English Graduate Student Profiles

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	Clayton Bradshaw Clayton Bradshaw writes fiction and nonfiction around the hard truths that define our lives. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University. His work can be found in Barren Magazine; Collateral; r.kv.r.y journal; The Deadly Writers Patrol; and War, Literature, and the Arts.
	Corinne Dekkers Corinne J. Dekkers' writing has appeared in The Carolina Quarterly, Product Magazine, Eohippus Labs, Tarot Manifest, among others, and has been adapted for chapbook, symposium, ritual, and performance. In winter and summer of 2020, she was a writer-in-residence on the banks of the Pascagoula River in southern Mississippi at Twisted Run Retreat. She received her MFA at Naropa University where she was the Leslie Scalapino and Robert Creeley Awards recipient. She is a current PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers and an Associate Editor of Mississippi Review.
	Gerard Duncan Jr.  Gerard Duncan Jr. has been published in Northwest Boulevard. Originally from Walla Walla, WA, he is currently working on his PhD in Creative Writing at USM. He holds an MFA from Eastern Washington University. His academic interests include modernism, surrealism, and the relationship between music and poetry.
	Rachael Fowler Rachael Fowler has been published in Prime Number Magazine, Deep South Magazine, and has work forthcoming in The Literary Review. She was a finalist in the Glimmer Train Short Story Award for New Writers, was shortlisted for The Masters Review Summer Short Story Award, won a 2019 Emerging Artist Award, and was awarded a Vermont Studio Center Artist’s Grant for a 2021 residency. She currently serves as Associate Editor of Mississippi Review and studies Modernism, Contemporary Literature, and Ekphrastic Prose. Find out more at her website: https://www.rachaelfowlerteachingportfolio.com/
	Karlie Herndon  Karlie Herndon is a Ph. D. student studying children’s and young adult literature. Her focal areas include Victorian literature and the study of gender and sexuality. She has an M.A. in English from the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and she received a B.A. in Creative Writing and a B. S. in Psychology from Virginia Tech.
	Karla Keffer Karla Keffer is in the Ph.D. program for fiction writing. Her fiction and poetry have been published in the Rappahanock Review, Moon City Review, and Smartish Pace. She is the creator and publisher of the zine “The Real Ramona” and the forthcoming comic “Charm City.”
	Jamie Logan Jamie Logan (PhD, Creative Writing) recently completed her MFA at the University of Memphis. While at Memphis, she served as Managing Editor of The Pinch and won awards such as the Fiction Concentration Award, the Ruth & Henry Loeb Scharff Scholarship, and the Outstanding Graduate Student Award. Her work can be found in the New Ohio Review and various news sources such as Tulane’s New Wave online magazine.
	Corley Longmire Corley Longmire is a second-year masters student whose academic interests include queer studies, magical realism, Old English literature, and contemporary literature. Having spent most of her life in rural Mississippi, she draws on personal experiences while also playing with themes such as grief, memory, and the bizarre in her fiction. She previously served as one of the fiction editors of Product and has worked on Mississippi Review.
	Marisa Mills Marisa Mills's fiction has been published by Hydra Publications, Wicked East Press, Ethereal Tales, and Fickle Muses. She earned her BA and MA at the University of South Alabama. Her academic interests include the High and Late Middle Ages, Arthuriana, ecocriticism, and Welsh mythology.
	Apoorva Mittal Apoorva Mittal (she/they) is a queer author from northern India. She has a MFA from Sarah Lawrence College. Now she homes in Hattiesburg, working on a PhD in Creative Writing (Fiction) at University of Southern Mississippi. Their words can be found in Carve and News That Matters Not. Before becoming a writer and teacher, they dabbled with codes and computers and created assistive aids for the visually impaired. Their research can be found in 3rd International Conference on Recent Advances in Information Technology, IEEE.
	Matthew Moniz Originally from the DC area, Matthew Moniz holds an MFA and MA from McNeese State University and a BA from Notre Dame. Matt’s work has appeared in Crab Orchard Review and has been awarded the SCMLA Poetry Prize, and he has participated in workshops with the Community of Writers and Tin House. His poetry is metaphysical, anthropological, neoclassical, and it’s driven by too much curiosity.
