Creative Writing Faculty
VCU Department of English

Susann Cokal (fiction)

Susann Cokal is the author of the novels Mirabilis and Breath and Bones, and of short stories featured in Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, The Journal, Hayden's Ferry Review, Painted Bride Quarterly and Gargoyle. Her articles and reviews have appeared in scholarly journals and anthologies such as Critique, French Forum, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Scandinavian Studies, Considering Aaron Sorkin, Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism and The Philosophy of Horror, and in The New York Times Book Review. She holds a PhD in creative writing from SUNY Binghamton and a PhD in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at California Polytechnic State University before coming to VCU.

   English Directory—Cokal

Tom De Haven (fiction, scriptwriting)

Tom De Haven is the author of five novels, Freaks' Amour, Jersey Luck, Funny Papers, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies, and his most recent, Dugan Under Ground, released October 2001; a collection of three related novellas, Sunburn Lake; and a three-novel series, Chronicle of the King's Tramp, which includes Walker of Worlds, The End-of-Everything Man, and The Last Human. His latest novel for young adults, The Orphan's Tent, was published in 1996, and his latest graphic novel, Green Candles, in 1997. He has previously published two young adult novels, two graphic novels, and various other innovative fiction projects. De Haven has a richly varied experience as a writer, having worked as a freelance journalist, an editor, and a film and television scriptwriter. His book reviews appear regularly in Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times Book Review. His awards include a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and he has twice won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Before joining VCU's faculty, De Haven taught at Rutgers and Hofstra University.

   English Directory—De Haven

Gregory Donovan (poetry)

Gregory Donovan is the author of poetry, essays, and short fiction published in such journals as The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Southern Review, storySouth, and 42opus, among others. His poetry collection, Calling His Children Home, won the Devins Award from University of Missouri Press. He has won the Robert Penn Warren prize, judged by Rosanna Warren and sponsored by New England Writers, as well as grants and fellowships from the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the Ucross Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His work has been anthologized in The Devins Award Poetry Anthology, Fives: Fifty Poems by Serbian and American Poets, and in Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets of Virginia. Donovan helped to establish VCU study abroad programs in both Scotland and Peru. He is Senior Editor of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts.

   English Directory—Donovan

Kathleen Graber (poetry)

Kathleen Graber is the author of two collections of poetry, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press, 2010) and Correspondence (Saturnalia Books, 2006).  She holds an undergraduate degree in philosophy and an MFA in Creative Writing.  She is the recipient of fellowships from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts and The Rona Jaffe Foundation.  She was the 2007 Hodder Fellow in Poetry at Princeton University and the 2008 Amy Lowell Travelling Scholar.  Her poems have appeared recently in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, AGNI, and The Kenyon Review.

   English Directory—Graber

Clint McCown (fiction, nonfiction, screenwriting)

Clint McCown is the author of the novels The Member-Guest, The Weatherman, and War Memorials, as well as the collections of poetry, Sidetracks, Wind Over Water, and Dead Languages. Several of his plays have been produced, and he has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. As a broadcast journalist he received an Associated Press Award for his investigations of Organized Crime, and he has toured as a principle actor with the National Shakespeare Company. He is the only writer to have twice won the American Fiction Prize; he has also won the Society of Midland Authors Book Award the S. Mariella Gable Prize, the Germaine Bree Book Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Distinction in Literature citation from the Wisconsin Library Association, and a Discover Great New Writers designation from Barnes & Noble. His stories, essays, and poems have appeared widely. He has been a contributing editor to a dozen national literary magazines and was the founding editor of the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he published for twenty years.

   English Directory—McCown

David Wojahn (poetry)

David Wojahn is the author of six collections of poetry, Spirit Cabinet (2002), The Falling Hour, Late Empire, Mystery Train, Glassworks, and Icehouse Lights. He is also the author of Strange Good Fortune (2001), a collection of essays on contemporary verse. He is the editor (with Jack Myers) of A Profile of Twentieth Century American Poetry; he also edited The Only World, a posthumous collection of Lynda Hull’s poetry. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Illinois Arts Council, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, as well as writing residencies from the Yaddo and McDowell colonies. Among his other awards and honors are the Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Scholarship, the Yale Younger Poets' Award for Icehouse Lights, the William Carlos Williams Book Award and the Celia B. Wagner Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Society of Midland Authors’ Book Award, Vermont College’s Crowley/Weingarten Award for Excellence in Teaching, the George Kent Memorial Prize from Poetry magazine, and three Pushcart Prizes. His poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in many journals and anthologies, among them The Paris Review, The New Yorker, Best American Poetry, The American Poetry Review, The New York Times Book Review, The Chicago Tribune, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The Georgia Review, and TriQuarterly.

   English Directory—Wojahn