School of Writing Directors and Staff
Kathleen Driskell
Chair, School of Creative and Professional Writing
Louisville, Kentucky
kdriskell@spalding.edu
Karen Mann
Administrative Director
San Jose, California
Mann is co-founder and administrative director of the low-residency Masters of Fine Arts in Writing, where she puts her varied past career experiences to good use. She has published two novels: The Woman of La Mancha and The Saved Man. She has an MA in Higher Education Administration and an MA with creative writing concentration from University of Louisville. Her bachelor's degree in English is from Indiana University. Karen’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in several anthologies. She was the managing editor for The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press from 1986-2016. She is the recipient of two grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and has served as a grant reader for the Indiana Arts Council. After having lived in the Indiana most of her life, Karen now lives near San Jose, Calif. Visit Mann's website.
Lynnell Edwards
Associate Program Director, Poetry Faculty
Louisville, KY
ledwards02@spalding.edu
Katy Yocom
Associate Director for Communications and Alumni Relations
Louisville, Kentucky
Yocom writes about animals, the environment, love, and loss. Her debut novel, Three Ways to Disappear, won the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, the First Horizon Award, and the Micro Press Award and was named a Barnes & Noble Top Indie Favorite. Other awards include the Al Smith Fellowship for artistic excellence from the Kentucky Arts Council and grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, LitHub, American Way in-flight magazine, Salon, Necessary Fiction, Terrain.org, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. She serves on the board of directors of the Kentucky Women Writers Conference, co-hosts Spalding at 21c reading series, and holds an MFA in Writing from Spalding University as well as a degree in journalism from the University of Kansas. Visit Yocom's website.
Ellyn Lichvar
Coordinator of Admissions and Independent Study
Louisville, Kentucky
elichvar@spalding.edu
Lichvar is the managing editor of The Louisville Review and is a poetry alum of Spalding’s MFA in Writing program. She was recently awarded an artist enrichment grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in DIAGRAM, BOAAT, The Journal, The Minnesota Review, Whiskey Island, Typo and others.
Jason Hill
School of Writing Faculty
Dianne Aprile
Creative nonfiction
Kirkland, Washington
Aprile is the author and editor of nonfiction books, including two collaborations with fine-art photographer Julius Friedman. Her essay “Silence” appears in the anthology This I Believe, Kentucky. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies. Aprile was the recipient of the Al Smith artist fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council and grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She is a recipient of a Hedgebrook Women Writers Residency and Washington State Artist Trust Writers Fellowship. As a journalist, she was on a team that won a staff Pulitzer Prize for the Louisville Courier-Journal and was an award-winning columnist. She is currently working on a family memoir. She holds an MFA from Spalding University.
Beth Ann Bauman
Writing for children & young adults
New York, New York
Bauman is the author of the short story collection Beautiful Girls and the young-adult novels Rosie and Skate, a New York Times editors’ choice and Booklist’s top ten first novels for youth, and Jersey Angel, selected by Publishers Weekly, Boston Globe, and The Horn Book as a best summer book. She has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts. She earned her MFA from the University of Arizona. Visit Bauman's website.
Julie Brickman
Fiction
Laguna Beach, California

Larry Brenner
Screenwriting, playwriting
Plainview, New York

K.L. Cook
Fiction
Ames, Iowa

Leslie Daniels
Fiction
Ithaca, New York
Daniels’s first novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, was translated into four languages. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review and The Florida Review, among others. She was the Walton Award visiting writer at the University of Arkansas. She worked previously as a literary agent in New York. She has served as the fiction editor for Green Mountains Review. She is on faculty at The Squaw Valley Writers Conference. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College. Visit Daniels' website.
Debra Kang Dean
Poetry
Bloomington, Indiana

Gabriel Jason Dean
Playwriting, screenwriting
Brooklyn, New York

Pete Duval
Fiction
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Kirby Gann
Fiction
Louisville, Kentucky
Gann is the author of Ghosting, a Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly and Shelf Unbound, which has been translated into French. He is the author of the novels The Barbarian Parade and Our Napoleon in Rags. The latter was a finalist for the Kentucky Award in Literature and was named one of the top five novels published in 2005 by Frontiers Magazine. His stories have appeared in Ploughshares and Post Road. He is series editor of Bookmarked, a line of books in which authors wrestle with a book that has been fundamental to their writing, and contributed the first volume in the series, on John Knowles’ A Separate Peace. He holds an MFA from Vermont College. Visit Gann's website.
Lamar Giles
Writing for Children & Young Adults
Harrisonburg, Virginia

Rachel Harper
Fiction
Los Angeles, California
Harper is the author of two novels: This Side of Providence and Brass Ankle Blues, a Borders’ Original Voices Award finalist and Target Breakout Book. Her work has been anthologized in Black Cool: One Thousand Streams of Blackness and Mending the World: Stories of Family by Contemporary Black Writers. Her one-act play, “Bluffing on a Queens Playground,” was part of the New Black Playwrights Festival in Atlanta, and a television pilot she co-wrote with filmmaker Sam Zalutsky, based on a novel by award-winning author Jacqueline Woodson, was a Sundance Institute Screenwriters Lab finalist. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony and the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts. A graduate of Brown University, she earned her Master of Arts degree from the University of Southern California. Visit Harper's website.
Edie Hemingway
Writing for children & young adults
Frederick, Maryland

Leah Henderson
Writing for children & young adults
Washington, D.C.

