Alumni and Student Achievements

Books

KB Ballentine's ('07) second collection of poetry, Fragments of Light (Celtic Cat Publishing) was published in June 2009. She published her first book of poetry, Gathering Stones, in 2008.

Bryan Ballinger ('05) published his retro parody Kooky Cookery as a print and ebook. More information is available at www.kookycookery.com.

Susanne Cope's ('07) memoir, Locavore in the City, will be published in fall 2012 by Michigan State University Press.

Charlene Donaghy's ('10) ten-minute play, "Who You Got to Believe" is included in The Best American Short Plays 2009-2010 (Applause Theatre & Cinema Books, 2011). The play has been produced around the country, including the 2011 Kansas City Women's Playwriting Festival. 

Mark Edwards' ('09) novel for young adults, Pirates on Dinosaur Island, was published by Gemmamedia Press (2011).

Thomas Fitzgerald's ('11) chapbook, Morning, was published by Finishing Line Press (2011).

Michael Graves' ('07) collection of stories, Dirty One, was published by Chelsea Station Editions (2011).

Beth Raisner Glass's ('06) picture books include Noises at Night (Abrams, 2005) and Blue Ribbon Dad (Abrams, 2011).

Patricia Lynn Gutman ('08) published her nonfiction book, The Work of Her Hands, with Wolsak and Wynn (2010).

Melanie Henderson's ('10) chapbook, Elegies for New York Avenue, won the 2011 Main Street Rag poetry award (Main Street Rag Press).

Laurie A. Jacobs' third picture book, Silly Frilly Grandma Tillie, illustrated by Anne Jewett, published by Flashlight Press, is available from March 2012.

Sara Latta's ('06) picture book, Stella Brite and the Dark Matter Mystery, was published with Charlesbridge Publishing (2006).

Sara Levine's ('06) picture book on vertebrates, What Kind of Animal Are You: Building Animals with Bones, will be published by Millbrook Press in fall 2013.

Robin Linn's ('09) chapbook, Fairytale Ending Machine, has been accepted for publication by FootHills Publishing, Kanona, NY.

Theodore Obenchain ('10) will publish his book, tentatively titled Rights of Man; Claims of Brutes with McFarland Press.

Kathy Park ('10) has published Seeing Into Stone: A Sculptor's Journey (Mercury Heartlink, 2011) about her fifteen-year apprenticeship with a stone sculptor.

Claudia Rueda's ('10) picture book, My Little Polar Bear (Scholastic Press, 2009), was designated a 2009 Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Platinum Award winner in the preschool category. She has also published the picture books No (Groundwood, 2010) and Huff and Puff (Abrams, 2011).

Scott Weems ('10) will publish Humorology, an exploration of the psychology and neuroscience of comedy and laughter, with Basic Books.

Marjorie Williams ('08) will publish The Markets of Paris, 2nd edition, with Little Bookroom in spring 2012.

Productions

In November 2011 Charlene Donaghy's ('10) play Everything Has a Season was produced as part of SLAM!Boston, along with Terry Johnson's ('10) Another Solid, Amanda Schaffer's ('10) Bearing Fruit, and Good Will. Salvation Army. War., by Cassie M. Seinuk.

Robbi D'Allessandro's ('10) ten-minute play, Sarcasms was performed as part of the 2011 SWAN Day event at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre. She also won the Kennedy Center Paula Vogel National Playwright's Award, 2011.

Charlene Donaghy's ('10) ten-minute play, Who You Got to Believe was produced at the Kansas City Women's Playwriting Festival, and was also published in Best American Short Plays, 2009-2010. Another August is a 2012 finalist for the Kennedy Center ACTF John Cauble Short Play Award and will be produced by Binghamton, NY's Know Theater in July 2012. Bones of Home and Proverbs were both produced in New York City last year, as well as around the country. Charlene has been named the Region 1 nominee for the Kennedy Center ACFT National Partners of the American Theatre Playwriting Award (NAPAT) for her full-length play, The Quadroon and the Dove, which has also been a finalist at Phoenix Theatre's New Works Festival and Wordsmythe Theatre Company's New Play Reading Series. Gift of an Orange has been selected to open Boston's New Urban Theatre Laboratory's 2012-2013 season and then will move on to the Tennessee Williams Theater Festival.

