Current MFA Faculty
Fiction
Jonathan Geltner
Jonathan Geltner studied English, Classics and French at the University of Cincinnati, medieval and renaissance literature at the University of Chicago, and received an MFA (fiction) from Warren Wilson College. He is the translator of Paul Claudel’s Five Great Odes and author of the novel Absolute Music. Current projects include a new novel, a monograph on J R R Tolkien and David Jones, and a translation from the Cantigas de Santa Maria from the court of Alfonso X the Wise. Jonathan lives with his wife and children in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In his spare time, he enjoys martial arts, cycling, and Celtic philology.
Thomas Maltman
Thomas Maltman’s first novel, The Night Birds, won an Alex Award, a Spur Award, and the Friends of American Writers Literary Award. In 2009, the American Library Association chose The Night Birds as an “Outstanding Book for the College Bound.” Little Wolves, his second novel, won the All Iowa Reads selection in 2014. His third novel, The Land, was published in 2020. In July of 2025, Soho Press published his fourth novel, Ashes to Ashes. This novel is currently a finalist for the Minnesota Book Award. He teaches at Normandale Community College and lives in the Twin Cities area with his wife, a Lutheran pastor, and his three daughters.
Nayomi Munaweera, MA
Books:
- What Lies Between Us (St. Martin's Press, 2016)
- Island of a Thousand Mirrors (St. Martin's Press, 2014, St. Martin's Griffin, 2016)
Nayomi Munaweera's debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, won the Commonwealth Prize for Asia. It was long-listed for the Dublin IMPAC Prize and the Man Asia Prize. The novel was also short-listed for the Northern California Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature, and was a Target Book Club selection in January 2016. Her second novel, What Lies Between Us, was hailed as one of the most exciting literary releases of 2016 by venues ranging from BuzzFeed to Elle Magazine. The book was awarded Sri Lanka's State Literary Award for English novel. Her short fiction and nonfiction are also widely available.
Poetry
Katie Hartsock
Katie Hartsock's second poetry collection, Wolf Trees, received the Philip H McMath Poetry Prize and was listed as one of Kirkus Review's Best Indie Books of 2023. Her work has appeared in journals such as Threepenny Review, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, Image, New Criterion, Birmingham Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, and New Verse Review. Her first poetry collection, Bed of Impatiens, was a finalist for the Able Muse Book Award. She has taught as a visiting assistant professor in the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan, where she earned her MFA and won the major Hopwood Award, and at Northwestern University, where she earned her PhD in Comparative Literature. Her poem "Museums" won the 2025 Iron Horse Literary Review's National Poetry Month competition. Her current manuscripts include The Last Crusade (containing, yes, some Indiana Jones poems) and Glimpses of the Iliad, a hybrid text combining translation with vignettes of the epic’s ancient audiences. She is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Oakland University in Michigan, and lives in Ann Arbor with her family. She is learning to play the fiddle.
Steven Knepper
Steven Knepper is the Bruce C. Gottwald, Jr. ’81 Chair for Academic Excellence at Virginia Military Institute, where he has taught since 2014. Much of his scholarship is in aesthetics, including his 2022 study Wonder Strikes: Approaching Aesthetics and Literature with William Desmond (State University of New York Press) and his co-authored 2024 study Byung-Chul Han: A Critical Introduction (Polity Press). Knepper is also a widely published poet and poetry critic. His poems have appeared in leading journals such as 32 Poems, THINK, Alabama Literary Review, and First Things. In 2024, he founded New Verse Review: A Journal of Lyric and Narrative Poetry, which Dana Gioia has called "an important new critical forum for American poetry." NVR has published many accomplished contemporary poets, but it has also helped introduce many new voices to the poetry world.
Jane Clark Scharl
Jane Clark Scharl is the author of Ponds (Poiema Poetry Series, 2024) and the verse plays Sonnez Les Matines (Wiseblood, 2023) and The Death of Rabelais (Wiseblood, 2025). Jane is the associate director of operations at The Witherspoon Institute, poetry editor at Plough Quarterly, and executive editor of The Better Part Journal.
