Chelsea Cabral
Chelsea graduated from the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth in 2019 where she studied English, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Her literary interests include contemporary American literature, multi-ethnic feminisms, women authors, and literary theory. She has most recently presented on the work of Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison at the Northeast Modern Language Association’s annual conference and the National Conference of Undergraduate Research. When not working or studying, she likes to cook, watch films, and find ways to help her community at large. Before coming to UNH, Chelsea spent a year serving in a fourth grade ESL classroom through City Year AmeriCorps in Providence, RI.
Seth Lewis
Seth Lewis is a first-year MA student in English Studies. He received his BA in English and Film Studies from East Tennessee State University in 2019. His research interests include early modern adaptation, specifically in the late twentieth century, global film culture, and the digital humanities. During his time at UNH, Seth aims to explore how the global appropriation of Shakespeare in film and television anticipates political conflict.
Michael Hurley
Mike is thrilled to be a new Wildcat, and he's excited to meet new friends who share his passion for literature, history, philosophy, psychology, and more. After receiving a B.S. in Secondary Education from UVM, Mike hopes to expand and deepen his studies in ELA as just one way of being the best possible teacher he can be for his future students. Current creative endeavors include a romance novel set in medieval Spain and a dystopian (or utopian?) novel set several hundred years in the future. In addition to reading and writing, Mike loves hanging with friends, going for hikes and bike rides, camping, listening to tunes, and eating delicious food!
Shane Morin
Shane is a non-traditional student, who has worked his way through the BA program of English Literature at UNH in recent years. Carrying with him Minors in Philosophy as well as Women and Gender Studies, Shane has a keen interest in the intertextuality and intersectionality of literature, societies and the human family. As an early admitted student, through the Accelerated Masters Program, Shane carries both unbridled academic passion and inquisitiveness as he undertakes the next step into First-Year Graduate studies. Other interests include astronomy, poetry, world literature and Star Trek. Creative projects include finalizing a manuscript for a chapbook of poems, leveraging ekphrastic methods in poetry and tapping into science and science fiction for new speculative poetry approaches.
Andrea Arnstein
A non-traditional student who earned a BA in American Studies from Marlboro College in 1999 and a BA in English Literature from Keene State College in 2019. Has a passion for twentieth-century American as well as Post Colonial literature and analyzing how they reflect social changes in the Post Imperial/ Post-industrial world. Is also passionate about dystopian writing, Holocaust literature, and enjoys drawing similarities between the social norms and expectations represented in Medieval literature and contemporary mores.
Remington LeBeau
Remington LeBeau (they/them/theirs) is a graduate student of Language and Linguistics at the University of New Hampshire. Sociolinguistics, phonetics, and phonology are their main areas of interest. Remington has conducted research examining the pitch ranges of non-binary transgender people and intends to pursue the study of transgender phonetics and phonology further. They are a research assistant for the PoLaR Labels project (polarlabels.com), a new framework for systematic annotation of suprasegmental features such as prosodic characteristics, pitch ranges, and levels, under Dr. Rachel Steindel Burdin and Dr. Byron Ahn. Remington is experienced in using Praat software for pitch tracking, speech annotation, and spectrogram analysis. Remington's goals for the future are to obtain a PhD in Linguistics, to continue sociophonetic research, and to learn to apply their skills to high-tech augmentative alternative communication technology.
Aelfwine Voytovych
Aelfwine is a first-year graduate student in the English: Language and Linguistics program. He graduated from Saint Louis University in 2021 with a BA in German Studies and a minor in French. Aelfwine's area of interest is historical linguistics, specifically the historical evolution of grammatical structures such as case and gender in Germanic languages and how these compare to other Indo-European language groups. He is also interested in studying gendered languages in a modern setting and exploring how changes can be made to certain grammatical structures in order to make languages more inclusive. Aelfwine speaks five languages including French, German, Ukrainian, and Polish. Outside of academics, Aelfwine does competitive horseback riding and enjoys hiking, reading, and writing fantasy stories.
