English Graduate Student Profiles

Rachel Bell

Rachel Bell is a first-year literature PhD student specializing in disability studies, particularly in twentieth-century American literature. For her bachelor’s, she double majored in creative writing and political science at Murray State University. She obtained her master’s in English from Mississippi State University. Her thesis, “Here I Am, Like I Am: Disability in Twentieth-Century Southern Literature” examines disability in three hallmarks of southern literature: Willian Faulkner’s Sanctuary, the short stories of Flannery O’Connor, and Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Grace Borcherding

Grace Borcherding holds a BA and MA in English from Southeastern Louisiana University and is currently a second year PhD literature student. Her research interests are primarily children's literature, 20th century literature and pop culture studies.

Madison Brown

Madison (PhD, Creative Writing) is a writer and editor whose work can be found in Little Patuxent Review, JMWW, Rain Taxi and elsewhere. Her creative and critical interests include queer studies, contemporary literature (Appalachian/Southern), and short fiction. She has an MA in English from Mississippi State University and MFA in Creative Writing from University of Central Florida.

Rheagan Case

Rheagan Case is studying in the Ph.D. program for Creative Writing at USM and is interested in short story and poetry writing. She holds an MA and BA in English from Mississippi State University. While at MSU, she had the pleasure of editing for the Jabberwock and Streetcar, two of the university's journals.

Holly Frey

Holly Frey is a graduate student in the hybrid MA/PhD program in English Literature at the University of Southern Mississippi. She has a B.A. in English from William Carey University. Her hobbies include quilting, gardening, and reading. She has lived in southern Mississippi for most of her life.

Madison Hankins

Madison Hankins is a second year M.A. student in the Creative Writing Fiction Program. She received her B.A. in English - Creative Writing from Mississippi University for Women in 2023, where she was the Editor-in-Chief for Merge Literary Journal and The Dilettanti Creative Journal. Her creative interests include magical realism, philosophical fiction, and thrillers.

MD Mehdi Habib Khan

MD Mehdi Habib Khan, a Bangladeshi Ph.D. student in literature, focuses on gender and sexuality in children’s and young adult literature. Along with teaching World Literature and Composition courses, he serves as the Senior Editorial Assistant for "The Southern Quarterly." Mehdi also hosts a literary discussion series, SpeakEasy, for English graduate students at USM. He collaborates with visual artists as a researcher and writer, and their works have been exhibited in multiple galleries. Fluent in four languages, he writes poems in Bangla, his mother tongue, as well as in English. In his leisure time, Mehdi enjoys exploring Hattiesburg’s food and bar culture.

Emilee Kinney

Emilee Kinney hails from the small farm-town of Kenockee, Michigan, near one of the Great Lakes: Lake Huron. She received her MFA from SIU Carbondale and is currently pursuing her PhD in Creative Writing. Her poems has been published in THE SHORE, Passages North, West Trestle Review, Cider Press Review, SWWIM and elsewhere. Kinney serves as an Associate Editor for The Mississippi Review. Her creative interests include the power of place/nature, Irish folklore, magical surrealism, and feminism in rural spaces.

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Bella McGill

Bella McGill is a second year PhD student in the Creative Writing - Fiction program at the University of Southern Mississippi. She received her MFA in Popular Fiction and Publishing from Emerson College in 2022. Her interests include young adult literature and Shakespeare and fairytale retellings. Her debut novel, Princess and the Pauper, is forthcoming from Wild Ink Publishing in June of 2025.

Kerem Topcu

A Ph.D student from Turkey with a Circassian background, Kerem Topcu received his BA from Istanbul University and MA from Yeditepe University. An avid reader of literary theory; his interests mainly lie in post-structuralism, psychoanalytic literary criticism, transgressive fiction, post-colonialism, and modernism. He is also the English Language editor of Journal of Caucasian Studies (JOCAS), an internationally peer-reviewed journal that chiefly publishes articles about the literature, sociology, geography, and politics of the Caucasus. Also a translator, the works Kerem translated range from Bram Stoker to H. P. Lovecraft.