Roosevelt MFA Faculty

Christine Sneed

2011-09-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

Christine Sneed is teaching Fiction III/IV for Fall 2011. Her story collection, Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry, won AWP's 2009 Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, first-fiction category, was named one of the seven best books of 2010 by Time Out Chicago, and has been chosen as the recipient of Ploughshares' 2011 first-book prize, the John C. Zacharis Award. It was also long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.

Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Short Stories, PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review, Notre Dame Review, and a number of other journals. She has also received an Illinois Arts Council fellowship in poetry.

Kathleen Rooney

2011-09-08T17:45:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Rooney is the Writer-in-Residence at Roosevelt for the 2011-12 school year. She is extremely active in the Chicago literary scene, has her own press, and has published books of both poetry and creative non-fiction.

A recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine, her first collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion) won the 2007 Gatewood Prize from feminist publisher Switchback Books, and her collaborative collection That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (co-written with Elisa Gabbert) was published by Otoliths in 2008. Also with Gabbert, she is the co-author of the chapbooks Something Really Wonderful (dancing girl press, 2007) and Don’t ever stay the same; keep changing (spooky girlfriend press, 2009). Her second solo collection, Robinson Alone Provides the Image: A Novel in Poems, has just been accepted for publication by Gold Wake Press. She will be teaching a non-fiction class this fall and a poetry class in the spring!

Kyle Beachy

2010-10-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

The Roosevelt MFA program is proud to have this year a new tenure tracked position, with novelist Kyle Beachy, who was the writer-in-residence last year. Kyle will be teaching the the introductory Fiction I course on Monday nights for the fall 2011 semester.

Kyle Beachy's debut novel, The Slide, was published in 2009 by The Dial Press. Hailed as “Suspenseful, erotic, and terribly sad,” it is a ghost story, a love story, and a story of the American Midwest (set in St. Louis). He received his M.F.A. from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. He has taught writing and literature at The School of the Art Institute, the Graham School at The University of Chicago, and the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

Scott Blackwood

2010-05-08T05:59:00.000-07:00

Scott Blackwood is a native of Austin, Texas whose award-winning collection of stories, In the Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001.

While on a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship in 2005, he completed We Agreed To Meet Just Here, a novel set in the Deep Eddy neighborhood of Austin. Published by New Issues Press, Blackwood's work won the 2007 Associated Writing Program's (AWP) Prize for the Novel. It 2009 it received the Texas Institute of Letters Award for Best Work of Fiction, and in 2010 We Agreed To Meet Just Here was named a finalist for the prestigious PEN USA Literary Award for fiction.

His short fiction has appeared in the Gettysburg Review, American Short Fiction, Boston Review, Southwest Review, and Other Voices, and the title story from his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review's "First Chapters" website.

Blackwood has also won two Texas Commission on the Arts Fellowships and been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. He holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Texas State University and now teaches in and directs the MFA Creative Writing Program at Roosevelt University in Chicago.

Gale Walden

2010-03-09T13:07:00.001-08:00

Gale Renee Walden is the author of a poetry book Same Blue Chevy, published by Tia Chucha Press. She writes and teaches in three genres. Her fiction has appeared in The Antioch Review, Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Fiction, and other magazines. Her short story, “Men I Don’t Talk to Anymore,” won the 2003 Boston Review Fiction Prize.

She has written political commentary for the Huffingtonpost and nonfiction essays for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Salon.com, Crab Orchard Review, and Another Chicago Magazine, as well as book reviews for the Harvard Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, The Chicago Sun-Times and The Chronicle of Higher Education. Gale is a member of the National Book Critic Circle.

She is currently writing about ghost towns and odd museums in the United States.

Frank Rogaczewski

2009-01-15T15:57:00.000-08:00

Dr. Rogaczewski received his Ph.D. in Creative Writing (Poetry) at the University of Illinois at Chicago. His poetry has been published in Notre Dame Review, Denver Quarterly, ACM, Samizdat, BlueSky Review, Oyez Review and elsewhere.

He’s also one of the featured poets in Vectors: New Poetics (Writers Club Press). His collection of prose poems, The Fate of Humanity in Verse (American Letters & Commentary, Inc.) is due in spring 2009.

Regina Buccola

2009-01-15T15:56:00.000-08:00

Dr. Buccola received her Ph.D. at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her poetry has appeared in the Journal of Kentucky Studies and New Growth Arts Review.

Her chapbook, Conjuring, is forthcoming spring 2009 from Finishing Line Press. She is also the author of Fairies, Fractious Women, and the Old Faith: Fairy Lore in Early Modern British Drama and Culture (Susquehanna University Press, 2006).

Lisa Stolley

2009-01-15T15:54:00.000-08:00

Dr. Stolley received her M.A. in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in English and Fiction Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Florida Review, Hawaii Review, Washington Review and Scribner's Best of the Fiction Workshops.

Her nonfiction has appeared in The Chicago Reader, Greenwich Review, and Today's Chicago Woman. She has received numerous awards, including a grant from the Illinois Arts Council.

Peggy Shinner

2009-01-15T15:52:00.000-08:00

Peggy Shinner's essays and stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Colorado Review, The Southern Review, Daedalus, The Gettysburg Review, Fourth Genre, TriQuarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Bloom, River Styx, and others. One of her stories, “Jack’s Things, ” was selected as one of the 100 Other Distinguished Stories in the Best American Short Stories 2007. She's been awarded two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships, residencies at the Ucross and Ragdale Foundations, and several Pushcart Prize Special Mentions. She received her M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College. Currently, she's at work on a book of essays about the body.

Janet Wondra

2009-01-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

Janet Wondra received her M.F.A. in poetry, as well as a Ph.D. in American Literature and Film Theory from Louisiana State University. Her poetry and creative nonfiction have appeared in The Southern Review, Denver Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, and The Christian Science Monitor as well as in Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction and In the Middle of the Middle West: Literary Nonfiction from the Heartland.

Wondra is also award-winning film and video maker. She has been the recepient of a writers’ residency at Yaddo and a Ragsdale Artist’s Fellowship.