Welcome to the Alumni News page. This page is updated each fall and spring. Please send your news to mfacrwalums@american.edu.
Maxine Clair is most recently the author of October Suite, a novel (Random House, 2001). Her first book, Coping with Gravity, a poetry collection, was published in 1988. In 1992 her first book of fiction, October Brown, won Baltimore's Artscape Prize for Maryland Writers in short fiction. In 1994, she published Rattlebone, a collection of short stories that won the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize for fiction, the American Library Association's Black Caucus Award, and the Friends of American Literature Award. In 1995 she received Guggenheim Fellowship. She is an associate professor of English at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.
J.L. Conrad is the author of A Cartography of Birds (Louisiana State University Press, 2002). Her poems have appeared in the Beloit Poetry Journal, H_NGM_N, Folio, For Poetry, and Phoebe. A native of Ohio, she currently lives in Boston.
Barbara Goldberg is a poet and translator whose books include Cautionary Tales (Dryad Press, 1990) and Marvelous Pursuits (Snake Nation Press, 1995). With Moshe Dor, she has translated several volumes of Israeli poetry, including The Stones Remember: Native Israeli Poetry (Word Works, 1991); After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace (Syracuse University Press, 1998); and The Fire Stays in Red, by Ronny Someck (University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).
Harvey Grossinger is the author ofThe Quarry, winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award For Short Fiction and The Edward Lewis Wallant Book Award. There are essays about "The Quarry" novella in Holocaust Literature: An Encyclopedia of Writers and Their Work and Contemporary Jewish American Writers and the Multicultural Dilemma: The Return of the Exiled. One of Grossinger's stories won a Nelson Algren Award and another was listed in Best American Short Stories. A former Writing Instructor at AU, he is a Professorial Lecturer in the Literature Department. He was a Visiting Writer as part of the MFA Program Visiting Writers Series, and he was In-Residence Scholar in the Jewish Studies Program. He is also a lecturer and dissertation advisor at Johns Hopkins University's Master of Arts in Writing Program, and participated in the JHU Manuscript Critique Program at the Washington Independent Writers 25th Anniversary Writers Conference. He taught for three years in the Honors College at the University of Maryland. He is the co-founder, administrator, and one of three judges of Moment magazine's annual short story contest. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he reviews fiction for The Houston Chronicle. His stories have appeared in Listening to the Voices: Stories from the Flannery O'Connor Award, The Chicago Tribune, New England Review, Western Humanities Review, Mid-American Review, Cimarron Review, and Ascent. He is working on a novel, set in the Bronx in the Fifties, calledThe Caretaker's Niece.
Ginnie Hartman lives in Lima, Peru with her husband and two children. She is working on a novel. Her stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hudson Review,and Iowa Woman. In 1997 she co-edited a book with Barbara Esstman, an anthology called A More Perfect Union: Poems and Stories about the Modern Wedding (St. Martin's).
Greg Hautaluoma is currently a senior writer at the Smithsonian's Office of Development. "The MFA program provided me with a tremendously marektable degree. I've had writing jobs of one sort or another ever since I graduated, mostly for nonprofits, but also as a press secretary on Capitol Hill. I continue to work on material from my thesis, as well as new pieces, mostly fiction. I still regularly attend readings and keep up with contemporary fiction, and the MFA program got me plugged into that in a way that I hadn't been before I entered it."
Donna Hemans has begun leading fiction workshops at the Writers Center in Bethesda. Her first novel, River Woman, was published in 2002. She is working on her second novel, tentatively titled Songs of the Lost Children. She has won grants from the Maryland State Arts Council and Prince George's Arts Council.
Livia Kent, MFA 2002 says, Going through the MFA program at AU was the greatest thing I've ever done for myself as a writer. I developed lasting relationships with my peers, whose opinion of my work I continue to value, respect, and call upon. Also, I gleaned knowledge invaluable to all forms of my writing through the tutelage, support, and friendship of my mentors: Richard McCaan, Kermit Moyer, Myra Sklarew, Andrew Holleran, and Henry Taylor. As each visiting writer passed through, I made a new connection to the writing community and to my own literary voice. By the time I graduated I had gained the confidence I needed to tackle the publishing world. I couldn't have imagined a more fulfilling or fruitful time.
Cindy Lollar is working on a novel and has worked at the American Association for the Advancement of Science and now works at the National Cancer Institute at NIH.
Nina Mercer is completing a doctorate in 20th century Literature of the Americas. She is a poet, actress, and playwright at work on a one-woman show entitled "Gutta Beautiful." She also teaches for the Folger Poetry Outreach Program at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School, as well as in the English Department at the University of Maryland.
