Faculty & Staff

Ph.D, Creative Writing, University of Houston

Dr. Kerry B. Neville is Associate Professor of Fiction and Nonfiction Writing. She is the author of two collections of stories, Necessary Lies, which received the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize in Fiction and was named a ForeWord Magazine Short Story Book of the Year, and Remember to Forget Me. Her memoir, Momma May Be Mad, is forthcoming in 2025. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, Triquarterly, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Her fiction and nonfiction have been named Notables in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She is a nonfiction editor for Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. In 2018, she was a Fulbright Fellow at University of Limerick in Ireland, where she was Visiting Faculty in the MA in Creative Writing Program.

M.A., English Education, Georgia College & State University

Professor Nancy Beasley earned her M.A. in English Education from Georgia College & State University.  She teaches composition, world literature and utopian/dystopian worlds.

Ph.D, English, The Ohio State University

alexeblazer.com

Dr. Alex E. Blazer specializes in twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature and critical theory.  His publications include I Am Otherwise: The Romance between Poetry and Theory after the Death of the Subject; articles on contemporary American authors Paul Auster, Bret Easton Ellis, and Chuck Palahniuk; and an article on the cult film Donnie Darko.  He teaches modern and contemporary American literature, film, poetry, critical theory survey, focused studies in literary criticism (existentialism and phenomenology, reader-response criticism, Marxist criticism, psychoanalytic film theory), global horror film, and science fiction and philosophy.

MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults, Hamline University

Randall Bonser earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in Minnesota. He is the author of several children's books, including "Comics, Graphic Novels and Manga: The Ultimate Teen Guide." He teaches first year composition at GCSU. 

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

Dr. Joy Bracewell earned her Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia.  In addition to being the Director of the Writing Center, she teaches composition and first-year composition practices.

Ph.D, Linguistics, University of South Carolina

Dr. Craig Callender is a historical linguist and phonologist who works on Germanic languages, including English. He regularly teaches History of the English Language, Medieval English Literature (Middle English), Human Language, Structure of Present-Day English, and World Literature. His research is primarily on the evolution of sound systems in Germanic languages, where he is interested in how comparative dialectology can aid in the reconstruction of historical processes. He also co-directs the European Council Summer Study-Abroad Program in Berlin, and is always happy to discuss study abroad (in Berlin and elsewhere) with interested students.

M.A. English Literature, Valdosta State University

Benjamin Elliott earned a Masters of Arts in English Literature from Valdosta State University in 2022. He teaches first year composition. Previously, he has edited for research journals Study and Practice of Undergraduate Research and Omnino. Research interests include multimodality, composition in a post-A.I. world, Jungian analysis, and science fiction. Most recently, he published “‘A Fountain by Another Name’: Communication Breakdown, Language, and Meaning in Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” for the Journal of the Georgia Philological Association’s 2022-23 Volume. 

Ph.D. in English, Florida State University

M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Southern Illinois University - Carbondale

B.A. in English, Missouri State University

Dr. Kerry James Evans is the author of the poetry collection, Bangalore, a Lannan Literary Selection. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship from Sewanee Writers' Conference, and he has taught poetry workshops, poetic forms and theory, and other courses at Florida State University and at Tuskegee University, where he was an Assistant Professor. His poems have appeared in Agni, Narrative, Ploughshares, and other journals. 

Ph.D, English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Dr. Jennifer Flaherty received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a Professor of Shakespeare studies, and her research emphasizes appropriation and global Shakespeare. Her work has been published in journals such as Borrowers and Lenders, Comparative Drama, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies, and Topic. She has also contributed chapters to the volumes The Horse as Cultural Icon and Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction. Dr. Flaherty regularly teaches courses in Renaissance literature, dramatic literature, film studies, adaptation, Milton, and Shakespeare for the Literature program. She also teaches courses for Women's Studies, GC1Y and GC2Y, and the Georgia College Honors College.