Bill Doncaster's adaptation of The Friends of Eddie Coyle was staged at the Oberon Theater in Cambridge, MA from Dec. 8, 2011-Jan. 15, 2012. http://www.thefriendsofeddiecoyle.com/

Angel Nunez ('11) is a semi-finalist for the 2012 Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival, Region 1, for his ten-minute play, "Fragment." It will be produced by Binghamton, NY's Know Theater in July 2012.

Catherine O'Neill's ('11) play, Murph, will be produced by Argos Productions at Boston Playwrights' Theater in April 2012. Her ten-minute play, The Resurrections, was produced by Actors Shakespeare Project and published by Smith and Kraus. Catherine's full-length play, Soul Fight, was produced by the Boston Actors Theater at the Boston Playwrights' Theatre.

Writing for Stage and Screen students and alumni have been finalists in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and their plays have been selected for or staged at the Boston Playwright's Theatre Marathon; FUSION Theater Company's annual short works festival The Seven: Hidden Agendas; ATHE's New Play Development Series in Chicago, Theater Development Center, Copenhagen; and the Copenhagen Music Theatre. Short films have premiered at the 15 Minutes of Fame Film Festival in Palm Beach, Florida, and the Polar Film Festival in Turku, Finland

Journals and Anthologies

Selected publications include: The Advocate, AGNI Online, Baltimore Review, Bellevue Literary Revue, The Boston Globe, Colorado Review, Columbia: A Journal of Literature and Art, The Connecticut Review, Crab Orchard Review, Del Sol Review, Driftwood, Family Circle, Field, Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Harvard Review, the Huffington Post, Jubilat, Massachusetts Review, McSweeney's, Missouri Review, New Delta Review, The New York Times, North American Review, Perihelion, Passages North, Post Road, Slate, Texas Review, The Writer, and on NPR and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

Alumni and student work has also appeared in the anthologies And Baby Makes More: Known Donors, Queer Parents and Our Unexpected Families; Battle Ruins: Stories of War; Best American Short Plays, 2009-2010; Best Gay Love Stories 2006; Best Women's Travel Writing 2010; Cool Thing: Gay Writers Under Thirty; The Creative Epiphany: Gifted Minds, Grand Realizations; Eclectica Magazine's Best Fiction Volume One; The Last Man; The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered; Poets of the American West; Poetry While You Wait; The Queer Collection: Prose and Poetry 2007; and Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Awards/Fellowships

Our students and alumni have won The Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award, the Jacob Javitz Fellowship, the St. Botolph Grant, the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Work-in-Progress award; fellowships from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation; a grant by the Shakespeare Fellowship Foundation; Pushcart Prize nominations; a Knight International Journalist Fellowship; the Nonfiction Prize from Columbia: a Journal of Literature and Art; Kennedy Center Paula Vogel National Playwright's Award; residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Residents Artists Program, the Vermont Studio Center, the Norman Mailer Writer's Colony, and the UCross Foundation.

Teaching Positions

Our alumni have found teaching positions at Adams State College; Berklee College of Music, Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging Arts; Brandeis University; Colorado College; Emerson College; Lasell University; Lesley College; Huntington University; Monroe Community College; Pikes Peak Community College; Suffolk University; University of California, Berkeley; University of Nebraska, Omaha; and Waubonsee Community College. They also teach at community writing organizations such as Grub Street, Boston; and Capitol Letters, Washington, DC.

Recent Achievements

Greg Abel ('11)'s poem, "Story Time" was published in the Summer 2011 issue of Salamander.

K.B. Ballentine's poem, "September Song" will be published in the forthcoming Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume VI: Tennessee. 

