Emma Burris-Janssen is overjoyed to be living in temperate New England after a childhood spent on the barren tundra of landlocked Nebraska.  For the last few years, Emma has been working as a sexual and domestic violence counselor in Pennsylvania and is looking forward to her first year as an MA student in Literature at UNH.

Gerald was born and raised in Hudson, MA, and earned his BA at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH.  His MA thesis work deals with Jack Kerouac, Sacvan Bercovitch, Gloria Anzaldua, and all things America.  He is a member of the Beat Studies Association, as well as the American Culture Association.  He someday hopes to parlay pieces of his MA thesis into a doctoral dissertation, but, for now, he's content to take some time away from being a student and move down to Nashville with his girlfriend for a few years.  In the meantime, he plans to teach and continue to write and present conference papers.

Brittany Hoxie is a first-year MA student in Literature. She has two degrees, one in English Literature and the other in Sociology from Suffolk University in Boston.  She originally went to Emerson College for their Writing, Literature and Publishing program, but could no longer justify attending the Hipster Olympics for forty thousand dollars a year.  She will generally read whatever you put in front of her, and having grown up without being allowed to watch much, if any television, she is not in the habit of doing so now. British Romanticism is her niche, but she is excited to engage other fields of literature. She finds writing short biographies with sparse credentials mildly frustrating. She hopes you will understand.

Jane is a second-year MA student in Literature. She was born and raised in Mid-Coast Maine. Originally pursuing a BM in Vocal Music Performance, she eventually  earned her BA in English from the University of Maine in Orono. Her undergraduate thesis explored themes of homosociality and gender subversion in Victorian sensation fiction. Her academic interests include late Victorian literature and gender themes. In her free time she enjoys watching embarrassing amounts of reality television.

Nichole is a second-year MA lit student.  She completed her BA in English at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine in 2008.  Her studies are primarily focused on African American literature.  In her spare time, Nichole enjoys watching football, hiking, and playing in the dirt with her two baby boys.

Shawn Kelly grew up in Merrimack, NH, which didn't have a skatepark until he was in high school.  He received his B.A. in English from Keene State, and completed his student teaching at Souhegan High School.  He taught for a year in Burlington, VT, and then Brittany, France the following year.  He now teaches at Oyster River High School.  Between Brittany and Oyster River, he worked as a line cook in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he often burned and cut himself because kitchens are hot and sharp.

Christine Leonard is a second-year MA in Literature student and a 401 TA.  During her undergraduate career at Stonehill College, she earned BA’s in English and Political Science and enjoyed her extensive involvement in Student Government and the Freshmen Orientation program.  Her time abroad at Oxford fostered her interest in Medieval and Early Modern Literature.  It also afforded her the opportunity to make embarrassing pilgrimages to sites where Harry Potter was filmed. Her academic interests include gender, queer theory and, most recently, early American literature. When she is not reading 401 papers, she enjoys cooking with her boyfriend, bad reality television and Just Dance 2.

Emily grew up in the Seacoast.  She attended Wheaton College in Norton, MA earning her Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature and Sociology.  During college she lived, traveled and worked in Sydney, Australia and several Latin American countries. After college she volunteered with AmeriCorps and helped manage a non-profit that serviced under-privileged youth in New Hampshire.  Her academic interests include queer theory, modernism and Latin American literature.  She works as a writing assistant at the Connors Writing Center and as the Graduate Assistant to the Honor’s Program at UNH.

Bader Monikher, is a second year student in MA in literature. Born and raised in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, he started learning English from a very young age and his passion for the language led him to study English literature in King Saud University, where he graduated with a BA in English Literature and Linguistics. He began working as a legal translator for the Saudi Council of Ministers since 2003 and in 2010 he finally got the chance to continue his studies in English and experience American culture firsthand.

Allison is a first-year M.A. student in Literature. Born and raised in the alternate reality of Southern CA, she packed up her cats and made her exodus to Washington state for college, where she earned her B.A. in English Language and Literature at Central Washington University, writing her senior thesis on education and gender roles in the Early Modern Period. Although she enjoyed her time in WA, she felt it was always a bit like "New England-Lite." After another brief and unproductive stint back in San Diego county, she came to her senses and decided to move to New Hampshire, where the good people do not waste over three hours a day stuck in freeway traffic for their commutes. She now spends her ample free time painting, writing creative nonfiction, and reading Elizabeth Bishop and E.E. Cummings poetry, along with whatever else strikes her fancy. She has a deep passion for the smell of old books, a love of all things vintage, and is delighted to finally be living the Robert Frost dream - after all, one could do much, much worse than "be a swinger of birches."

