Join us in celebrating the work of our graduating second-year MFA students! Readers will include Gussie Beaver, Rose Darline Darbouze, Tim Fab-Eme, Alaina Johansson, Chibuike Ogbonnaya, Jamjun Rorsoongnern, and Taylor Thomas. This is a free but ticketed event. [Click here] to reserve your free tickets today.
Gussie Beaver received her B.A. in English from Duquesne University in 2022, Summa Cum Laude. She was the 2021 recipient of the O’Donnell Undergraduate Research Award and the Carroll Creative Writing Scholarship. This enabled her to attend the Elk Rivers Writer’s workshop in Livingston, Montana. She was a Duquesne University Writing Center consultant. Gussie was featured in Duquesne’s alumni magazine Much Ado and was the treasurer of the Duquesne Poet’s Society. Her work has been published multiple times in the literary magazine Lexicon. She is interested in the personification of animals and objects and experimenting with formation. Her favorite poets are Emily Dickinson and e. e. cummings.
Rose Darline Darbouze is from Béraud, Haiti. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing and is a recipient of a grant from the Graduate School Professional Development Awards at the University of Notre Dame. She was the 2022-2023 Sparks Editorial Fellow at Notre Dame Review, and her work is forthcoming in the Birmingham Poetry Review.
Tim Fab-Eme worked as a field engineer at Shell's largest integrated gas plant in West Africa, where he gained insight into the destructive mechanisms that drive the fossil fuel industry. His poetry, which centers on social and environmental justice, has been published in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, South Korea, and other countries. He co-edited the 2023 issue of Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice, received a 2022 Cove Park writer-in-residence on climate action funding, and the inaugural Center for Social Concerns International Justice Poetry Fellowship.
Alaina Johansson lives in Indiana with dogs, Brigit and Søren. Previous work is published in Early American Literature, Psaltery & Lyre, and 3:AM Magazine. An MFA student studying Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, Johansson works as an editorial assistant at Action Books.
Chibuike Ogbonnaya writes stories that explore humanity, gender and sexuality. They obtained combined honors in English and Literary Studies and History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Their unpublished collection of thematically linked short stories featuring women, feminine gay men, and gender queer was a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize. Chibuike is an alumni of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in Green Mountains Review, The Forge Literary Magazine, Taint Taint Taint Magazine, Stellium, Akuko Magazine, Black Femme Co, and elsewhere.
Jamjun Rorsoongnern (she/they) is a ลูกครึ่ง writer exploring burlesque, the grotesque, and poetic protest. Her writing queers religious aesthetics to indulge in divine sinfulness and disidentification, particularly in relation to woman-ish-hood. Jam interned at Ballantine Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, as the 2023 Nicholas Sparks Summer Fellow and served as editor-in-chief of Re:Visions for their 20th-anniversary edition. Following her graduation from Notre Dame’s MFA program, she plans to return to San Diego (occupied land of the Kumeyaay) to support her mother’s flower shop, watch baseball, and read for fun.
Taylor Thomas (she/her) is a biracial emerging writer from Indiana. Her work has been published in Bayou Magazine, Salt Hill Journal, The Journal, So to Speak Journal, and many more. She was the runner-up for the 2024 Nicholas Sparks Prize Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in South Bend, Indiana with her husband, Herschel, and her dogs, Bella & Buster. Website: taylornoellethomas.com