Sandy Allen (MFA ’12) published the feature “A Brilliant Cure But We Lost the Patient,” a cultural history of electroshock, in The Believer; and the essay “Into the Woods with 150 Trans Men,” about attending a summer camp for trans men, in Esquire. 

Mary Margaret (Mia) Alvarado (MFA ’06), has a short story, “Application for Admission [DRAFFFFT] from Kaylee River King,” in The Rumpus, written in the busted form of an essay; and a new nonfiction book, American Weather, in collaboration with the artist Corie Cole, out and for sale. 

Barret Baumgart’s (MFA '14) second book, YUCK: The Birth & Death of the Weird & Wondrous Joshua Tree, Yucca brevifolia, won the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book award for nonfiction and will be published by WA-based Wandering Aengus Press in March 2025. He also has a blog and occasional podcast on Substack called Dumpster Fires. 

Hannah Bonner (MFA ’24) has recently published reviews in Hyperallergic, Senses of Cinema, and The Sewanee Review.  

Drew Bratcher (MFA ’16) published “All the Honky-Tonk Babies Have Broken Hearts," an essay about Hank Williams Jr., in the Los Angeles Review of Books; and an essay called “One on One," about losing to his son, Beckett, at basketball, in Salvation South.  

Frances Cannon (MFA ’17) is the Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow at Kenyon College and is an editorial reader for the Kenyon Review. She has several forthcoming books in the coming years: Willow and the Storm (forthcoming with Green Writers Press in the spring of 2025) and Queer Flora, Fauna, Funga (forthcoming with Valiz Press in 2026).  

Matthew J. C. Clark (MFA ’09) published the essay “Reconsidering the Lobster” in Rustica Journal.  

Mieke Eerkens (MFA ’13) will publish an essay in the forthcoming anthology Nothing Compares to You (Simon & Schuster), a celebration of musician Sinéad O’Connor. Essays by program alumni Sarah Viren (MFA ’11) and Stephanie Elizondo Griest (MFA ’12) will also appear in the book. 

Rachel Faldet (MFA ’87) is co-editor, with Maren Johnson, of Sagas of Luther College. The grant-funded (CIC-NetVUE) anthology’s thirteen essays and intergenerational interview explore the heritage and identity of the liberal arts college, past, present, and future.  

Ori Fienberg (MFA ’07) had his first collection, Where Babies Come From, published in September by Cornerstone Press; the Chicago Review of Books named the collection a must-read and declared it “dazzling and eccentric.” He was also a Scholar at the 2024 Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference, and his writing is forthcoming in the Cimarron Review, Ploughshares, and Smartish Pace.  

Jonathan Gleason (MFA ’22) was named one of four finalists for the 2024 Granum Foundation Prize. His first book, "Field Guide to Falling Ill", is forthcoming from Yale University Press in 2025.  

A. Kendra Greene (MFA ’ 12) is a Scholar of Note at the American Library in Paris. She’ll be visiting professor at the University of Missouri in the spring. And while a MacDowell fellow this fall, she completed the illumination of No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity, forthcoming March 4, 2025, from Tin House. 

Jenna Hammerich (MFA ’10) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Ground,” published in River Teeth 25/2. 

The Council of Writing Program Administrators named Douglas Hesse (MFA ’ 80) one of the two recipients of its Lifetime Achievement Award for 2024. The CWPA will hold an event in July 2025 to honor his achievements. In addition, the Association of Departments of English/Modern Language Association will award him the Francis Andrew March Award at its annual convention in New Orleans, in January, where he’ll be invited to give remarks. He notes: “the second winner of the March award was Jix Lloyd-Jones, one of the forces behind founding the NWP. The first winner of the award was John Gerber, also a long-ago chair at Iowa.” 

Laura Julier’s (PhD ’ 88) book, Off Izaak Walton Road, won this year’s River Teeth Nonfiction Book Award, judged by writer Lacy M. Johnson, and will be published by the University of New Mexico Press in March 2025. She will give a reading at Prairie Lights Books this spring. 

Sarah Khatry (MFA ’24) published the essay “Experiments in Light” in VQR. 