Vallery Smith
Vallery is a first-year graduate student in the English: Language and Linguistics program. In 2016 she received her BA in Classical Studies with Emphasis in Latin at Seattle Pacific University in Seattle, WA. She has been teaching Latin and French at the secondary level for the last six years since moving to New England from the Pacific Northwest. Ancient linguistics and Alphabetical origins and transitions are a major area of interest as well as comparing linguistic transitions from ancient to modern eras. By studying English linguistics Vallery hopes to gain a greater grasp on linguistic progressions over the years and how social linguistics helps in these progressions. Aside from these direct applications of Linguistics to her current career, Vallery also wishes to travel and teach abroad having become better equipped in language acquisition.
Austin Bolton
Originally from Michigan, Austin earned a degree in English from the University of Colorado before moving to New Hampshire to pursue his MFA. He loves reading, writing, poetry, philosophy, and the Oxford comma. Austin has no idea where his life will take him, but wherever that is he's sure to have a copy of the complete works of Henry David Thoreau by his side.
Laura Chisholm
Laura is a part-time student in the MFA program and works full time in advancement at UNH. She studied English and Italian at Wellesley College and earned an M.A. in English Literature at UVA. Laura spent much of her life living abroad before moving to New Hampshire. After 22 years of campus life at Phillips Exeter Academy, where her husband teaches, Laura and family recently moved to an old farmhouse in Lee, where projects and critters abound.
Eve Glasergreen
Eve graduated from Cornell University with a BA in English and French, and an honors thesis on water imagery in Montaigne's Essais. She was a varsity distance runner for Cornell, and will compete for UNH track and field. She gets her best ideas on muddy trail runs. A few of her favorite creatives include Helen Oyeyemi, Federico García Lorca, and Frida Khalo.
Samantha bradbury koster
Samantha Bradbury Koster is a 2020 MFA fiction candidate at the University of New Hampshire. She is a freelance writer, artist, and farm hand. She currently serves as Advisor to UNH's undergraduate fiction journal Scriptor, which she founded during her undergrad at UNH; and Managing Editor of UNH's literary journal Barnstorm. She’s the author of short story "The Heart of the Machine”, published in Decameron Days and the 2021 recipient of the Dick Shea Memorial Award for her short story "Seeking Advice." Samantha lives in Rollinsford with her partner Ben and their rescue dog Banjo.
Howard Zachary Lewis
Howard Zachary Lewis is a poet, journalist, playwright, and author. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of New Hampshire with a BA in English. Lewis recently published his serialized novella, The Adventures of Tracy and James, in The New Hampshire. Lewis also volunteers at creative writing workshops for the Telling Room. Currently, he is writing this biography. Lewis lives in New Hampshire with his wife and two cats.
J. Dominic Patacsil
Dom Patacsil is an MFA student in fiction. A Hoosier by birth, Dom graduated summa cum laude from Wabash College with a B.A. in English and Spanish. Between coursework and writing, Dom can be found running dirt roads in the rolling countryside or enjoying a coffee from his beloved Chemex.
Heidi Turner
Heidi is an MFA Fiction candidate originally from Maui, Hawaii. She graduated with her BA and MA in English from Azusa Pacific University in 2016 and 2017 respectively. Her 2015 study abroad experience in Oxford, England solidified her desire to write full-time, and after college, she completed her debut full-length work, The Sacred Art of Trespassing Barefoot, which was published by Heritage Future in 2019. When she's not writing, Heidi is an avid guitar and ukulele player, reader, and caffeine enthusiast.
Colton Huelle
Colton Huelle graduated from UNH with a BA in English Literature and is thrilled to be returning to his alma mater to begin his MFA. Prior to entering the program, he taught high school English at Great Bay Charter School in Exeter, NH. Among his favorite writers are George Saunders, Jesmyn Ward, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. When not reading or writing, Colton enjoys playing basketball, bird-watching, and leaning against brick walls.
Vicktor Bueno
Vicktor M. Bueno is a writer of many faces. Their current mask speaks of Speculative Fiction - it might be their favorite.
