Current Students

Michael Beard (he/him) received his BA in English: Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a minor in Communications. As a Senior, he served as Poetry editor for his undergraduate literary journal, Sequoya Review. He is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Bowling Green State University. His work has appeared in publications such as Glass Mountain Review, Oakland Arts Review, the 2021 Southern Literary Festival Anthology, and elsewhere.

Samuel Burt is a second-year MFA candidate and graduate assistant. Sam grew up in Grinnell, IA where he attended Grinnell College and received his bachelor's degree in Russian. After, Sam moved to Iowa City where he lived as a pastry chef and cheese monger, working on poems and paintings in his spare time. Sam likes to cook, run, snack, and carve wooden spoons. His favorite books of poems are Victoria Chang's "Obit," CD Wright's "One with Others," and Yusef Komunyakaa's "The Chameleon Couch." A 2022 winner of the AWP's Intro Journals Project, Sam's poems may be found in Salt Hill, Anti-Heroin Chic Mag, Indigo, The Journal, and forthcoming in Colorado

Angelica Esquivel (she/her/hers) is a first year MFA fiction student, poet, and embroidery artist from Fostoria, Ohio. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing at the University of Michigan, where she was awarded three Hopwood Awards and the Quinn Prize for Best Creative Thesis. She recently received the 2021 Zocalo Prize in Poetry. Her work, which is concerned with decolonization and the lived experiences of Latinx people in the Midwest, has appeared in or is forthcoming from America Magazine, Chestnut Review, Cream City Review and Great Lakes Review.

Kelly Kurtzhals Geiger grew up on a farm in downriver Detroit. She earned a full scholarship to attend NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and upon graduating with a BFA in Acting she pursued a career in standup comedy. She moved to Hollywood and became a paid regular at both The Comedy Store and the Laugh Factory, made a few television standup appearances including on NBC’s Later, and had a small but poignant role in the movie Pauly Shore Is Dead. Her standup experience led to working as a television writer and producer. She earned six Daytime Emmy nominations as a producer for the celebrity entertainment show E! News. She’s also written and produced for E!’s The Daily 10, Style Network’s Clean House Comes Clean, ABC’s Wipeout, CBS’s Hollywood Squares, and HGTV’s What's With that House? and Manland.

As a fiction writer, Kelly earned her MA in English from California State University at Northridge where she received the Association of Retired Faculty Award for her thesis project, a sci-fi novel about aliens and robots. She served as a Teaching Associate of first-year composition and presented at panels for the MLA and NeMLA about her experience learning to teach during the pandemic. During her time at CSUN she also spearheaded a collaborative Middle Grade urban fantasy novel called The Portal: This Set of Journeys Is for You with some fellow English students, published in December 2021 by Dark Owl Press. She has published short stories in the anthologies Hell Comes to Hollywood II and Cemetery Riots as well as with The Arcanist, Bards and Sages Quarterly, Tell-Tale Press, Trembling With Fear magazine, and The Northridge Review. She’s currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing – Fiction at BGSU.

Kangsen “Yassay” Masango is a second year MFA candidate (Fiction) of Cameroonian ancestry. He earned his undergraduate degree in English Studies (Magna Cum Laude) from Fitchburg State University in 2021, and also has a degree in Industrial Technology from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. He is a member of Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honors Society. Before becoming a writer, he served as a tactical intel analyst and paratrooper in the U.S Army, deploying to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Kuwait. His writing has an Afrocentric focus, ever dissecting the dynamics of race, decolonization and post-colonialism, patriarchy, and power, be it political or societal.

Chloe graduated St Lawrence University in 2021 majoring in Art and English. She spent her senior year in undergraduate writing and editing a collection of feminist speculative fiction short stories and continues to focus in this genera. 

Chloe spends much of her free time dying in video games, playing DnD, and trying (and failing) to outsmart her cat. 

Chloe is from central New York and is still growing accustomed to the flatness of Ohio.

