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MFA Writers and Faculty

Edan Lepucki (she/her)

Books:

• Woman No. 17 (Random House Publishing Group, 2018)
• California (Little, Brown and Company, 2015)

Edan Lepucki is The New York Times bestselling author of the novels California and Woman No. 17, as well as the editor of Mothers Before: Stories and Portraits of Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire Magazine, McSweeney's and The Cut, among other publications.

Vi Khi Nao

Fiction:

• Swimming with Dead Stars: novel (FC2, 2022)
• Fish Carcass: poetry (Black Sun Lit, 2022)
• Waiting for God: play (Apocalypse Party, 2022)
• That Woman Could Be You: creative nonfiction (BlazeVOX, 2022)
• The Vegas Dilemma: short stories (PRESS 11:11, 2021)
• A Bell Curve Is A Pregnant Straight Line: poetry (PRESS 11:11, 2021)

Vi Khi Nao is also the author of these poetry collections - Human Tetris (11:11 Press, 2019), Sheep Machine (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Umbilical Hospital (Press 1913, 2017), The Old Philosopher (winner of the Nightboat Prize for 2014) - and of the short stories collection, A Brief Alphabet of Torture (winner of the 2016 FC2's Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Prize) and the novel, Fish in Exile (Coffee House Press, 2016). She is an interdisciplinary artist who works in multiple and interchangeable mediums. Her work includes poetry, play, fiction, nonfiction, performance, film and cross-genre collaboration. She was the Fall 2019 fellow at the Black Mountain Institute.

Kyle Winkler

Books:

• Grasshands (JournalStone, 2024)
• Boris Says the Words (2022)
• OH PAIN (2021)
• The Nothing That Is (2021)

Kyle Winkler is the author of the cosmic horror novella, The Nothing That Is, the short story collection, OH PAIN and the speculative novel, Boris Says the Words. His writing has appeared in Conjunctions, The Millions and The Rumpus. His academic work focuses on the crossover between artistic and academic genres. He’s also the host of the podcast, The Left Hand of Le Guin.

Dexter Booth

Books:

• Abracadabra, Sunshine (Red Hen Press, 2021)
• Rhapsody (Upper Rubber Boot Books, 2019)
• Scratching the Ghost (Graywolf Press, 2013)

Dexter L. Booth’s collection, Scratching the Ghost, won the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have been included in numerous anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2015, The Burden of Light: Poems on Illness and Loss, The Golden Shovel Anthology honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, Furious Flower: Seeding the Future of African American Poetry and Plume Poetry 9.

Adam J. Gellings

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.

Creative Nonfiction

Cass Donish (they/them)

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.

Terese Marie Mailhot

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.

Lisa Nikolidakis (she/they)

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.