Richard Ballon has had plays and/or monologues in the following 2011 festivals: Alumnae Theater's New Ideas Festival, Toronto, Ontario; Walking the Wire Festival OMG, Riverside Theater Iowa City; Asphalt Shorts, Kitchener, Ontario; Balck Box Series, University of Hawaii; Sola Voces, Estrogenius Festival, NYC; Left Out Festival, NYC; His monologue, "Griselda" was published in The Good Ear Review Magazine. His short story,"Drunk With Myself" was published in Caterpillar Chronicles, and his short film was shown at Cineslam GLBT Festival in Guildford, VT.

Susanna Brougham ('06) has recently placed poems in Yemassee, Salamander, and The Cincinnati Review.

Frances Susanne Brown's article "Historical Hattery" appears in the March 2012 issue of Renaissance Magazine. 

Alissa Butterworth has launched Fabula Poematis, a print and online literary review by and for young and aspiring writers aged 12-17 in conjunction with Teddyfrin Public Libraries.

Leland Cheuk ('08) will be an artist-in-residency at the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts in April 2012.

E. Christopher Clark ('05) has stories forthcoming in Entelechy International: A Journal of Contemporary Ideas and the anthology Mill City Stories: Tales of Lowell and the Merrimack Valley.

Debka Colson's ('09) poem, "Following After Williams' Nantucket" was published in Poetry Cram 11=Poetry². She has a flash fiction piece, "Healing in Oaxaca" in ROAR Magazine.

Suzanne Cope ('07) has published essays in The New Plains Review and on culinate.com, as well as articles in Edible Boston, Edible Buffalo, and Edible Cape Cod. She is teaching writing at Berklee College of Music and Grub Street and is finishing her dissertation on Creative Nonfiction Pedagogy as part of Lesley's doctoral program. Her memoir, Locavore in the City, will be published in fall 2012 by Michigan State University Press.

Robbi D'Allessandro ('10) won the 2011 Kennedy Center Paula Vogel National Playwright's Award and was a 2011 Christopher Brian Wolk Excellence in Playwrighting Nominee for Po Sui Mu Lam (Broken Prayer). The play has been picked up by the Gersh Agency. Last Call was produced at Carollwood Theatre and was a selection at the 2011 American Theatre in Higher Education Selection. Sarcasms Anonymous has been produced with Fire Rose Productions and the screenplay, Ship of Dreams is in front of Summit Entertainment. Robbi is an invited observant at the 2012 O'Neil Playwright's Conference.

Karin C. Davidson's ('09) story, "The Cap," was published in Prime Number Magazine. She also has stories forthcoming in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art and New Delta Review.

Cheryl Eagan-Donovan was a lecturer at the 2011 Shakespeare Oxford Society & Shakespeare Fellowship Joint Authroship Conference in Washington, DC, where she spoke on La Serenissima: Sex in Venice in the Late Sixteenth Century, and screened clips from her upcoming documentary film, Nothing Is Truer Than the Truth. Her article, "Shakespeare the Writer," a review of the film Anonymous, was published in the November 2011 issue of the Shakespeare Oxford Society Newsletter. 

Yolanda Franklin ('09) has had poems published in Saw Palm: Florida Literature and Art, The Orchard Review, Specs: Journal of Arts & Culture, and The Sugarhouse Review. She has read at Rollins College for Urban Re-Think in Orlando, FL and was a Pushcart Poetry Prize Nominee for her poem "Porch Sitters Sippin' Sweet Tea in Heaven." She is a recipient of the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference Scholarship.  

Jen Girdish's ('08) essay, "The Impossible Return," originally published in Post Road no. 19, was selected as a "notable essay" in Best American Essays 2011. She also published "Nearly Beloved: How to Celebrate the Day You Don't Get Married" in Good magazine.

Cassandra Goldwater's ('06) essay,"Then What?" will be published in the journal Precipitate in spring 2012.

