Faculty

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  Cassandra Kircher Squire ’23 Creative Nonfiction Instructor

  Cassandra Kircher’s essay collection, Far Flung: Improvisations on National Parks, Driving to Russia, Not Marrying a Ranger, the Language of Heartbreak, and Other Natural Disasters, was published in 2019 by West Virginia University Press. Her nonfiction has been nominated for Best American Essays and a Pushcart, and has appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, South Dakota Review, Cold Mountain Review, Flyway, Apalachee Review, and Permanent Vacation. She teaches creative nonfiction at Elon University. 

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  Joseph Mills Squire ’23 Poetry Instructor

  A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair, the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities, and has been honored with a UNC Board of Governors Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has published eight volumes of poetry, most recently Bodies in Motion: Poems about Dance. His book This Miraculous Turning was awarded the North Carolina Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for its exploration of race and family. In 2019, he published his debut collection of fiction, Bleachers, which consists of fifty-four linked pieces that take place during a youth soccer game. He also has edited the collection of film criticism A Century of the Marx Brothers, and, many years ago, with his wife, Danielle Tarmey, he researched and wrote two editions of A Guide to North Carolina’s Wineries. More information about his work is available at www.josephrobertmills.com. 

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  Sheryl Monks Squire ’23 Fiction Instructor

  Sheryl Monks is the author of Monsters in Appalachia, a collection of stories published by Vandalia Press, the creative imprint of West Virginia University Press. She holds an MFA in fiction from Queens University of Charlotte. Her work has appeared in Rkvry Quarterly, Electric Literature, The Butter, The Greensboro Review, storySouth, Regarding Arts and Letters, Night Train, and other journals, and in the anthologies Surreal South and Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary West Virginia Fiction and Poetry, among others. Monsters in Appalachia is a Weatherford Award finalist, a Southern Book Prize finalist, and a Foreword Indies Book finalist. Sheryl writes from her home in North Carolina.