Deborah F. Vernon received her BA from Hampshire College in 2008 with a focus in writing and sculpture. She is currently working towards her Masters in Literature at UNH. She is thrilled with the program and excited to be serving as Social Coordinator. 

Kimberly Young originally comes from the small town of Windber, Pennsylvania.  She received a Bachelor’s in Secondary Education of English from the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown. She is now a second year Master’s student in the literature program and lives in Dover with her husband, Justin (a sociology PhD student at UNH). Her specific interest is 20^th Century literature (particularly dystopian works and their function as social commentary). Her other interests are working out, cooking/baking, and art.

Tyler Wentland is an M.A. Lit student as well as a teaching assistant at UNH. He loves to draw, read, lift weights, and learn about old school physical culture. 

Derry, NH's David Bersell is a first-year MFA student in nonfiction.  He earned a BFA in creative writing from the University of Maine Farmington and studied feature writing at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, ME. So far writing has enabled David to explore restaurants, transcribe a 200-year-old journal by a teenager primarily interested in farming, God, and death, attend baseball card conventions, teach young people, and walk 128.6 miles with veterans and monks.

Caro Clark is a second-year fiction student and the co-founder of Read Free or Die, a monthly reading series based out of Portsmouth, NH. She's usually nice to strangers, but has been known to bite.

Larry Clow is a third year MFA nonfiction student. Originally from Auburn, NH, he traveled to New Jersey to attend William Paterson University. He returned to the NH seacoast in 2004 and spent some time as a newspaper reporter, a project manager, and a freelance writer before coming to UNH. In his spare time, he organizes drive-ins and zombie walks, makes guest appearances on podcasts, writes movie reviews, and engages in other strange pursuits.

Kathleen Cobb was raised tall and strong by Iowa corn. She has been a journalist, a wildfire fighter in Colorado, and an ESL teacher in South Korea and Spain. Currently, she is the poetry editor of Barnstorm, an online literary journal, and is the program director for Friends Forever, an international youth peace organization based in Portsmouth, NH. She can sing lullabies in Norwegian. 

Alicia de los Reyes

Alicia grew up in NJ but always wanted to live in NH. She graduated from Swarthmore College in '08. She's a second-year nonfiction MFA student currently writing about crafts in the US and travel outside of it. Non-writing interests include running, hiking, knitting, and baking cookies.

Janet Falvey

T.S. Eliot reminds that the journey brings us back where we started, now knowing that place for the first time.  My journey started with songs and poems of the ages, rendered by heart in my father’s deep baritone voice.  Overlaid over the years with voices of reason, of anger, of yearning, my path has always tangled with words.  As a photojournalist, therapist and educator, my attention was drawn to the words of others, my own voice muted, words constrained by theory and science and editorial policy.  I did well in those fields, remain a tenured professor widely published in the literature of counseling psychology. But something was always missing.  Witness to generations of voices coming from the heart and soul of others, I have at last circled back to my father’s side with stories and poems of my own.  And a young girl’s spirit that soars on the beauty of words.  

Aaron grew up in a coastal town in Maine, and later studied creative writing, music and visual arts at Hampshire College .  After graduation, Aaron moved to Portland Oregon where he lived for five years focusing primarily on songwriting and music performance.  As a member of the band A Weather, he wrote and recorded a few albums on the New York label Team Love, and toured around the country a few times.  Recently, Aaron's interests have returned to poetry.  He now lives in Dover.

Joe Gilbert is a first-year MFA student in fiction.  He returns to UNH, where he finagled his BA in English, after five years of research in the real-life applications of cartoon physics.  His fiction has appeared in The Southern California Review and McGill's Scrivener, and in 2009 he wrote and produced a one-act play for The Players' Ring in Portsmouth, NH.  Additionally, he has dabbled in freelance journalism, substitute teaching, and semi-professional gambling.  He also holds awards and honorable mentions in pumpkin-carving, competitive eating, and Big Lebowski costume.

