Faculty Achievements

Ethan Rutherford

Ethan Rutherford, Associate Professor of English, had his story, Farthest South, published in BOMB Magazine on January 15, 2020. His debut novel, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, is one of six novels to be a finalist for the 2025 National Book Awards for Fiction.

Sarah Bilston

Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of English Sarah Bilston‘s book, The Promise of the Suburbs was selected by CHOICE as an Outstanding Academic Title, 2019.

In 2023, Bilston received the prestigious National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellowship for her latest book, The Lost Orchid: A Story of Victorian Plunder & Obsession, which earned a Kirkus Starred Review.

Lucy Ferriss

Lucy Ferriss, former Writer-in-Residence, won the Brighthorse Books Prize for her story collection FOREIGN CLIMES.

Francisco Goldman

The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? by Francisco Goldman, Allan K. Smith Professor of English Language and Literature, has been made into a documentary (An HBO Documentary Films release) and was to be featured at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. It aired on HBO October 13, 2020.

His novel Monkey Boy was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and winner of an American Book Award. Additionally, his novel Say Her Name, which received the prestigious Prix Femina Étranger in France, is in development as a feature film with Fabula Films and Wonderful Films.

Professor Goldman is currently at work on a new novel and continues to write essays and literary pieces, including recent contributions to The New Yorker and a prologue for an upcoming collection of Roque Dalton’s poetry in translation.

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura

Aaron Caycedo-Kimura, Visiting Lecturer in English, was awarded a Connecticut Office of the Arts 2025 Artist Fellowship Grant. 

His poem “Dad Called It Camp” was anthologized in The Gate of Memory: Poems by Descendants of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Haymarket Books, 2025).  

Recent literary journal publications include “Floating Clouds” in American Poetry Journal (Issue 20, October 2025), “Grandmother” and “Elegy for Minnie Negoro” in Diode (Issue 18.2, June 2025), “Girl at a Sewing Machine” in Gordon Square Review (Issue 15, May 2025), and “Search & Rescue” in Good River Review (Spring 2025). 

His full-length book of poetry, Common Grace, was published by Beacon Press in 2022, and his chapbook Ubasute, which won the 2020 Slapering Hol Press Chapbook Competition, was published in 2021.  

Catina Bacote

Catina Bacote, Associate Professor of English, was a 2024 Mellon Arts and Practitioner Fellow at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. Among other honors, Bacote has received fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the American Association of University Women. Her essay, The Funk of Defiance, The Freedom of Refusal appeared in the anthology, Bending Genre: Essays on Creative Nonfiction (Bloomsbury, 2023). Her book chronicling the lasting impact of the illegal drug trade on families and communities will be published by Holt.

Ciaran Berry

Ciaran Berry, Professor of English & Co-Director of Creative Writing, is the author of States (2025), his fourth collection of poems, published by The Gallery Press. Praised in The Irish Times as a “firework display of a book” (Declan Ryan) and in Poetry Ireland Review for its “beautifully wrought, long lines and intricate stanzas [that] require the reader’s full attention but repay it handsomely” (Ben Keatinge), States affirms Berry’s reputation as a poet of lyric precision and expansive vision.

This fall, Berry will be giving readings across Connecticut, including the Riverwood Poetry Series at Real Art Ways in Hartford (October 8), Wordhouse at the Noah Webster House in West Hartford (October 15), and the Connecticut Literary Festival (October 18). In the new year, he will appear at the Hoppin Gallery, Barney Library, in Farmington (January 10, 2026).

More about States and his previous books can be found at The Gallery Press or on his author website. He also recently discussed the new collection in an RTÉ Radio interview.

David Sterling Brown

David Sterling Brown ’06—Associate Professor of English and author of Shakespeare’s White Others (Cambridge UP 2023)—served as the 2025 inaugural Visiting Scholar for England’s National Shakespeare Birthday Celebration where he delivered a moving speech that closed out the weeklong event.

His public-facing work was recently recognized by the American Council of Learned Societies, which also awarded Brown in 2021 the prestigious Scholars and Society Fellowship that facilitated his residency with Claudia Rankine’s The Racial Imaginary Institute, of which he remains a full-time curatorial team member.

Brown’s most recent peer-reviewed publications include: “Baldwin, Shakespeare, Whiteness and (Anti)Fandom: ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It?’” (Transformative Works and Cultures, 2024); “In Authenticity: (De)Valuing Same-Gender-Loving “BlaQueer” Men in Higher Education” (The Journey: Truths of Same-Gender-Loving Black Males in Higher Education); and “Shakespeare Under the Hood: Teaching, Researching and Learning Shakespeare from Within” (Shakespeare Survey, 2025).

Alejandro Heredia

Alejandro Heredia, Artist-in-Residence for English, is a queer Afro Dominican writer and community organizer from The Bronx. He is the author of Loca (Simon & Schuster), which has been shortlisted for The Center for Fiction 2025 First Novel Prize, and the story collection You’re the Only Friend I Need (2021).

His work, which explores queer transnationalism, friendship, and belonging across the African diaspora, has appeared in Teen Vogue, Lambda Literary Review, and Tasteful Rude Magazine.

A recipient of fellowships from Lambda Literary, VONA, and the Dominican Studies Institute, he has also taught writing workshops at Emerson College, Pace University, and the University of Pittsburgh.