Kevin Koch (MA Writing ’81; PhD English ’92) was interviewed on Iowa Public Radio (“Talk of Iowa”) regarding his recently published book, Midwest Bedrock: The Search for Nature’s Soul in America’s Heartland (Indiana University Press, 2024). The 35-minute interview is archived at https://www.iowapublicradio.org/podcast/talk-of-iowa (dated Nov 8, 2024). 

Emily Mester (MFA ’18) published the debut essay collection American Bulk: Essays on Excess with W.W. Norton in November 2024. She will give a reading at Prairie Lights Books in Spring 2025. 

Michele Morano (MFA ’ 01) was recently elected as Secretary of the AWP Board of Directors. Feel free to contact her with any questions or feedback about the organization. 

Aaron Pang (MFA ’24) followed up his Iowa City performances of his one-person show “Herein Lies The Truth” with a performance at the Elysian Theater in Los Angeles. The show, which was his NWP thesis project, was directed by Connie Chen (MFA ’25). 

Angela Pelster-Wiebe (MFA ’12) sold her new essay collection, "The Evolution of Fire: Meditations on Crises to Milkweed Editions," coming out in 2026. 

Torrey Peters (MFA ’09) will publish "Stag Dance: A Novel and Stories," with Penguin Random House in March 2025.  

Kristen Radtke (MFA ’20) visited the NWP in October as the Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor. 

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (MFA ’ 22, will publish her second horror novel, The Mean Ones, in Fall 2025. 

Rebecca Sheir (MFA ’06) is in her 8th season as host and writer of Circle Round, the family folktales podcast from Boston’s NPR station. Rebecca took the podcast across the country in 2024, with live on-stage recordings in San Francisco, Minneapolis, Portland (OR), Seattle, Chicago and New York City. In February 2025, Circle Round will make its debut at Boston’s Symphony Hall with a live recording featuring an all-star cast and players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. 

Darius Stewart (MFA ’ 20), current doctoral student in the University of Iowa English Department, successfully passed his comprehensive exam in December 2024. This fall, he taught a workshop and participated in the discussion “Fine Lines: Poems from Around the World” at the Mumbai LitFest in India. 

In addition to being a finalist for the 2024 National Book Award, Deborah Taffa’s (MFA ’13) debut, Whiskey Tender: A Memoir, was longlisted for a 2025 Carnegie Medal of Excellence in Nonfiction. It was also named a Top 10 Memoir of the year by Audible, a Top 10 Nonfiction Book by Esquire Magazine, a Top 10 Book of 2024 by The Atlantic, a Top 100 Book of the year by Time Magazine, and a 2024 Top 50 Nonfiction Title by The Washington Post. It was also included in Electric Literature’s Best Nonfiction of 2024 list. Deborah recently signed with the speaker’s bureau, Authors Unbound. 

Adina Talve-Goodman’s (MFA ’19) posthumous essay collection Your Hearts, Your Scars, released by Bellevue Literary Press, was shortlisted for the 2024 Wingate Prize in the UK. The annual prize is awarded to the best book “to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader.” Ann Napolitano wrote, “Adina Talve-Goodman walked a tightrope, for much of her thirty-one years, between life and death. I’m grateful this beautiful book exists, so everyone else can know her, too. Adina was a brilliant writer, and these pages are imbued with her exuberance, her sharp humor, and both versions of her spectacular heart.”  

Joshua Wheeler (MFA ’15) published a feature on the cultural history of Smokey Bear, “The Last and Final Death of Smokey Bear,” in a special issue of Alta on Reckoning with the West. His novel, “The High Heaven,”  will be published by Graywolf in October 2025.  

Cutter Wood (MFA ’10) will publish "Earthly Materials: Journeys Through Our Bodies’ Emissions, Excretions, and Disintegrations" with Mariner Books HarperCollins at the end of April 2025. 

The film adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s (MFA ’11) novel Nightbitch opened the third annual ReFocus Film Festival in Iowa City in October. The film, starring Amy Adams and written and directed by Marielle Heller, was released by Searchlight Pictures in December. 

Marilyn Abildskov (MFA '97) was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. She has new essays and short stories in Prairie Schooner, Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Sonora Review, Mississippi Review, and Southern Humanities Review. 

