Meet Our MFA Director
Nynke Passi (she/her) is co-chair of MIU’s English department, founder of MIU’s creative writing programs, and director of the MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing and the Soul Bone Literary Festival. She holds a graduate degree from San Francisco State University and has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, and more. Her work has been anthologized in The Anthology of New England Writers, River of Earth & Sky, Carrying the Branch, among other places. She was a finalist in the Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize of The Missouri Review both in ‘14 and in ‘22. Nynke teaches the creative process courses in the MFA program, is on most thesis boards, and is the advisor of all students.
Meet Some of Our MFA Faculty & Mentors
Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza (she/her) is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, the co-founder of Boshemia Magazine, and the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been selected by both Dorothy Allison and bell hooks for collections such as The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Appalachian Review. She earned her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside, and her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky (2025).
Jennifer Espinoza (she/her) was our full time MFA faculty until Spring ‘24. She has mentored in our program in poetry and multi-genre and teaches many of our online courses, including a new course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” She is a trans woman poet and author of THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019), plus the new I Don’t Want to be Understood from Alice James Books. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Riverside. One of her most recent publications is “Everybody at the Same Time is Beginning to Understand There is No Such Thing as a Self” in Gulf Coast.
Susan Smith Daniels (she/her) is a frequent fiction mentor and a core fiction faculty of our MFA. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Published by New Rivers Press, her novel, The Genuine Stories, won the Fairfield University Book Prize in 2017. Her memoir, The Horse Show Mom’s Survival Guide, was published by Lyons Press.
Rustin Larson (he/him) was a regular mentor in our program. He has taught our publishing practicum and has mentored in various genres, mainly poetry. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and is a seven-time Pushcart nominee whose fiction has appeared in Delmarva Review, Wapsipinicon Almanac, and The MacGuffin. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Iowa Review, North American Review, Thrush, and Poetry East. He is author of Bum Cantos (Blue Light Press), The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press), and Crazy Star (Loess Hills Press), and more.
Sasha Kamini Parmasad (she/her) is a frequent fiction, creative nonfiction, or poetry mentor in our MFA, often teaches our introduction to consciousness-based education courses, and is one of our resident TM-teachers. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University and is the author of the poetry collection No Poem (Yuganta Press). She has designed and taught academic and creative writing courses at Columbia University. Her work is included in Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians (Sahithya Akademi) and an anthology from Red Hen Press.
Jennie Rothenberg Gritz (she/her) is a frequent creative nonfiction mentor and core MFA faculty. She earned her Masters in Journalism from U. C. Berkeley and was a senior editor at The Atlantic before becoming senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine, where she edits features about science, history, and culture. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and more. Her essay “Arab Music” appeared in The Lonely Planet travel series.
Linda Egenes (she/her) was is a frequent creative nonfiction or fiction mentor. She is the author of over 500 articles and six books, including Visits with the Amish: Impressions of the Plain Life (University of Iowa Press, 2010) and The Ramayana: A New Retelling of Valmiki’s Ancient Epic (TarcherPerigee, division of Penguin Random House, 2016) co-authored with Kumuda Reddy, M.D. For kids she has written nonfiction for Cobblestone, poetry for Cricket and short stories for the Timeless Wisdom audio series. She holds an MA in Professional Writing from MIU.
Read More →
Ben McClendon (he/him) developed our narrative evaluation model and teaches Literary Theory for the Creative Writer and Writing Pedagogy, two courses he designed for our program. He earned his PhD in English (Poetry and Rhetoric) from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He also studied Creative Writing and English Education at Northern Arizona University. Ben’s poetry can be found in literary journals such as Rattle, Indiana Review, The Chariton Review, Stirring, Zone 3, and Redivider.
Mel McCuin (she/her) developed and sometimes teaches and has designed our social media marketing course, The Writer Online. She is a full-time faculty in our undergraduate English department and a frequent residency guest. She received her Bachelor of Arts in History from Arizona State University in 2005 and her Master of Fine Art in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014. Her writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, The Blue Guitar, and Unstrung. Mel is joining us in our Fall ‘22 residency to talk about poetry and art and show her work.
Eric Boyd (he/him) is a regular fiction mentor in our MFA. He is a winner of the PEN Prison Writing Award and Slice Magazine's Bridging the Gap Award. His writing has appeared in Joyland, Hobart, Guernica, and The Offing, as well as the anthologies Prison Noir (Akashic Books) Links to an external site. edited by Joyce Carol Oates, and Words Without Walls (Trinity University Press). He is the editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing) and holds an MFA from The Writer's Foundry in New York City.
Read More →
“It’s amazing. All five students have developed manuscripts that are completely viable, either full-length books or the basis of very strong future books. This was an impressive group of people.”
Fall ’24 Mentors
POETRY: Eileen Espinoza
FICTION: Eric Boyd
CREATIVE NONFICTION: Sasha Parmasad
Peek at Future MFA Mentors
Sara Henning (she/her) is interested in being a future mentor in our MFA. She is the author of View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), co-winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. Her latest collection of poetry, Terra Incognita, won the 2021 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize and has been published by Ohio University Press. Sara is joining us as a guest in our Fall ‘22 residency to read from her new book.
Faculty Stories & Shares
To view all MIU English Dept. faculty, click here.