CRW Graduate Student Profiles

Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé is from Tede, Nigeria. He is the author of My Father Paints His Dreams on My Body (Moon City Press, 2026), the winner of the 2024 Moon City Poetry Award from Missouri State University. He was awarded the 2026 Pink Poetry Prize from the Great River Review at the University of Minnesota. His poem was the runner-up for the 2026 Auburn Witness Poetry Prize Honoring Jake Adam York, selected by A. Van Jordan. His recent work has been published or is forthcoming in African American Review, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry London, Callaloo, Magma, Transition Magazine, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Michigan Quarterly Review. He is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing. He has received a fellowship from the Obsidian Foundation (UK) and is the Assistant Interviews Editor at Southeast Review. You can reach him on Instagram @IfeoluwaAyandele.

Monir Gholamzadeh Bazarbash is from Urmia, Iran. Her work has appeared in Orion, Nowruz, The Brooklyn Review, The Georgia Review, and more. After moving to the United States, she received her M.F.A. at Purdue University and is currently a Ph.D. candidate. She lives in Tallahassee with her son.

Lachlan Bowden is a writer from Adelaide, South Australia. His work has appeared in The Masters Review, The West Trade Review, Going Down Swinging, and Swine. He was awarded the William A. Holodnak Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for The Masters Review Winter Short Story Award, The Best Australian Yarn, and the Phyllis Grant Zellmer Prize for Fiction. He holds an M.F.A. in creative writing from Boston University, and is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in fiction.

Helen Brower is pursuing her Ph.D. in Fiction. She graduated with a Distinction for her M.A. in Creative Writing from Queen’s University of Belfast. She has been published in the Seamus Heaney Centre’s Blackbird Literary Anthology. Her pilot script was shortlisted for BBC's 2024 Writer's Open Call, the Barnstorm Fest 2023 and a semi-finalist in TSL Free Screenplay Contest in 2023, as well as a finalist for 2025 BBC Belfast Voices. She grew up in Central California on a dairy farm. She wants to create films in genres where there isn’t a lot of female representation at the writing stage. Her stories aim to twist stereotypes of who gets to be the hero. She tries to emulate this in all her writing.

Brendan Byrne is an M.F.A. student. His work has previously appeared with Hyacinth Review, Mockingheart Review, Stone Circle Review, and The Shore Poetry, and is forthcoming from the Academy of American Poets. He is the winner of the Ralph and Doris Hansmann Poetry Prize and the George E. Watrous Literary Prize in Poetry. He is a graduate of Hamilton College in Central New York.

Kate DeLay is a poet from Tennessee. A 2025 Pushcart Prize winner, her work can be found or forthcoming in the 2025 Best New Poets anthology, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, swamp pink, Adroit Journal, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review and elsewhere. Kate is the winner of the 2023 William Matthews Poetry Prize, selected by Diane Seuss. A former Editor of Black Warrior Review, Kate is a graduate of University of Alabama’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing and is a Ph.D. student in Poetry. Find her at katedelaypoet.com.

David Emeka is a Nigerian writer, and an M.F.A. graduate of the Washington University in St. Louis. His work has appeared in Adroit Journal, The Republic, Lolwe, amongst others, and supported by Tin House and the Outpost Foundation. He's working on a novel and story collection. 

Adachioma Ezeano is a writer and screenwriter who co-wrote the TV series, Agoodjie, for Canal+ and StudioCanal. She is a 2021 O. Henry Prize recipient and a 2023 Best of the Net winner. Her short story, published in Granta, was Granta's top fiction piece of 2022. Her work has appeared in Best Small Fictions, Best of the Net, The Best Short Stories, The McSweeney's Anthology of Contemporary Literature, and Guernica, amongst others. Currently a reader for the O. Henry Stories, and a Ph.D. candidate, her short stories have been translated into Italian and Bengali.

Noah Farberman is a Ph.D. student in fiction and a Toronto-born writer and comedian. His fiction finds comedy in unexpected places and twists it into something more: surreal obituaries for imagined Canadian heroes, second-person narratives that sneak up on you. His recent novella is The Death of Greaseboy (Archive of the Odd, 2026). He is represented by The Rights Factory, and his work has appeared in West Branch, Storm Cellar, Long Con, Pioneertown, and elsewhere.

Braulio Fonseca is an Army veteran and Ph.D. student in creative writing. He studies non-fiction and literature of trauma and serves as managing editor of The Southeast Review. His work has appeared in The Laurel Review, Slab Magazine, Reckon Review, and elsewhere, and he recently published a hybrid poetry/memoir collection, Falling Forward: A Lyrical Memoir, with Redhawk Publications. He is co-founder of Smoky Mountain Storytellers and founder of The Warriors Way Cancer Fund Inc.

