UW-Milwaukee's community of writers is diverse. Our students don't conform to a particular demographic; rather, they come from varied backgrounds and possess a variety of life experiences. The result is a community in which this wealth of diversity creates lively, constructive interaction and collaboration.
And we do mean community. You will find that our writers help each other grow in both workshops and in their interactions outside the classroom.
Please take a moment to get to know us!
Christi Clancy is at work on her Ph.D. with a focus on fiction. Her work has appeared in Glimmer Train, Hobart, the Wisconsin Academy Review, the Cream City Review, on literarymama.com and elsewhere, and is forthcoming in Yabalusha Review. She won the Ellen C. Hunticut award for fiction, and her work was a finalist for the Charles Johnson award for student fiction. She won a scholarship to study with Robert Olen Butler through the San Juan Writer's Conference, and her work has been featured as a "work of the day" on the Emerging Writers Network. She is the assistant to the creative writing coordinator.
Paul Dworschack-Kinter began the program as a poet and then moved into fiction. Having come to creative writing through the school of fine arts, he continues to play with clay, paint and digital media. Currently in the Ph.D. program, he's a blurred genre (so, too his writing). His scholarly interests revolve around mythology and magical realism with strong leanings toward Celtic Studies. He is currently working on finishing his course work, finding time to write and working on a Secret Project.
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| Ellen Elder with Professor Sheila Roberts |
Ellen Elder is a doctoral student in creative writing working in poetry and fiction. She has degrees from The University of Chicago and Miami University, where she received The Academy of American Poet's Prize. She spent her summers growing up in Ireland. Her fiction was nominated for the Best New American Voices, 2006 and her work has been published or is forthcoming in DMQ Review, River City and Plainsongs. She is co-poetry editor at Cream City Review. Her interests include confessional poetry, Modernist British and Anglo-Irish writers (including Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen), memoir, and Italian and French languages. She is currently working on a memoir called Feast.
Sarah Freese thinks it started when she was twelve, though it may have been slightly before that. But year twelve would be her most vivid Young Adult memory. Year twelve, among other eventful circumstances, was the year she came down with the chicken pox. She especially remembers her mom reading all of The Little House on the Prarie books to her as she lay in bed sobbing, only to eventually fall dead asleep because of her exhaustion. After years of fear that someone would discover her continued fascination with YA literature, one day (read: the day she broke her hand, couldn't write, and discovered The Series of Unfortunate Events), Sarah decided that it was okay. She read YA books. No, she loved YA books. That was around the time she decided to apply to graduate school as a writer and never again go sledding with high schoolers. She has managed to stick to her first goal, and has recently completed a year and a half of graduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
H. Suzanne Heagy writes fiction, and occasionally poetry, and has published both genres in small lit journals. Her literary interests run toward 19th century American texts, and she's also interested in the discourse of humor. Nearing the end of her coursework, Suzanne hopes to take her Ph.D. in Spring 2006.
Joseph Radke is a winner of The Academy of American Poets' University Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in Poetry East, Sojourn, Homestead Review, and The Texas Observer. His writing and research interests include the post-confessional lyric and issues of belief and faith in poetry. He generally writes his poems in the first person and biographical profiles in the third.
Ann Stewart is a native of Michigan. She received her Bachelor's degree in English Language and Literature from the University of Michigan and her Master's degree in Creative Writing for Miami University-Ohio. After working briefly as an editor for an Ann Arbor free publication, she joined the program at UWM in order to follow her dream of becoming a great writer of fiction. She currently works as an editor at UWM's literary journal, Cream City Review, and she teaches both Creative Writing and first-year composition. My publications have been in: ESC!, 101: The Journal of the Image Warehouse, Words and Images, and Common Review.
Gene Tanta: Born in Timisoara, Romania in 1974, Gene Tanta immigrated to Chicago in 1984 with family. He earned his MFA in Poetry from the Iowa's Writers' Workshop in 2000. He translates contemporary Romanian poetry and makes visual art with found materials. Mr. Tanta's Publications include: Epoch, Ploughshares, Circumference Magazine, Exquisite Corpse, Watchword, Columbia Poetry Review, and Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry (two poems with Reginald Shepherd). Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he is also the Art Editor for Cream City Review.
Some of Gene's work can be found online:
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist_profile//59351.html
http://www.milkmag.org/tantapage.htm
http://www.beardofbees.com/acosmei.html
http://www.uglyaccent.com/GTanta.htm
http://www.woodlandpattern.org/poems/gene_tanta01.shtml
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.com/Secure/ecommerce/Catalog.asp?prdc=29
http://www.pshares.org/issues/article.cfm?prmArticleID=7118
Dawn Tefft is working on a PhD in Creative Writing, and she is currently Co-Poetry Editor for Cream City Review. Her e-chapbook Field Trip to My Mother and Other Exotic Locations was published in Mudlark in fall of '05. Recent publications include poems in Court Green and Alimentum: The Literature of Food and poems forthcoming in Third Coast and Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics. She has presented at Writing By Degrees: The 9th Annual National Graduate Creative Writing Conference and at Wesleyan's Tongue & Ink Undergraduate Creative Writing Conference, both in '06. Awards include the Academy of American Poets Prize at UWM ('06) and at SIUC ('00), Best American Poets Anthology nominee at UWM ('07), AOP Fellowship recipient at UWM ('05-'08), and Winnow Press Open Book Award in Poetry Finalist ('04). Her interests include Modernism, Magical Realism, and Feminist Theory.
Katy J. Vopal is a fiction writer currently working on her doctoral dissertation novel, The Way Back to August. Her academic concentration is adolescent literature. A former newspaper reporter, she is currently on faculty at Lakeland College and Ottawa University where she teaches creative writing, composition, American Literature, Child and Adolescent Literature, Women in Literature, and a variety of communication courses. Her short fiction has appeared in Upstreet, Quality Women's Fiction, Characters: Kids' Short Story and Poetry Outlet, Dan River Anthology, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Scrivener's Pen and other publications. Judy Blume is her hero.
David Yost is a first-year Ph.D. candidate in creative writing. A former Peace Corps Volunteer, he's worked teaching infant nutrition in Mali and teaching English to Burmese refugees in Thailand, where he regularly returns for his summers. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Pleiades, the Mid-American Review, the minnesota review, The Red Rock Review, Flyway, Lake Effect, the South Carolina Review, The Iconoclast, and other publications, and his scholarly work has appeared in MELUS and War, Literature, and the Arts.
Students currently in the Creative Writing Program at UW-Milwaukee are highly successful in placing their work. You may have seen (or will soon see) their poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and academic work in journals and anthologies like:
