Faculty
Matt Bell
Matt Bell is the author most recently of the novel Appleseed (a New York Times Notable Book) published by Custom House in July 2021. His craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision, will follow in early 2022 from Soho Press.
He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Tin House, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, Orion, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University.
Maurice Broaddus
Maurice Broaddus is a community organizer, teacher, and writer. His work has appeared in magazines like Lightspeed Magazine, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Asimov’s, Magazine of F&SF, and Uncanny Magazine, with some of his stories having been collected in The Voices of Martyrs. His books include the urban fantasy trilogy, The Knights of Breton Court, the steampunk works, Buffalo Soldier and Pimp My Airship, and the middle grade detective novels, The Usual Suspects and Unfadeable.
-
His project, Sorcerers, is being adapted as a television show for AMC. As an editor, he’s worked on Dark Faith, Fireside Magazine, and Apex Magazine.
His gaming work includes writing for the Marvel Super-Heroes, Leverage, and Firefly role-playing games as well as working as a consultant on Watch Dogs 2. Learn more about him at MauriceBroaddus.com.
Tommy Dean
Tommy Dean lives in Indiana with his wife and two children. He is the author of a flash fiction chapbook entitled Special Like the People on TV from Redbird Chapbooks.
He is the Editor at Fractured Lit. He has been previously published in the BULL Magazine, The MacGuffin, The Lascaux Review, New World Writing, Pithead Chapel, and New Flash Fiction Review.
-
His story “You’ve Stopped” was chosen by Dan Chaon to be included in Best Microfiction 2019.
It will also be included in Best Small Fiction 2019. His interviews have been previously published in New Flash Fiction Review, The Rumpus, CRAFT Literary, and The Town Crier (The Puritan). Find him @TommyDeanWriter on Twitter.
Melissa Fraterrigo
Melissa Fraterrigo is the author of the novel Glory Days (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which was named one of “The Best Fiction Books of 2017” by the Chicago Review of Books as well as the short story collection The Longest Pregnancy (Livingston Press, 2006). Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in more than forty literary journals and anthologies from storySouth and Shenandoah to Notre Dame Review, Sou’wester and The Millions. She is the founder and executive director of the Lafayette Writers’ Studio in Lafayette, Indiana, where she offers classes on the art and craft of writing. Melissafraterrigo.com
Michelle Herman
Michelle Herman’s newest book is Close-Up, a novel. The author of three previous novels – Missing, Dog, and Devotion – and the novella collection A New and Glorious Life, as well as three collections of personal essays – The Middle of Everything, Stories We Tell Ourselves, and Like A Song – and a book for children, A Girl’s Guide to Life, Herman’s essays and short fiction have appeared in The Sun, American Scholar, O, the Oprah Magazine, Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, The Southern Review, Story, and many other journals.
-
Her awards and honors include numerous individual artist’s fellowships from the Ohio Arts Council and the Greater Columbus Arts Council, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Copernicus Foundation, the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, the Devil’s Kitchen Reading Award, and multiple teaching awards from Ohio State, where she taught for 34 years and was a founder of the MFA program in creative writing.
She also founded a graduate interdisciplinary program across the arts at OSU and is the executive and artistic director of an all-scholarship, in-residence summer writing program on the OSU campus for teenagers who are enrolled in urban public schools.
A New Yorker by birth – and temperament – born in Brighton Beach and educated in New York City public schools and at Brooklyn College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she has lived for many years in Columbus with her husband, the painter Glen Holland. Their daughter, Grace, used to live there too, but she is long grown, and her mother dispenses weekly parenting advice on Slate.
Christine Sneed
Christine Sneed is the author of the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts, and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men (Bloomsbury USA & UK). Her fifth book, Please Be Advised: A Novel in Memos, and a short fiction anthology she edited, Love in the Time of Time's Up, will both be published in October 2022.
Her work has been included in publications such as The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the Midwest, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, ZYZZYVA, New England Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and O Magazine.
-
Her feature script The Female Gaze was one of 150 semifinalists, drawn from 7,831 entries, in AMPAS's 2020 Nicholl Fellowship competition. She has written a number other high-placing scripts in the Austin Film Festival, CineStory Feature and TV Pilot competitions, the PAGE Awards, Atlanta Film Festival, Filmmatic, New York International Screenplay Awards, and Screencraft Comedy Feature competitions.
She has received the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction, the 21st Century Award from the Chicago Public Library Foundation, the Chicago Writers’ Association Book of the Year Award twice, the Society of Midland Authors’ Award, an O. Henry Prize, and Ploughshares’ Zacharis Award.
She has also been a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Chicago Review Fiction Award. She lives in southern California with her partner Adam Tinkham and teaches for the graduate creative writing programs at Northwestern University and Regis University.
Laura Maylene WalteR
Laura Maylene Walter is the author of the debut novel Body of Stars (Dutton, 2021). Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, The Sun, Literary Hub, The Masters Review, Horse Girls (Harper Perennial 2021), and many other publications. She has been a Tin House Scholar, a recipient of the Ohioana Library Association’s Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant, and a writer-in-residence at Yaddo, the Chautauqua Institution, and Art Omi: Writers. Laura is editor in chief of Literary Cleveland’s Gordon Square Review and works for Cleveland Public Library.
Melissa Scholes young
Melissa Scholes Young is the author of the novels The Hive and Flood, and editor of Grace in Darkness and Furious Gravity, two anthologies of new writing by D.C. women writers. She is a contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review, and her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Washington Post, Poets & Writers, Ploughshares, Literary Hub and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of the Bread Loaf Bakeless Camargo Foundation Residency Fellowship and the Center for Mark Twain Studies’ Quarry Farm Fellowship. Born and raised in Hannibal, Missouri, she is currently an associate professor in Literature at American University.