Reading Room
Alumni of the U of A’s Creative Writing MFA program are out and publishing.
Robert Reck
The Wet Wound: An Elegy in Essays
by Maddie Norris ’20 | University of Georgia Press
This debut essay collection, likening mourning to wound care, is inspired by the grief the author experienced after her father’s death when she was 17.
Take My Name But Say It Slow: Essays
by Thomas Dai ’17 | W. W. Norton & Company
A luminous memoir in essays that explores place, identity and what it means to grow up queer and Asian in the American South.
Autobiography of the [Undead]
by Emilio Carrero ’19 | University of Georgia Press
An autobiographical mosaic built from fragments of books, media, thoughts and conversations —deconstructed, reassembled and reframed.
![Autobiography of the [Undead]](/sites/default/files/styles/az_small/public/2025-05/Reading_Room_6.png.webp?itok=lv5EtBXh)
Origin Stories
By Corinna Vallianatos ’99 | Graywolf Press
This meditative collection dramatizes the mother-child bond, the self-destruction of young womanhood, the thrill and bewilderment of friendship, and the power of place.
The Tilling
by Matthew Morris ’21 | Seneca Review Books
Exploring questions of race, identity, family history and love, this book was selected for the 2024 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize by Wendy Walters.
Satellite: Essays on Fatherhood and Home, Near and Far
by Simmons Buntin ’09 | Trinity University Press
A series of essays written over nearly two decades that dives into the idea of belonging — in place, time, family and community.