Lindsey was raised by a corporate dude/drummer and a massage therapist/artist in Sandy Hook, CT. It’s a small and unfailingly sentimental town. She received her BA in English from Manhattanville College, where she transferred after two years in a small writing program in Brooklyn (the art school atmosphere eventually grew tiresome, and smelled too much like paint and cheap cigarettes). She harbors an irrational fear of moths and butterflies. However, she loves yoga, wandering through old bookstores and singing in the shower. She is a first-year MFA in fiction student. She also feels strange talking about herself in the third person.

Willa is a first year Creative Non-Fiction MFA student. She is originally from Montauk, NY and received her BA in Anthropology and Creative Writing from Dartmouth College in 2010. Willa spent the past year  as an intern and fellow at The Frost Place in Franconia, NH; guiding extended horse treks through the Patagonia and the Chilean Andes; and stage managing a nonprofit theater company. After five years in Hanover and Franconia, she's excited to come south to Durham.

Jennie Latson is a second-year MFA nonfiction student. She left behind the soggy swamps of Houston, where she was a reporter for the Houston Chronicle, to learn how to make facts dance in New Hampshire. In her spare time, she does jazzercise and performs poorly at trivia nights. 

Jesse Mack is a poetry student in the MFA program.  He grew up in Ellington, Connecticut and received his BA in English from Providence College in 2010, where he also did extensive work in Greek and Latin.  He spent the past year working as wine manager at a small boutique wine shop and tutoring students in English and writing at a community college.  His poems reflect the rural setting of his early life as well as his obsessions with mortality, memory, and the intelligibility (or not) of the natural world.  He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts and his other interests include music and songwriting, German and Austrian wine, cooking, biking, and coffee.

Dustin Martin was born in Texas in 1988 and brought up by his French Catholic extended family in a one-mill town in Maine. In 2010, he graduated from the University of Maine at Fort Kent, where he was managing editor of The Aroostook Review. Recently, he assumed editorship of Barnstorm's blog. A second-year MFA Fiction student, he lives with his wife in Newmarket, NH.

Andrew McKernan is a first-year MFA in fiction. He finds himself back in New Hampshire (having graduated UNH '09 in Russian and linguistics) after an extended foray into the academic lifestyle of Russian historians. Although the dichotomy of a life spent bouncing between one of the largest international cities and one of the corn-ridden corners of the American heartland is its own brand of fun, he is excited to relegate Russia into esoteric fantasies and secret writing codes. And tchatchkes. There must always be tchatchkes. He runs and imbibes hallucinatory levels of caffeine and keeps a watchful eye on his potted garden. 

Lisa Meerts-Brandsma returned to New England this year after spending the last seven in Colorado.  Out west, she explored a variety of careers as mountain bums are wont to do, and now plans to settle down and earn her MFA in non-fiction.  If lucky, she'll tie together her experiences as a horseback riding instructor, wilderness therapy backpacking guide and mortgage fraud investigator, and bring those stories to life through writing.  But successful or not, she looks forward to playing in the White Mountains, riding her bike on New Hampshire's quaint, country roads, and meeting other like-minded folk (whom she may bore by repeating the same stories about the Wild, Wild West for the next three years).  Before she became a granola hippie-type, Lisa earned her bachelors in psychology and literary non-fiction from Gettysburg College, and spent three years working as a journalist.

Kayleigh is a first-year MFA student in fiction. Originally from small town NH, she moved to Salem, MA for undergrad and earned a BA in English from Salem State in 2008. She loves to travel and just returned from a five-month stint in Ireland, where she spent most of her time getting to know the other half of her family. She also enjoys cooking and photography, and spent a short time designing and producing a self-published literary magazine with a couple of friends.

Melissa is in her first year in the MFA Fiction program. She graduated with a BA in Journalism from Northeastern University in 2009 and spent her first two years out of college in the public relations and marketing industry. Melissa grew up in Rhode Island, but moved to New Hampshire after college to be with her high school sweetheart (now husband) Adam, also a UNH student.  When she isn’t writing, Melissa enjoys kettlebell workouts, DIY projects, blogging, reading good books, eating good food and drinking good wine.

