People in the News

Awards

Kellam Ayres MA ‘07 has been selected as a 2024 Vermont Book Awards Finalist for her debut poetry collection, In the Cathedral of My Undoing (Gunpowder Press, 2024).

Bread Loaf actor and faculty member Angela Brazil, Associate Professor of the Practice at Brown University / Trinity Rep MFA Programs in Acting and Directing, has been named a 2025 Lunt-Fontanne Fellow. She will also serve as the 2025 BLTN Faculty Fellow.

Rochelle Johnson, Bread Loaf faculty member and Bernie McCain Chair in the Humanities and Professor of Environmental Studies at the College of Idaho, is the winner of the Georgia Review Prose Prize.

Author and Bread Loaf faculty member Rebecca Makkai’s novel The Great Believers (Penguin Books, 2019) has been placed on the Best Books of the 21st Century (So Far) by Kirkus Reviews. Makkai is also recipient of Bread Loaf’s Robert Frost Chair of Literature for 2025.

Abby Manzella MLitt ‘03 won a Pushcart Prize for her essay “Glossary of Centralia, Pennsylvania,” first published in the Summer 2023 edition of The Threepenny Review. The essay is included in the 2025 Pushcart Prize Anthology.

Publications

Damián Baca, Bread Loaf faculty member and Professor of Mexican American Studies at University of Arizona, is co-editor of the text Pluriversal Literacies: Tools for Perseverance and Livable Futures (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024).

Bread Loaf faculty member Barbara Black, Professor and Tisch Chair in Arts and Letters at Skidmore College, published the article “Thinking Of and With Another: Caring for Schreiner in the Time of Covid” in Global Nineteenth-Century Studies (Fall/Winter 2024). Black also taught a course at Middlebury’s Alumni College in the fall of 2024.

Audrey Crossman Peck (attended ‘97) independently published her second book, The Adventures of Sequoia (2024), about the world travels of a seven-year-old girl from San Diego, California.

Based off his 2023 Bread Loaf course on Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen, faculty member Shalom Goldman, Pardon Tillinghast Professor of Religion at Middlebury College, recently wrote an article for The Conversation (2025) entitled “From Jewish summer camp to gospel to Chabad, Bob Dylan’s faith doesn’t fit in a box − but he’s long had a connection to Israel.”

Roberta Harold MA ‘01 has written an historical novel about the wife of the Civil-War Colonel Shaw entitled Portrait of an Unseen Woman: A Novel of Annie Shaw, coming out this month from Rootstock Publishing.

With Middlebury College alum Bird Jones, Marshall Highet MA ‘07 has written her fourth novel, The Washashore (Koehler Books, June 2025), a historical murder mystery set on Martha’s Vineyard in 1929.

Bread Loaf faculty member Alice Joubin, Professor of English and Director of the Digital Humanities Institute at George Washington University, is editor of a collection of essays that uses a site-specific lens to examine global performances of Shakespeare on stage, on radio, and on screen, entitled Contemporary Readings in Global Performances of Shakespeare (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024). She also recently interviewed on JSTOR (April 2025) speaking about how we can combine literary studies and critical AI theory.

Michael Katz, C.V. Starr Professor Emeritus of Russian and East European Studies at Middlebury College and Bread Loaf faculty member, has two newly translated Russian novels: A Family Chronicle by Sergei Aksakov (Northern Illinois University Press, 2024) and My Moral and Literary Meanderings by Apollon Grigoryev (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025).

Bread Loaf faculty member Gwyneth Lewis, Former Welsh Poet Laureate and Member of the Order of the British Empire, has two new publications: Nightshade Mother: A Disentangling (Calon, 2024), which was a Guardian Book of the Year, and a new collection of poems, First Rain in Paradise (Bloodaxe Books, 2025).

Join playwright Roger Q. Mason MA ‘14 in San Francisco, Chicago, and Philadelphia, as they direct three new theatrical productions: The Pride of Lions, Lavender Men, and The Duat.

Christopher McCurry MA ‘16 has released his second collection of poetry, The Gospel of God Boy, published by the independent press Accents Publishing (2025).

Bread Loaf faculty member Cruz Medina, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Santa Clara University, authored Sanctuary: Exclusion, Violence, and Indigenous Migrants in the East Bay (Ohio State University Press, 2024).

Mark Rasmussen, Charles J. Luellen Professor Emeritus of English at Centre College and Bread Loaf faculty member, appeared in the Summer 2024 issue of Arthuriana with his essay, “Tweaking the Tradition: Gawain as Perceval in David Lowery’s The Green Knight.”

Recipient of Bread Loaf’s 2025 Frank and Eleanor Griffiths Chair, David J. Russell, Associate Professor of English at UCLA, released Marion Milner: On Creativity (Oxford University Press, 2025).

Bread Loaf faculty member, poet, memoirist, and storyteller Cheryl Savageau will be releasing her memoir Out of the Crazywoods in paperback from University of Nebraska Press (2025). In Summer 2024, her poems “Shiksa,” “Shabbas,” and “At Pesach 2002” were published in the Jewish Writing Project. Her poem, “Seizure Villanelle” was published in the Winter 2025 issue of the Raven Review. She also recently joined Substack and YouTube where she shares ekphrastic poetry based on Tarot cards entitled, The Poetry of Tarot.

Ryan B. Tahmaseb MA ‘15 credits his 2019 Bread Loaf Writing for Children course with Sam Swope and Michele Stepto for spurring his journey into writing for children. His latest publication, the collection of tales Persian Mythology: Epic Stories of Gods, Heroes, and Monsters will be released in November (Running Press Kids, 2025).

Bread Loaf faculty member and director of the Ken Macrorie Writing Center David Bwire Wandera MA ‘08 MLitt ‘13, Associate Professor of Special Education, Language, and Literacy at the College of New Jersey, is author of two publications released in 2024: “Resisting Epistemic Blackout: Illustrating Afrocentric Methodology in a Kenyan Classroom” in Skewed Artificial Intelligence: Flagging Embedded Cultural Practices in Children’s Stories Featuring ‘Alice and Sparkle (Reading Research Quarterly) and “Unboxing Black Immigrant Youth’s Heritage Resources” in Educating African Immigrant Youth: Schooling and Civic Engagement in K-12 Schools (Teachers College Press).