Creative Writing Faculty
Dr. Amy Wright, Associate Professor of English
MA, University of Colorado-Boulder
PhD, University of Denver
Amy Wright has authored three poetry books, six chapbooks, and co-edited the Virginia volume of The Southern Poetry Anthology (2022). Her nonfiction debut, Paper Concert: A Conversation in the Round, (2021) won a Nautilus Gold Award for Lyric Prose. She has twice been awarded a Peter Taylor Fellowship to the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Essays appear in the Fourth Genre, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Ninth Letter, and elsewhere available on her website.
Valencia Robin Grice, Lecturer
MFA, University of Virginia (Creative Writing)
MFA, University of Michigan (Art & Design)
Valencia Robin Grice is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice includes poetry and painting. A recipient of a National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship, her debut poetry collection, Ridiculous Light, won Persea Books’ first book prize, was a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and was named one of Library Journal’s best poetry books of 2019. Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and have received the Emily Clark Balch Prize from the Virginia Quarterly Review. Similarly, her artwork has been shown nationally and supported by the King-Chavez-Parks Fellowship and the Margaret Towsley Fellowship at the University of Michigan (U-M) where she also co-founded GalleryDAAS in the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies. She was raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and has deep roots in Georgia. Grice received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia and an MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan. She writes and paints under the name: Valencia Robin: https://www.valenciarobin.com/
Dr. Jesse Graves, Professor of English; Writer In Residence
MFA, Cornell University
PhD, University of Tennessee
Jesse Graves was recently awarded the Philip H. Freund Prize from Cornell University and the James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. His poetry collections include Specter Mountain: Poems (2018, with William Wright), Basin Ghosts (2014), and Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine (2012). You can find out more about Dr. Graves’ work on his website.
Dr. Mark Baumgartner, Associate Professor of English; Director of the Creative Writing Minor
MFA, Bowling Green State University
PhD, University of Nevada-Las Vegas
Mark D. Baumgartner's writing has been published in many literary journals, including The Southern Review, Confrontation, Best of Ohio Anthology, Bellingham Review, Silk Road, Yemassee, Wisconsin Review, Phoebe, and Tampa Review, among others. His fiction is featured on an upcoming episode of the Rock is Lit podcast, as a winner of the 2024 Bill Hallberg prize in short fiction. His story, “The Great Siwash Shoe War,” won the 2014 Fugue prize in short fiction. His writing has twice been nominated for inclusion in the Pushcart prize anthology. He has worked in various editorial capacities at River Styx, Mid-American Review and Witness, and is currently editor-in-chief of Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. His collection of short fiction, Last Chance for a Slow Dance: Stories, is forthcoming from JackLeg Press in 2026.
For more information, check out our Literature and Language faculty page.