John Noonan is a first year MFA student from Derry, NH. He studied journalism at Boston University, and worked for not quite a year as a newspaper reporter in Franklin, NH. John has also lived and worked in North Carolina, Colorado, California, New Mexico, North Jersey, Chicago, and Boston. He has especially loved his experiences as an instructor of freshman English at Seton Hall University, and as a wildland firefighter and trails crew member with AmeriCorps and the U.S. Forest Service. John recently moved to Durham, and loves being back in New Hampshire. While less itinerant lately, he still visits New Orleans whenever he can.

Marc Paltrineri grew up around here and has lived elsewhere for certain periods of his life. He cofounded and coedits the poetry journal Sun's Skeleton and helps edit Barnstorm, the online literary journal based out of the UNH MFA Program. He writes poems and knows a dog named Pierre.  

Alan Schulte is a third year MFA nonfiction student. He graduated from UNH Manchester in 2008, with a BA in English and communications. A native New Englander, Alan is currently living in Chichester, New Hampshire with his wife Molly and their two-year-old daughter, Lily. As an accomplished musician, Alan works as contemporary music director in his local church. The remainder of his free time is split between working on his his thesis manuscript (to be completed this fall) and potty-training.

Alison Silverglad is a first year MFA student in fiction, most recently from New York City. Her favorite books include Anna Karenina and The Godfather. A former high school teacher, she is excited to be a student again and looks forward to residing in New Hampshire. 

Erin Somers is a first year MFA fiction student. She attended film school at NYU's Tisch School for the Arts. Since graduating, she's lived in Brooklyn and worked as an editor at a trade magazine about film and television. She grew up in South Carolina.

Sarah Terry is a first year poetry MFA student, and a nearly twenty-third year human. She comes originally from New Jersey, and has spent the last four years living in New York City while getting her BA in creative writing at Columbia University. Her poetry is strongly influenced by her love of science fiction, music and obscure rhyming words. When not writing, she is singing her way through German operas and the Kurt Weill songbook, stargazing, baking TARDIS cakes, playing piano, pretending she can play violin, and dressing up in costumes whenever possible. She has a mini dachshund named Annabel Lee, who couldn’t make the trip up to New Hampshire, but is being trained to play fetch over Skype.

Michael Thompson is a second year fiction student.  He has struggled his entire adult life to stop running like a girl.  One time, he accidentally shot himself in the eye with a champagne cork.  He lives in Durham with his wife, two kids, and their puggle.     

Victoria is a second-year MFA student in poetry. Although originally from Arlington, MA, she got her BA in English at Penn State, and came straight to UNH after she graduated. Currently, she works as the assistant in the UNH Office of Research Development and Communications. When she's not writing or working, you can find her running outdoors, listening/dancing to live music, volunteering for local organizations, coaching field hockey, or eating pizza. 

Noah Tucker

Noah Tucker is a second-year MFA fiction student. Before coming to New Hampshire, he graduated from Arizona State University with a BA in English.  Before that, he grew up on a mountain in Maine, where he often returns to bake pies, pickle things, grow food for his family and friends, and write long sentences, all in the company of his peculiarly tall springer spaniel, Scout. 

Jonathan Vesey

Jonathan Vesey is a student in the Poetry MFA program, transplanted from his life and schooling in Cleveland, Ohio.  He was born there into a suburban lifestyle before doing his undergraduate work at Case Western Reserve University closeby, studying English and Cognitive Science.  He predominantly focused on writing poetry and cognitive linguistics.  Having had a 5 year college radio show, he's a fervent devourer of music of all sorts, though predominantly metal.  Since graduating from CWRU in 2009, he had been making paltry amounts of money cleaning and stocking at a department store so that he could save up for graduate school.  Now, as a TA and all around charismatic gentleman, he might just have enough momentum on his side to live a decent life.

Rose Whitmore

Rose Whitmore hails from San Francisco where she was an All-American rugby player, immunology researcher, and amateur smelt fisherman. Before coming to New Hampshire, she walked across Spain, then joined the ranks of the editorial team at Prishtina Insight in Prishtina, Kosovo. She is a second year MFA fiction student and an editor of Barnstorm. 

