MFA Student Profiles 2025-26 by UNCW Department of Creative Writing

Marah Hoffman - Creative Nonfiction ('26)

2023-08-30 19:53:05 UTC

Marah Hoffman grew up in Reading, Pennsylvania. Since graduating with her bachelors in English and creative writing in 2022, she has lived in Tennessee, Michigan, and now North Carolina. She is an MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at University of North Carolina Wilmington and the Creative Director of Sundress Academy for the Arts. She enjoys genre fluidity, whimsicality, coffee, distance running, travel, and adding to her personal lexicon. Her list of favorite words grows every week.

Aslan Gossett - Poetry ('26)

2023-09-05 17:49:24 UTC

Aslan studied English and Philosophy at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Their poems explore queerness, family, and place. Aslan loves coffee, pugs, and corduroy.

Caroline Beuley - Fiction ('26)

2023-09-26 14:59:09 UTC

Hi all! I am a first year in fiction writing. For the past four years I’ve been a 12th grade English teacher in D.C. I didn’t study creative writing in college, but I’ve attended summer workshops at Oxford, Breadloaf, and American University in Paris. I love to write for children and young adults and enjoy stories that are gothic or have anything to do with fairy tales. Basically I want to write the next Coraline or Series of Unfortunate Events. Currently I live on Wrightsville Beach with my miniature dachshund, Dumbledore, and my cat, Eloise.

Zack Carson - Poetry ('26)

2023-09-26 14:59:55 UTC

Zack graduated from the University of North Carolina Asheville in 2014. His work explores the psychedelic, the cosmic, the occult, aggression and gentleness. He has a lovely fiancée and a lovely dog.

J.T. Bryson - Poetry ('26)

2023-09-27 22:55:45 UTC

J.T. Bryson is a poet hailing from the coastal plains of North Carolina. After earning his bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing from UNCW, he entered the world of public education where he devoted his time to proselytizing the importance of writing and reading.

Many rumors surrounding this wordsmith are true. He started writing poetry during his senior year of high school to impress women. He has worked in public education for a decade. He failed to become a professional wrestler, much to the delight of his mother; though he still collects their action figures, much to the dismay of his father.

His work has appeared in Teach. Write. A Writing Teachers Literary Journal, Atlantis Magazine, and New River Anthology. He released a self-published collection of short stories, poetry, and photography together with his UNCW companions entitled Rustic Southern Façade in January of 2023.

Valentine Johnson - Fiction ('26)

2023-10-02 21:38:29 UTC

Valentine is from a small town in Florida, just outside Jacksonville. They got their BA in creative writing from Florida State University and are currently a teaching assistant at UCNW. Their work explores being queer in the American South and the posthuman. Outside of writing, they enjoy vampire movies and their golden retriever, Mabel.

Abigail Peabody - Creative Nonfiction ('26)

2023-10-17 22:51:52 UTC

Abigail Peabody is a North Carolina writer, whose love of the state seeps into both her fiction and nonfiction. She writes about how place, religion, and family shape women’s self-perceptions. Her work has appeared in Hairstreak Butterfly Review. She is currently a creative nonfiction MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where she also teaches undergraduate creative writing classes. Outside of the South, Abigail has lived and taught in Madrid, Spain, and has traveled to many other places. One of her life goals is to travel to 100 countries and try their signature sweet treats. So far, she’s been to 26, and pastel de nata is her favorite.

Lara Boyle - Creative Nonfiction ('26)

2024-02-01 03:13:38 UTC

Lara Boyle grew up in Long Island, New York but has called Charlotte, North Carolina home for the past few years. She is currently a creative nonfiction MFA candidate at The University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She graduated in 2023 from Queens University of Charlotte with a degree in Creative Writing, summa cum laude. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, The Jerusalem Post, and a variety of literary magazines. Her work often explores the intersection of queerness, disability, and Jewish identity. An unapologetic comics geek, she is currently at work on a graphic memoir. She loves Broadway, and she always reads the cartoons in The New Yorker first.

Jessica Jones - Fiction ('27)

2024-09-12 21:11:13 UTC

Jessica Jones is a fiction writer originally from Fayetteville, North Carolina. An MFA candidate working in the Publishing Lab at UNC Wilmington, she received her bachelor’s degree in English/comparative literature and psychology from UNC Chapel Hill in 2023. Her work largely centers on themes of unreality, betrayal, and uncertainty. She can be found at a concert, playing The Sims for hours at a time, or pspspsing the neighborhood cats.

Campbell Haynes - Poetry ('27)

2024-09-15 15:41:53 UTC

Campbell Haynes is from Ohio, where he majored in English/Creative Writing at Xavier University, then got a Masters in Creative Writing/Poetry at Ohio University. Campbell likes all things related to Dungeons and Dragons, arguing about the relative merits of Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Robert Frost and James Wright, and the intersection of philosophy and poetry. Always up for a good debate!

Danny Crapanzano - CNF ('27)

2024-09-17 18:39:09 UTC

A grandson of Sicilian immigrants, a Creative Nonfiction candidate and TA at UNCW, Danny Crapanzano is finding the time to be a person.

He's a school photographer by day, a musician by night, and somewhere in between- a self proclaimed writer.

Danny received his B.S. in Film and Moving Image with a focus in Cinematography from Stevenson University in Baltimore, Maryland (2017). In the years since, he's lived in Colorado and North Carolina. He's worked on enough reality TV shows, indie movies, and stage productions to know that most of the sausage out there is being made in a way that is not conducive to creativity, and that sausage based epiphany is what led him to pursue his MFA.

He often writes humorous creative and experimental nonfiction about his family’s storied history, the absurdity of late stage capitalism, the doom and fear associated with climate change, and the joy of being alive. As a screenwriter and songwriter, fiction and poetry are also a big part of his storytelling.

You wanna find him? Well, there's a good chance he's at Bespoke, reading or writing, bothering his partner Olivia who works there and really wishes he would stop treating her workplace like his own living room. If he isn't there, have you checked the Vonnegut section of every bookstore and library in town? Because that's your best bet.

Marian Cramer - Poetry ('27)

2025-09-12 17:45:42 UTC

Marian Cramer grew up on a dairy farm in southern Wisconsin. She graduated from Lakeland University in 2024 with her BFA in creative writing and English. Currently, she is a TA at UNCW where she is an MFA candidate in poetry. She considers herself a modern-day imagist and tries to write poems that everyday readers will relate to. She enjoys drinking good coffee, talking about her cat, and writing with her friends.