MFA alum Emily Holland was just awarded the 2025 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House and her debut collection of poetry, Notifications On, will be published in January 2027.

Alum David Leftwich has been selected as the Winner of the 2025 Omnidawn 1st/2nd Poetry Book Contest by poet Daniela Molnar. 

Patricia Coral’s (MFA, 2022) thesis collection Women Surrounded by Water was longlisted for the 2024 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Nico Penaranda (MFA, 2022) published four poems in The Mid-Atlantic Review. 

Jamie Hennick’s (MFA, 2024) review of Bojan Louis’s 2022 short story collection Sinking Bell, written for a graduate course, was placed with Colorado Review.

Moa Short (MFA, 2024) published the story “Deficiency” in The Rumpus; “Recorded,” Sonora Review (online), a poem from poetry workshop; “To Protect the Living,” Atticus Review (online), flash CNF from Sandra Beasley's workshop; “The One,” in The Perch; and new work in The Cut, as well as work forthcoming in The New Republic. 

Jordan Pérez (MFA, 2019) won the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for Santa Tarantula, a searing and beautiful collection of poetry published in 2024 from Notre Dame Press. 

Caroline Hockenbury (MFA, 2023) was featured in Attached to the Living World, an upcoming ecopoetry anthology (Trinity University Press), alongside major voices like Ada Limón and Natasha Trethewey.

Bailey Blumenstock (MFA, 2920) published her debut poetry chapbook Leaving the Religion of Self-Harm with Cathexis Northwest Press.

Jane Palmer (MFA, current), wrote the creative nonfiction piece, "The Head that Floated Away," which was published in Awakenings: Story of the Body and Consciousness (2023). [print] Jane also published "The Limitations of a Statute," an essay, in Queer Victimology (2023). [print]. Finally, Jane alsopublished three poems in 2023 in the Querencia Press Quarterly Anthology: “Orion Shoots First,”That Night at the Bar by the Sea,” “The Yard Sale,” “Lonely Together,” and “Instructions for Repairing the Broken.” [print]

Fatima Haidari (MFA, 2024) published (attributed both to her and "with" David Keplinger as collaborator) a selection of English poems from the original Farsi by Jalal al-din Rumi in Beltway Quarterly in 2023. Fatima also published a selection by Rumi in Rowayatin 2023.

Isabella Salcedo (MFA, 2025), has been named the new Oral History Intern at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The museum writes: "The Oral History Intern will support the National Museum of African American History and Culture by participating in the Social Justice Oral History Conversations Project. The project is designed to capture intergenerational oral histories from African American veteran and youth activists. Our Oral History Initiative is dedicated to documenting, interpreting, and preserving the African American experience through the medium of oral history."

Oyin Shoola (MFA, 2024) published her Kermit Moyer Prize winning thesis as a collection called Face Me I Face Youin September 2024.

Valzhyna Mort (MFA, 2011), was winner of the 2020 Griffin Prize for Poetry—a prestigious international award of $50,000 for one collection published in English in the previous year. A professor at Cornell, Valzhyna received a Guggenheim last year, as well as the 2022 Rilke Prize. Her third collection is Music For the Dead and Resurrected.

Anastasia Stelse (MFA, 2013) has placed under contract her poetry book Haunch High Snow (a revised version of her AU thesis. It is forthcoming from Pierian Springs Press in November 2024. Her second collection has also been picked up by Pierian Springs and is scheduled to be published next year (2025).

Richard Cytowic (MFA 2014) has published a new work of creative nonfiction with MIT Press. Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age: Coping with Digital Distraction and Sensory Overloadwas published on October 1, 2024. Cytowic is the author of many books on the subject of synaesthesia as well as brain health. His publisher describes the project as “An award-winning neurologist on the Stone-Age roots of our screen addictions, and what to do about them.” Oliver Sacks said of Cytowic that he “changed the way we think of the human brain.” Richard is a medical doctor who lists his MFA alongside his MD on the covers of his books.

Karan Madhok’s (MFA, 2019) debut novel, A Beautiful Decay, based in his graduate thesis at American University, was published by India’s Aleph Book Company in 2022. Aleph has contracted Madhok for a new book of creative nonfiction on sports journalism and a third book now under contract. 

Sylvia Jones (MFA, 2021) published Television Fathers (poems based on her thesis in our MFA program) with Chicago’s Meekling Press in October 2024 and was a featured presenter at the Baltimore Book Fair.

Paula Whyman (MFA, 2002) published Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, a memoir, in 2024. The publisher is Hachette. Will publish BAD NATURALIST: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop (forthcoming from Hachette in January 2025).

Virginia (Ginnie) Hartman's(MFA 2002)The Marsh Queen, a novel, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2022. Virginia is an AU MFA alum: she studied under Kermit Moyer. This is her debut novel.

Patricia Coral (MFA, 2022), won the Editor’s Prize for Women Surrounded by Water from Ohio State University Press. It is her thesis from spring 2022. The collection of essays and poems, with photographs of Coral’s ancestors on Puerto Rico, will appear in October, 2022.

Jenny Molberg (MFA, 2010) is Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Director of Creative Writing Programs at Central Missouri University. Her new poetry collection, In the Court of No Record, published by Louisiana State University Press in 2023, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award in spring 2024.

Yohanca Delgado (MFA, 2019) collaborated with Janelle Monae on a story published in The Memory Librarian (Harper/Voyager 2022). She was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford 2021-2023. Her work has been published in the New York Times magazine, Time magazine, the Paris Review, and many others. She was a 2021 Emerging Critic for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her short story “Little Widow from the Capital” was selected by Pulitzer-prize winner, Andrew Sean Greer, for inclusion in the 2022 Best American Short Stories and performed live on Symphony Stage in New York. 

Lindsay Forbes Brown(MFA 2023) has published stories in Cimarron Review, Hobart, and Sonora Review. 

Lauren Johson (MFA 2017) has sold her first novel, The West Facade, a historical piece based on Paris in the year 1348, to Santa Fe Writers Project. Publishers Marketplace has announced it is due out in spring 2026. 

Chet’la Sebree(MFA 2013) is Assistant Professor of English at George Washington University and the author of the following poetry collections: Blue Opening; Field Study, winner of the 2020 Academy of American Poets Award, and Mistress, nominated for the NAACP Image Award. She received fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts, DC COmmission for the Arts and Humanities, MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and others.

Andrew Bertaina (MFA 2009) is the author of the book length essay, Ethan Hakwe & Me: The Before Trilogy (Barrelhouse 2025) as well as the essay collection, The Body is a Temporary Gathering Place (Autofocus 2024) and the short-story collection, One Person Away from You (Moon City Press Award Winner 2021).