Alumni Bookshelf

Alumna writer Diane Mehta has published a new book of poetry, Forest with Castanets (2019). "In her debut book of poems, knit together with personal essays, Mehta explores her own cultural history― Indian Jainism and American Judaism―as well as her ideas about faith, feminism, and family."

Joanna Doxey holds an English BA from Union College and an MFA from Colorado State University, where she currently works advising undergraduate students in English, Ethnic Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies, and Philosophy. Plainspeak, WY is her first full length book of poetry. Her work has also appeared in Yemassee, Matter Journal, JournalCutBank LiteraryJournal, Tinderbox, Denver Quarterly, and Ghost Proposal.

Union alumnus Daniel Kason is a doctoral student and an accomplished author of shorts stories. His recently published first novel, The Leech World, was originally conceived as an Honors Thesis creative project in English here at Union.

“Chelsea Woodard’s Vellum, a finalist for the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, propels the reader along new paths of discovery in the quotidian as in the mythical. Its scope is far-ranging: a flower press received as a gift in childhood, Tarot reading with a favorite aunt, unexpected reflections at a tattoo parlor, reminiscing about an old flame, the discovery of rare volumes at the local library, or auctioning off old toys on eBay. Woodward’s insights and sensibilities in the visual and performing arts are deftly realized in fine or broad strokes—as in “Coppélia,” “The Painter and the Color-blind,” “Degas’s Nudes,” or as in “Still Life,” which muses that “It’s difficult/ to give back life/ to what’s been cut off from the living.” Stories and scenes represented in popular artwork are reimagined in ekphrastics such as “Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting.” With excursions into the surreal, myth is made, lived or remade, as in “Philomela,” “Pegasus” and “The Feral Child.” This is an exquisite debut collection that rewards the mind and senses with its formal impetus and deft musicality, its precise and lively language, its emotional compass.”
— Able Muse

Anne Blankman earned degrees in English and History from Union College in 2001, which come in handy when she writes historical fiction. After receiving a Master’s degree in Information Science from the University at Albany, she began working as a youth services librarian. Prisoner of Night and Fog, published this month, is a young adult novel, the first in a three-book deal from Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. The title of Anne’s talk is: “Uncle Dolf/Adolf Hitler: A Murder Mystery Featuring History’s Most Notorious Villain.”

Bill Wolff, an Associate Professor at Rowan University in New Jersey and former Watson Fellow, earned his MA from the University of Cincinnati and his PhD from the University of Texas, Austin. At Rowan he teaches undergraduate and graduate classes in the College of Communication and Creative Arts — Writing Arts. He’s particularly interested in what he terms “the intersections of new media communication technologies and writing.” His passion for Bruce Springsteen has never waned, and his current research focuses on Springsteen. Professor Wolff considers “how music fans’ use of social media spaces [expands] our understanding of how texts contribute to the creation of communities.” Wolff’s published work has appeared in Technical Communication Quarterly, Computers & Education, and Currents in Electronic Literacy, the last piece co-authored with two Writing Arts undergraduates. He is also a photographer and was named a 2013 Delaware Division of the Arts Emerging Artist in Photography.

After receiving an MA from York University’s Eighteenth-Century Studies program, alumnus Jared Richman was awarded a full scholarship with teaching year at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received his PhD. Jared is an Assistant Professor at Colorado College, where he serves as the Faculty Director of the College Writing Program. He’s published on the poetry and art of William Blake and the fiction of Charlotte Smith. He’s just now finishing a book, Transatlantic Realms”: British Romanticism and the Idea of America, 1780-1832, while also working on a new project that traces “the relationship between nascent elocutionary theories of the Enlightenment and disability in Anglo-American culture.”

Dan Payne ‘80 is a full professor at SUNY Oneonta where he teaches screenwriting, creative non-fiction, American and environmental literature. Prior to teaching at Oneonta, he earned a law degree at Albany Law and practiced for the state for c. 10 years. His MA and PhD are from Buffalo, and Payne has published Voices in the Wilderness: American Nature Writing and Environmental Politics (1996); The Palgrave Environmental Reader (2005); Writing the Land: John Burroughs and His Legacy (2008); and Why Read Thoreau’s Walden? (2013). After 10 years of research and writing, his biography of American nature writer Henry Beston will be published by David R. Godine in fall 2014. Director of the John Burroughs Nature Writing Conference & Seminar, Payne was also awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Annemarie Monahan, who recently published her first novel, Three, kicked off the English Department’s John and Winifred Smith Alumni Writers Series on Tuesday, Nov. 5 at 7:30 p.m. in Humanities 019.

Her book is a tale of one woman’s three possible lives that Endgame author Derrick Jensen called, “a book of such beauty that it could change the world.”

The writing series is organized by Jordan Smith, the Edward E. Hale Jr. Professor of English, and is named for his parents. Every term, it will host one former student who went on to become a published author. Monahan will be followed by Michael Allen Potter ’94 in the winter. Potter is an award-winning playwright, poet and essayist. Novelist Anne Blankman ’01 will visit campus in the spring.

Other alumni writers who have come to speak about their work over the years include New York Times reporter Neil A. Lewis ’68 and director and screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson ’71.

Honors graduate Rachael Federico ’08 has published two law articles and has passed the Oregon bar exam. Her first article appeared in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin (2011), and her second article is forthcoming in the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal. After Union, Federico took an M.A. in Women’s Studies from Texas Woman’s University in 2010. She graduated cum laude from Lewis and Clark Law School in May 2013, passed the July 2013 Oregon bar exam, and now works as a judicial clerk for the Oregon Court of Appeals. She is engaged to be married in November 2013.

Emma Kroschell ’11 has recently appeared in print again with her poem “Super Moon” appearing in the Grey Sparrow Journal (2013). “Super Moon” is Kroschell’s second published poem, following “Bus at Night in the Rain” in the Willows Wept Review (2012). After graduating from Union, Kroschell worked as a Production Assistant at Jones & Bartlett Learning and began a Ph.D. program in American Literature at the University of California, Davis in Fall 2012.