Join us in celebrating the work of our graduating second-year MFA students! Readers will include Lance Carroll, Arman Chowdhury, Zoe Darsee, Kristyn Garza, Raju Kalam, Woori Kim, Angela Lorang, Jacob Moniz, and Kalie Pead.
Lance Carroll is a writer who, while born in southern Missouri, has migrated throughout the entirety of the Midwest. He graduated from Shimer College—"the worst school in the country"—where he earned a degree in liberal arts after a year of study in Oxford. At Notre Dame, he has served as the co-editor of fiction for Notre Dame Review and taught classes on nonfiction and speculative fiction. He is working on a hybrid memoir about sexuality and religious experience.
Arman Chowdhury is a prose writer from Dhaka, Bangladesh. His short story “Deficiency Notice” is a finalist for the 2023 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. He is working on a novel of speculative fiction centered on the encampment of stateless refugees and environmental collapse. His work has been supported by the University of Notre Dame, the Loft Literary Center, and the Tin House Summer Workshop.
Zoe Darsee was born about noon on a Tuesday. Later they founded TABLOID Press, a publishing practice rooted in the poetics & sounds of the local, with poet, friend and artist Nat Marcus in Berlin, Germany. This work continues. Some of the poet's texts have appeared in Annulet, KEITH LLC, Spectra Poetry, The Quarterless Review, in translation for EDIT Magazine, and in vocal collaboration with musicians Exael and DJ Paradise. Their chapbook, BELL LOGIC, is forthcoming from Spiral Editions. They are interested in structure(s), ideologies, and are working on a novel, for free.
Kristyn Garza, a queer chicana from the U.S./Mexico border, moved from her hometown of McAllen, Texas to Austin to pursue her bachelor's degree in English Literature at St. Edward’s University. A current Poetry MFA candidate at the University of Notre Dame, she has been researching the ways in which the liminality of the sonic poetic space can exorcise the haunting of trauma held within the femme body. She was longlisted for Palette Poetry's 2022 Sappho Prize and her work has been published or is forthcoming in Tupelo Quarterly, The McNeese Review, The Spectre Review, New Note Poetry, and as a finalist for RHINO Poetry's Founders Prize 2022.
Raju Kalam, known as Lovely Raju to his fans and followers, has self-published a few books on Amazon and owns an Instagram poetry page with about 16k followers, where he publishes excerpts of his works. He loves to write nature poetry and the poetry that motivates people to get out of anxiety, sorrow and depression. There is a secure place in his heart where theoretical physics sleeps. He aspires to preach Peace words through his writing.
Woori Kim has a B.A. and M.A. in English from Duksung Women’s University, Korea.
Angie Lorang Mueller (sometimes publishing under the surname St. John, sometimes not) is from rural Missouri, and she writes stories that her dad says are “weird.” Her work has appeared in Dappled Things, Storm Cellar, About Place, and elsewhere. She is the winner of the J.F. Powers Prize in fiction and a Pushcart Prize nominee. Angie considers herself a “Catholic writer,” whatever that means. She is fascinated by sacramental nature, flora and fauna, and—duh—women’s bodies. She lives in South Bend, IN with her husband and newborn.
Jacob Anthony Moniz is a writer and visual artist from California. His work captures the ambiguities of memory, legacy, and grief, relying upon disparate forms of contemplation and narration to produce a sense of empathy in readers and viewers alike. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Catamaran Literary Reader, Penumbra, Chicago Quarterly Review, and The Ocotillo Review, among other journals and publications. His short film "Mother of Mercy" was an official selection for Best Short Screenplay at the 2020 Rome Independent Prisma Awards. "The Pacific End," a short film based on his novel-in-progress, won Best LGBTQ Short Screenplay at the 2020 New Renaissance Film Festival in Amsterdam. He is the recipient of a grant from the Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts at the University of Notre Dame, which he used to fund a multimedia arts project titled “Someplace Else,” based on his family history in São Miguel, Azores.
Kalie Pead is a queer writer from Salt Lake City, Utah. She is currently an MFA Candidate in Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, living in South Bend Indiana with her partner. While she grew up in Salt Lake she will always consider home somewhere between the red rocks of Utah and the wilds of Wyoming. Her work is published or forthcoming in The Whiskey Blot, From Whispers To Roars, Metaphor, and Peculiar.