We are enormously proud of our MFA students.

Here’s a sampling of their accomplishments.

Jacob M. Appel (Playwriting, 2013) adding to his numerous publications, his most recent are: a collection of short stories Amazing Things Are Happening Here (Black Lawrence Press), the novel, Surrendering Appomattox (C & R Press), as well as a collection of ethical conundrums from medicine, Who Says You’re Dead?

Eric M.B. Becker, (Translation, 2015) the recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Award, a Fulbright Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships, is editor of the world literature journal Words Without Borders. His translated books include Maria José Silveira’s Her Mother’s Mother’s Mother and Her Daughters, Martha Batalha’s The Invisible Life of Euridice Gusmão, Paulo Coelho’s Hippie, Mia Couto’s Rain and Other Stories. and Fernanda Torres’ Glory and Its Litany of Horrors.

Ariel Francisco Henriquez (Translation/Poetry, 2021) is the author of the three collections of poetry A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship, All My Heroes Are Broke (named one of “8 great Latino books of 2017” by Rigoberto Gonzalez), and Before Snowfall, After Rain. The Miami New Times named him one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019. Journal publications range from The New Yorker, Poetry, The American Poetry Review to The Rumpus.

Michael Fu (Fiction, 2015) first published work is the translation Stories of the Sahara by the late groundbreaking Taiwanese writer Sanmao. From the Paris Review: “Mike Fu’s gorgeous translation brings to life Sanmao’s evocative descriptions of the Sahara communities in which she lived …” Additionally, he will be participating in ALTA’s Emerging Translator Mentorship Program, and writes, “Despite very much feeling like I’m still in the throes of emerging myself, I’m excited to offer my support to someone else’s Chinese prose translation project in 2021.” He is working on his novel.

Rajiv Mohabir (Poetry, 2013) won the Four Way Books Intro Prize for The Taxidermist’s Cut, his second collection The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press) won the Kundiman Poetry Prize; and he completed his translation collection I Even Regret theNight: Holi Songs of Demerara (Kaya Press) with a PEN/Heim translation fund award. After graduating from QC, he received a PhD at the University of Hawai’i and is now an assistant professor at Emerson College’s MFA Program.

Anne Posten (Translation, 2013), Fulbright Fellowship recipient, has translated over half a dozen books from the German, including graphic novel Dostoyevsky: The Life and Work by Vitali Konstantinov and This Place Holds No Fear by Monika Held. In 2018, she took part in the 2018 Sommerakademie for translators at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin and in 2019, was granted the Freiraum Residency of the index collective in Zurich, as well as a travel grant to Aberdeen, Scotland, from the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds.

Camila Santos (Fiction, 2013), 2020 Writer-in-Residence at Soaring Gardens, has been awarded a number of grants including a 2016 Queens Council on the Arts WordFeast, a 2017 Individual Artist Grant for multimedia project “Masks of the Quotidian” funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as well as a 2017 “Mentee” in AWP’s Writer to Writer Program. Of her short stories, Dona Lita’s Last Week at Home can be found in Minola Review and A Better Son in Columbia Journal.

Heather Simon (Translation/Fiction, 2014) was awarded a New Work Grant from the Queens Council on the Arts for her poetry comic installation, “Home Scar” that displayed at RISE in Far Rockaway in 2018. She presented “Expanding Comics: New ways of using words and pictures” on a panel at the Queers and Comics conference at California College of the Arts in 2017. Her writing and interdisciplinary work has been widely published in journals and she has participated in group shows at Plaxall Gallery, DeFord Gallery, Local Project, and Shoestring Press.

Publications from our new Creative Non-Fiction cohort include work by Mary Catherine Ford (Entropy Magazine, the Independent, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, as well as a piece in the anthology Fury: Women’s Lived Experiences in the Age of Trump) and Catherine LaSota (Vice, Literary Hub, The Brooklyn Rail, Electric Literature, and Catapult).

Chapbook culture and presses figure large in our community and publications include those by zakia henderson-brown, John Reid Currie, Jonathan Larson, Deborah Fried Rubin, Leila Ortiz, Roger Smith, Pete Vanderberg. And Jacqui Cornetta and Alison Macomber co-edited and translated the LOST & FOUND: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative Series VII chapbook, Paul Blackburn & Julio Cortázar: “Querido Pablito”/“Julissimo Querido,” Selected Correspondence, 1958-1971 with Queens faculty Ammiel Alcalay.

New presses were founded by Pete Vanderberg (Ghostbird Press) and Brian Matta (Black Centipede Press). New journal Brine was launched by Alex Radison (in tandem with an artisanal pickle business!).

Residencies at the prestigious Vermont Studio Center include zakia henderson-brown, Hillary Gulley, and Camila Santos.

Our students’ work has also appeared in many journals including: American Poetry Review, Poetry, The New Yorker, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Hanging Loose, Hunger Mountain, Drunken Boat, Virginia Quarterly Review, Conjunctions: Iowa Review, StoryQuarterly, Poetry and Performance, Asian American Literary Review, Words Without Borders, Asymptote, The Massachusetts Review, Drunken Boat, Prairie Schooner, Aldus: A Journal of Translation, Hanging Loose Journal, Women’s Studies Quarterly, CURA, The Iowa Review.

Our students have read and performed their work at venues that include The Associated Writing Programs Conference, The American Literary Translators Association, The New York Poetry Festival on Governor’s Island, Lit Crawl—Brooklyn, The Manhattan Theatre Club, Cornelia Street Café, KGB Bar, Café Marlene, Astoria Books, Dixon Place.