Marino is a proud, and, slightly incredulous, graduate of Bridgewater State College in Bridgewater, MA. He graduated with a BA in Philosophy, which makes getting an MA in Linguistics look like he is becoming an accountant. His family is very proud that he will eventually (hopefully) become a doctor, though they aren’t sure how Linguistics will help with their acid reflux. Marino grew up in Brockton, MA but was born in Portugal and spent sometime living in Cape Verde. He moved to the United States with his family when he was 14. Marino has spent the last two years teaching ESL in Boston. He is interested in studying the profile of diverse kinds of second language learners and thinking about the implications of this in theories of L2 acquisition as well as in the ESL classroom . Marino also enjoys playing djembe and balafon (both instruments from the African nation of Mali). You can catch Marino drumming in the centerfold of the August 2010 issue of ever-popular Science News where he enjoyed the shortest modeling career on record.

I am in my final semester in the MA for English Language and Linguistics program. I graduated in 2005 from Philadelphia Biblical University with a BS in Biblical Studies with an emphasis in Missions Ministry. For the first three years after college I worked as a high school language teacher at a local private Christian school before deciding to get a job working for the insurance company Unum, whom I currently work for, to support myself through Grad School. I am born and bred native of the beautiful state of Maine and currently live in the town of Limerick, ME in my own quaint little apartment close to family and my local church. Between working for Unum, spending time with family, teaching junior church at my local church, interviewing for various ESL teaching jobs overseas, and volunteering as an ESL teacher at the Root Cellar nonprofit ministry in Portland, ME, I am a very busy woman! For leisure, I greatly enjoy relaxing by the seaside (or poolside), getting lost in a good book, watching BBC programs (Doctor Who!), hiking, going on an occasional shopping trip and to the movies with family and friends. After graduating in December I plan to teach English overseas wherever the Lord leads.

Luke Dietrich began the PhD program in English Literature in the Fall of 2010, and works primarily with late Nineteenth- and early Twentieth-century American literature. He received his undergraduate degree from Wesleyan University in 2006 and his MA in English from Boston College, where he served as Assistant Managing Editor for Post Road Magazine. Luke’s research focuses on literary realism and modernism, fictional representations of space and place, and the history of U.S. print culture.   He has presented papers at conferences with the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment as well as UNH’s English Graduate Organization (where he now serves as co-president).  He also works part-time as an Editorial Assistant for UNH’s Office of Research Development.  Outside of academia, Luke enjoys playing basketball and tennis, watching HBO, and spending time with family and friends.

Hi, I’m Kim Dougherty.  I made it to my fourth-year as a Ph.D. lit student through much trial and error and I’m looking forward to beginning my dissertation “‘Of the sky above you must beware’: Airpower, Airspace, and Biopolitics in Twentieth Century Literature.” In June I presented a paper entitled “Intersections of Air Space and Biopolitics in Dickey’s ‘The Firebombing’ and Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five,” at University of Bucharest’s Tales of War: Expressions of Conflict and Reconciliation.  I’ve taught First-Year Writing and Introduction to Literature at UNH, and several classes at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and University of Phoenix.

I’m currently pursuing a second career in academics after 22 years as an Air Force Officer and Navigator on the KC-135 aircraft, directing in-flight refueling with other aircraft. I was a flight instructor for many years, and taught in the classroom, in the air, and in simulators. I participated in most of the air operations of the last two decades, flying missions in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and coordinating my unit response on 9-11.  I’m married, with a stepdaughter in college, and a rescue dog.  In my copious free time I enjoy fly-fishing, hiking, skiing and snowshoeing.

James Finley

James Finley, having received a BA from Grinnell College and an MA from UNH, is in his third year of the doctoral program. He has taught First-Year Writing, Introduction to Literary Analysis, and American Literature to 1865. His research interests include radical and antislavery portrayals of land and labor in Antebellum American Literature. He has an article forthcoming from ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment on Thoreau's The Maine Woods and has presented his work at conferences including the American Literature Association, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment, Black New England, and the Thoreau Society Gathering.
 

