Faculty

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  Rebecca Bernard SW24 Fiction Instructor

  Rebecca Bernard’s debut collection of stories, Our Sister Who Will Not Die, won the 2021 Non/Fiction prize from The Journal and was published by Ohio State’s Mad Creek Books in August 2022. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Wigleaf, Bellingham Review, and elsewhere. She holds a PhD in Fiction from the University of North Texas and an MFA from Vanderbilt University. She is an incoming Assistant Professor in the English department at East Carolina University. She serves as a Fiction Editor for The Boiler.

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  Jim Grimsley SW24 Creative Nonfiction Instructor

  Jim Grimsley is the author of nine novels, a collection of short stories, a volume of plays, and a memoir. Works include Winter Birds, Dream Boy, Comfort & Joy, and The Dove in the Belly. His novels are published in German, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Hebrew, and Japanese. His first novel was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction by the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was a finalist for the PEN Hemingway Award. In 2005 he received an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. A memoir, How I Shed My Skin, was published by Algonquin Books in 2015.

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  Amber Flora Thomas SW24 Poetry Instructor

  Amber Flora Thomas is the author of three collections of poetry: Eye of Water, which won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize; The Rabbits Could Sing; and most recently Red Channel in the Rupture. A recipient of the Dylan Thomas American Poet Prize, the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize, and the Ann Stanford Poetry Prize, her poetry has appeared in Orion Magazine, Colorado Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, and Tin House, as well as numerous other journals and anthologies. She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at East Carolina University.