UC PhD Student Appears in Playboy (And Other Eye-Popping Achievements by UC English Students)

The University of Cincinnati’s

Department of English

has been exposed in all its glory over the past year, thanks to the hard work and talents bared by several creative writing PhD students.

First-year fiction student Brian Trapp won third prize in Playboy’s 2010 College Fiction Contest with his story, “The Best Man," based on his experience teaching English in China. "Real life," he says, "provided a truly absurd situation that would be hard to imagine otherwise." For his effort Trapp will receive a cash prize as well as a mention in Playboy. Previously,

Playboy has mentioned PhD student Jamie Poissant

.

Speaking of Poissant, now in his final year, the Atlantic Monthly just published his story “The Heaven of Animals,” and will be featuring it as part of the Atlantic Fiction for Kindle Short Story Series. Read “

The Heaven of Animals

” on Amazon.

Third-year creative writing student Sheri Allen, whose poem “June Arrival, Gainesville” has been selected by the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Claudia Emerson for the 2010 edition of “Best New Poets” from the University of Virginia Press. Highlighting work by poets who have not yet published a first book, the “Best New Poets” anthologies have come out annually for the last five years. The 2010 edition will be out in November. Allen was also the only English department graduate student this year to be awarded UC's University Research Council Fellowship Grant for original summer research.

University of North Texas Press will publish graduate student Caki Wilkinson's first book next year. “Circles Where the Head Should Be” won the 2010 Vassar Miller Poetry Prized, judged by J.D. McClatchy. Her book includes poems that appeared originally in the Yale Review and Poetry, among other journals.

Rebecca Morgan Frank has also had her first book accepted by the Irish press Salmon Poetry and should be available in early 2012. “Little Murders Everywhere” includes poems that appeared originally in Ploughshares, the Georgia Review and elsewhere. She also received the Poetry Society of America's 2010 Alice Fay di Castagnola Award for her new manuscript-in-progress.

Professor Donald Bogen notes that both Wilkinson and Frank’s books feature works published in the UC publication

Cincinnati Review

before they entered the department’s PhD program. And he adds that this is further proof the Cincinnati Review is attracting work from the “strongest young poets around.”