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Emma Burris-Janssen |
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.
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Gerald Cournoyer |
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. |
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Brittany Hoxie |
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.
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Jane Hunt |
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.
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Nichole Ivey |
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.
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Shawn Kelly |
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. |
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Christine Leonard |
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. |
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Emily Lepkowski |
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.
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Bader Monikher |
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. |
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Allison Riley |
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."
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Deborah Vernon |
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.
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Kimberly Young |
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 20th Century literature (particularly dystopian works
and their function as social commentary). Her other interests are working out,
cooking/baking, and art.
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Tyler Wentland |
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.
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David Bersell |
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.
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Caro Clark |
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.
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Larry Clow |
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.
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Kathleen Cobb |
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.
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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.
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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. |
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Aaron Gerber |
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.
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Joe Gilbert |
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. |
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Lindsey Greene |
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.
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Willa Johann |
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.
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Jennie Latson |
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.
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Jesse Mack |
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. |
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Dustin Martin |
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.
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Andrew McKernan |
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.
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Lisa Meerts-Brandsma |
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. |
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Kayleigh Merritt |
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.
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Melissa Mowry |
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. |
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John Noonan |
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. |
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Marc Paltrineri |
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.
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Alan Schulte |
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. |
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Alison Silverglad |
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.
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Erin Somers |
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. |
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Sarah Terry |
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. |
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Michael Thompson |
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.
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Victoria Thompson |
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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Marino Fernandes |
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.
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Jennifer Hansen |
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. |
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Luke Dietrich |
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.
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Kim Dougherty |
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. |
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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.
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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. |
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Katherine Gillen |
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.
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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.
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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. |
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Catherine Welter |
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.
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Brad Dittrich |
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.
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Sarah Franco |
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. |
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Corey McCullough |
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). |
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Michael Peterson |
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. |
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Wendy VanDellon |
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. |
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Jim Webber |
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.
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Shauna Wight |
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
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Maja Wilson |
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. |
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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. |
Yassmeen
Abdulhamid graduated from the MA program in Literature. In 2005, she
earned her BA in English at SUNY Plattsburgh in upstate New York, where she
graduated Summa Cum Laude. Yassmeen was awarded the SUNY Chancellor's Award for
Student Excellence during her last semester at Plattsburgh, and she was also the
recipient of the 2006 Phi Kappa Phi Award of Excellence. During her senior year,
she completed an undegraduate honors thesis entitled, "'My cherished preserver':
Uncovering the Parasitic Male in Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and The
Professor." Yassmeen taught one section of First-Year Writing per semester at UNH and her
research interests include 19th-Century British Literature and the construction
of gender identity in both fiction and non-fiction. |
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. |
Keith M. Botelho graduated from the PhD program in Literature with a focus on Renaissance
and Early Modern Literature. His dissertation, completed on a fifth-year dissertation fellowship,
was entitled, "Rumor, Gender, and Authority
in English Renaissance Drama." His articles have been published in Comparative
Drama and English Language Notes, and two shorter essays
have appeared in The Age of Milton: An Encyclopedia of Major 17th-Century British
and American Authors. |
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. |
Michelle
Cox graduated from the PhD program in Composition Studies. Her research interests
include second language writing, Writing Across the Curriculum and workplace
writing. Her publications include "Reading an ESL Writer's Text," co-authored
with Paul Kei Matsuda and published in ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center
Tutors (2004), and "Writing for the Clinical Practicum," co-authored
with Cinthia Gannet, Amy Plante and Jeanne O'Sullivan and published in The
CSD Survival Guide (2005). Michelle Cox has presented her research at CCCC,
American Speech Hearing Association, Northeast Writing Center Association, National
Writing Across the Curriculum Conference, and Conference of the Canadian Association
for the Study of Language and Learning (otherwise known as Inkshed). Her dissertation
project, When the Workplace is on Campus: Learning to Write for a University
Speech-Language Clinic, focused on how the overlapping academic and workplace
activity systems in this clinic affect the ways that writing is shaped, taught,
learned, and perceived. |
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. |
Christina Healey graduated from the PhD program in Literature in May of 2009. She earned her BA in English from Providence College and her MA in English from Boston College. Christina completed her dissertation on a University Fellowship; her project focuses on archaeology, antiquarianism, and the landscape in American women’s writing, 1820-1890. Other research interests include ecocriticism, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies, and representations of nature, space, and place in literature. She has published an article in Eighteenth-Century Fiction and is a regular participant in the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment’s biennial conference. During her time at UNH, Christina served as co-President of the English Graduate Organization with Jeff Ringer. She taught courses on American literature, critical analysis, creative nonfiction, and the First-Year Writing seminar. |
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. |
Rachel Israelson completed the MA program in English Literature. She is from Westbrook,
ME and received her BA in English and History from the University of Rochester.
