University of Georgia – A Student Showcase
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 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 the University of Georgia’s writing program. The reading will be held on Saturday, October 5th at 4:00 PM on the Emerging Student Writer’s Stage in The Reading Room.
Emerging Student Writers
Ryan Atkinson is an Atlanta-based writer and essayist. A native Kansan, his work has appeared in Atlanta magazine, Fansided, Oklahoma Magazine, and more. He spent more than a decade as a sports writer and editor in various newsrooms across the Lower Midwest. His biography of Moses YellowHorse will appear in an upcoming SABR book on Native American baseball players.
Ashley Fantz is a Peabody-winning investigative reporter and writer. She was a CNN journalist for 14 years where she tackled a range of domestic and international stories but she favored stories at the intersection of crime and gender discrimination. Her CNN investigation “Destroyed” revealed that police nationwide destroyed untested rape kits in open and unsolved cases and failed to investigate reported rapes and child sex abuse. The story led to police reforms and a new state law prohibiting rape kit destruction. In 2021, she left CNN to report, write and host narrative multi-episodic podcasts. Her 2022 podcast “Suspect: Vanished in the Snow” became the number 1 podcast in the U.S. Her 2023 podcast “Body Brokers” hit #3 on the true crime charts. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, daughter and stinky French bulldog Milo. Her work can be found on her site: www.ashleyfantz.com.
As a storyteller, Mercedes Kane is drawn to the stories of real people and how they exist within and make sense of the world around them. The founder of Daisy May Films, Mercedes most recently directed the documentaries Art and Pep (2022, Peacock), More with Less: The Power of HBCUs in America (2022), What Remains: The Burning Down of Black Wall Street (2021) and Breakfast at Ina’s (2016, Amazon Prime). Art and Pep premiered at OutFest before winning the Audience Award at the Chicago International Film Festival and being acquired by Peacock and APTV. Mercedes is currently writing a feature story and developing a documentary about the dementia choir movement and the power of social singing. She will graduate with an MFA in narrative nonfiction from the University of Georgia in December of 2024. She happily resides in Atlanta with her husband, Sanghoon, their children Jasper and Daisy, and two mischievous tuxedo cats. Untold stories – and her young children – have been known to keep her up at night.
Beth Ward is an Atlanta-based essayist, arts journalist, and editor who writes primarily about books and art, bodies and place, feminism and folklore. Her work appears widely in publications including Oxford American, Atlanta magazine, the Bitter Southerner, ArtsATL, the Rumpus, Hyperallergic, Atlas Obscura, Pigeon Pages Literary Journal, UK-based Cunning Folk magazine, and elsewhere. Her essay, “Knockout,” was selected as the 2024 AWP Intro Journals winner in creative nonfiction and is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review.