Georgia College & State University – A Student Showcase

Time: 2:45 – 3:45 PM

Location: The Emerging Student Writer’s Stage in The Reading Room, 429 Church St, Decatur, GA 30030

Join us for a reading by graduate students of different genres from Georgia College & State University’s writing program. The reading will be held on Saturday, October 5th at 2:45 PM on the Emerging Student Writer’s Stage in The Reading Room.

Emerging Student Writers

Ash Earnhardt is a first-year creative writing graduate student at Georgia College and State University, specializing in fiction. Originally from North Carolina, Ash has spent most of their life in Southern California, and received a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from University of California, Berkeley. Ash has recently returned from a Peace Corps position in Kyrgyzstan, where they taught English to non-native speakers and learned what it means to live in the post-Soviet sphere. Ash enjoys mainly writing science fiction, particularly alternate history and post-apocalyptic, that explores real and imagined culture and folklore, as well as human responses to traumatic events in ways that both divide and unite us.

 

 

 

 

 

Noah Lorey is a first-year graduate student at Georgia College & State University, where he is earning a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction. Originally from Wisconsin, Noah also earned his undergraduate degree from Emory University, where he worked on several student publications and wrote, produced, and acted in a one-act play at Emory’s Oxford campus. Noah loves to travel, having spent time in such disparate places as Vietnam and Ireland, and much of his writing focuses upon the importance of place in making sense of the world. Noah is currently working on a collection of short stories about growing up in the North and coming-of-age in the South, something he hopes you’ll all like to read one day.

 

 

 

 

 

Richard Lassiter hails from rural southeastern Washington State where the deer outnumber the people and funerals are a community event. He obtained a B.A. and M.A. in English literature from Washington State University, focusing on the Lake Poets and defending a thesis on Coleridge’s Christabel. His literary influences include David Sedaris, Bill Bryson, Mary Karr, Cheryl Strayed, and Jean Shepherd. With thirteen years as a licensed funeral director, Richard’s current writing explores grief healing through layers of memory and intersections of truth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dan Johnston (he/him) is an MFA student in his final year at Georgia College & State University, where he writes creative nonfiction with a journalistic bent. His essays are about people, places, and things like music, nature, and sports. His writing has appeared in Open Minds Quarterly, World Psychiatry, and the Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal. He also enjoys gardening, rock climbing, playing bass, and brewing beer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emma Garcia is currently an MFA student studying poetry at Georgia College & State University. Born and raised in California, Emma grew up reading and writing near the mountains and the beach! She eventually moved across the country to pursue her academic dreams of obtaining her master’s degree. Emma has poems published in Prism Review, Sandpiper Review, and The Pierian Journal.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christina Faber is a poet from New York. Born and raised on Long Island, her writing explores her relationship with the place she calls home while being far from it. She has a BFA in Creative Writing from Stony Brook University, and is now a second-year writer in Georgia College’s MFA program.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michaela Reed is a third year MFA fiction student attending Georgia College & State University. Born and raised in Albany, Georgia, her love for the South often shows up in her writing, where she explores topics such as race, family, and identity in the southern setting. Largely influenced by Southern Gothic writing, Michaela strives to create vulnerable characters and journey with them as they confront the mysteries and histories, the connections and disconnections, that attempt to strengthen them while also threatening to break them. Michaela also likes practicing languages, drawing, crocheting, and playing video games, and her first publication is due to appear in the Spring 2025 issue of Cottonwood literary magazine.

 

 

 

 

 

Nathanael Williams’ pronouns are He/Him and he goes by his given name, Nathanael, as well as Nate. He is a third-year graduate student at GCSU where he teaches English Comp II and Intro to Creative Writing. He’s lived abroad in Ethiopia and South Africa and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro. While he has yet to publish anything in the professional sense, he got his start writing fanfiction as a young teen, and a few of those have been published to their respective fan-sites. He loves to write stories about people and how they are shaped by beautiful and terrible moments, who we become after the end of the world as we know it.

 

 

 

 

 

Kay Hammond is a 2020 Graduate of Susquehanna University’s Writers Institute. They are currently an MFA candidate at Georgia College and State University. Their work focuses on themes of queerness, religion, and bathrooms.