Gabe is an MFA in Creative Writing: Poetry student from San Francisco. He completed his BA at University of California, Los Angeles in 2019, where he majored in Art. His undergraduate work focused on text in performance, sculpture, and video projects. He has worked in museum visitor services in Los Angeles, and values talking to both peers and strangers about creative work. Gabe enjoys bookstores, cafes, museums, and other inspiring yet relaxed spots to spend time.

Christopher McCormick (he/him) was born and raised in Toledo, Ohio, where he completed his undergraduate degree in English with a French Minor. In recent years, he has completed an honors thesis on Philip Levine and produced a chapbook of his poetry through UT’s typography lab while working part-time at the Toledo Museum of Art. His writing concerns life in the Rust Belt, love, and hope in a fallen world. His work has appeared in The Mill and Working Artist Collective. When not reading or writing, Christopher enjoys cooking for his friends and taking long walks in nature. 

Tyler Michael Jacobs (He/Him) is the author of Building Brownville (Stephen F. Austin State University Press). He is originally from rural Nebraska and received his BA from the University of Nebraska at Kearney where he studied English and Creative Writing. His words have appeared in Sierra Nevada Review, Thin Air Magazine, White Wall Review, Funicular Magazine, and elsewhere. His poems have also been featured on Nebraska Public Media. He is a first year MFA candidate studying poetry.

Mary Simmons is a first year MFA poetry student from Cleveland, Ohio. She earned her BA in creative writing from Baldwin Wallace University with a minor in gender studies. While at BW, she served all four years on the staff of the undergraduate literary journal The Mill, including a two-year run as editor. In her free time, Mary enjoys playing lore-heavy characters in D&D, writing serialized sci-fi novels, singing, cosplaying, traveling, and painting acrylic landscapes.

Gen Greer is a Creative Writing MFA student in Fiction. She holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature from Scripps College in Claremont, California. Her work has appeared in a handful of online publications and her short story "Fall of the Gladiator" was a top finalist for The Chestnut Review's Stubborn Writer's Contest. She is deeply interested in reclaiming the narratives of women whose life stories were stolen from them by their abusers such as Medusa and Dolores Haze. When she's not writing Gen can usually be found running, reading, looking for a new craft beer, or hanging out with her friends.

Caitlyn Mlodzik (she/her) is a fiction writer in BGSU’s MFA program. Though originally from the beautiful Colorado Springs, Colorado, she got her B.A. in English at the University of Wyoming where she completed an Honors Thesis that explored fame, queer identity, and ghostwriting in New York City and led a very small but very spirited writing club called Cliché Can Kill. In her writing, she is fascinated by the everyday, the strange, and the fantastic. She dabbles in magical realism, fantasy, and multi-genre projects, but her latest interest is queer and place-based fiction for the emerging New Adult genre. When she isn’t writing, you can find Caitlyn reading books that challenge the traditional narrative, browsing thrift stores, or traveling to give her new places to write about. Her poetry, photography, and short fiction have appeared in publications such as The Pinyon Review, Furrow magazine, The Palouse Review, and others.  

Dan is a first-year MFA fiction student from Portland, Oregon. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where he won the Edward W. Moses Creative Writing Prize and was published in Palaver Arts magazine. Dan has worked a series of odd jobs (pizza chef, intern, baseball stadium janitor, healthcare consultant, laundry van driver, etc.), many of which show up in his writing. In his free time, Dan enjoys running, reading, watching basketball, and over-caffeinating.

Dan is a first-year MFA fiction student from Portland, Oregon. He graduated with a bachelor's degree in English and Creative Writing from the University of Southern California, where he won the Edward W. Moses Creative Writing Prize and was published in Palaver Arts magazine. Dan has worked a series of odd jobs (pizza chef, intern, baseball stadium janitor, healthcare consultant, laundry van driver, etc.), many of which show up in his writing. In his free time, Dan enjoys running, reading, watching basketball, and over-caffeinating.