Born and raised in NYC, New Hampshire felt like the perfect place to disappear off to. They wonder if they’re missed.
Rich Mayne
Born and raised in Worcester, Massachusetts, Rich holds a BA in English from Worcester State University where he graduated summa cum laude, and also holds an AA from Quinsigamond Community College in Liberal Arts with a concentration in Sociology. He was Editor-in-Chief of The New Worcester Spy’s Creative Writing section for two years, was co-Editor of The New Worcester Spy for a year, while periodically serving as the director of INK, WSU’s on-campus creative writers club. His work tends to focus on the antihero, setting as its own character, various sorts of enclaves, colloquialism, and issues surrounding class and affluence. Rich is currently a first-year MFA student at the University of New Hampshire, where he concentrates in Writing Fiction. Outside of telling stories, Rich has also been known to explain what the heck the progymnasmata is to anyone willing to listen, fish (quite terribly), theoretically adapt Joe Abercrombie’s First Law Trilogy for television, and complain about the respective states of his favorite sports teams.
Alexandria Carolan
Alexandria Carolan is a first year fiction student. She graduated from the University of Maryland ('18) with degrees in English and journalism. Alex also graduated from UMD's Jiménez-Porter Writers' House, a selective undergraduate creative writing program. Since then, she has dabbled in science journalism, oncology communications, and the cat rescue social media world. She likes to write about pathetic animals, uncomfortable situations, and life in coastal New Jersey.
AManda nevada Demel
Amanda Nevada DeMel is a born-and-raised New Yorker, though she is currently out of state for her MFA program. Aside from being a lifelong reader and visual artist, she has been relentlessly writing since she was thirteen years old. Her favorite genre is horror, thanks to careful cultivation from her father. She especially appreciates media that can simultaneously scare her and make her cry. Amanda also loves reptiles, musicals, and breakfast foods.
Ervin Brown
Ervin Brown is a 20-year-old writer born and raised by the Coney Island boardwalk. He is a first-year graduate student in the Writing MFA program. His works can be found in Art Block Zine, Willows Wept Review, twice in The Dillydoun Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Aurtistic Zine, Grime Prophet Mag, and Drunk Monkeys, among other places. He also solved a Rubik’s cube in nine seconds! Visit his website at ervinbrown.ink and Instagram @ervin.writes
Beverly D'Angelo
Beverly is a 70-year-old mother and grandmother. She retired after forty years working as a clinical social worker, providing mental health counseling to people of various ages and backgrounds. Her favorite job was working with the US Armed Forces, which was a big surprise to her. It was probably the most validating position she ever held. Beverly and her husband, Jim, lived in Tyngsboro, MA, for 38 years while raising their family. Beverly is very excited about embarking on a new chapter in her life. Pun intended. She has many examples of various symptoms from her long career in mental health service delivery, and she wants to write about how mental illness affects not only the patient, but their family and friends as well. She is hopeful that some of her stories may be effective in softening the stigma against mental illness and perhaps help some people feel less shame about issues in their own lives.
Benjamin Scott Savard
Benjamin is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction with an eye toward disability justice, queerness, and . Prior to UNH, he studied film and media culture at Middlebury College and the University of Edinburgh, but to this day doesn’t know what “media culture” means. Since receiving his BA he has worked as a producer and video editor, primarily in Minneapolis. The writers he most admires are Eli Clare, Elena Ferrante, Maggie Nelson, and Ottessa Moshfegh.
Rebecca Sperry
Rebecca graduated from UNH in 2006 with a Bachelors in History and a minor in English. She went on to obtain her Masters in Education and has worked as a Special Educator for the last nine years in various public schools in New Hampshire. She is a resident of New Hampshire and spends her free time hiking and writing. Rebecca is a freelance writer in the outdoors industry, with works published in over a half dozen online publications. Additionally, she works at the Connor's Writing Center at UNH, and as a substitute teacher.