Faith Adiele (MFA '02) became a tenured full professor and the Chair of the BA in Writing & Literature at California College of the Arts (San Francisco). Her boxed set of hybrid chapbooks, "Her Voice: Hänen Ääensä: A Hybrid Memoir", is coming out in May. 

Sandy Allen (MFA '12) had an essay published on Esquire called “Mourning the Trans Boyhood I Never Got.” 

Mary Margaret (Mia) Alvarado (MFA '06) won the Burnside Review’s chapbook contest for her daybook, "Chrome of Iris," forthcoming this spring. She published “Chopping Up the Gun,” in the Fall 2023 issue of The Georgia Review, an essay that was nominated for a Pushcart. She taught the inaugural writing workshop for The School for Living Futures, “an interdisciplinary, experimental school in Durham, North Carolina, dedicated to creating new knowledge and possibility for our climate-changed future.” She also had two essays exhibited in the show “Another World is Possible,” Fine Arts Center, Colorado College; and a poem, “Palisades Kepler,” exhibited in “Parallels: A Collection of Prints Inspired by Poems,” at the Campus Commons Gallery, University of Northern Colorado. 

Zaina Arafat (MFA '13) published the essay “Fasting for Ramadan While Gaza Goes Hungry” in The New Yorker. Author of the novel You Exist Too Much, she will teach a novel workshop at Tin House this summer. 

Barret Baumgart (MFA '14) reports that his book-length, lyric essay, "YUCK," about the Joshua Tree, yucca brevifolia, won the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award and will be coming out through Wandering Aengus Press in early 2025. From the editorial board that selected it: “YUCK does something rarely tried in CNF: the essayistic mastery of a single object, propelled across time as an extended metaphor, that because of its accumulation of history, poetry, and insight becomes a compelling narrative.” 

Brittany Bettendorf (MFA '22) became the Nonfiction Editor of The Examined Life journal, published by the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine. The Examined Life “seeks works related to health and the human condition in all its myriad definitions.” 

Hannah Bonner (MFA '24) was selected as the 2024-25 CLAS Postgraduate Visiting Writer in Nonfiction at the University of Iowa. 

Frances Cannon (MFA '17) is the Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellow at Kenyon College, 2023-2025. Her poetry collection Fling Diction was published in February 2024 by Green Writers Press. 

Erica Cavanaugh (MFA '04) interviewed Sofia Samatar for The Chicago Review of Books. The interview is titled “In Solidarity with the Shattering: an interview with Sofia Samatar about The White Mosque.” 

Matthew Clark (MFA '09) published his essay collection, Bjarki, Not Bjarki: On Floorboards, Love, and Irreconcilable Differences, with the University of Iowa Press in 2024. He will give a special reading at Prairie Lights Books on April 19, 2024. 

Julia Conrad (MFA '20) published two pieces in VAN Magazine, “Explosions of the Voice: An Interview with Paola Prestini” and “The Works of Augusta Holmès, Ranked in Order of Virility.” 

Andy Douglas (MFA '05) had his third book published in the fall. Songs of the New Dawn: Selected Song-poems of Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar is a book of translations, from the Bengali, of song-poems by a contemporary Indian mystic. It also features gorgeous illustrations by artist Kindle Corwell. The book was published by Innerworld Press. 

Rachel Faldet (MA '87) published the essay “Sit for Awhile and Rock” in The Wapsipinicon Almanac: Selections from Thirty Years (University of Iowa Press). “Personal Essays as a Path to Effective Transactional Writing, or, No, You Haven’t Always Wanted to be a Doctor” appears in Nonfiction, The Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones (University Press of Colorado). “A Portrait of Crown Princess Märtha of Norway Who Never Became Queen (1905-1954)” appears in Vesterheim, Vol. 20 No.1. 

The paperback edition of the young adult novel My Heart Underwater, by Laurel Flores Fantauzzo (MFA '13) was released by Harper / Quill Tree Books in November 2023. The paperback release was featured in Vogue Philippines. My Heart Underwater has also been banned from libraries and schools in Texas and Florida. 

