Megan PaonessaMarquette UniversityMarquette Hall, 241
MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3996megan.paonessa@marquette.eduI teach creative writing because I love witnessing the moment when a student falls in love with the power of language. To trick them down the English rabbit hole, I force them into reading contemporary, new voices who are experimenting with form and subject matter, hoping by pushing them outside their comfort zones I can introduce students to new ways of looking at story. My favorite stories to teach cross genres or use fabulist, surreal, or oddly ordinary lives to connect to personal truths. In mimicking what we read, I encourage students to push the boundaries of a typical story arc and find what interests them about language – a description full of weighted images and implications, Woody Allen-type dialogue, full of wit, unexpected or unreliable endings, suspense that builds and intensifies before a fantastic payoff. These outsider fictions help students let down their walls and locate the stories hiding inside them. Oftentimes, they fail. But we learn best when we learn from our failures.
My fiction also uses fabulist elements. I like to explore ways in which our mental health and imagination affect our physical and natural world, asking readers to question the way we judge one another and the history we’ve created. My recent work earned Honorable Mention in the 2020 NYC Midnight Short Story Contest and has appeared in The Adirondack Review, PANK, fwriction : review, Camera Obscura, and my chapbook “The Great Reimaging of Greenletter Avenue” is forthcoming. In addition to fiction, I’m a big fan of the personal narrative. My creative nonfiction has won the Hayden’s Ferry Review 25th Anniversary Award, has been published in Scary Mommy, and is forthcoming in The Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, Special Edition. I earned my MFA from the University of Alabama, and a double BA in English and Fine Art from the University of Notre Dame.
Textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Time-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0817359427, co-written with editor Robin Behn, University of Alabama Press, 2020
Fiction:
“Flawless,” Inter et Inter, May 2023
“Riedichi,” winner of the TL;DR Press Flash Fiction Contest, June 2022
“Mother Gardener,” Identity Theory, November 2021
“The Great Reimagining of Greenletter Avenue,” winner of Moving Words chapbook contest, forthcoming
“My Mother, the Psychic,” ARZONO Press 2021 Annual Anthology, June 2021
“Cloudspire,” finalist in Reedsy’s post-apocalyptic climate change contest, April 2021
“A Condition Known as Solitary Disassociation and Privation,” Adirondack Review, Winter 2020
“Color Wheel,” Flying House, October 2013
“Catch & Release,” Picayune Literary Magazine, May 2013
“Alcohol Memory,” Liver of Dixie – Stories from Egan’s, May 2013
“Paper Bag Dragon,” fwriction : review, April 2013
“PARKING $20––EZ OUT,” Specter Literary Magazine, September 2012
“Two Years in Tuscaloosa,” Tuscaloosa Runs This, May 2011 eBook, on PANK, and in print
February 2012, Broken Futon Press
“Paper Cutouts,” Red Lightbulbs, May 2011
“Vacancies,” Camera Obscura, April 2011
“Overexposed, Mending into White,” 5923 Quarterly, March 2011
“Release,” Flying House, Winter 2010
Creative Nonfiction:
“Reading and Writing with the Times: What Covid-19 taught me about my creative writing
Classroom,” Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, forthcoming
Postpartum Depression: How I Finally Came Up for Air, Scary Mommy, May 2016
Why SAHMs Get Depressed, Scary Mommy, March 2016
“The baby that didn’t make it,” Hayden’s Ferry Review 25th Anniversary Award Winner, May
2012
Office Hours
Fall 2024
Teaching Schedule
Spring 2024
Department of English
Marquette Hall, 115
1217 W. Wisconsin Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53233
(414) 288-7179
wendy.walsh@marquette.edu
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