Eden Wales Freedman

Eden Wales Freedman is a third year doctoral student in Literature. She earned a BA from Swarthmore College in English and Political Science and an MA in English Lit from Boston College. Her work focuses on twentieth century American literature in the context of trauma theory, race, and sexuality; the ethics of representing trauma in testimonial literature, autobiography, and fictional texts; and the (in)capacity of language to articulate the experience of trauma. She is currently researching how readers respond to traumatic narratives in order to formulate a theory of reading that enables both speaker and reader to witness traumatic events. She has taught Freshman Composition, Freshman English, and British and American Literatures at UNH. She is co-president of EGO.

Katherine Gillen is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Hampshire whose work focuses primarily on economics, sexuality, and semiotics in early modern drama. Her dissertation, The Counterfeit Jewel: Economic Anxieties and Representations of Chastity on the Early Modern Stage reconsiders the significance of female chastity on the Elizabethan and Jacobean stage, arguing that chastity tropes resonate with a range of economic concerns about value, commoditization, and exchange. A version of her first chapter, on chastity-as-treasure imagery in The Rape of Lucrece and Cymbeline, is forthcoming in Early English Studies. She has also published on John Bale’s biblical plays (forthcoming from Cahiers Elisabethains) and on intersections between the fields of literature and composition (LORE, Spring 2009). In addition to her work in literary studies, Katherine directs the Connors’ Writing Center at UNH, where she enjoys training student tutors and working with writers from across the university.

Matt Hurwitz, vice president of EGO, is in his fourth year of UNH’s PhD in Literature program. This past spring he successfully passed his qualifying exams and is now beginning work on his dissertation in the fields of 20th century British literature, English national identity, theories of nationality and globalization, and tropes of tourism, travel, migration, and displacement. He has recently presented a paper entitled “Space, Island, Postcard: Traveling Through Derek Walcott’s Omeros” at Tulane University. He has also written recently on the relationship between Englishness, modernity, and colonial Indian space in Anglo-Indian Mulk Raj Anand’s 1936 novel Coolie. He has been a recent recipient of a UNH Summer Fellowship and was chair of the 2008 Graduate Student Conference, “Challenging Faith: Belief and Doubt in Literature, Composition, and the Profession.” Matt is currently teaching “Introduction to Literary Analysis”; in the past he has also taught “First-Year Writing” and “Survey of British Literature 1800-Present” at UNH. This year marks his 10th year of teaching.

Lin is in her fourth year of the PhD in Literature, studying eighteenth-century drama and theater history. Her focus is the meaning of props in that century’s particular performance and consumer contexts, especially the ways human/object relationships on stage generate agency and challenge hegemony. She has presented work at ECASECS and the Harvard Humanities Seminars, is preparing work for publication, is planning to apply her work to an x-rated (yet arty) film, and currently teaches English 419. Lin worked with props for many years as stage crew and stage management, and thus wields a mean glue gun. She received a BA from Williams College, an MFA from American University, and an MA from Northeastern University. Her poetry has appeared in The Newport Review, Folio, BlackWater Review, the online anthology Tanka Splendor, and the book Regrets Only: Contemporary Poets on the Theme of Regret. She lives in the Hub of the Universe, enjoying theater, yoga, and coffee as often as possible.

Catherine Welter, a first-year PhD student in English Literature, specializes in the 19th c. British Novel. Originally from Syracuse, NY, she received a BA in English and French from Union College in Schenectady, before moving to London to work for the British Museum. She later returned to the States for grad school. After earning her MA in English Literature from the University of Connecticut, she continued teaching at UCONN as an Adjunct Professor. In her spare time, Catherine enjoys traveling and hiking, as well as exploring her passion for amateur photography and historic architecture.

Brad Dittrich is a first year doctoral student in Composition Studies.  So far, he has spent his entire life in school and has gotten pretty good at it.  He was raised in the tiny town of Snow Hill, Maryland where he learned his deep and abiding love of chickens, corn, blue crabs, and Old Bay.  He received a BA in English from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and an MA in Composition & Rhetoric from Salisbury University.  He just moved to New Hampshire, so if you see someone looking lost and shivering in the cold climate, come over and say hi.  His academic interests are varied, and include digital writing practices, epistolary studies, History of Rhetoric (especially, but not exclusively, the medieval stuff), and Writing Centers.  Someday he will focus those interests enough to write a dissertation.  He also likes to cook, write (obviously), drink craft beers, run, and visit the beach. 