Tom Fate (MA '86) published the op-ed piece “There is No Winning in Gaza. We Must Stop the Cycle of Loss” in The Chicago Tribune in January. He also wrote about the Iowa Lakeside Lab for Iowa Magazine. 

Micah Fields (MFA '18) published his first book of nonfiction, We Hold Our Breath: A Journey to Texas Between Storms, with W. W. Norton in fall 2023. He gave a reading at Prairie Lights Books in October. 

Ori Fienberg (MFA '08) reports that his microchap, Interim Assistant Dean of Having a Rich Inner Life, is available from Ghost City Press. He has writing forthcoming in Cimarron Review, the Dallas Review, Ploughshares, and Smartish Pace. A collection of prose poetry, "Where Babies Come From," will be published by Cornerstone Press later this fall. 

Jonathan Gleason (MFA '22) won the Indiana Review fiction prize for his story “Guardians,” selected by judge Jonathan Escoffery. His essay “Field Guide to Falling Ill,” which appeared in The Sun, was included among the 2024 Krause Essay Prize nominees. The judging process is still underway. 

David Groff (MA '82) published Live in Suspense, his third book of poems, in July 2023 with Trio House Press. An independent book editor, he taught creative writing this past fall at NYU. In March 2023, he was inducted into the hall of fame of the Saints + Sinners Literary Festival. An independent book editor, since 2007 he has taught poetry, nonfiction, and publishing in the MFA creative writing program at the City College of New York. 

A. Kendra Greene (MFA '12) will publish the essay collection, "No Less Strange or Wonderful," with Tin House Books in 2025. She was honored to join nonfiction publisher Marchialy at the galerie of the Paris Print Club to launch the French edition of her Icelandic museum book, Le Musée de la Baleine (Que Vous Ne Verrez Jamais), translated by Nathalie Peronny. 

Nonfiction, the Teaching of Writing, and the Influence of Richard Lloyd-Jones, co-edited by Doug Hesse (MA '80; PhD'86) and Laura Julier (PhD '88) was published by the University Press of Colorado in 2023. The book includes a history of early years of the Nonfiction MFA program at Iowa and has essays from several program alumni and faulty. Hesse also just completed a term as Chair of the MLA Forum on Nonfiction Prose and a term as Chair of the Association for Writing Across the Curriculum. 

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs: A Journey Through the Deep State (Random House) by Kerry Howley (MFA '11) was named a National Books Critics Circle Award Finalist in Nonfiction. 

Jeremy B. Jones (MFA '09) reports that his next book, "The Coded Life," will be published by Blair in 2025. He published the essay “Obituary for a Quiet Life” in the fall issue of The Bitter Southerner and two essays in Our State Magazine. He was also named to the Board of Trustees of the North Carolina Writers’ Network. 

In March 2024, Indiana University Press released a new book by Kevin Koch (MA '83, PhD '92) titled, Midwest Bedrock: The Search for Nature’s Soul in America’s Heartland. The book features often-overlooked natural wonders and habitats in each of the twelve Midwestern states, written in a narrative/informative style. Koch is a Professor of English at Loras College (Dubuque, IA), from which he will retire after 42 years of teaching at the end of the Spring 2024 semester. 

Jessie Kraemer (MFA '22) won the Mississippi Review Prize in Nonfiction for the essay “Object Permanence,” originally drafted in Professor Melissa Febos’s NWP workshop. The essay will be published in the MR prize issue in June. Jessie also read at The Brink Exhibition, an event BRINK magazine held this spring. 

Aviya Kushner (MFA '05) published an essay, “Esther on the Eve of War,” in the fall 2023 issue of The Southern Review. She was recently awarded an Individual Artists Program Grant from the City of Chicago. 

Amy Leach (MFA '05) will publish her third book, a memoir entitled "The Salt of the Universe," with Farrar, Straus and Giroux in August 2024. 

The story collection, Wednesday’s Child, by Yiyun Li (MFA '05) was named one of the three finalists for the $20,000 Story Prize. Other Minds and Other Stories, the latest collection by Associate Professor Bennett Sims, is also a finalist. 

