WVU is pleased to welcome seven new MFA students across three genres. Take a moment and get to know them through their bios below.

POETRY

Natalie Homer is from the ugly part of Idaho. She went to Idaho State University and earned a degree that is currently being used as a placemat on her dining room table. She is a fan of cats, rain, and catching up to the person who cut her off in traffic. Favorite authors include Matthew Quick, Ray Bradbury, Stephen King, Michael Dickman, Amber Tamblyn, Beth Bachmann, and others.

Natalie Homer

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Maggie Montague is from Fallbrook, California, the avocado capital of the world (or so they believe). She received her BA in English with a minor in art history from Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. After graduating, she spent all her money on a plane ticket to Ireland and rode a bicycle for the first time in over ten years. Moving to West Virginia marks her first adventure on the eastern side of the country and her first home in a landlocked state. Item number one on her bucket list is to go on an archaeological excavation in Egypt. Maggie’s favorite writers include Elie Wiesel, Jack Gilbert, Annie Dillard, and Zadie Smith.

Maggie Montague

Meredith Jeffers grew up in Rochester, New York, the second snowiest city in the country, and attended college in the snowiest. She recently developed a severe lactose intolerance and still has not figured out how to pour soy into her coffee without it curdling. She most admires the work of Cheryl Strayed, Roxane Gay, Donna Tartt, and Jennifer DuBois, although she has soft-spot for popular mysteries—think Gone Girl and Luckiest Girl Alive.

Meredith Jeffers

Kat Saunders holds a BA and MA in creative writing from Ohio University. She is a first-year contributor to The MFA Years and serves as the associate fiction editor for Stirring: A Literary Collection. In her spare time, she enjoys cooking, taking baths, and asking her cat questions. Some of her favorite writers include Jo Ann Beard, Rebecca Solnit, Bonnie Jo Campbell, and Haruki Murakami.

FICTION

Nat Updike has never known what she wanted to be “when she grows up.” Starting in the field of civil engineering, she changed her focus to literature, creative writing, and philosophy. She then earned her BFA in creative writing and literature from the University of Evansville in 2012 and her MA in English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2014. After graduating from the University of Tennessee, she taught EFL in Colombia, South America as part of the Peace Corps from 2014–2015. Afterward, she taught ESL at the University of Southern Indiana and worked with people with disabilities at the ARC of Evansville, to save up money and begin her MFA in fiction writing at West Virginia University. When she’s not reading English 101 student papers or going to classes or religiously writing her second novel manuscript, she’s hiking, reading Nikki Giovanni poetry and art history, watching anything dystopian, especially The Walking Dead, volunteering, debating the mystery of Lost, wishing to do construction work in El Progresso, Honduras, thinking about Lemony Snicket, or drinking more coffee. She still doesn’t know what she wants to be “when she grows up,” but she hopes to teach creative writing and literature, earn a BA in philosophy, travel to Egypt, publish her manuscript, and own a Dyson vacuum cleaner someday.

Nat Updike

Jake Maynard grew up in a town of 800 people near Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. He started writing fiction after spending a summer working in a salmon cannery in the Alaskan bush. Since graduating from Hiram College in 2010 with a BA in history, Jake has acquired a border collie and a 1988 Chevy Blazer. His favorite books are Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five and Halldor Laxness’s Independent People.

Jake Maynard

Bryce Berkowitz has a BA in creative writing from Columbia College Chicago. He moved to West Virginia from Los Angeles, where he worked at a talent and literary agency. He’s interested in recounted details surrounding crime related stories and events—interviews, undefined116122.undefined116123.undefined116124.undefined116731.undefined213152.documentaries, journalism, oral history, etc. Berkowitz currently admires the work of Danez Smith, Saeed Jones, Phillip B. Williams, Stuart Dybek, Richard Price, and Claire Vaye Watkins.