The MFA Program in Creative Writing is pleased to welcome two new writers to our faculty: Dionne Irving Bremyer, author of the forthcoming novel, QUINT, and Xavier Navarro Aquino, author of the forthcoming novel, VELORIO, adding to the program’s strengths in postcolonial and transnational literature, environmental humanities, global contemporary writing, and translation theory and practice. We are proud to announce that Dionne Irving Bremyer and Xavier Navarro Aquino are liaison hires with the Initiative on Race and Resilience, directed by Mark Sanders, Professor of English and Africana Studies. This model of hiring represents a historic and groundbreaking partnership for the MFA Program in Creative Writing because it has allowed us to recruit writers whose lived experiences and artistic practices speak to issues of race, racialization, and racism, deeping our program's commitment to structural anti-racism and to the celebration and amplification of American writers of color with enormous talent. We are looking forward to welcoming Dionne Irving Breymer and Xavier Navarro Aquino with enthusiasm in the Fall of 2021.
Dionne Irving Bremyer is originally from Toronto, Ontario. Her work has appeared in Story, Boulevard, LitHub, Missouri Review, and New Delta Review, among other journals and magazines. She earned her Ph.D. in creative writing from Georgia State University. Her novel Quint will be published by 7.13 Books in August, 2021 and her short story collection Islands is forthcoming from Catapult Books in 2022.
Xavier Navarro Aquino was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He is the author of the forthcoming novel, Velorio from HarperVia/HarperCollins and HarperCollins Español in January 2022. His fiction has appeared in Tin House magazine, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, and Guernica. His poetry has appeared in The Caribbean Writer and is anthologized in Thicker Than Water: New writing from the Caribbean by Peekash Press. He has been awarded scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a Tennessee Williams scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, a MacDowell Fellowship, and an American Council of Learned Societies Emerging Voices Fellowship at Dartmouth College. He holds an M.A. in English Caribbean Studies from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and a Ph.D. in English and Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
- Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Director, MFA Program in Creative Writing