Michael Graves' ('07) debut collection of stories, Dirty One, was published by Chelsea Station Editions. His short story, "Comb City" appeared in Pank Magazine. Also, his review of Tomas Mournian's novel, Hidden, appeared in the premiere issue of the new literary journal, Chelsea Station.

Lisa Gruenberg ('07) received an Honorable Mention from Glimmer Train Press for her short story, "Keiskamma."

Plynn Gutman ('08) published her poem "Lucius" in West Wind Review 2011 and her story "Sarah the Chicken" is forthcoming in the anthology Animal Companions, Animal Lovers, Animal Doctors (University of Guelph Press).

Alia Hamada's poem, "Season to Season" was published in elimae. She's also continuing her AmeriCorps Massachusetts Promise Fellowship with 826 Boston, a nonprofit youth writing and tutoring center.

Caitlin Johnson was recently selected as one of the promising student poets for the Central Region in the Gilbert-Chappell Distinguished Poet Series 2011-2012.

Joyce Shor Johnson ('07) started a new publishing venture, Pugalicious Press, now accepting submissions: www.pugaliciouspress.com. Her middle grade novel, The Casting, will be available in spring 2012.

Tom Laverty ('11) has two poems forthcoming in Unsaid Literary Magazine, vol. 6.

Jennifer LeBlanc's poems have been published in Subliminal Interiors, Quantum Poetry Magazine, and Eunoia Review. Up the Staircase nominated her poem "Taming" for Best of the Net 2011.

Hunter Liguore's ('12) 3rd semester craft essay, "Middle Birth: The Novella as an Art Form" has been accepted for publication in the Writer's Chronicle. Her short story, "Elder Leah," was published in Rio Grande Review, and was performed by the Liar's League in London (video available here). Her story, "Area 54" was selected as a finalist in the Eric Hoffer Prose Award and was published in Strange Horizons. She has also had stories published in Steampunk Tales, Mason Road, and SLAB Literary Review.

Susi Lovell's ('09) short story, "Just Beyond the Curve" will appear in the 2011 Anthology of Montreal Writers. A flash fiction piece, "The Wolffe Brothers" will be published in the upcoming first issue of the Kudzu Review. 

Lindsey Gates Markel's short story, "Night" was a top ten finalist for the Fiction International 2011 short fiction contest. 

Lacy Mayberry's short story, "A Thousand Distant Cousins" appeared in 322 Review (as Lacy Arnett).

Naomi Mulvihill ('11) has two poems forthcoming in Eclipse and The Georgetown Review.

Lauren Norton ('09) was awarded second prize in Redivider's Fiction Contest for her story, "Benevolent Street."

Dan Portincaso ('08) is now the Managing Editor at Chicago Quarterly Review.

Sandra Rouse ('08) has had stories appear in Serving House Journal and Our Stories.

Alana Ruprecht's ('08) story, "The Snow of Tehran" appears on Opium Magazine.

Rebecca Silverman ('09) has been hired as a regular graphic novel reviewer for Anime News Network.  

Tracy Strauss has published three memoir pieces in Solstice Literary Magazine, South Loop Review, and Drunken Boat. "The Wreck" was a finalist for the Solstice Fiction/Nonfiction prize. It has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Nathan Tavares's ('11) short story, "Interior Spaces" was published in Pank Magazine. His essay, "Kids? Maybe in Ten Years," was published in The Good Men Project.

Katie Wiese will publish her essay, "Twenty Miles from Wisdom" in Lumina.

July Westhale's poems will be published in three new anthologies: Conversations at the Wartime Cafe: A Decade of War; So to Speak: A Feminist Literary Journal; and 100 Thousand Poets for Change. She has also been awarded a 2012 editorial internship at Copper Canyon Press.

Julie Wittes-Schlack's short story, "Burning and Dodging" was published in The Monarch Review and is forthcoming in Soundings East. Her book reviews have appeared in The Boston Globe.