Nathaniel R Hankins is an M.F.A. candidate in Creative Writing. His background includes eight years as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technician in the U.S. Army, which influences his writing. Nathaniel is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder. He holds two degrees from the University of Colorado: an A B.A. in Journalism with a focus in Print and Photojournalism; and a Summa B.A. in English with a focus in Creative Writing. Nathaniel explores themes of chaos, grief, horror, the occult, and the Southern Gothic through primary research methods developed in journalism practices. He has been published in Hindsight and with CU Boulder’s News Team.

Maria Hiers (she/her) received her M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Houston, where she was an assistant non-fiction editor and an assistant poetry editor at Gulf Coast. Her recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry and Beloit Poetry Journal. She is a writer and educator who is currently pursuing a Ph.D.

Ryan Hunke is pursuing his Ph.D. in Fiction. His background includes a decade as an Intelligence Officer in the U.S. Army, which influences his science fiction writing as an outlet to contextualize his experiences. Ryan explores themes at the intersection of technology, society, and human experience. He has multiple works published in Analog magazine. An associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA), Ryan is passionate about supporting writing communities.

Olivia Jacobson is a Ph.D. candidate in poetry. She holds her M.F.A in poetry from Syracuse University, where she served as editor-in-chief of Salt Hill Journal. Her chapbook, On Junkyards, won the Etchings Press Book Prize for Poetry (October 2025). Winner of the Charles Simic Poetry Prize, her work appears or is forthcoming in the Florida Review, Hole in the Head, and Moon City Review. Her work has received support from The Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Hudson Valley Writer’s Center. Find her on Instagram @Oliviaaajacobson

Jade Jemison is a Creative Writing (Nonfiction) Ph.D. student and a McKnight Doctoral Fellow. She has also won scholarships through the Key West Literary Seminar, Scribente Maternum, Hippocampus Nonfiction Conference, and more. Jade received her M.F.A. from the University of South Florida. Her work examines the impact of representations of Black literary familial relationships on societal norms, expectations, and child-rearing. Her writing covers themes of motherhood and identity in literature and has appeared in Spoken Black Girl Magazine, Mineral Literary Magazine, and Prenumbra. She is available at jadejemison.com

Caroline Laganas is earning her Ph.D. in Creative Writing with a specialization in poetry and literary food studies. She was an award winner in the Atlanta Review International Poetry Competition, a finalist for the New Ohio Review Prize and Mississippi Review Prize, and a Fulbright Semi-Finalist. Her poems and translations appear in Poetry, Best New Poets, The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, New Orleans Review, Five Points, and many others. In 2026, she received the university-wide Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

Max Lasky is a poet from New Jersey, pursuing a PhD in creative writing. His poems have been published by Frontier Poetry and are forthcoming from Painted Bride Quarterly. He is the co-founder of the literary magazine Leavings (leavingslitmag.com). He earned a B.A. from Ramapo College and an MFA from the University of Maryland.

Hikari Leilani Miya—better known as Soup (she/they)—is using their current human life to be a herpetologist, poet, and Ph.D. Candidate specializing in animal studies, eco-literature, and disability studies. They are the author of Do Not Feed the Animal (2024, Cornerstone Press) and Pokemon Go player, Pokemon TCG vendor, and Pokemon Plushie Collector. 
 

Larissa Martins is a Brazilian-American queer writer based between Rio de Janeiro and Tallahassee. She is pursuing her M.F.A. in Poetry, and she previously earned her B.A. in English at FSU. Her poetry explores themes of cultural heritage, feminism, and religious deconstruction. Her work has been published in Poetry is Currency, Press Pause Press, and elsewhere. 

Qiang Meng is a Ph.D. student from Changchun, China, and writes poetry in English as a second language. His poems have been translated into Mandarin, Portuguese and appeared in Poetry, Salt Hill Journal, Electric Literature, among others.
 

Olga Mexina is an award-winning poet. She was born in what is now St. Petersburg, Russia, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Her book of translations of the Russian poet Boris Ryzhy is forthcoming from Zephyr Press in March 2027. Mexina’s poetry won the Gregory O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition in 2025, was a finalist in Narrative’s Sixteenth Annual Poetry Contest, The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition in 2024, the 2025 Bridport Prize, the 2025 ALTA Travel Fellowship, and was an Editors’ Final Round Pick for the 2024 Plentitudes Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Narrative, Boulevard, Southword, Red Wheelbarrow, and elsewhere, and her translations have appeared in various magazines including Asymptote, Resistance and Opposition Arts Review, and Angime. She is a Ph.D. candidate and Interviews Editor for Southeast Review, and she lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

John Milas is a writer from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois and current Ph.D. student. His debut novel, The Militia House (Henry Holt, 2023), was nominated for a 2023 Shirley Jackson Award, longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and recognized by Indies Introduce, Indie Next, and The Audacious Book Club curated by Roxane Gay. He received a Walter E. Dakin fellowship to attend the Sewanee Writers’ Conference in 2024 and a Legacy Fellowship to attend Florida State University in 2025. Learn more at johnmilas.com.