Sarah B. Franco is a second year PhD student in Composition Studies.  She received her BA in English and Psychology from the University of Rochester, and her MA in English and MAT at Simmons College.  After teaching writing and literature for several local colleges in the Boston area, Sarah has found a home at UNH and kindred spirits in her fellow writers and professors.  Her academic interests include therapeutic writing practices, nonfiction prose, and development of writing services for returning veterans.  In addition to working in the Connors Writing Center, Sarah facilitates writing workshops at the Manchester VA Medical Center.  When not reading, writing or talking about what she's reading or writing, Sarah loves studying maps, hearing peoples' stories, trying new beers, visiting the ocean, and exploring coastal towns from Bar Harbor to Newport.

Corey McCullough is a first-year PhD student in Composition Studies.  He has a BA in English from St. Michael's College, an MA in English from The University of Vermont, and an MSEL (Masters of Studies in Environmental Law) from Vermont Law School.  Having taught ESL in Spain, worked as an adjunct professor teaching literature and writing classes, and served as the interim director of a college writing center over the last several years, he's excited to be a student again

His areas of interest include first-year studies, TESOL, writing center administration, humor, ecocriticism, and creative writing.  He hails from a faraway land known as Vermont, where he spent his formative years driving a pickup truck along dirt roads listening to The Grateful Dead. 

He currently spends most of his free time refurbishing a 1961 Airstream trailer, which he will most likely end up living in someday (soon).

Mike Peterson is a doctoral candidate in Composition Studies and is currently the Associate Director of the University Writing Programs. He is writing his dissertation on privately-published family histories, looking specifically at how people write about their Mormon polygamist ancestors. He has a BA in literature and an MA in rhetoric and composition from Boise State University. When he isn’t dissertating, Mike hangs out with his wife and four children in the middle-of-nowhere, New Hampshire.  After completing his PhD, Mike hopes to someday write a Broadway musical.  

My name is Wendy VanDellon and I am currently working on my Ph.D. in English Composition. Currently, I am interested in several research topics, including critical whitness theory, expressivism, No Child Left Behind and audit culture, and classical rhetoric. For my Master's degree, I attended Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and studied English Rhetoric and Composition. I also have a BA in English with a minor in Communications from St. John Fisher College in Rochester, New York and an Associate's degree in Liberal Arts from Monroe Community College also in Rochester, New York. My hometown is Rochester, New York. I have many interests that I have been able to explore throughout my academic career. During my time in school, I have played the violin, played and coached soccer, worked on newspapers for four years, worked on a literary magazine, and worked at a small sports shop that specialized in lacrosse. When I am not running from meetings or classes, I enjoy spending time with friends, reading and writing, making a trip back to Rochester, New York, and relaxing.

I'm a 6th-year PhD candidate in Composition Studies/English. My primary interests include public and political discourse, rhetorical education, writing teacher preparation, and Writing Across the Curriculum. I'm writing a dissertation about public debate over college- and career-readiness standards for literacy education.

Shauna Wight
Program: Ph.D. Composition
Hometown: Fruit Heights, UT
Academic Interests: Language diversity and policy, writing the body, embodied pedagogy
Other Interests: gardening, hiking, running, skiing, cooking

Maja Wilson is a first year PhD student in composition studies. She has worked in Michigan's public school system for 10 years, teaching high school english, alternative education, adult basic education, and ESL. She is interested in examining how assessment policy either undermines or supports our goals and values as educators and citizens, and in finding ways to develop teacher agency in institutions designed to thwart it. Her published works – including Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment, published by Heinemann in 2006 and recipient of NCTE's 2007 James Britton award – began with a feeling of frustration. When she is particularly caffeinated, she has grand delusions of being Obama's education advisor. She enjoys reading and swimming with her two sons, gardening, and taking long walks in the fall.

Kate Abbott finished the MFA program in Fiction. She's had fiction, poetry and nonfiction published in the Comstock Review, Entelechy International, The Berkshire Review and qarrtsiluni, among others, and accepted for an anthology, The Farmer's Daughter. Before she came to UNH, she spent four years as a reporter and Associate Editor of the Berkshire Advocate, an independent weekly paper.

