Philbin Studio Theatre

Join us in celebrating the work of our graduating second-year MFA students! Readers will include Gussie Beaver, Rose Darline Darbouze, Tim Fab-Eme, Alaina Johansson, Chibuike Ogbonnaya, Jamjun Rorsoongnern, and Taylor Thomas.
<strong>Gussie Beaver</strong> received her B.A. in English from Duquesne University in 2022, Summa Cum Laude. She was the 2021 recipient of the O’Donnell Undergraduate Research Award and the Carroll Creative Writing Scholarship. This enabled her to attend the Elk Rivers Writer’s workshop in Livingston, Montana. She was a Duquesne University Writing Center consultant. Gussie was featured in Duquesne’s alumni magazine <em>Much Ado </em>and was the treasurer of the Duquesne Poet’s Society. Her work has been published multiple times in the literary magazine Lexicon. She is interested in the personification of animals and objects and experimenting with formation. Her favorite poets are Emily Dickinson and e. e. cummings.
<strong>Rose Darline Darbouze</strong>  is from Béraud, Haiti. She is an MFA candidate in creative writing and is a recipient of a grant from the Graduate School Professional Development Awards at the University of Notre Dame. She was the 2022-2023 Sparks Editorial Fellow at <em>Notre Dame Review</em>, and her work is forthcoming in the <em>Birmingham Poetry Review</em>.

<strong>Tim Fab-Eme</strong> is an engineer and poet who experiments with poetic forms on environmental and social justice themes. He’s the Issue 7 poetry editor of <em>Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice</em>, and Cove Park’s 2022 funded writer-in-residence on climate action. Tim loves exploring nature, gardening, and fishing in the mangrove swamps of his island home, Egun-Okom (Ogonokom). His work has appeared in <em>The Malahat Review</em>, <em>The Fiddlehead</em>, <em>Magma</em>, <em>New Welsh Reader</em>, <em>About Place Journal</em>, <em>Reckoning: Creative Writing on Environmental Justice</em>, <em>Channel: Ireland’s Environmental Literary Journal</em>; <em>apt</em>, <em>Planet in Crisis Anthology</em>, <em>Deep Wild Journal: Writing from the Backcountry</em>, <em>Land and Territory Anthology</em>, <em>Delmarva Review</em>, <em>FIYAH</em>, and <em>The Future of Black: An Afrofuturism & Black Comics Poetry Anthology</em>, <em>Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review</em>, <em>FU Review</em>, <em>The Maine Review</em>, etc. His other projects center on the lore, myth, and experiences of marginalized folks and communities.
<strong>Alaina Johansson</strong> lives in Indiana with dogs, Brigit and Søren. Previous work is published in <em>Early American Literature</em>, <em>Psaltery & Lyre</em>, and <em>3:AM Magazine</em>. An MFA student studying Poetry at the University of Notre Dame, Johansson works as an editorial assistant at Action Books.

<strong>Chibuike Ogbonnaya </strong>writes stories that explore humanity, gender and sexuality. They obtained combined honors in English and Literary Studies and History and International Studies from the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Their unpublished collection of thematically linked short stories featuring women, feminine gay men, and gender queer was a finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize. Chibuike is an alumni of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in <em>Green Mountains Review,</em> <em>The Forge Literary Magazine</em>, <em>Taint Taint Taint Magazine</em>, <em>Stellium</em>, <em>Akuko Magazine</em>, <em>Black Femme Co</em>, and elsewhere.

<strong>Jamjun Rorsoongnern</strong> is a ลูกครึ่ง (Thai american) writer gripped by the musings of nondiscursive knowledge building. At times, their writing dons normative white religious aesthetics in a subversive exploration/queering of sensuality & disidentification. Admittedly a theory nerd, she finds herself fangirling over Barthes, Vuong, Muñoz, Baldwin, & Derrida. Jam writes towards literary/linguistic openings in hopes of creating liminal utopias/liberation/depths with their reading/cultivated communities.
<strong>Taylor Thomas</strong> (she/her) is a biracial emerging writer from Indiana. Her work has been published in <em>Bayou Magazine</em>, <em>Salt Hill Journal</em>, <em>The Journal</em>, <em>So to Speak Journal</em>, and many more. She was the runner-up for the 2024 Nicholas Sparks Prize Fellowship. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She lives in South Bend, Indiana with her husband, Herschel, and her dogs, Bella & Buster. Website: <a href="http://taylornoellethomas.com/">taylornoellethomas.com</a>