Roy Hoffman
Creative nonfiction, fiction
Fairhope, Alabama
Hoffman, a novelist and journalist, has worked as a professional writer for more than twenty-five years. His latest book is the novel Come Landfall. He is the author of Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations, the essay collection Back Home: Journeys through Mobile, and the novels Chicken Dreaming Corn and Almost Family, which won the Lillian Smith Award for fiction. His essays have appeared in Newsday andSouthern Living and have been anthologized in Best American Essays 2003. He was a long-time staff writer for the Mobile Press-Register and has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times. He received his MFA in Writing from Spalding University. Visit Hoffman's website.
Silas House
Fiction
Lexington, Kentucky

Jason Howard
Creative Nonfiction, Professional Writing
Lexington, Kentucky

Fenton Johnson
Creative nonfiction, fiction
Tucson, Arizona

Erin Keane
Poetry, Professional Writing
Louisville, Kentucky

Helena Kriel
Screenwriting
Calabasas, California

Robin Lippincott
Fiction, creative nonfiction
Boston, Massachusetts

Douglas Manuel
Poetry
Longbeach, California
Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and a MFA from Butler University, where he was the Managing Editor of Booth a Journal. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. He has served as the Poetry Editor for Gold Line Press as well as one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His poems are featured on Poetry Foundation's website and have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, Rhino, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. His first full length collection of poems, Testify, was released by Red Hen Press in 2017. Visit Manuel's website.
Charles Maynard
Professional Writing
Louisville, Kentucky

Nancy McCabe
Creative nonfiction, fiction
Bradford, Pennsylvania
McCabe is the author of five books: a novel, Following Disasters, and four works of creative nonfiction, including From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood, After the Flashlight Man: A Memoir of Awakening, and the memoirs Meeting Sophie: A Memoir of Adoption and Crossing the Blue Willow Bridge: A Journey to My Daughter’s Birthplace in China. She has received a Pushcart Prize and been listed six times in the notable sections of Houghton Mifflin’s Best American series. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazine and journals. She also received a fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Arkansas and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska. Visit McCabe's website.
Eleanor Morse
Fiction
Peaks Island, Maine
Morse has published three novels: Chopin’s Garden, An Unexpected Forest, which won the 2008 Independent Book Publisher’s Award for best regional fiction and the 2008 Maine Literary Award, and White Dog Fell from the Sky, which was a Publishers Weekly Pick of the Week. A nonfiction book, Over the Mountains: Two Tibetan Girls Journey Toward Hope, was written in collaboration with two young women from Tibet and describes their escape into Nepal. She has received grants from the Maine Humanities Council. She received a Master of Arts in teaching from Yale University and a Master of Fine Arts in writing from Vermont College. Visit Morse's website.
Lesléa Newman
Writing for children & young adults
Northampton, Massachusetts

Kira Obolensky
Playwriting
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Elaine Neil Orr
Creative nonfiction, fiction
Raleigh, North Carolina

Jeremy Paden
Translation
Lexington, Kentucky

Greg Pape
Poetry
Frankfort, Kentucky

John Pipkin
Fiction
Austin, Texas
John Pipkin’s newest novel is The Blind Astronomer’s Daughter. His critically acclaimed debut, Woodsburner, was awarded the First Novel Prize by the New York Center for Fiction, the Fiction Award from the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and the Texas Institute of Letters Steven Turner First Novel Prize and was named one of the best books of 2009 by The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Christian Science Monitor. He was awarded fellowships at the Harry Ransom Center and from The Dobie Paisano Fellowship program. He received his PhD in British Literature from Rice University. Visit Pipkin's website.
Bruce Marshall Romans
Screenwriting, Playwriting
Los Angeles, CA

Eric Schmiedl
Playwriting
Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Charlie Schulman
Playwriting, screenwriting
Washington, DC

Maggie Smith
Poetry
Columbus, Ohio

Jeanie Thompson
Poetry
Montgomery, Alabama

Jacinda Townsend
Fiction
Bloomington, Indiana

Neela Vaswani
Fiction
New York, New York
Vaswani is the author of the short story collection, Where the Long Grass Bends and the memoir You Have Given Me a Country. She is co-author of the middle-grade novel Same Sun Here (with Silas House). She is the recipient of the American Book Award, an O. Henry Prize and the ForeWord Book of the Year gold medal, as well as a Grammy and an Audie Award for her audio book narration. She has an MFA from Vermont College and a PhD in cultural studies. An education activist in India and the United States, Vaswani founded the Storylines Project with the New York Public Library. Visit Vaswani's website.
Rebecca Walker
Creative nonfiction
Los Angeles, California
Walker is the author of the bestselling memoirs Black, White and Jewish and Baby Love, the novel Adé: A Love Story, and the editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, One Big Happy Family, and Black Cool. Her writing has appeared online at CNN, The Root, Babble, and The Huffington Post, and in Marie Claire, Real Simple, Newsweek, and The Washington Post. A fellow at the LA Institute for the Humanities at USC, she is a recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo and the Alex Award from the American Library Association. Rebecca holds a BA from Yale and an MFA from Spalding. Visit Walker's website.
Keith S. Wilson
Poetry, Professional Writing
Chicago, Illinois

Sam Zalutsky
Screenwriting
New York, New York