Irene Muchemi-Ndiritu’s journey as a storyteller began in East Africa, when a short story she wrote in high school won a prestigious national student prize. In 1998, she traveled across the Atlantic to start a new life in the United States as a first-year college student, a transition that would later become a deep well of inspiration for her fiction. Irene’s career as a journalist in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Boston gave her a front-row seat to the American immigrant experience, which she weaves into her prose, offering readers a textured portrait of the evolving African diaspora.

Her debut novel, Lucky Girl (2023, Penguin Random House), was hailed by the New York Times, Kirkus Review, Harper’s Bazaar, several book clubs, and prolific authors as a poignant and powerful coming-of-age story. Her short story, The Blessing of Kali, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Irene holds an M.A. in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Cape Town, where she earned a high distinction. She's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in fiction. You can find her at her website at www.irenemuchemindiritu.com.

Jon Mukand is studying fiction in the M.F.A. program.  He received his M.A. in English literature and poetry from Stanford and his Ph.D. from Brown. His edited works include anthologies of poetry (Articulations) and fiction (Vital Lines) about medicine.  A collection of narratives about people with disabilities is titled The Man with the Bionic Brain.

Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag is the author of The Alphabet of Aliens (prose poems; Mawenzi House, 2025), Hands Like Trees (short fiction; Ronsdale Press, 2023), and three previous collections of poetry, including Uncharted (Mansfield Press, 2021). His work has been published in numerous journals worldwide, including Arc, The Antigonish Review, Canadian Literature, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, Diagram, Grain, Prism International, and The Windsor Review. Currently, he is a doctoral student, and he holds an M.F.A. in fiction from the University of British Columbia and is an alumnus of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is also the managing editor at Artisanal Writer, an online journal that explores books, lit craft, and theory.

T. Garrison O'Donnell is an M.F.A. student in poetry and recipient of the David Kirby Fellowship. His poems have been published in Red Ogre Review and are forthcoming in Allium. He's from Northern Virginia and received his B.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2025.

Audrey Obuobisa-Darko is a Ph.D. student in Fiction and a recipient of the Dean's Doctoral Scholar Award at Florida State University.

Natalie Eleanor Patterson is a poet and editor from Atlanta, Georgia, with an M.F.A. in poetry from Oregon State University. She is the author of the chapbook Plainhollow (dancing girl press, 2022) and the editor of Dream of the River (Jacar Press, 2021), and has work featured in Sinister Wisdom, South Florida Poetry Journal, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. Natalie is the Managing Editor of Jacar Press, Assistant Poetry Editor of the Southeast Review, and a Ph.D. candidate in poetry. Her debut full-length collection, The Red Year, is forthcoming from Iron Oak Editions in late 2027.

Forrest Rapier is a Ph.D. student in poetry. He has published poems in dozens of literary journals across the country, including Asheville Poetry Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, and Greensboro Review. He has received scholarships and writing residences from Brevard College, Key West Literary Seminar, Sewanee Writers' Conference, and the University of Virginia. His debut poetry collection, As the Den Burns, was published by Texas Review Press in 2022.
 

Riley Richards taught Creative Writing and Political Writing at Uzhhorod National University in Uzhhorod, Ukraine, and is currently a Ph.D. student. He directs the Southeast Review’s Incarcerated Writers Program. Riley’s work can be found in the Wigleaf Top 50, Fugue, The Journal, After Happy Hour Review, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere.

Sarah E. Robinson is a Ph.D. student in Fiction. She has a B.A. in English and Studio Arts from the University of New Mexico and received her M.F.A. from the University of Houston. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Leavings and The Cincinnati Review.

Chloe Rodriguez is a poet, writer, and translator from South Florida. She is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing (Poetry) at Florida State University, where she also earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her poetry and prose have appeared in a variety of literary magazines, journals, and anthologies. She is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominee and recipient of Florida State University’s Robert O. Lawton Award for Excellence in Teaching First-Year Composition. Chloe is the author of the chapbook Ruin Me Before the Party Ends (Finishing Line Press) and the forthcoming poetry collection Aphrodite in Orange (Iron Oak Editions). Find her at chloe-rodriguez.com.