Elise Wallace
Elise is most interested in the written word when it is spoken. Before pursuing her MFA in creative nonfiction she helped a nonprofit, Authoring Action, teach a creative writing process based on memorized spoken word performances. Her writing is inspired by coffee-shop anecdotes provided by years working as a barista, her Appalachian Trail thru-hike, life experiences rooted in emotional memory, and the tenuous division of truth and fiction. Her thesis focuses on eco-anxiety generated by the current anthropogenic climate crisis. Elise is a humanities faculty member at The White Mountain School in Bethlehem, New Hampshire. She and her dog Sadie will always call Winston-Salem, NC home.
Lily Pudlo
Lily is a second-year Nonfiction MFA Candidate with a special interest in gender and sexuality studies. She aims to tell stories that make people feel seen. As someone who often turns to the page when looking for answers to life's hardships, Lily hopes to be honest and vulnerable in her writing in an attempt to guide others as they navigate confusing and complicated experiences surrounding gender and sexual identity. Aside from writing, Lily enjoys playing rugby, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and taking woodland walks with their partner.
Mason Cashman
Mason is a multimedia storyteller primarily operating in essay and memoir, focusing on personal identity relating to community, sexuality, religion, and subculture. Mason returned to his fifth-generation hometown of Somersworth, NH, after studying international journalism and photography at Emmanuel College in Boston and Bauhaus Universität-Weimar in Germany. His works have been published in journals and exhibited in galleries internationally, and his editing has supported efforts ranging from higher education curriculum development to art gallery book production. When not holding a pen or camera, Mason is a metalwork jewelry artist, works in the nightlife industry, and is often found in coffee shops.
Lena Gemmer
Lena Neris Gemmer is originally from the quiet foggy town of Montara CA where she began her love of writing on her grandfather's Remington Rand typewriter. Before deciding to pursue her MFA in Creative Nonfiction at UNH, she received her BA in English and History at Allegheny College in Meadville PA. As a nonfiction writer she believes in connecting to her readers on a visceral human level by experimenting with structure, form and voice.
Bianca Bourgault
Bianca was born and raised in Maine, and from the time she could hold a pencil, her grandmother insisted she become a writer.
Bianca received her BA in English from the University of Maine at Farmington, and currently works as an Educational Technician and Behavioral Health Professional. During the summer of 2020, she underwent a botched surgery that inadvertently led to her achieving sobriety after over a decade-long battle with alcoholism. She now aspires to complete her memoir in order to help others who struggle within the addicted community.
She thinks her grandmother would be extremely proud.
Isabelle Curtis
Isabelle graduated from the University of New Hampshire last year with a BA in Journalism and a minor in history. Now, they return to their alma mater's Nonfiction MFA program with an aim to share the stories of the people at the forefront of today's greatest conflicts. Isabelle also has a special interest in gender, sexuality, and interpersonal relationships, so things might get a little introspective along the way too. They currently work as a freelance journalist and intern at the Music Hall in Portsmouth.
Emily Gore
Emily hails from Prattville, Alabama and received a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in English from Lipscomb University in Nashville, Tennessee. She's a first year poetry student and a graduate teaching assistant with an interest in writing poems that make people feel the way Sylvia Plath made her feel in 2012. She expects her southern upbringing will leave her entirely unprepared for winter in New England and hopes to adopt a cat as soon as possible to join her first snowy hibernation. She finds joy watching stand-up comedy, scrolling through weird twitter, seeing New England bartenders' faces wrinkle in confusion at the sight of her AL drivers license, and in FaceTime sessions with her now long-distance best friends and little sister.
Johnathan Riley
Johnathan Riley comes from a properly salted family of artists on the glacial shores of Maine, was raised in a house made of blueberries, and rode a moose to school where Stephen King was rumored to be a janitor. After losing a bad bet the night of his high school graduation Riley spent a brief stint in Costa Rica hitch hiking and living in the jungle. He eventually emerged from the thickets of Central America to attend Florida State University where he found spoken word poetry and consequently his writing career blossomed. Riley left FSU with publications in the Kudzu Review and Vellichor Magazine and in 2018 was the recipient of FSU’s Poetry Literati award. He spent the next year in Southeast Asia learning to navigate traffic on a motorbike and teaching English in Ho Chi Minh City. He currently resides in Portland, Maine with his roommate Ryan and his dog Jake. Together they are working on a mixtape set to drop in 2021.
