Every year, we ask our current students and alumni to send us updates on how their writing has been going over the past year. This is just a small sample of what our students do here in the MFA Program! 

Jacob M. Appel (Playwriting, 2013) published his eleventh collection of short stories, The School of Anecdotal Medicine (Sagging Meniscus Press, June 2025). He continues to teach bioethics and practice psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.  

Jonathan Alexandratos’ (Playwrighting, 2011) book, Free with Every Kids’ Meal: The Cultural Impact of Fast Food Toys, came out in July 2025 from McFarland. The book is the first peer-reviewed monograph to study fast food toys and the ways they can be “read” as cultural text. Jonathan also joined the playwrights’ collective Lather, Rinse, Repeat, where they’re working on a new script. They teach at Sarah Lawrence College and Queensborough Community College.

Catherine Bai (Fiction, TBD) received a Vermont Studio Center fellowship for June 2026 and a residency grant from the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation for the June-August 2027 session. Her work was longlisted in fiction for the 2025 Disquiet Prize. She has also signed on to write for and act in a film project.

Kayla Joan Baur (Fiction, 2026) is a multi-genre writer. Since the age of 17, she has self-published eight novels across various genres, including young adult, fantasy, and coming-of-age. Baur also teaches English Language Arts in Queens, New York, and delights in challenging literary conventions. In Summer 2025, she self-published her ninth novel, a standalone murder-mystery titled All the Love in Copper Valley.

Sunu P. Chandy (Poetry 2013) (she/her) is scheduled to take part in a few literary events this fall where she will share both newer poems and selections from her poetry collection, My Dear Comrades. Details are available on her website, www.sunuchandy.net. Sunu is also a senior advisor with Democracy Forward and encourages everyone to follow the incredible work of her colleagues who are daily fighting the harms of the current administration in court.

John Reid Currie (Poetry 2009) read poems with fellow alums in the Brainstorm reading series at Pete’s Candy Store in Brooklyn and at the Clark Memorial Library in Bethany Connecticut. This Onion Snow his new chapbook, a collaboration with the painter Evelyn Twitchell, was published by Ghostbird Press in August 2025. 

Tejas Desai (Fiction, 2009) is publishing his latest book, Bad Americans, in parts throughout 2025 and 2026. As the book is a frame novel containing 12 stories set during the Covid Pandemic, each story is being released a month apart with the two whole books being published on 9/15/25 (Part I) and 4/15/26 (Part II). Bad Americans: Part I has received rave reviews from readers and publications like Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, which called it a “Powerful rendering of the human experience uniting a divided America.” Go to http://tejas-desai.com for more information.

Rob Gunther (Fiction, 2017) is a senior producer and guest host for Slate’s daily news podcast, What Next. This year, he was nominated for a Writers’ Guild Award for an episode titled “Inside A Gaza Hospital.”

Yvette Heyliger (Playwriting, 2010) Yvette’s bedroom farce, Carpe Noctem! (Seize the Night!) has been selected for the New York Theatre Festival’s Winterfest, December 1, 5, and 7, 2025, at the Hudson Guild Theatre, NYC. This bedroom farce for the twenty-first century asks, “What brings a couple of middle-aged swingers, their gay son, his new husband, a trans woman, and a closeted cop all together one fateful night?”   Read more about the production here. Carpe Noctem! had its genesis here in the MFA Creative Writing Program! 

Don Kelly (Fiction, 2015) started a new career in education, currently working with 5th graders in Los Angeles. He’s working on secret memoir comics involving X-Men and high-stakes stickball. 

Jonathan Larson (Poetry and Translation, 2015) has a translation of French poet Nathalie Quintane’s non-fiction book The Cavalier coming out this fall from Winter Editions. Poems and other writing appeared last year in Conjunctions, Tripwire v.21, and Minor Literature[s], with pieces forthcoming in Cleveland Review of Books.

Rajiv Mohabir’s (Poetry, 2013) fifth poetry collection releases from Four Way Books this September. He is finally going up for tenure at the University of Colorado, Boulder after deciding to stop moving across the country every couple of years. He will be in NYC this September to read and teach a masters class at the AAWW.

Sean O’Connor (Playwriting, 2013) finished the editing of a film he wrote, directed and acted in, Summer of 70, which goes to festivals this fall. He’s working on a novel, called American Roulette, set in NYC in the 1980s. His play, The Knitting Club, was part of a drama festival in Boston recently. He’s recording new songs, letting his hair turn grey, and drinking slightly less wine! 

John Rice (Poetry, 2009) thought he was rejected from every journal he submitted to and every magazine he pitched to, but he managed to sneak something into Points in Case early this summer. He was named Alumni of the Month for April 2025 by the Office of Graduate Admissions, presumably because they needed an April Fool! 

Jay Boss Rubin (Literary Translation, 2023), a Swahili-English translator and writer focused on the translation adjacent, has recently published his first book-length translation: the novel Rosa Mistika by revered Tanzanian author Euphrase Kezilahabi (Yale University Press). His next project, a story collection by contemporary Tanzanian author Esther Karin Mngodo, will be released by Hanging Loose Press this December, under the title The Witness of Nina Mvungi and Other Stories. Jay also serves as Managing Editor of Portland Tennis Courterly.

