currently the Assistant Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program. His fiction, poetry and essays have been published in over a dozen journals and anthologies, including Laurel Review, Wisconsin Review, Beyond the Workshop, Concho River Review, and New Writing: The International Journal for the Practice and Theory of Creative Writing. He is co-editor (along with colleagues Chris Drew and David Yost) of the book Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011). Read more at www.josephrein.com.
Christine Stroik Stocke is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis, magna cum laude, with degrees in English and Psychology. Her work has appeared in World Karting Association, West Bend Daily News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Washington University Literary Journal and Cornucopia Weekly. Christine writes fiction and creative nonfiction, and is interested in disabilities in writing, the gothic tradition, magical realism, contemporary fiction and post-modernism.
Gene Tanta was born in Timisoara, Romania in 1974 and immigrated to Chicago in 1984 with family. He earned his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 2000. He translates contemporary Romanian poetry and makes visual art with found materials. Mr. Tanta's publications include: Epoch, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (two poems with Reginald Shepherd). Currently, he is a PhD student in Creative Writing (Poetry) and is also the Art Editor for Cream City Review.
Some of Gene's work can be found online:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//59351.html
http://www.milkmag.org/tantapage.htm
http://www.beardofbees.com/acosmei.html
http://www.uglyaccent.com/GTanta.htm
http://www.woodlandpattern.org/poems/gene_tanta01.shtml
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/ecommerce/Catalog.asp?prdc=29
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=7118
Dawn Tefft is currently a PhD student in Creative Writing at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as well as co-poetry editor for Cream City Review. Recent publications include poems in Witness, Third Coast, and Court Green. Her e-chapbook Field Trip to My Mother and Other Exotic Locations was published through, and can be found at, Mudlark (http://www.unf.edu/mudlark/mudlark29/contents.html). Her poem "In the House of the House of Miniatures" was nominated for a Pushcart by Witness in '07. She has presented at Writing By Degrees: The 9th Annual National Graduate Creative Writing Conference and at Wesleyan's Tongue & Ink Undergraduate Creative Writing Conference, both in '06. Her scholarly interests include modern fantastic literatures: magical realism, slipstream, science fiction, and fantastic poetry; Marxist feminism; and postcolonial theory.
Katy J. Vopal is a fiction writer currently working on her doctoral dissertation novel, The Way Back to August. Her academic concentration is adolescent literature. A former newspaper reporter, she is currently on faculty at Lakeland College and Ottawa University where she teaches creative writing, composition, American Literature, Child and Adolescent Literature, Women in Literature, and a variety of communication courses. Her short fiction has appeared in Upstreet, Quality Women's Fiction, Characters: Kids' Short Story and Poetry Outlet, Dan River Anthology, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Scrivener's Pen and other publications. Judy Blume is her hero.
Todd Wellman (twellman@uwm.edu) is in the Creative Writing MA program, with a focus on short fiction. He is Fiction Editor at Cream City Review; Director of Training & Learning at Public Allies, Inc.; and enjoys freelancing in writing, piano, and logo design. He likes discovering new things, such as the public-use mini-islands on the Milwaukee river. Who knew those were there?
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| David Yost |
David Yost (djyost@uwm.edu) is a PhD student in creative writing. His interests include 20th century American fiction, creative writing pedagogy and world literatures. As a former Peace Corps Volunteer, he's worked teaching infant nutrition in Mali and teaching English to Burmese refugees in Thailand, the setting for much of his fiction. His fiction has been published in The Southern Literary Review, The Sun, Massachusetts Review, American Short Fiction, Witness, Pleiades, Hunger Mountain, and Mid-American Review; critical articles have appeared in MELUS, SAIL, The Southern Literary Review, and War, Literature, and the Arts. With Chris Drew and Joe Rein, he is an editor of the anthology Dispatches from the Classroom: Graduate Students on Creative Writing Pedagogy. You can find him on the web at davidyost.wordpress.com.