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.
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!
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.
Irene Doukas Behrman
Originally from the Boston area, Irene Doukas Behrman lived in Portland, Oregon for 8+ years and holds a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from Portland State University. She's interested in delusion, in the stories we tell ourselves and failed attempts at communication, as well as the (very real) relationships between power and privilege. Irene is thrilled to be returning to her preferred coast to start school at UNH, on the same campus where she once visited her older brother at band camp. He was fifteen that summer and came home with a beautiful gothic girlfriend and black painted nails.
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.
William Price
Born in San Diego, California, Bill has lived there, in Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma, Massachusetts, and now New Hampshire. He is a veteran of the US Army, being another in a long familial line of veterans dating back before the 20th century. Bill has traveled extensively, having visited (among other places) Canada, England, Germany, Italy, Poland, Greece, the Aegean, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and a number of places in the Middle East. He has a Bachelor of Arts in English and History, as well as two Master of Arts, one in English and the other Classical Studies. Although interested most in writing creative fiction and some poetry, Bill is especially interested in narrative theory, the study of how we tell stories.
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 writes Sci-Fi / Fantasy Femenist Queer Fiction. Born in NYC, they're new to New Hampshire and are super excited to start at UNH!
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.
Liz Joseph
Liz has returned to UNH after receiving her undergraduate degree in English in 2008. The decade in between, she worked as an organic farmer and educator in central Massachusetts. Before that, she played under the streetlights with her five siblings in North Providence, RI. Her writings are outgrowths of these experiences, exploring themes of growth and connectedness in both our internal and physical landscapes. In addition to writing, farming, and playing outside, Liz loves animals, food, photography, crafting, and getting organized.
Benjamin Savard
Benjamin is pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction with an eye toward chronic illness, queerness, and memoir. 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 Porochista Khakpour, Doris Kearns Goodwin, 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. She explores overheard phrases through her project Found Aloud (foundaloud.com). In her hiking blog (theoneswhowalk.com) she records conversations with hikers and incorporates their recorded stories into her writing. She also writes about backpacking for The Trek. 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. She graduated from Wake Forest University with a B.A in English (2008). She and her dog Sadie will always call Winston-Salem, NC home.
Lindsey Wente
Lindsey was born and raised in Minnesota, but her heart belongs to Phuket, Thailand and London, United Kingdom where she lived temporarily. She received her degree in English and theatre arts from The University of Minnesota. Lindsey has an affinity for odd jobs. She loves writing about her experiences as a teacher in Thailand, a Pizza Hut delivery driver, a door-to-door canvasser for PBS, and as a Segway tour guide. She considers herself a humor essayist and takes inspiration from David Sedaris, Chloe Caldwell, and Phoebe Robinson. Lindsey is in a long-term relationship with greasy fast-food. She tries to be the best yogi she can be, has a strong passion for astrology (a typical Aries), and will read your Tarot spread if you ask.
Lily Pudlo
Lily has been a Wildcat since 2017 when she arrived at UNH as a freshman to pursue a degree in Sociology. Four years of self-discovery and memorable adventures later, she graduated UNH with a degree in English Text, Business Writing & Digital Studies with a minor in Classics. Lily hopes that a Nonfiction Master's degree will allow her to continue and improve upon two things she loves: writing and storytelling. As a member of the LGBTQ+ community, she hopes to give a voice to queer identities and create a safe space for LGBTQ+ youth in her work. When she's not writing, you can find Lily on the rugby pitch at UNH, traveling home to Western Massachusetts to see family, or nerding out at a D&D session with friends.
Mason Cashman
Mason considers himself to be a multimedia storyteller, employing the written word, documentary photography, and audio recording to present lived experiences and their unique emotions. A New Hampshire native, Mason returned to his fifth-generation hometown of Somersworth after completing his BA in International Journalism in Text & Image from Emmanuel College of Boston, and studying in the faculty of Art in Social Practice at Bauhaus University in Weimar, TH, Germany. His works have been published in journals and exhibited in galleries internationally, and he is the recipient of Emmanuel College's 2021 Procaccini Award for Thesis Excellence. When not holding a pen or camera, Mason is a metalwork jewelry artist, a lover of coffee and the shops where it is served, and an avid home cook.
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.