She is interested in Renaissance literature with a particular focus on gender
representation and identity. She later plans to pursue a career in teaching. |
| Alison "Abby"
Knoblauch graduated from the PhD program in Composition Studies. She received
her MA in Literature from UNH, and BA in English from Northland College. Abby's dissertation explored intersections and implications
of feminist rhetorical theory and pedagogy. Her interests include feminist theory,
pedagogy, and rhetoric; teacher development; and popular culture. Abby has presented
on the first-time teaching experience, embodied rhetoric, the uses of popular
culture in the composition classroom, and Samuel Richardson's Pamela. She
has also co-edited a book entitled What to Expect When You're Expected to Teach:
The Anxious Craft of Teaching Composition. Abby served as Assistant Director of
the Composition Program and co-president of the English Graduate Organization.
She taught first-year composition, creative nonfiction writing, critical analysis,
the writing studio and persuasive writing at UNH. |
Ken Lambert completed the MA program in English literature. He is originally from Jaffrey, NH and received his BA in French from
Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. He is interested in comparative literature,
especially the postcolonial literature produced in French and English. Ken is
the Graduate Student Organization's representative to the Honorary Degrees and
Awards Committee and assists in the school's ESL program. |
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. |
Lisa Litterio is from Reading, MA and graduated from the MA program in Literature. She received her BA from the College of the Holy Cross (Worcester, MA) Magna Cum
Laude, Phi Beta Kappa in the College Honors Program. At Holy Cross, she was
a writing center Head Tutor for three years, a teaching assistant for a three
week intensive composition summer course, and a writer and editor for The Crusader newspaper. She was also published in Creative
Communication's Spring 2004 Poetry Anthology for original poetic work entitled
"Vision of God." She has an interest in rhetoric (from her classical
background), pedagogical issues, and British Literature. At UNH, she was a tutor
in the Connors Writing Center and an editorial assistant to a professor. |
| Darcy McLaren,
of Raymond, NH, completed the MA program in Literature. She graduated
from Emmanuel College (in Boston, Massachusetts) with a Bachelor's
Degree in English Literature and Secondary Education, and is a licensed English
educator for grades 8-12. During her senior year of undergrad, she had the wonderful
experience of teaching 9th and 11th grade English at Boston Latin School. She
graduated Magna Cum Laude and with honors for her recent completion of a year-long
Distinction in the Field research project focusing on why high school students
cheat academically. Her primary literary interests include the Harlem Renaissance,
the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and the persuasive strategies of rhetoric. |
Kate Megear graduated from the MA program in Writing. She is from New York City and
received her BA in English from the University of Virginia. Kate writes both fiction
and poetry, and enjoys teaching, letter writing, typewriters and garage sales.
