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.
Kelly Luce
Books:
- Pull Me Under (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux 2016)
- Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail (A Strange Object 2013)
Kelly Luce is the author of the story collection Three Scenarios in Which Hana Sasaki Grows a Tail and the novel Pull Me Under, a Book of the Month Club selection and one of Elle’s Best Books of 2016. She has received fellowships from Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Michener Center for Writers, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Carnegie Foundation, and the Tennessee Arts Commission, and her work has appeared in New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, Salon, New England Review, O, the Oprah Magazine, The Southern Review, and other publications. She serves as editor-in-chief of the The Commuter literary magazine at Electric Literature. She lives in Tuscany.
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.
Naomi J. Williams, MA
Books:
- Landfalls (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015)
Naomi J. Williams is the author of Landfalls, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in numerous venues, including One Story, A Public Space, Ninth Letter, Lit Hub, The Rumpus and the Brevity blog. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, Best American Short Stories honorable mention, Sustainable Arts Foundation grant and residencies with Hedgebrook, Djerassi, Willapa Bay and Storyknife.
Poetry
Chuck Carlise
Books:
- In One Version of the Story (New Issues Poetry & Prose 2016)
- Casual Insomniac (Bateau, "Boom" Prize Winner 2011)
- A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs (Concrete Wolf 2011)
Chuck Carlise is the author of In One Version of the Story, Casual Insomniac, and A Broken Escalator Still Isn’t the Stairs. He is the recipient of the InPrint/Paul Veraine Poetry Prize, the CT Wright Prize from the Academy of American Poets, and fellowships from Wildacres, the Writers Colony at Dairy Hollow. Carlise's poems and essays appear in Pleiades, Southern Review, Zyzzyva, and Verse Daily, and were twice anthologized in Best New Poets. He studied at Wittenberg University, and University of California, Davis, before completing his Ph.D at the University of Houston, and has taught at UC-Santa Cruz, Westminster College, and Grand Valley State. Currently he is Assistant Professor at Ashland University, where he also serves as Director of the Ashland Poetry Press.
Cass Donish, MFA
Books:
- Your Dazzling Death (Knopf, 2024)
- The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), poetry collection
- On the Mezzanine (Gold Line Press, 2019), nonfiction chapbook / selected by Maggie Nelson
- Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018), poetry collection
Cass Donish is a queer nonbinary writer from California. They are the author of the poetry collections Your Dazzling Death (Knopf, 2024); The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), chosen by Brenda Shaughnessy as winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize; and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Their nonfiction work On the Mezzanine (Gold Line Press, 2019) was chosen by Maggie Nelson as winner of the Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition. Donish has writing appearing or forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Gettysburg Review, Guernica, Poem-a-Day, Texas Review, VICE, and elsewhere. They have taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, University of Missouri, Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, and Ashland University’s low-residency MFA program. Their current poems and essays explore themes of grief, queer love, suicide loss, ecology, and young widowhood. They live in Columbia, Missouri.
Adam J. Gellings, MFA, Ph.D.
Books:
- Little Palace (Stephen F. Austin State University Press, 2022)
Adam J. Gellings received his MFA from Ashland University and his Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he was the recipient of a fellowship from the Marion Clayton Link Endowment. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines such as Best New Poets 2017 & 2021, New South, Salamander, The Southampton Review and Willow Springs.
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, MFA
Books:
- Children of the Land: A Memoir (Harper Collins, 2020)
- Cenzontle (BOA Editions LTD, 2018)
- Dulce (Northwestern University Press, 2017)
Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Cenzontle is a winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize and Dulce, won the Drinking Gourd Prize. As one of the founders of the Undocupoets campaign, he was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan. His work has been featured in the New York Times, Harper’s Magazine and The Paris Review.
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.
Tania Runyan
Tania Runyan is an NEA fellow and author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air, which was awarded Book of the Year by the Conference on Christianity and Literature. Her first book-length creative nonfiction title, Making Peace With Paradise: An Autobiography of a California Girl, was released in 2022. Tania’s instructional guides, How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem, are used in classrooms across the country, and her poems have appeared in publications such as Poetry, Image, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, The Christian Century, and the Paraclete anthology Christian Poetry in America Since 1940. She lives with her family in Illinois.
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.