Samuel Rucks
Samuel is a poet from Tulsa, OK, and received a B.A. in English with a concentration in creative writing from Oklahoma State University, where he served as a T.A. in the philosophy department. He's interested in urban and rural imagery and their influence on memory. He enjoys meditation and cooking and hopes to perfect his sourdough while living in New Hampshire.
Jason Adam Sheets
Jason Adam Sheets holds a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard. Books include A Madness of Blue Obsidian, The Hour Wasp, and Theopoetica: An Anthology. His work has been featured by Oxford University’s Research Centre in the Humanities. He has taught for the Poetry in America program, in affiliation with the eponymous PBS television series, and has worked as a mentor in AWP’s Writer to Writer mentorship program, Season 10. His work has been supported by Harvard University, PEN America, and Poets & Writers Magazine.
Matthew Dinaro
Matthew Dinaro (they/he) was raised in Massachusetts but spent the most of the past decade in Portland, Oregon, where they played in three rock bands, blogged on local indie music, wrote and self-published four poetry chapbooks, co-founded the literary journal Pom Pom, and wrote a short book, “Strange Boy”, on the autobiographical music of Daniel Johnston. They graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in English in 2008 and completed in the Poetry Certificate Program at Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center in 2019. Their intellectual interests include theology, philosophy, critical theory, psychoanalysis, and gender studies. In addition to poetry, they’ve made comics, fiction, music criticism, songwriting, and vlogs. Since 2018, they’ve been in charge of the weekly Things to Do page for Boston Magazine’s website, and prior to this wrote a similar page for the now-defunct Boston Metro newspaper. In 2022, after years of claiming they were going to leave Portland and then staying, they were coxed back to New England to pursue an MFA in poetry at UNH, which is why you are reading this now. (Photo credit: Marjorie Williams)
Ann DeCiccio
Ann DeCiccio is in her fourth year of the PhD program in Composition Studies. Her interests include language acquisition and loss, rhetorical grammar, and First-Year writers’ perceptions of meaningful writing. Ann taught Composition at Nashua Community College. She also taught English Language Arts and Creative Writing at high schools in Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. Earlier, Ann wrote for several New England technology companies. As a freelance writer, Ann’s clients included the University of Massachusetts in Lowell and a shelter for survivors of domestic violence. Ann earned an M.A. in Writing and Literature from Rivier University in Nashua, NH, and a B.A. in English from Wheaton College in Norton, MA. She studied poetry with Robert Pinsky and, as a licensed reading specialist, assisted students with dyslexia using the Orton-Gillingham method of instruction.
Rachel Roy
Rachel is a fourth-year PhD student in Composition and Rhetoric. Her research interests include disability studies and writing center studies and she is interested in making writing spaces accessible for all. She graduated with her BA in English and MS in Publishing from Pace University.
Jennifer Daly
Jennifer Daly is a PhD student in English Composition Studies. Her conference presentations include: “Let It Be Known: Margaret Fuller’s Voice in Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Work on Women’s Rights” and “The Father of Transcendentalism and the Mother of American Feminism: The Influencing Friendship between Margaret Fuller and Ralph Waldo Emerson.” She also attended the 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Session "Transcendentalism and Reform in the Age of Emerson, Thoreau, and Fuller." Her research will focus on the transcendentalists, original ideas, plagiarism, and teaching writing. She has been teaching First Year Writing for the past four years at Montclair State University and Sussex County Community College, both in New Jersey.
Nicole cunningham-frisbey
Nicole Cunningham-Frisbey is in her 5th year in the Phd program in Composition Studies. She is currently serving as the Associate Director of University Writing Program. Her research interests include Mestiza Rhetorics, Community Writing Engagement, CE-WAC Scholarship, and Online Literacy Pedagogy. Nicole earned her BA in Professional Writing from University of Texas in San Antonio and her M.A. in English Language and Literature from Texas A&M San Antonio. Nicole is also a 2020 recipient of the CCCC Scholar's for the Dream Grant for her archive project on ChicanX Radio.