Rachael Berkey graduated from the MA program in English Literature. She is originally from Cleveland, OH and spent four years in upstate New York attending St. Lawrence University for her undergraduate degree. Her scholarly interests include early modern drama, eighteenth century novels and postcolonialism with a focus on feminist issues. She taught First Year Composition.

Jeff Covington graduated from the MA program in English Literature. Originally from (outside) Richmond, Virginia, Jeff earned his BA in English from James Madison University. His interests include twentieth-century literature (sort of a transatlantic studies approach), war and subjectivity, and all realms of literary theory (but particularly psychoanalysis, gender, and aesthetics). He has presented on a wide array of topics—i.e. W.G. Sebald and memory, eighteenth-century libertine literature, Whitman and flaneurism, and ontological readings of Brian Friel's plays—at various national and international conferences. He wrote his thesis on affective renderings of "shame" in gendered Modernist war poetics.

Meredith Dunham completed the MA program in Literature. She is a New Hampshire native, although she received her BA in English and Religion from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Her interests include British Victorian Literature, Theology and Theodicy in Literature, and Contemporary British and American Literature. She plans to pursue a career as a secondary school English instructor.

Tim Horvath completed the MFA program in Fiction. While at UNH, he wrote and revised his novel, Goodbye in Many Languages, which is populated by conservatory musicians, volatile chemists, new agey goth kids, urban spelunkers, alienated actors, rhesus monkeys, and foodie truckers. He has published several short stories, including "The Understory," which received the 2006 Raymond Carver Prize. He taught Creative Nonfiction at UNH and spent a year as a counselor in a psychiatric hospital. His preoccupation with cognitive neuroscience appears to be incurable.

Hannah Larrabee graduated with an MFA in Poetry. She was born and raised in Maine and received her BA in Philosophy at UNH. She greatly admires the work of William Stafford, Richard Hugo, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara and Franz Wright. Although she has only recently begun the process of publication, one of her poems was a semi-finalist for the 2006 Indiana Review Poetry Prize.

Mike Michaud graduated from the Composition Studies PhD program at UNH. He received his Master of Arts in Teaching from the University of Iowa and taught high school English for one year before returning to work as an adjunct/lecturer at UNH, St. Anselm's College, Boston College, and the College for Lifelong Learning (CLL). He has designed and taught courses online for CLL. His academic and professional interests include issues of adult and workplace literacy, constructions of masculinity, histories of composition, technical writing, composition pedagogy and the disciplinary status of the first-year course. He has presented papers at local and national conferences and currently teaches technical writing at UNH.

Suzanne Philbrick completed the MA program in Literature, and hopes to continue with a PhD in Composition Studies. She taught First-Year English as a TA, and was also a Developmental English and Academic Self-Management lecturer for the University of Southern Maine. She returned to college nearly 20 years after graduating from high school, and graduated Summa Cum Laude with English Honors from the University of Southern Maine, where she worked as a writing and ESL tutor. She is a Phi Kappa Phi member and received the C. Elizabeth Sawyer Scholarship from USM.

Laura Smith graduated from the PhD program in Literature. She studies nineteenth-century American women's literature and its concern with domestic space and furnishing. She studies the intersection of literature and material culture, and has a corollary interest in the literature and lifeways of the Shakers. She has written and presented on works by Caroline Kirkland, Elizabeth Stoddard, and Willa Cather.

Jason Tandon graduated from the MFA program in Poetry. He received his BA and MA in English from Middlebury College. His poems have appeared in Poet Lore, Euphony, Regarding Arts & Letters, Folio, Broken Bridge Review, Del Sol Review, Good Foot, Pavement Saw, Bayou, Cairn and elsewhere. He taught composition and Intro to Critical Analysis at UNH and was an intern poetry editor at The Paris Review.

Kuhio Walters graduated from the PhD program in Composition Studies. He taught Composition, Introduction to Prose Writing, Introduction to Literary Studies and Critical Analysis at UNH. He has presented papers at various conferences on ethnography, photography and critical theory in Composition, and on the role of mass media in shaping the "exotic" in the American imagination. He investigates the history, theory and practice of photography in the writing classroom.