Our Alumni - Their Accomplishments     

Chelsea Rathburn, B.A. 1997 - Her first collection of poetry, The Shifting Line, received the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award and was recently published by the University of Evansville Press. She received an MFA from the University of Arkansas in 2001. Rathburn is also author of a limited edition fine letterpress chapbook, Unused Lines, published by Aralia Press in 2002. She works as a freelance copywriter and video producer in Atlanta.

Michael McClelland, Ph.D., Creative Writing - Already hailed by Publishers Weekly as an “up-and-coming mystery writer” following the success of his first novel, Oyster Blues, Michael McClelland, Wittenberg University assistant professor of English, has again captured the attention of critics with his latest release, Tattoo Blues, a witty crime novel set in Cedar Key, Fla.

Brigitte Byrd, Ph.D. 2003 - She is the author of three collections of poems: Song of a Living Room, (Ahsahta, 2009), The Dazzling Land (Black Zinnias, 2008) and Fence Above the Sea (Ahsahta, 2005). She is currenly an Assistant Professor of English at Clayton State University, where she teaches creative writing.

David Bottoms, Ph.D. 1982 - Robert Penn Warren selected David Bottoms's first collection, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, for the 1979 Walt Whitman Award. His recent work includes Armored Hearts: Selected and New Poems and the novel Easter Weekend. He is a Professor of English at Georgia State University and the State Poet Laureate for Georgia.

Heather Sellers, Ph.D. 1992 - Heather is the author of three books of poetry, Your Whole Life, Drinking Girls and Their Dresses, and His Boys in My House, a collection of stories, Georgia Underwater, which won a Barnes and Noble New Discovery Award, and Two books for writers, Page After Page and Chapter After Chapter. Her textbook for the multi-genre creative writing clasroom, The Practice Writing is forthcoming from Bedford/St Martins. Sellers has been a member of the Hope College faculty since 1995, and is a full professor of English. She is at work on a memior, Face First.

Pamela Ball, MA 1988 - Pam Ball is haole, born and raised on Oahu of American parents. Both of her novels, i>Lava and The Floating City, are set in Hawaii. She is the winner of numerous writing awards, including the Hemingway Short Fiction Award.

Jesse Lee Kercheval, BA 1983 - Poet, essayist, short story writer, and novelist, Jesse Lee Kercheval is the author of seven books, including Dog Angel, The Museum of Happiness, Space: A Memoir, and Building Fiction: How to Develop Plot and Structure. She teaches at the University of Wisconsin where she directs the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing.

Tom Hunley, Ph.D. 2003 - Tom is an assistant professor of English at Western Kentucky University and the director of Steel Toe Books (www.steeltoebooks.com). Since leaving FSU, he has had three poetry books published: The Tongue (Wind Publications 2004), Still, There's a Glimmer (WordTech Editions 2004), and My Life as a Minor Character (Pecan Grove Press 2005). His book of essays, Teaching Poetry Writing: A Five Canon Approach, forthcoming from Multilingual Matters LTD. 2007, has been excerpted in The Writer's Chronicle.

Rita Mae Reese, M.A. 2003 - Rita has won two AWP Intro Journals Project awards and a Discovery/The Nation award. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Verse Daily, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction. She is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in fiction and is working on a novel.

Russ Franklin, Ph.D. 2000 - Russ is a Wallace Stegner and a Truman Capote fellow in fiction at Stanford University. His short stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Epoch, and Greensboro Review. He is a winner of the Quarterly West, novella competition. His short story "Night Flying" is anthologized in Air Fare: Stories, Poems and Essays on Flight.