We’re always pleased to share updates from our family of contributor-alumni and event presenters. Think of this as your alma mater’s Class Notes, only the alumni are our volunteers, contributors, and speakers.
This update is long overdue and, because of that, this installment includes almost a year’s worth of wonderful accomplishments that happened between our last update (in December 2025) and now.
Most of these were submitted via our form, but we also try to keep an eye for exciting news you share on social and your own newsletters. But we can’t catch everything, and we’d really LOVE to grow this feature, so please submit your news here for inclusion in a future update.
[To browse our past essays and other content by contributor name, visit this page.]Chris Arthur’s most recent essay collection, What is it Like to be Alive? Fourteen Attempts at an Answer, has been named as one of the “10 Best Books of 2024” by the California Review of Books.
Dayna Bateman received the 2025 American Literary Review Award in Essays (judged by Jaquira Díaz) for “Deracination, Or How To Disappear,” which interrogates the decision of her Indigenous Sámi ancestors to pass for White in the racial climate of 1880s America
Janée J. Baugher’s third full-length poetry collection was selected by Shane McCrae for the Tupelo Press Dorset Prize; The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles will be released in February 2026.
jodi sh doff joined Substack with new essays in both Oldster Magazin , Saying No, Fifty Years Later; and Open Secrets, The Ties that Bind: Rape as a Job Hazard.She has also been publishing two weekly newsletter columns: The Long Goodbye: Dementia Caregiving & Other Life Stories and Dirtygirl Diaries — What I Did for Love
In the summer of 2024, Cory Fosco’s chapbook, Empty Streets was published by Alien Buddha Press. In this collection of essays, poems, and short fiction, Fosco included “The House That Built Me” which was originally published in Hippopcampus Magazine in 2011. He was also nominated for a Pushcart Prize for his short story, “Die Forelle,” which is included in the chapbook.
Sue Granzella’s book Pushed to the Edge: Teachers’ Stories From the Culture Wars will be published by The New Press in early April, 2026.
Ona Gritz won the 2025 Clara Johnson Award in Women’s Literature for her memoir, Everywhere I Look.
Kim Hayes had a story recently published in Adelaid Magazine. While it was submitted as fiction (names were changed), it’s a true story about Kim and her husband and moving into a hoarder house (trigger warning for those who have dealt with extreme hoarding). They lasted 36 hours.
Yolande House wrote about the hybrid memoir, Every Cripple a Superhero in The Fiddlehead’s Stop! Look! Listen! Blog. In November 2024, her essay “The Anxious GERD Diet” was published in Plenitude, marking her first published piece about chronic illness. This essay is from her manuscript on invisible disabilities called Muscle Memory.
Belinda J. Kein was nominated for the 2025 Pushcart Prize by Yellow Arrow Publishing for her nonfiction flash, “Elegy in Silver” and by Vestal Review for her nonfiction flash, “For All His Promises.”
Evelyn Krieger won 2nd place in the Exposition Review Flash Fiction 2025 Contest.
Andrea Lius’s microessay, “Bistik Ayam,” was nominated by Glassworks for the 2025 Best of the Net anthology.
Sue Repko published an essay, “What To Do With The Bodies,” in January 2025 at The Manifest Station. Sue also taught a virtual three-session workshop, “Ready, Set, Revise,” through Project Write Now last spring.
Marian Rogers’s micro-essay “Moorings” appeared in Beautiful Things, River Teeth’s online magazine, on April 8, 2024.
Marsh Rose published “Dinosaur Rock” in the Spring/Summer 2025 issue of Tulip Tree’s Wild Women contest. And her memoir, “A Version Of the Truth,” was accepted by Sunbury Press (release date TBA).
Diane Simmons’ award-winning novel, Dreams Like Thunder, was re-issued by Red Hen Pres in March 2025. A new version of her nonfiction book, Courtship of Eva Eldridge is now available.
Kirsten Voris’ essay “Landscapes on Cardboard” was nominated for Best of the Net by Zoetic Press.
Casey Mulligan Walsh published a reprint of “The Beautiful Game,” first published in The Under Review, in Sugar Sugar Salt on February 19, 2025. Her memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, released from Motina Books in February 2025. She also published a new flash essay, “Keeping Score: An Abecedarium” on December 17, 2025, at Short Reads.
A slightly updated version of Elizabeth Zaleski’s essay, “The Trouble with Loving Poets,” first published in February 2017, is now the title essay of her forthcoming collection with Belt, The Trouble with Loving Poets and Other Essays on Failure, available in February 2026. She also launched a database aimed at cataloging the best literary farts of the ages, which you can view (and contribute to) here.
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If you’re a past/current volunteer, contributor, or conference speaker and you have news to share, you can submit it here.