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 BFA in Creative Writing from Goddard College and a Master of Theological Studies degree (MTS) from Harvard University, where he studied animistic elements of occultist belief in modernist poetry alongside French and German translation. He is the author of A Madness of Blue Obsidian (forthcoming 2022) and The Hour Wasp (April Gloaming, 2017), and co-author of Theopoetica: A Micro-Anthology (forthcoming 2021). He is the recipient of the 2016 Poetry Society of New Hampshire Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and magazines and have most recently been featured by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities and The Graduate Journal of Harvard Divinity School. He has taught in Harvard’s Poetry in America for High Schools Program and has worked as a mentor for AWP’s Writer to Writer mentorship program. His work has been supported by Harvard University, PEN America, and Poets & Writers. When he's not working, he can often be found in his hometown of Plymouth, Massachusetts, where he enjoys wandering the beach and spending time with friends and family.
Indigo Hallett
Indigo is a first year MFA poetry student at the University of New Hampshire. Despite starting college as a Genetic Engineering major, getting a BA in English made them happier than struggling through an organic chemistry class. While still enthusiastic about genetics, they recently fell in love with magical realism, astrophysics, microbiology, and abstract painting.
Ann DeCiccio
Ann DeCiccio is in her third year of the PhD program in Composition Studies. Her interests include the process students learn to write professionally in the workplace as well as the language of politics and invisibility. Ann taught Composition at Nashua Community College for five years. She has 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 in her second year of the Composition and Rhetoric Program. Her research interests include writing center studies, disability studies, and the teaching of writing to non-native English speakers. She has 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.
Elizabeth Davis
Elizabeth is a PhD student studying 19th-century British literature. Her main interests are women’s literature, the marriage plot, and the incorporation of fairy tales and folklore into the novel. Her favorite authors include the Brontë sisters, Jane Austen, and Elizabeth Gaskell. 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 Flarity is a science fiction scholar and writer. A graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, he has presented his research at the annual conference for the Science Fiction Research Association, the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts, Worldcon, and the international Philip K. Dick festival. He recently published a short story in the time travel issue of The London Reader and his debut novel is forthcoming from a publisher in New York. His current research interests include: interactive fiction, postcolonialism, the Anthropocene, bizarro literature, Stanislaw Lem, and the philosophy of Luce Irigaray. A former middle school teacher and writing specialist, Jess is excited for the opportunity to teach at UNH through a TAship.
MElissa Kleinschmidt
Melissa Kleinschmidt is a doctoral candidate at the University of New Hampshire. In her doctoral studies, she is particularly interested in early modern women’s epistemologies, early modern women’s practice of medicine, the spaces where these epistemologies and medicine interact, as well as how their practice of medicine interacts with other intellectual shifts, especially religion, science, and race. She recently presented at the 2019 Conference on John Milton on Eve’s medical knowledge in Paradise Lost, as well as the 2019 CLA Conference on medicine and intertextuality between August Wilson and Shakespeare. She also served as a co-workshop organizer at the 2018 Attending to Women Annual Conference. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Manual Culture, Women’s Medical Practice, and English Health in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Wroth,” argues that early modern women’s medical practice was not only grounded in the tenets of expectations prescribed in early modern domestic and conduct manuals, but also participated in broader nation-building enterprises—as is seen in depictions of women’s actions in the works of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Lady Mary Wroth.
Daniel Lauby
Daniel Lauby (they/he) is a fourth year English Ph.D. in literature candidate. Their dissertation examines how early nineteenth-century domestic novelists use Shakespeare to redefine American womanhood. Daniel received his feminist studies certificate from UNH in 2020 and currently teaches Introduction to Women’s Studies (WS401). Their most recent publications 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). Their current project explores onscreen transgender Shakespearean performance in Orlando (1992), adapted and directed by Sally Potter. Before coming to UNH, Daniel taught high school English literature and composition at college preparatory schools in Ft. Lauderdale and Clearwater, Florida. During that time, they also taught courses on Gothic literature as an adjunct instructor at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg. Daniel currently lives in Maine with his wife and two cats where he enjoys hiking, camping, snowboarding, and playing classical guitar.
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, 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. 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
Abigail is a first year Literature PhD student whose primary areas of interest are British Modernism (specifically the work of Virginia Woolf, Edith Wharton, and Jean Rhys) and trauma studies. They received their BA in English from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
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.