Beth Sherman (Fiction, 2014) became a Submissions Editor for Smokelong Quarterly. She has had her writing published in more than 85 literary journals this year, including Smokelong, Ink in Thirds, Leon Literary Review, Utriculi, Litmosphere, Blue Mountain Review, Midnight Fawn Review, Hooghly Review, Works Progress, Barren Magazine, Microzine, Mulberry Literary, Teach. Write, Remington Review, Flash Frog, Eucalyptus Lit, Superfast Stories, Flash Fiction North, Tangled Lives Anthology, Trash Cat Lit, Eunoia Review, JAKE The Magazine, Bond Street Review, Gone Lawn, New Feathers Anthology, The Phare, Fictive Dream, Vine Leaves Press, Inscape, Westword Journal, Third Street Review, Madswirl, Lit Ezine, Eleventh Hour Literary, Variant Lit, Flash Boulevard, Ginosko Literary Review, The Hemlock Journal, Prosetrics the Magazine, JMWW, Does It Have Pockets?, Gigantic Tentacles, fussub mag, Emerge Literary Journal, Gooseberry Pie, The Hoolet’s Nook, Grey Sparrow Journal, Waffle Fried, 1922 Review, Whale Road Review, Arts & Letters, Molecule: A Tiny Lit Mag, Vestal Review, Bottle Rocket Lit, Embark Literary Journal, Red Ogre Review, Hotch Potch Literature and Art, Burningword Literary Magazine, Milk Candy Review, Ponder Review, The Mersey Review, Croak, Flash Flood, Blood Tree Literature, Paragraph Planet, Inkfish Magazine, Molotov Cocktail, The Solitude Diaries, January House Lit, Mythic Picnic, Coin-Operated Press, The Owl’s Rant, Quail Bell Magazine, Macrame Literary Journal, Orange Rose Literary Magazine, Blood + Honey Literary Magazine, Sudden Flash, Soul Poetry, Prose & Arts Magazine, Switch, Six Sentences, Eulogy Press, The Quasar Review, Chouette Literary Magazine, Café Lit, and Cowbell Literary Magazine. Her stories were longlisted for Wigleaf’s Top 50 for 2024, shortlisted for The Bridport Prize and Smokelong Quarterly’s 2024 Grand Micro Contest, published in the Bath Flash Fiction Anthology and the National Flash Fiction Anthology, and nominated for the Best of the Net Award and the Pushcart Prize. Her story “Mud Pies” won the 2024 Smokelong Quarterly Workshop Prize; “Bent” won Smokelong’s Sprint Challenge, and “How Do Crows Say I love You?” is included in the 2025 Best Small Fictions Anthology (Alternating Current Press). 

Heather Simon (Translation/Fiction, 2014): An extract from her never-ending poem/lyric essay, Dumpster Dive Here, was published in A Velvet Giant and nominated for Pushcart Prize. She’s just returned from a summer residency at Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska, where she plasma cut recycled steel for the construction of their new library, experimented with laser-cut bookmaking, and worked on other creative projects that didn’t involve cutting.  

Radhika Singh (Fiction, 2022) has two novels coming out in 2026. Weirdly Tuned Antennae, winner of the 2025 Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest, is forthcoming from FC2 Press. Earthly Playing Field is forthcoming from Common Notions/ Nonaligned Press.

April Smallwood (Playwriting, 2013) had a short series she wrote and produced, called Knawbone Creek, take part in the Festival of Cinema: NYC, where it was nominated for Best Web/TV Series!!! Go to festivalofcinemanyc.com for more information. 

Todd Sullivan (Fiction, 2009) taught English as a Second Language in South Korea and Taiwan for sixteen years. His fiction, poetry, and non-fiction have been published internationally. He was listed on the preliminary ballot for the Bram Stoker’s Awards in 2018, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry and fiction in 2023. He currently has two book series through indie publishers in America. He wrote for a Taipei play and web series that focused upon African narratives. He founded the online publication, Samjoko Magazine, in 2021, and hosts a YouTube Channel that interviews writers across the publishing spectrum. 

Rebecca Suzuki (Translation, 2021) is very grateful for the publication of “Practicing Dying” in The Los Angeles Review, “A Dip in the Ocean” in Bright Flash Literary Review, and “Counting” in Killing the Buddha, a journal co-edited by fellow alum Francesca Hyatt and CNF faculty Briallen Hopper. She got to participate in two dreamy artist residencies over the summer: Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and Arte Studio Ginestrelle in Assisi, Italy. Rebecca also got to read at the NYC Poetry Festival on Governors Island in July with fellow Queens College poets Ryan Black and Victoria Lau. She is still struggling to find the right form to write her memoir in!

Peter Vanderberg (Poetry, 2009) is the Editor of Ghostbird Press and a PhD student at St. John’s University. His chapbook, Ordinary Time, was recently published by Bottlecap Press. Give a look-see: https://bottlecap.press/products/ordinarytime

Interested in being part of some fine company? Check out our Admissions page for more info!