She has taught fiction at The Young Writers' Workshop in Charlottesville, Virginia,
in addition to teaching a university seminar on moral issues at UVA. She has been
published in several small-scale literary magazines and has read at dozens of
organized reading events. Her favorite writers include Hemingway, Salinger, Frank
O'Hara, Robert Hass, Charles Simic, John Irving and Lorrie Moore. |
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. |
Christina
Ortmeier graduated from the PhD program in Composition Studies. She is interested in second language writing and immigrant literacy. At UNH,
she taught Composition and English as a Second Language. She also worked
as a writing consultant for the Connors Writing Center and a Writing Fellow for
the Communication Disorders Department. She published "Project Homeland:
Crossing Cultural Boundaries in the ESL Classroom" in TESOL Journal on using the writing process with middle school ESL students. Her work was also
presented at the 1999 TESOL and 2000 Northern New England TESOL conferences. She
also participated in a panel on Writing Across the Curriculum initiatives
at the 2001 Convention of the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. For her dissertation research, she worked on case studies of immigrant ESL students in Composition
courses. |
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. |
Katie Raynes graduated from the MA program in Literature. She grew up in Kittery Point, Maine, and received her
BA in English from the University of New Hampshire. She is particularly interested
in Early Modern Drama and hopes to explore the field more fully, but her interests
also include the Romantic poets and the 19th century novel. She approaches these areas from a queer studies perspective. Her other interests
include animation, the graphic novel, and Japanese culture, history, and language.
She worked at the Connors Writing Center and
at the UNH Center for the Humanities. |
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. |
Cara Snider is a life-long Nittany Lion from Waynesboro,
Pennsylvania, and graduated from the MA program in Literature. Her interests
include many aspects of religion and 20th century American literature, and recent
projects involve concepts of grace and sacrifice in Fitzgerald's This Side
of Paradise and issues of core confrontation between faith and art in Potok's My Name is Asher Lev. Cara is also interested in Native American literature,
such as Samson Occom's typological view of New England Protestantism. In addition
to teaching First-Year Composition, Cara was co-social chair of
the English Graduate Organization at UNH. During the summer, she taught Literature and
Composition for UNH's Upward Bound summer program. |
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. |
Katherine Tirabassi graduated from the PhD program in Composition
Studies. Her research interests include Writing Across the Curriculum,
Writing Center Theory and Practice, and Historical Studies, and she has presented
on these topics at CCCC, NEWCA, NNETESOL, and the bi-yearly UNH Composition Conferences.
Katherine taught First-Year Writing, Technical Writing, Creative Nonfiction,
Critical Analysis and Writing Consultation at UNH, and served as
Assistant Director for the Robert J. Connors Writing Center. Her publication
"It Might Come in Handy: Composing A Writing Archive at the University of
New Hampshire: A Collaboration between the Dimond Library and the Writing Across
the Curriculum/Connors Writing Center, 2001-2003" was co-authored with John
C. Brereton, Cinthia Gannett, Elizabeth Slomba and Amy Zenger and appears in Centers
for Learning: Libraries and Writing Centers in Collaboration (2005). Her dissertation
project, Revisiting the Current-Traditional Era: Innovations in Writing Instruction
at the University of New Hampshire, 1940-1949, derew on archival research,
alumni interviews, and 1940s journals to explore the institutional writing culture
of UNH, and to expand the ways that we conceive of, study, and write about historical
and current shifts in writing instruction. |
| Amy VanHaren graduated with an MFA in
Creative Nonfiction. She has little ability to sit still or stay inside. She has
lived in six different states from Michigan to Hawaii; traveled to over 13 different
countries; competed in five triathlons and one marathon; hiked Mount Washington
in winter whiteout conditions; and worked with George Clooney. During her time at UNH, she worked on a book about a New Hampshire volunteer search and rescue team. She was director of the Connors Writing Center and associate editor of N’East
Magazine. Her articles appear frequently in AMC Outdoors. |
Laura Waldon graduated from the MFA program in Creative
Nonfiction at UNH. She taught composition at UNH and finished a book about the battle over same-sex marriage in Massachusetts,
as told through the stories of the people who fought on the frontlines of the
battle. She is co-director and creator of UNH’s Online Writing Lab, and is the
former associate director of the Connors Writing Center. Prior to coming to UNH,
Laura received her BA in English and Sociology from Augsburg College in Minneapolis.
Before moving to her current home in Massachusetts with her wife, Emily, Laura
worked for four years as a journalist and freelance magazine writer in the Twin
Cities, where she got to do fun things like fly a plane, shoot a sub-machine gun,
and pretend to be a firefighter – all in the name of work. |
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. |
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