Ph.D, English, University of Texas

Dr. Bruce Gentry, Editor of the Flannery O’Connor Review, received GC’s Excellence in Scholarship award in 2013. He is the author of Flannery O'Connor's Religion of the Grotesque, editor of The Cartoons of Flannery O'Connor at Georgia College, and co-editor of the oral history At Home with Flannery O'Connor. Gentry has served three times as co-director for NEH Summer Institutes on O'Connor, most recently in 2023. Other publications by Gentry include Better to See You With: Perspectives on Flannery O'Connor, Selected and New, with Mercer UP, 2022.  Along with Katie Simon and Kerry Neville, Gentry is on the Organizing Committee for the conference honoring Flannery O'Connor's 100th birthday at a conference scheduled September 12-15, 2024, entitled "Flannery O'Connor's Second Century: Looking Forward, Looking Back." (see gcsu.edu/oconnorinstitute for details)

Ph.D., English, University of California, Los Angeles

Dr. Julian Knox earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Los Angeles. His teaching and research interests include British and Global Romanticism, literature and visual culture, Romanticism and popular music, children’s literature, theories and practices of translation, and the philosophy of time. He has published articles in the journals European Romantic Review, The Wordsworth Circle, The Coleridge Bulletin, Grave Notes, and The New German Review, and has contributed chapters to The Oxford Handbook of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Memory in German Romanticism, Rock and Romanticism, and David Bowie and Romanticism. He is co-editor of the forthcoming essay collection Romanticism and Heavy Metal.

Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland College Park

Dr. Roberto León earned his Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland College Park.  His teaching and research interests include theories and histories of rhetoric and composition, comparative rhetoric, technical and professional writing, second language writing, writing program administration, writing across the curriculum, religious rhetorics, and argumentation.

M.A. in English Language & Literature, Georgia College & State University

Kathryn Livingston earned her M.A. in English Language & Literature from Georgia College & State University. She specializes in English as a Second Language, international education, and composition. Her debut novel Epoch was published in May 2023.

M.F.A, Fiction, Chatham University

Mr. Jeffrey MacLachlan earned an M.F.A. in Fiction from Chatham University. His work has recently been published in New Ohio Review, Eleven Eleven, and Minetta Review, among others.  He teaches composition, world literature, and war literature.

Ph.D, Folklore, Indiana University

Dr. Mary Magoulick teaches many courses on folklore, popular culture, and literature (including on myths and fairy tales). She has published in The Journal of American Folklore, The Journal of Folklore Research, The Journal of Popular Culture, and more. Her book, The Goddess Myth in Contemporary Literature and Popular Culture was published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2022. She has traveled widely, including on a Fulbright in Croatia, and focuses on contextual approaches to studying human artistic expressions.

Ph.D, Creative Writing, University of Houston

Dr. Kerry B. Neville is Associate Professor of Fiction and Nonfiction Writing. She is the author of two collections of stories, Necessary Lies, which received the G. S. Sharat Chandra Prize in Fiction and was named a ForeWord Magazine Short Story Book of the Year, and Remember to Forget Me. Her memoir, Momma May Be Mad, is forthcoming in 2025. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Gettysburg Review, Epoch, Triquarterly, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and elsewhere. Her fiction and nonfiction have been named Notables in Best American Short Stories and Best American Essays. She is a nonfiction editor for Panorama: The Journal of Travel, Place, and Nature. In 2018, she was a Fulbright Fellow at University of Limerick in Ireland, where she was Visiting Faculty in the MA in Creative Writing Program.

M.F.A, Creative Writing, Warren Wilson College

Professor Laura Newbern earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College. She teaches intermediate poetry writing, poetry workshop, and creative writing senior seminar.

M.F.A., Creative Nonfiction, Georgia College & State University
M.A., Creative Nonfiction, University of Alabama, Birmingham

James S. Owens specializes in Creative Nonfiction and the works of Flannery O'Connor. James earned his M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from Georgia College, an M.A. from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and is a graduate of Auburn University. At Georgia College, he was an assistant to Dr. Bruce Gentry at the 2014 NEH Institute Reconsidering Flannery O’Connor and has participated in several O'Connor conferences such as Flannery O’Connor and Other Southern Women Writers, and James joined a roundtable called The Objects of O'Connor at SSSL’s The South in the North in Boston, MA. As well, Flannery O’Connor studies have taken James across the Atlantic to Seville, Spain where he presented "O’Connor’s Dirt" at the international conference Andalusia in Andalucía hosted by Loyola University. 