River Selby graduated from the creative writing program at Syracuse University with an M.F.A. in Fiction. As an undergraduate, they studied English, film theory, and Hindi before graduating summa cum laude, with honors. They were the first in their family to graduate from college. Before pursuing their bachelor's degree, River worked as a wildland firefighter throughout the western United States for seven years. Currently, they are pursuing a Ph.D. in Creative Writing-Nonfiction. River's work has been published in Bellevue Literary Review, The New Ohio Review, Vox, Boulevard, and Bitch (rip). Their narrative nonfiction book, Hotshot, is forthcoming in 2025, via Grove Press. 

Nick Stovel is a Bahamian-American writer from West Palm Beach, Florida. His stories are explorations of the ridiculous aspects of everyday life, interrogating concepts such as orderliness and composure. He enjoys juxtaposing the mundane with the insane, balancing humor, irony, and epiphany. Nick's work has appeared in Fterota Logia. He earned his M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Central Florida and is currently a Ph.D. student.

Abigale Tabor is pursuing her M.F.A. in Poetry. Her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Arkansas International, Pornstar Martini Magazine, Burningword Literary Journal, Creation Magazine, and more. When not writing, she enjoys reading Matthias Svalina and Arthur Sze, or playing with her rescue dog, Sherlock. 

Nathan Tauber is an M.F.A. student in Fiction. A 2023 graduate of the University of Scranton, his work has appeared in Esprit. He is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Fernanda Coutinho Teixeira is a Ph.D. candidate in the Fiction track, a writer who deals in the fantastical, the scary, and the weird. Born in Rio de Janeiro, she is a Brazilian writer exploring themes of change, transformation, the reasons we leave and the reasons we stay. She earned her M.F.A. in Fiction from University of Central Florida. Her work has been featured in Strange Horizons, The Ex-Puritan, and The Deadlands. You can find her on Instagram, @fercoutinhotex.

Gabrielle Tribou is a Ph.D. student in fiction. Her work has appeared in WomenArts Quarterly Journal, The Lindenwood Review, High Shelf Press, and other journals. She is the recipient of a John Mackay Shaw Undergraduate Award from the Academy of American Poets, a Literati Award in Undergraduate Fiction, and a Spotlight Award in Undergraduate Fiction, chosen by Pam Houston.

Heather Truett is editor-in-chief for Southeast Review. She is the author of Kiss and Repeat (MacMillan 2021), a Pushcart nominee, and a Dedicated of the Black Tower. You can find her work in Hunger Mountain, Whale Road Review, Utopia Science Fiction, Salt Hill Review, Flash Fiction Online, The Appalachian Review, and Sweet Lit, along with other journals and anthologies.
 

Ikechukwu Roy Udeh-Ubaka is a fiction Ph.D. candidate, with an M.F.A. from the University of Florida. His work has won both the Gerald Kraak Award and the Masters Review Award, and has appeared or been anthologized in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Wasafiri, Lolwe, Bakwa Magazine, The Gerald Kraak Anthology, 14: The Inward Gaze, and the Masters Review Anthology XI, amongst others. He is also a finalist for the Sisters in Crime Pride Award, the Globe Soup Short Story Award, and the Awele Creative Trust Award, and was profiled in Electric Literature as "One of the Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction." He has studied creative writing under the tutelage of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, David Leavitt, Dave Eggers, Tash Aw, Camille Bordas and Uwem Akpan. His novel-in-progress and short story collection are currently being preempted by a few publishers.

Sarah Vedder is an M.F.A. student and writer from the Northeast. She studied creative writing at Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven, where she completed a collection of short fiction stories as an undergraduate. Her work explores themes of addiction, sexuality, familial relationships, and the often-complicated pursuit of human connection. If you can't find her camping out at numerous coffee shops, you'll likely spot her behind the wheel of a '99 Chevy van plotting her next adventure.

Hugh Wilhelm is a Ph.D. student in Poetry. He earned a B.A. in English from Cornell University and an M.F.A. in poetry from Syracuse University. He recently had a poem published in The Progressive.

Mae Ellen-Marie Wissert is a poet. She earned her M.F.A. from the University of Mississippi in 2026 and is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing.

Miranda Wonder is a Ph.D. student in Fiction. She completed her M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University.
 

Fahim Zaman is pursuing a M.F.A. in Fiction. His writing uncovers the stories of his home community – Bangladeshi Muslims from Bronx, New York. He earned his B.A. in English from Amherst College.

Matthew Zhao is a poet from Michigan, and he is now a Ph.D. student in poetry. He was a finalist in the National Poetry Series and Mississippi Review Prize, and a semifinalist in the Word Works Washington Prize, Longleaf Press Book Prize, Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize, and Autumn House Press Poetry Prize. His poems appear or are forthcoming in swamp pink, Four Way Review, Frontier Poetry, Summerset Review, Indianapolis Review, Shade Journal, BoomerLitMag, PRISM International, Good River Review, Pinch, and elsewhere.