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Faculty

Faculty & Staff

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Jennifer Leonard

Director

JENNIFER LEONARD ’09 is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Denison University. She has held scholarships and fellowships at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, New York State Summer Writers Institute, and Indiana University, where she received her MFA in poetry and served as Editor-in-Chief of Indiana Review. She is the recipient of the Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellowship at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and a 2013 Ruth Lilly finalist. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with the poet Keith Leonard and their two children. 

Peter Grandbois

Peter Grandbois

Faculty

Peter Grandbois  is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Denison University. He is the author of 12 books: three novels,  half-burnt,  Nahoonkara, and The Gravedigger; two memoirs, The Arsenic Lobster and Kissing the Lobster; a collection of short fictions, Domestic Disturbances; three novella collections or “monster double features”—Wait Your Turn, The Glob Who Girdled Granville, and The Girl on the Swing—and four collections of poetry, This House That,  Triptych: the Three-Legged World, Last Night I Aged A Hundred Years, and Everything Has Become Birds. His plays have been performed in St. Louis, Columbus, Los Angeles, and New York. His poems, essays, and short fiction have appeared in over one hundred magazines and been shortlisted for Best American Essays, Best American Horror, and the Pushcart Prize. He is the Poetry Editor for Boulevard magazine and coaches Denison’s varsity fencing team.

Alison Stine

Alison Stine

Faculty

Alison Stine ’00 was a student in the inaugural Reynolds Young Writers Workshop and has been a member of the Reynolds faculty since 2002. She is the author of the novels Trashlands, long-listed for the Reading the West Award, and Road Out of Winter, winner of the Philip K. Dick Award; a novella; and three books of poetry. Recipient of an NEA fellowship and the Wallace Stegner at Stanford, she formerly worked as a reporter with “The New York Times,” and now writes as the staff culture writer at “Salon.” Her next novel Dust will be published by Macmillan in 2023.

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Anne Barngrover

Faculty

Anne Barngrover’s (’08) third book of poetry, Everwhen, is forthcoming with University of Akron Press in 2023. Anne earned her BA from Denison University, her MFA from Florida State University, and her PhD from University of Missouri. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Saint Leo University, where she is on faculty for the low-residency MA program in Creative Writing, and lives in Tampa, Florida. She has served on the Reynolds Workshop staff since 2008. 

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Lauren Mallett

Faculty

Lauren Mallett ’10 (she/her/hers) is a poet, teacher, birth doula, and fiber artist. She has lived and studied in Guanajuato and Xalapa, Mexico. Lauren taught dual-language immersion fifth grade in Richmond, California. She earned her MFA and was the Assistant Director of Creative Writing at Purdue University. Her poetry appears in Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, The Seventh Wave, Salamander, Passages North, Scud, and other journals. Lauren lives with her partner, Strand Sheldahl-Thomason, on Clatsop land of Oregon’s north coast. She serves on the Board of Directors for the Oregon Poetry Association. Lauren is the Student Contest Chair of Cascadia, an online anthology and contest for Oregon’s young poets. She teaches in Warrenton, Oregon
 
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Matthew Moser Miller

Faculty

Matthew Moser Miller ’10 is a Denison graduate and born-and-raised Ohioan. He holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan, and his work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Gettysburg Review, Narrative, and elsewhere. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University and lecturer at the University of Michigan, he is now a visiting assistant professor in English at Denison University. In addition to his teaching, he also works as an orchardist and cidermaker on his family’s Ohio farm.

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Abigail Current Carlson

Faculty

Abby Current Carlson ’14 was raised in southern Ohio, then spent a few years in New Mexico, where she earned an MFA in fiction from the University of New Mexico, before moving back to Ohio again. She has been writing all her life and attended Reynolds as a student in 2008 before coming to Denison and joining the Reynolds staff in 2012. She writes fiction, often tangling magical elements with real to explore moments of tension, transformation, and the unspoken bubbling up. Abby lives with her partner and their dog, Cassie, who occupies about 80% of her camera roll. 

Isabella Reynolds

Isabella Antonelli

Teaching Associate

Isabella Antonelli ’20 received her B.A. in English Literature and Narrative Journalism from Denison University. She works in Los Angeles as a Production Assistant for the Art Department on national commercials and manages the social media for two companies. During her time at Denison, she served as the Editor-in-Chief of Exile (the literary magazine), as Features Editor for the Denisonian (newspaper), was an editorial intern for LA Magazine, studied in Norway for five months, produced a podcast, and more. She has been a TA at the Reynolds Workshop since 2018. 

Faculty

Creative Writing at Denison University

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Denison University offers majors and minors in English focusing on either creative writing or literature. Creative writers make up about half of Denison’s English majors. 

Creative writing majors take writing workshops across the genres plus a range of literature classes. We offer many sections of the introductory multi-genre class plus advanced workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, literary translation, and/or other genres (no application required). All senior majors complete a full-year independent writing project. Senior writers work in small groups under the close mentorship of a creative writing faculty member and produce a book-length work!  

Denison’s large creative writing faculty includes prize-winning poets and writers David Baker, Michael Croley, Peter Grandbois,  Jennifer Leonard, Jack Shuler, and Margot Singer. 

Denison’s  Journalism major is for students interested in writing that combines rigorous research with compelling, story-driven prose. Students gain experience researching and writing long-form journalism on topics in their areas of interest. They build skills in fact-based storytelling with a focus on ethical reporting and research, gain experience through independent writing projects, and make connections through internships and workshops with editors and writers.

Denison’s endowed Beck Series brings  prominent writers to campus for short residencies to give readings, craft talks, workshops, and manuscript consultations. Visiting writers have included Ada Limon, Hanif Abdurraqib, Joy Harjo, Billy Collins, Louise Erdrich, Bill McKibben, Stephen Millhauser, Michael Pollan, Pam Houston ’83, and many others.

The creative writing program also publishes Exile, a biannual award-winning student-edited literary magazine. We also have a vibrant creative writing club, student readings, and much more!

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CONTACT US

E: reynoldswriting@denison.edu

Ph: 740.587.6207

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