Ph.D., English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

 Dr. Profitt is a Lecturer of Film Studies in the Department of English at Georgia College.  She teaches courses in global film history, classical and contemporary film theory, and gender & sexuality studies.  Her research focuses on Reagan Era film history and youth-oriented media.  In particular, she concentrates on popular youth films and culture in Generation X, with emphasis on delinquency and gender performance. Her work has been published by The Association for the Study of Buffy+ and Wayne State University's Popular Culture Consortium. Dr. Profitt earned a Ph.D. in English (concentration in Cinema Studies) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was twice awarded the Chancellor’s Award for excellence in English Studies, and a BA in English from the University of Michigan-Dearborn.  Dr. Profitt is excited to work with students interested in film, U.S. history since 1945, coming-of-age narratives, gender & sexuality, celebrity studies, and other topics in U.S. popular culture.

Ph.D., University of Alabama

M.F.A., Creative Writing, New School University

Peter Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the 2007 Flannery O’Connor Award for Fiction, two children's books, three books on the writer’s craft, and two essay collections. His memoir, The Inventors, won the 2017 Housatonic Book Award. His 2020 novel, Duplicity, won the Best Indie Book Award and the Indie Excellence Book Award. His full-length drama, A God in the House, based on Dr. Jack Kevorkian and his “suicide machine,” won the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference. His novel, A Boy’s Guide to Outer Space, is forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in the Fall 2024.

Ph.D., English, University of Georgia

Dr. Sidonia Serafini earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of Georgia. Her teaching and research interests include early African American literature, multiethnic American women’s writing, periodical studies, and public history and humanities. She co-edited The Magnificent Reverend Peter Thomas Stanford, Transatlantic Reformer and Race Man (UGA Press, 2020). Her essays have appeared in the Southern Quarterly, Women’s Studies, and the Journal of Transatlantic Studies. She is the Co-Director of Black Activism: A Transatlantic Legacy, a website that examines the imprint of Black activism in the US and the UK, past and present. She has secured grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the American Council of Learned Societies, and her research has been recognized by the National Council on Public History.

M.F.A., Creative Writing, Georgia College and State University
M.A.E., English/Language-Arts Education, The University of Alabama at Birmingham 
B.A., English, Samford University 

Shannon Skelton holds an MFA in fiction from Georgia College and State University and an MAE in English education from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She has written a collection of short stories, and her writing has been published in The Flannery O’Connor Review, Image Journal, Relief, and Ruminate Magazine. She teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Some of many research and teaching interests include:  stories in all forms, the contemporary short story, Flannery O'Connor, the writing process, writing and faith, grief in literature, writing and well-being, the evolution of the essay, and the intersection of creative writing and composition pedagogies.

M.F.A., Creative Writing, Georgia College & State University

M.A., English Literature, Mississippi State University

B.A., English Literature, Delta State University

Jonna Smith (they, them) earned their M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Georgia College & State University while writing their memoir-in-hybridity Wild Animal. They teach first-year composition, including Monsters and Horror for ENGL 1102, as well as World Literature and American Literature.

Ph.D, English, University of California, Berkeley

Dr. Katie Simon is an Associate Professor in the English Department and the Coordinator of the Program in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research and teaching focuses on American literature, critical theory, and the environment—with special interests in issues of social and environmental justice. Current projects include an anthology of essays on Ecocriticism and Social Justice in the U.S. South, as well as a research initiative on Race and Nature. Her articles appear in ESQ: A Journal of Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture; The Transparent Eye-ball; Eighteenth-Century Fiction; Women's Studies: An Inter-Disciplinary Journal and in the anthology Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (Pluto Press). Dr. Simon has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, and was awarded GCSU’s Excellence in Teaching Award.

Dr. Chika Unigwe earned her Ph.D. from the Universiteit Leiden, Holland, and her M.A. from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium.

Dr. Unigwe's novels include On Black Sister Street (Random House, 2011) and Night Dancer (Jonathan Cape, 2012). Her debut collection of short stories, Better Never than Late (Cassava Republic),  was published in 2019. Widely anthologized, she has also placed work in different journals including the New York Times, Guernica, Kenyon Review, the UK Guardian, Aeon, Wasafiri, Transition and Agni.