Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing Faculty and Directors
Kathleen Driskell
Chair, Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing
Louisville, Kentucky
kdriskell@spalding.edu
Karen Mann
Administrative Director
Loveland, Colorado
kmann@spalding.edu
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 Phillip H. McMath Post-Publication Book Award, 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. With Kathleen Driskell, she co-edited the anthology Creativity & Compassion: Spalding Writers Celebrate Twenty Years. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, LitHub, American Way in-flight magazine, Salon, Necessary Fiction, Terrain.org, The Louisville Review, and elsewhere. She is a former member of 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
Programs Manager
Louisville, Kentucky
In addition to her role as programs manager for the School of Writing, Ellyn is the managing editor of the school’s biannual literary journal, Good River Review. In this role she oversees the production of each issue from start to finish, working with Spalding students and graduate assistants as they read editorially each semester. Ellyn holds a BA in English from the University of Louisville and an MFA in Writing (poetry) from Spalding University. Her own poems have been published in the journals DIAGRAM, BOAAT, Meridian, The Journal, and others. In addition to poetry, Ellyn loves hound dogs, summertime, Audrey Hepburn movies, bourbon, gardening, good food, and spending time with her people.
Renée Culver
Student Services Coordinator
Louisville, Kentucky
Renée Culver is the student services coordinator for Spalding’s School of Writing. She is an alumna of Spalding’s MFA program and holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Kentucky. She also teaches part-time in the English department at Bellarmine University.
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.
Larry Brenner
Screenwriting, playwriting
Plainview, New York

Julie Brickman
Fiction
Laguna Beach, California

Wiley Cash
Fiction
Wilmington, North Carolina

Felicia Rose Chavez
Creative Nonfiction
Colorado Springs, Colorado

K.L. Cook
Fiction
Ames, Iowa

Debra Kang Dean
Poetry
Bloomington, Indiana

Gabriel Jason Dean
Playwriting, screenwriting
Brooklyn, New York

Kirby Gann
Fiction
Louisville, Kentucky

Ellen Hagan
Fiction
New York, New York

Rachel M. Harper
Fiction
Los Angeles, California

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 Kyle Howard
Creative Nonfiction, Professional Writing
Lexington, Kentucky

Angela Jackson-Brown
Fiction
Eaton, Indiana

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.
Lee Martin
Fiction, Creative Nonfiction
Grove City, Ohio

Charles Maynard
Professional Writing
Louisville, Kentucky

Nancy McCabe
Creative nonfiction, fiction
Bradford, Pennsylvania

Karen Salyer McElmurray
Nonfiction, Fiction
Bradford, Pennsylvania

Eleanor Morse
Fiction
Peaks Island, Maine

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

Charlie Schulman
Playwriting, screenwriting
Washington, DC

Maggie Smith
Poetry
Columbus, Ohio

Jeanie Thompson
Poetry
Montgomery, Alabama

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