	Hannah Mummert Hannah Mummert is a graduate student in the Children's Literature program. Her research interests include children's and young adult literature, fairy tales and their retellings, British literature, and popular culture studies. Her hobbies include playing video games and critically watching Disney movies.
	Ian Pittman Ian Pittman is a first year in the MA/PhD combo program in literature. Broadly, his interests include Modernism, Southern Literature, and the interdisciplinary study of Christianity and literature. He has presented at several regional and national conferences including MPA, SAMLA, CEA, and with the Southeastern Conference on Christianity and Literature later this year. Ian received his B.A. with a double major in English and Religion from William Carey University where he completed an Honors Thesis on the short stories of Flannery O’Connor. Ian is also a lifelong violinist, pianist, and dabbler in various other instruments.
	Kayla Schreiber Kayla Schreiber is a Ph.D. Student in English at the University of Southern Mississippi, where she is a graduate instructor and the current Course Coordinator for Online World Literature. Schreiber’s research interests—nineteenth century American Literature, Critical Race Theory, and Women and Gender Studies—have led to her two current projects: an exhibit on Frederick Douglass for the Colored Conventions Digital Archival that is currently under review, and a co-authored essay, “Women (Re)reading Milton: Gendered Reflections on an All-Day Reading of Paradise Lost,” set to be published in an edited collection, titled Women (Re)writing Milton.
	Kevin Thomason Kevin Thomason’s work can be read in 32 Poems, Arkansas Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. Originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he has lived and taught in Canada and South Korea. He holds an MFA from McNeese State University. His academic interests include modernism and 20th-century poetry.
	John Tobin John Constantine Tobin (PhD, Creative Writing - Poetry) grew up in the woods of Maryland just outside of Annapolis. He earned his MFA at The University of Baltimore and BA at The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. His poetry has been published in Welter Literary Journal and the Café Shapiro Anthology. He's written and designed a poetry book titled The Order in Which They Went, which served as the thesis to his MFA. He most recently spent two years as a Co-Founder and the Narrative Designer at Merfolk Games in Shanghai. He's passionate about the roles of family and the environment in contemporary poetry, historic preservation, the intersection video games and literature, and swimming in the cold northern Atlantic waters of coastal Maine.
	Elizabeth Trueblood Elizabeth Trueblood’s (PhD, Creative Writing) fiction has previously appeared in Verdad Magazine, Blackberry Winter, and Windmill, among others. She received her BA in English from Northern Michigan University in 2017 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Minnesota State University-Mankato in 2020. Her creative and critical interests include speculative fiction, feminist literature, and pop-cultural influence and context.
	Brooke Turner Brooke Turner’s recent fiction has been featured in South 85 Journal and White Wall Review. In addition to fiction, her essay, “The Milkman,” appeared in the print publication, Quills & Pixels. She recently presented her short story, “Woman Friend,” at the 2019 Arkansas Philological Conference where she also served as a moderator for a creative writing panel. She is the Editor of Product Magazine and also volunteers her time as an Assistant Editor with the Mississippi Review.
	Crystal Veronie Crystal Veronie is a Doctoral Candidate in English Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her dissertation project, “Resistive Embodiment and Mid-Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers,” focuses on such writers as Mary Shelley, Dorothy Wordsworth, Sara Coleridge, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and George Eliot and the ways that these women and others respond to changes in science and medicine that pathologize women’s bodies and redefine gender roles. She interest in individual resistance and Indigenous-American Literature have also led to the recent publication of her essay, “When My Hands Are Empty / I Will Be Full’: Visualizing Two-Spirit Bodies in Chrystos’s Not Vanishing” in Studies in American Indian Literatures (SAIL). To view her full CV and more, please visit https://crystalveronie.com.
	Megan Wilkinson Megan Wilkinson is a first-year creative writing student and is interested in exploring how the physical and psychological interactions between people and their environment can translate into verse. She writes southern persona poetry that invites social progressivism through stream-of-consciousness narration, and her poems have been published in Coastlines.