MFA: Upcoming Guests

Neema Avashia is the daughter of Indian immigrants and was born and raised in southern West Virginia. She has been an educator and activist in Boston Public Schools since 2003 and was named a City of Boston Educator of the Year in 2013. Her first book, Another Appalachia: Coming Up Queer and Indian in a Mountain Place, was published by West Virginia University Press in 2022. It has been called “A timely collection that begins to fill the gap in literature focused mainly on the white male experience” by Ms. Magazine and “A graceful exploration of identity, community, and contradictions” by Scalawag. The book was named Best LGBTQ Memoir of 2022 by BookRiot; was one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2022; and was a finalist for the New England Book Award, the Weatherford Award, and a Lambda Literary Award. She lives in Boston with her partner, Laura, and her daughter, Kahani.

Craig Blais’ first collection of poems, About Crows (University of Wisconsin Press, 2013), was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and Walt Whitman Award before being selected by Terrance Hayes for the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. It was awarded the Florida Book Award gold medal for poetry. Craig’s second book, Moon News (University of Arkansas Press, 2021), was named a finalist for the Miller Williams Prize by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins and also was a finalist for the Housatonic Book Award. His current book project is a long poem/memoir hybrid titled /The Vents/, which has had “chapters” published in Another Chicago Magazine, Arts & Letters, Gulf Coast, Harpur Palate, The Laurel Review, Mid-American Review, and Salt Hill. Craig lives in Massachusetts, where he is associate professor of English at Anna Maria College.

Cathy Linh Che is a writer and multidisciplinary artist. She is the author of Becoming Ghost (Washington Square Press, 2025), Split (Alice James Books), and co-author, with Kyle Lucia Wu, of the children’s book An Asian American A to Z: a Children’s Guide to Our History (Haymarket Books). She is working on a creative nonfiction manuscript on her parents’ experiences as refugees who played extras in Apocalypse Now. Her video installation Appocalips is an Open Call commission with The Shed NY, and her documentary short We Were the Scenery premieres at Sundance in 2025.

Dr. Leola Dublin Macmillan serves as the Chief Operating Officer of Radical Reversal, where she leads strategic initiatives at the intersection of the literary arts and social justice. A critical cultural scholar, essayist, and activist, she brings over 30 years of experience in education, community development, and advocacy. Dr. Macmillan earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Washington State University, where her research explored identity development among marginalized youth and representations of women in American visual culture. Her career spans diverse fields, including environmental science, adult literacy, and university-level teaching. Dr. Macmillan has also been instrumental in advancing equity and inclusion, serving on boards and advisory groups for organizations such as Just Communities Central Coast and RACE Matters SLO County. In 2019, she was honored as Congressional Woman of the Year by Rep. Salud Carbajal for her contributions to social justice and education. Through her leadership at Radical Reversal, Dr. Macmillan fosters transformative creative opportunities for justice-involved youth, empowering them to reimagine their futures through art, writing, and collaborative community projects. Her work is grounded in the belief that storytelling and the arts are powerful tools for building a more just and inclusive world.

Mckendy Fils-Aimé is a New England based Haitian American poet, organizer, and educator. His work has received support from the Callaloo Writers Workshop, Cave Canem, The Watering Hole, and Periplus. Mckendy’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Adroit, American Literary Review, Bellingham Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection, Sipèstisyon, will be published by YesYes Books in 2026.

AC Gaughen is the author of the Elementae series (Reign the Earth, Imprison the Sky) and the Scarlet trilogy (Scarlet, Lady Thief, Lion Heart). With a strong passion for community engagement, Annie serves as the co-director for Kindling Words East, a retreat for professional writers, illustrators, and editors, and works at Lasell University in alumni engagement. She holds a Master of Letters in Creative Writing from the University of St Andrews (Scotland) and a Masters of Education (Arts in Education) from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Alejandro Heredia is a writer from the Bronx. He has received fellowships from LAMBDA Literary, Dominican Studies Institute, University of Nevada Las Vegas' Black Mountain Institute, and elsewhere. He received an MFA in fiction from Hunter College. Loca is his debut novel.

Elizabeth Gonzalez James is a screenwriter and bestselling author of the novels Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower, named a “Most Anticipated Book of 2024” by such platforms as Goodreads, CrimeReads, and HipLatina; a January 2024 Book of the Month Club selection; and an “Indie Next Pick” for February 2024. She published the chapbook Five Conversations About Peter Sellers. She has taught fiction writing at Grub Street, Pioneer Valley Writers Workshop, Story Studio, and elsewhere. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Massachusetts.

Rebecca Kaiser Gibson’s debut novel is The Promise of a Normal Life, (Arcade Publishing, 2023). Her poetry collections are Girl as Birch (2022) and Opinel (2015), both from Bauhan Publishing. Her writing appears in Agni, Barrow Street, Field, Green Mountains Review, Greensboro Review, Interim, The Harvard Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Massachusetts Review, Northwest Review, Ocean State Review, Passengers, Pleiades, Salamander, Slate, Tupelo Quarterly, and Verse Daily, among others. She’s received fellowships from MacDowell, Massachusetts Cultural Council, Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Moulin A Nef in France. As Fulbright Scholar, she taught in India. She taught poetry at Tufts University for 23 years and then founded and runs The Loom, Poetry in Harrisville, a poetry reading series.

Afaa M. Weaver, previously known as Michael S. Weaver, was born in 1951 in Baltimore, Maryland. When he was eleven years old, he was enrolled in the accelerated program in Baltimore’s public school system, and entered the University of Maryland, College Park, at the age of sixteen. After two years, he left the university to pursue life as a poet and factory worker, emerging from that life in 1985 with a National Endowment of the Arts fellowship in poetry and acceptance into Brown University’s graduate writing program. His most recent book, A Fire in the Hills (Red Hen Press, 2023), won the Paterson Poetry Prize. His plays have been produced professionally. The recipient of Fulbright and Guggenheim awards, Afaa has also received the Wallace Stevens Award, the St. Botolph’s 2019 Distinguished Artist Award, as well as medals from the Beijing Writers Association and Taiwan’s Artists and Writers Association. In 2024, he was elected to the Board of Chancellors at the Academy of American Poets. He is Professor Emeritus at Simmons University and a guest faculty member of Sarah Lawrence’s MFA program. His papers are held in the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University. He and his wife Kristen Skedgell live in Pleasant Valley, New York.

Annie Wenstrup (Dena’ina) is the author of The Museum of Unnatural Histories, forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press in March 2025. Annie is the recipient of the 10th annual New England Review Emerging Writer’s Award and was the 2024 Stephen Donadio Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholar. In 2023, she received the Alaska Literary Award and support from The Rasmusson Foundation. Annie’s held a Museum Sovereignty Fellowship with the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center (Alaska office) supported through a Journey to What Matters grant from The CIRI Foundation and was an Indigenous Nations Poets Fellow in 2022 and 2023. Her poems have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, Poetry, and elsewhere. She and her family live in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she serves as a coordinator for Indigenous Nations Poets.

Writer and developmental editor Tanya Whiton’s fiction has recently been featured in Hypertext, Collateral, CutBank, Fanzine, The Cincinnati Review, and Beer & Weed Magazine. In 2022, her essay “For the Winter” was included in Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family. Tanya is the co-writer and associate producer of the documentary feature about human trafficking titled The Zen Speaker: Breaking the Silence. She is currently adapting Maine author Elizabeth Garber’s memoir, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster, for a limited television series. She was the Associate Director of the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program from January 2007 to August 2016. Visit her website.