2021
Graduates
ABOUT THE CLASS OF 2021
Give it up for these grads! Although we can’t celebrate their many accomplishments in person, we want to give them each the spotlight they deserve. Read on for writing samples, fun facts, and praise from faculty.
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NEOMFA Class of 2021
FICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Leyna Bohning is a NEOMFA graduate in fiction and a former Graduate Assistant at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.
FICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Courtney Ebert holds a BA in French and Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the NEOMFA program through Cleveland State University.
CREATIVE NONFICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Jazz Ellington, lives in Cleveland, Ohio and is the Poetry Editor for Sidereal Magazine. She was a 2019 fellow for the Baldwin House Residency with Twelve Literary Arts.
CREATIVE NONFICTION | KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
A.J. Giorgi is a writer and standup comedian. He has devoted the last decade of his life to telling better stories and learning as much as he can about language.
POETRY | KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
Brittany Helmick (she/her) grew up in the high desert of the Pacific Northwest. She was a finalist for the Sustainable Arts Foundation’s Promise Award in 2019.
CREATIVE NONFICTION | KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
Andrew Koss is a writer of creative nonfiction and an MFA candidate in the Northeast Ohio MFA program. He lives in Cleveland with his wife, Amaya, their son, Roscoe, and their pets, Hawking, Darwin, Copernicus, and Galileo.
FICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Joseph Lewis is currently in his last semester as a graduate student in Cleveland State University’s NEOMFA Creative Writing Program. He previously taught English and Film Studies at the Sichuan University of Arts and Science in China, where he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer for three years.
POETRY | UNIVERSITY OF AKRON
In the poetry collection Match Bitten, we are animals, or almost animals. We sit awestruck beneath a celestial ceiling, and ask the stones and crystals around us for a glimpse of their wisdom. Fortunately, we have fire, an element that pervades and illuminates this volume.
POETRY| CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
DT McCrea (they/she) is a trans-anarchist poet, a reader for Flypaper Lit, and Pushcart Prize nominee. They love the NBA and know the lyrics to every Saintseneca song. Her work can be found in Indianapolis Review, Gordon Square Review, Honey & Lime, mutiny!, Stone of Madness Press and others.
FICTION | UNIVERSITY OF AKRON
In Jeremy Waits, Danny Paparella's novel, a young man finds himself in a confusing near future world that is riddled with the results of climate change, technological change, and radical social change.
POETRY| CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Zach Peckham’s poems illuminate the 'bright core' of our world’s most minute, intimate units of measurement—cells, pixels, heartbeats, drumbeats, dronefuzz, puns—gesturing toward the consequences of entropy, a single syllable’s significance, and the overwhelming anxiety of meaning too much.
FICTION | KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
Kacie Prologo is a Rust Belt writer who has spent her life wrapped up in the kinds of familial mythology that runs rampant in her hometown of Alliance, Ohio. Kacie spends her time translating this family folklore into acts of gruesome fiction.
CREATIVE NONFICTION | KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
April Sharp is a graduate of the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts program. She often writes of her childhood growing up in Southeast Ohio. She now resides in Akron, Ohio. Her work has been featured in The Devil Strip and Rubber Top Review. When not writing she can be found eating cupcakes and hiking with her two dogs.
FICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Nicole Tsakoumagos teaches English and writes Fiction in her native city of Cleveland. She is a lover of all things geeky, spooky, and punk rock.
FICTION | CLEVELAND STATE UNIVERSITY
Meghan Louise Wagner is a writer and NEOMFA graduate. Her work has recently appeared in such places as AGNI, matchbook, Shirley Magazine, Hobart, and X-R-A-Y Lit.
© 2021 NEOMFA
English Department
Cleveland State University
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