Mali Barker
Mali Barker is in her first year of the PhD program in Composition Studies. She has her M.A. in English from Boston College, and while there, she studied composition theory, pedagogy, and rhetoric, and she taught First Year Writing. She is now interested in studying the intersection between composition pedagogy, sociolinguistics, and cognitive poetics.
Elizabeth Drummey
Elizabeth is a PhD student studying 19th-century British literature with a particular focus on overlooked Victorian women novelists. Her other interests include the Gothic, the incorporation of fairy tales and folklore into the novel, and the marriage plot. She received her MA in English Literary Studies: Romantic and Victorian Literature from Lancaster University in 2016 and wrote her dissertation on the use of oral folklore in the Victorian Gothic novel.
JESS FLARITY
Jess is a 4th-year PhD student focusing on masculinity in literature across the 20th century. His dissertation is currently titled "The Splintered Man" and it theorizes that a new kind of "fractured" male character emerged simultaneously during Modernism as well as in early popular fiction, and this identity continues to influence cultural ideas surrounding maleness/manliness today. He has recently taught a Gender and Science Fiction course for the Women's Studies program at UNH and he received his Feminist Studies certificate in 2022. He presented at last year's NeMLA, and at the Fifth International Edgar Allan Poe Conference, on topics related to William Hope Hodgson, New Wave science fiction authors, Masculinity Theory, fascism, feminism, and gender. Also, he was thrilled to visit the Ursula K. Le Guin archives over the summer and hold copies of her original manuscripts, as well as read her increasingly bizarre letters from Philip K. Dick. Jess lives in South Berwick, Maine, but hails from the small logging town of Buckley, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. He graduated with an MFA from Stonecoast in 2016.
Daniel Lauby
Daniel Lauby (they/them) is a fifth year Ph.D. candidate and dissertation year fellow. Their dissertation examines how early nineteenth-century American domestic novelists adapted Shakespeare to expand womanhood in relation to national space. Their forthcoming article “Recovering Transgender Shakespearean Performance in Sally Potter’s Orlando (1992)” is forthcoming in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation. Other articles include “Fascism, Resistance, Failure: Woolf’s Adaptations of Masques in Between the Acts,” appearing in Woolf Studies Annual (2021), and “Queer Fidelity: Marlowe’s Ovid and the Staging of Desire in Dido, Queen of Carthage,” appearing in the essay collection Ovid and Adaptation in the Early Modern English Theater (2020), edited by Lisa S. Starks. Before coming to UNH, Daniel taught as an adjunct professor at the University of South Florida and as a high school English teacher in Ft. Lauderdale and Clearwater, Florida. Daniel currently lives in Portland, Maine with their wife and two orange cats.
Leanna Lostoski-ho
Leanna Lostoski-Ho is a Literature Ph.D. candidate in UNH's Department of English. Her primary research areas are modernist literature and ecocriticism (including new materialism and object-oriented ontology), and her work focuses on representations of the environment, temporality, and humanity's relationship with the nonhuman world in early 20th century texts. She earned a Graduate Certificate in Feminist Studies from UNH in the fall of 2020. She would say her favorite author is Virginia Woolf, and she has published an article on Woolf titled “‘Imaginations of the Strangest Kind’: The Vital Materialism of Virginia Woolf” (2016) in the Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Society. Her most recent publication appears in Woolf Studies Annual (2022) and is titled “‘Against time and sea’: The Deep Temporality of the Interludes in The Waves.” She is currently working on her dissertation, which will focus on representations of the environment in modernist literature. Her dissertation research was recently awarded a 2021 UNH Sustainability Award at the Bronze Level. When not working on her scholarship or teaching, Leanna likes to hike or ski depending on the season as well as tour New England's finest breweries.