Lucas Mann (MFA '12) published his new essay collection, Attachments, with the University of Iowa Press in 2024. He will give a special reading at Prairie Lights Books, followed by a conversation with Professor Melissa Febos, in April 2024. 

Brittany Means (MFA '20) published her debut essay collection, Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways, with Zibby Books. She read at Prairie Lights Books in November 2023. 

Cheyenne Nimes (MFA '10) reports that the manuscript, "Coming Apocalypse Attractions," garnered first place in the 65th annual Utah Division of Arts & Museums original writing competition, for book-length collection of poetry. It was judged by Knar Gavin. 

Lynne Nugent (MFA '05, PhD '10), Editor of The Iowa Review, received a FACE grant (with Assistant Professor Sarah Minor) and traveled to Paris as part of the podcasting collaboration between the MFA and the University of Paris 8. 

Elena Passarello (MFA '08) is hosting the Mission Creek Festival’s Live Wire Radio event featuring Carmen Maria Machado and others this April. 

"America Del Norte," the first novel by Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez (MFA '19), is forthcoming from SoHo Press in 2024. 

Lucy Schiller (MFA '18) is teaching as an assistant professor at Texas Tech University, and has recent publications in the Columbia Journalism Review, as well as forthcoming work in the Paris Review online and the Cleveland Review of Books. 

Tatiana Schlote-Bonne (MFA '22) will publish her debut YA horror novel, "Such Lovely Skin," with Page Street Kids in 2024. 

Rebecca Sheir (MFA '06) is in her seventh season writing and hosting "Circle Round," the award-winning children’s folktales podcast distributed by Boston’s NPR station. She released the fourth Circle Round picture book last year (The Lion’s Whisker, Storey Publishing) and will be taking Circle Round on a national tour this year, with live episode recordings in San Francisco, CA; Minneapolis, MN; Portland, OR; Seattle, Washington; and Chicago, IL. This April, she’s giving a keynote address about folktales and oral storytelling at Calvin University’s 2024 Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids, MI. 

Jenny Singer (MFA '25) published the essay, “Grief Memoirs Are for the Living” in Electric Literature. 

Sanjna Singh (MFA '22) coordinator overseeing the brand-new Nonfiction Writing House, taught a generative writing class at Porchlight in Iowa City this spring. 

Darius Stewart (MFA '20) published the lyric memoir, Be Not Afraid of My Body in 2024. He gave a reading at Prairie Lights Books in February 2024 and was featured in the University of Iowa’s “Dare To Discover” campaign. In June he’ll be on the faculty of the David R. Collins Writers’ Conference at Augustana College, teaching a workshop entitled “Mining Memory with Lyricism: Crafting Memoir through Lyric Essay.” 

Rachel Sudbeck (MFA '21) published the piece “A 1993 ZR1 Spyder” in The Normal School. 

Deborah Taffa (MFA '13), who published her memoir, Whiskey Tender, with Harper in spring 2024, was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Director of the MFA in Creative Writing at the Institute for American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, NM, she will give a special reading at Prairie Lights Books on March 29, 2024. 

Jessie van Eerden (MFA '07) will publish her second essay collection, "Yoke and Feather," with Dzanc Books in November 2024, with the release of the paperback of her novel, Call It Horses, two weeks prior. 

In June, Sarah Viren (MFA '11) published her second book, To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and an NPR and a LitHub Best Book of 2023. She also had the pleasure of reading from that book at the new NWP building (during an event that included a breathtaking shadow puppet performance by Johanna Winters and Sarah Minor). In December, she published a new story, “Breaking the Case” in the New York Times Magazine. 

Joshua Wheeler (MFA '15) will publish "The High Heaven," his first novel, with Graywolf Press. 

Wyatt Williams (MFA '23) published the essay, “Lucinda Williams and the Idea of Louisiana,” which was included on the Longreads “Best Of 2023” list. 

Rachel Yoder (MFA '11) published an article on Pennsylvania Dutch folk medicine entitled “In the Glimmer” in the July 2023 issue of Harper’s. She also served as the Trias Writer-in-Residence at Hobart & William Smith Colleges for fall 2023. The film adaptation of her book Nightbitch will be released in 2024.