Glenn Shaheen
Books:
- Carnivalia (Gold Wake Press 2018) - Fiction
- Energy Corridor (University of Pittsburgh 2016) - Poetry
- Unchecked Savagery (Ricochet Editions 2013) - Fiction
- Predatory (University of Pittsburgh, Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize Winner 2011) - Poetry
Glenn Shaheen is the author of two collections of poetry, Predatory and Energy Corridor, a flash fiction chapbook, Unchecked Savagery, and a full length collection of flash fiction, Carnivalia. He edits the chapbook press Tram Editions with Elizabyth Hiscox. Shaheen is the Executive Director of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and an assistant professor of creative writing at Prairie View A&M University.
Tess Taylor, MA, MFA
Books:
- Last West (Museum of Modern Art, 2020)
- Rift Zone (Red Hen Press, 2020)
- Work & Days (Red Hen Press, 2016)
- The Forage House (Red Hen Press, 2013)
Tess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Misremembered World, which was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship, and The Forage House, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of poetry of 2016. Taylor’s book of poems, Last West, was commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art as a part of the Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures exhibition. Her other book of poems Rift Zone, was hailed as “brilliant” in the LA Times and named one of the best books of 2020 by The Boston Globe. Taylor has also served as on-air poetry reviewer for NPR’s All Things Considered for more than a decade.
Creative Nonfiction
Kate Hopper, MFA
Books:
- Silent Running: Our Family's Journey to the Finish Line with Autism with Robyn K. Schneider (Triumph Books, 2015)
- Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood(University of Minnesota Press, 2013)
- Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers(Viva Editions, 2012)
Kate Hopper is the author of Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood, winner of a Midwest Independent Publishing Award, and she’s co-author of Silent Running, a memoir of one family’s journey with autism and running. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times online, Poets & Writers and River Teeth. Kate has been the recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board Grants, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Grant and a Fulbright Scholarship.
Terese Marie Mailhot, MFA
Books:
- Heart Berries: A Memoir (Counterpoint Press, 2018)
Terese Marie Mailhot is the author of Heart Berries: A Memoir, a New York Times bestseller. Her work has been featured in Time Magazine, Elle, The Guardian, Mother Jones, "Best American Essays," Men's Health, Guernica and Granta.
Tommy Mira y Lopez
Books:
- The Book of Resting Places (Counterpoint 2017)
Thomas Mira y Lopez is the author of the essay collection The Book of Resting Places and a translator from Portuguese. He is a 2025 NEA Fellow in Translation and has received fellowships and support from MacDowell, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and Colgate University’s Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship. A fiction editor at DIAGRAM, he lives in Iowa City, where he teaches Creative Writing and Translation at the University of Iowa.
Lisa Nikolidakis, Ph.D.
Books:
- No One Crosses the Wolf (Little A, 2022)
Lisa Nikolidakis's memoir, No One Crosses the Wolf, about the traumas of a perilous childhood, a shattering murder-suicide and a healing journey from escape to survival to recovery is forthcoming. Her essay “Family Tradition” was selected by Jonathan Franzen for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2016. Other writing of hers has won various prizes and mentions, including the Annie Dillard Prize for Creative Nonfiction 2021, Gulf Coast Prize, Indiana Review’s Fiction Prize, the Tobias Wolff Award for Fiction, the Calvino Prize, A Room of Her Own’s Orlando Prize, Cincinnati Review’s Robert and Adele Schiff Award for Prose, Hunger Mountain’s Frank Mosher Short Fiction Prize, The Briar Cliff Review’s Annual Nonfiction Contest and The Chattahoochee Review’s Lamar York Prize.
Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Los Angeles Review, New Orleans Review, Bellingham Review, Hunger Mountain, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Salt Hill, The Rumpus, Nimrod, Passages North and Gulf Coast Online. She writes nonfiction and fiction, returning often to themes of trauma, mental health, chronic illness, music and nature.
Sarah M. Wells
Sarah M. Wells is the author of two poetry collections and four nonfiction books, most recently Ordinary Time: Meditations from the In-Between. Her seventh book, To Say One Million Times WOW: Essays on Awe, Faith, and Family from America’s Great Outdoors (And Some Hotel Rooms) will be published by Bracket Publishing in spring 2026. Sarah is a 2018 recipient of an Ohio Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Her work has been honored with four Pushcart Prize nominations, and six of her essays have been listed as Notable in The Best American Essays. She serves as the poetry editor for Relief: A Journal of Art and Faith and is a regular contributor to God Hears Her, a blog for women from Our Daily Bread. Sarah earned her BA in creative writing and MFA in creative nonfiction from Ashland University. You can follow her through her Substack Palace in Time or visit her website www.sarahmariewells.com.