"The MFA program at AU provided me with the foundation to understand my more fully craft. The program also sparked my desire to continue my studies as a writer and critical literary theorist. Conflicting roles, right? Yes and no. I am also the mother of two amazing daughters, Aya, 7 and Raisa, 5."
Lisa Norris is the author of Toy Guns, a collection of short stories published by Helicon Nine Press and winner of the Helicon Nine Editions' 1999 Willa Cather Fiction Prize. She is an instructor in creative writing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her writing has been published in a variety of literary magazines, including the Notre Dame Review, Ascent, Kansas Quarterly/Arkansas Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Grand Tour, and the South Dakota Review.
Bill O'Sullivan is a features editor at The Washingtonian and a former fellow the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, The Washingtonian, The North American Review, Christopher Street, and Common Boundary, among others. A two-time recipient of Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, he is listed in Best American Essays 1996 and 1997. He teaches the personal essay at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, Maryland.
"Although I wrote fiction at AU, I write exclusively nonfiction now--mostly personal essays and occasionally book and other reviews. Nevertheless, I consider every moment of my fiction-writing life useful and wouldn't change a thing. Fiction was a fun ride and a huge challenge, but I've settled into the genre that feels more natural to me--though just as challenging."
Carolyn Parkhurst has published fiction in The North American Review, Minnesota Review, Hawai'i Review, and The Crescent Review. She has also published nonfiction in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her first novel, The Dogs of Babel, which was published by Little, Brown & Co. in June, 2003, has been chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection. She lives in Washington, DC, with her husband and their son.
W.T. (Todd) Pfefferle, MFA '84, has settled in Kentucky after a year-long trip around the country researching and writing his third book, Poets on Place (Utah State University Press, 2005). The book is a travel narrative of a 20,000 mile trip he and his wife took in an RV while Todd interviewed and photographed 62 American poets, including his MFA mentor, Henry Taylor. His poetry has appeared most recently in Antioch Review, North American Review, Carolina Quarterly, Nimrod, Mississippi Review, Greensboro Review, etc. He's been nominated for 3 Pushcart Prizes, most recently last year for a poem in the New Orleans Review. He and his wife have been married for 22 years, and they no longer argue about things that occur on the golf course.
Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of a novel, Pears on a Willow Tree (Avon). Her short fiction has appeared in many journals and magazines, including Washingtonian, TriQuarterly, Gettysburg Review, The Sun, Iowa Review, New Engand Review, and Confrontation. Her work has been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes and has received awards from Shenandoah, Columbia, Crescent, and other journals. She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences.
Liz Poliner is an attorney, poet,and fiction writer who has won three individual artist's grants in fiction and poetry from the D.C. Commission on the Arts. A former fellow at Yaddo and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow, she is also former editor of Folio and co-editor of Poet Lore. Her work has appeared in Southern Review, Seneca Review, Tar River Poetry, Other Voices, Ascent, Kenyon Review and elsewhere.
"The MFA at AU was one of the very best gifts I ever gave myself. That's how I see it. I desperately wanted to write, but was very shy about that, and coming to AU just opened door after door. I found out I could stand on my feet in both poetry and fiction workshops, and to this day I write in both genres. I found out I love teaching and editing. In so many ways, I found my voice at AU."
Jacklyn Potter is a poet living in Washington, DC. Since 1984 she has run the Miller Cabin Poetry Series, the oldest summer reading series in Washington. With a volunteer committee, she selects readers from a large pool of applicants that include well-established authors and emerging poets. Her work has appeared in McGuffin and twice anthologized by Papier Mache Press: If I had a Hammer: Women's Work in Poetry and Fiction and Photography and If I Had My Life to Live Over, I'd Pick More Daisies. She also was published in Jazz a Go-Go, a Polish jazz magazine.
Sarah Priestman has earned her living as a freelance writer for about eight years. During that time she has ghostwritten two books and published numerous essays and articles. In 1999 she adopted a baby girl from China, and she credits her writing skills with the ability to support her daughter and lead a fulfilling life. "I work from home, and the flexibility means the world to me, as it allows me to be with my daughter before and after school. I absolutely love mothering." In Summer 2003 The Washingtonian published Priestman's essay on the adoption process.
Sarah Priestman, MFA 1991 opines, Though I know this is said about everything from Spirulina to the Bible to combat duty, I have this to say about the American University MFA program: it changed my life. I was capable of stringing words together when I entered the program, but did not have perspective a writer needs in order to sit with her work--and herself--as the material takes on a life of its own. By the time I graduated, I trusted myself as a writer and I believed in my work. The MFA program taught me to listen, to hang in-there, and to keep writing. Which is what I now do. I also landed in a community of great companions when I got to AU, some of whom remain my dearest friends.