Cameron Netland
Cameron Netland grew up in Boxford Massachusetts and graduated from Connecticut College in 2018 with a bachelors in English and Economics. He then received his masters in Secondary Education from ASU in 2020 through Teach for America while teaching in Phoenix.
His interests include guitar, running, and chess. His literary interests range from antiquity to postmodernism. He aims to study classical works or American literature.
Jonathan Levitt
Jonathan Levitt is a first-year PhD student in English Literature and holds a master’s degree in English from Boston College. He is interested in conducting critical analyses of children’s literature with an eye to identifying the structural and thematic complexity that can easily be overlooked in those works. Jonathan recently earned a master’s degree in teaching at Boston University and hopes to combine his love of literature with education. He would like to explore how cultural ideals such as the “hero” are represented in secondary school literary curricula, as well as other media such as video games, TV, comics, and film, in a way that shapes children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of themselves and their role in the world. His favorite authors include J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.
Abigail Davenport
Abby is a PhD student in the English Literature program. From North Carolina originally, she received her BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her areas of focus include transatlantic modernism, the Harlem Renaissance, and the intersection of class and trauma theories.
Her favorite writers include: Virginia Woolf, Toni Morrison, Ocean Vuong, Oscar Wilde, Ada Limon, Seamus Heaney, and J. R. R. Tolkien. More broadly, she enjoys postmodern philosophy, jazz, the collected works of Natalie Wyn, anime, going outside, and Hozier's discography.
Chelsea Warren
Chelsea has a BA in English from Ithaca College and an MA in Literature from SUNY Brockport. Their primary focus is in late Gothic/early Victorian transatlantic literature with a focus on gender politics.
Derek Castle
Derek completed his undergraduate degree in English at Tufts University and his MFA in Creative Writing at the Stonecoast MFA program. Before starting his academic life, Derek was a world traveler, visiting Europe, Central, and South America. His travels sparked his current research interests which include mixed race studies, translation theory, and cultural identity in American literature. When not buried in books, Derek explores other forms of storytelling, such as movies and video games. He has a soft spot for mythology, folklore, and fairy tales.
nicholas jaroma
Nicholas Jaroma is a first year Ph.D. student. He is experienced in teaching and tutoring college students, a huge fan of New England Sports teams, and is greatly invested in American politics. He received his M.A. in English at Rhode Island College in 2019, after successfully defending his master’s thesis on the works of William Shakespeare’s influence in American politics. His area of focus is early modern English literature, with particular interests in Shakespeare, Milton, as well as the Bible as literature.
Julia McCoy
Julia is a first year literature PhD student in English Literature. She holds a BA in English Literature and Political Science from Providence College. Her primary interests are contemporary British Literature and Women's Writing — with particular interests in the works of Margaret Drabble and Zadie Smith. She is also interested in journalism, baseball (and the writing and films that come along with it), and exploring New England.
Michaela George
Michaela George is a 3rd year PhD student studying 19th Century British women writers. Her primary interests is in the role illness plays in women’s writing, especially across the color line. She also enjoys reading 18th Century women’s rights and education activists of Ireland and England, like Maria Edgeworth and Mary Wollstonecraft. She received her MA from Northern Arizona University in 2018. Her essay “The Symbolism of Trees in Tess of the d’Urbervilles” is published in The Explicator.
Christopher Westrate
Christopher Westrate is a first-year doctoral candidate at UNH. He holds an MA from the University of Massachusetts, Boston where he studied Vladimir Nabokov’s philosophy of art. Chris taught literature and writing for many years at the high school level and enjoyed serving as executive director of his program for over a decade. Interested in cultural flux, Chris thinks a lot about how novels, plays, and poems express dramatic change. He hopes to study how writers spearhead societal shift during iconoclastic periods as well as how they repurpose outgoing semiotic systems to explore new vistas. Literary interests: mythology and symbols, evolution of the novel, modernism, and Nabokov. Other interests: rambles via paths and pavement, public coffee drinking, nonprofit leadership, teaching, and amateur snowboarding.