Professional CV

Education:

MFA candidate, Southern New Hampshire University, Genre Fiction and Professional Development Track

Book Development Certificate, Queens University of Charlotte, 2022

MFA, Bennington Writing Seminars, 2020
(Dual Genre Fiction, Nonfiction)

Ph.D., University of Delaware, 2007
(English Literature)

 M.A., University of Washington, 2000
(English Literature)

 B.S., United States Air Force Academy, 1991
(English)

 MFA Thesis (Dual Genre):
Set Something Free: A Novel-- When an untimely death and a relentless boss push her to the brink of survival, young junior marketing executive Willow Lamont must set aside the security that bought high class stabling for her beloved horse, a decent truck, and a promise of rapid career progression, she lost her footing after her beloved sister’s untimely death from breast cancer. Confronting her most profound regret and deep-seated depression, she challenges herself to take a tough backcountry ride with Murphy, her most dear horse and companion. When events go beyond her control, she learns that letting go can set her free.

Max’s World: A Military Memoir: With a naïve mind and a great work ethic, I followed my brother to the U.S. Air Force Academy where the guaranteed post-graduation job and a lack of imagination landed me as an officer in the U.S. Air Force four years later. This memoir traces that time through essays about a military college and a full, 26-year military career where we watch naivete turn into consciousness. That awareness was shared with young Air Force Academy cadets in my senior war literature English classes. I learned to balance my pride in service with clarity about the immoral nature of what servicemembers are asked to do—something I encouraged my students to dissect on their way to their own military service.

 Dissertation:
Finding a Future for the Past: Time, Memory, and Identity in the Literature of Mary Hunter Austin, Edith Wharton, Ellen Glasgow, and Willa Cather, develops a new account of the relationship between fiction and autobiography of four women authors whose writing spans the movement into modernism. As these women work out theories of memory and identity in their fictional and autobiographical narratives, the process raises questions about their own definitions of self.  They see their culture’s major flaw as a form of historical amnesia: America is becoming a memory-less society by detaching itself from the past and, particularly, literary traditions.  Their life stories narrate independent, thinking women who must learn how to accept lessons from a past that has disappointed them and how to negotiate a future that alarms them. 

 Publications: 

“Quantum Constellations,” Snoozine, January 2025 (website moving)

 “Harrowing,” Switch

“We Laugh.” Cleaver Magazine. June 2024.

“This Old Moon.” Corvus Review. Spring/Summer 2024.

“Tuna Casserole and Me.” Seraphic Review. May 2024.

“A Feminist History of You.” South Florida Poetry Journal. February 2024.

“STOP.” Booth. January 2024.

“Hidden History,” Collateral Journal. 8.1. November 2023.

“A Military Liberal Education.” The Wrath-Bearing Tree. July 2023.

“Common Tongue.” SCRIBES*MICRO*FICTION. Issue #31. July 2023.

 “What competes in the room where she writes.” Bending Genres. June 2023.

 “A Military Liberal Education.” The Wrath-Bearing Tree. February 2023.

 “Jaffrey, New Hampshire, Willa Cather’s Creative Intersection for My Antonia.” The Ekphrastic Review. April 2023.

 “Behind Her House.” 50 Give or Take. Story No. 390, 2023.

 “For Love.” The Bath Flash Fiction Contest. Judge’s Choice. Snow Crow, vol. 6, 2021.

“First, Unbecoming.” The Line Veteran’s Literary Review. February 2021.

“Willa Cather.” Twentieth Century and Contemporary American Literature in Context. Edited by Linda DeRoche.

“Reading My Ántonia, Visiting a Memory.” Nonfiction. The Willa Cather Review. Spring 2019. 

“‘Heroic in Size’: Reading My Ántonia as Willa Cather’s First World War One Novel.” The Willa Cather Review. Summer 2018. 

“M.F.K. Fisher’s Culinary Autobiographies.” The Routledge Companion to Food Literature, edited by Donna Lee Brien and Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Routledge. Spring 2018.

“Here Is Where My War Story Begins.” Nonfiction. CONSEQUENCE Magazine, edited by George Kovach and Catherine Parnell, June 17, 2017.

“Cather’s Prescience in One of Ours.” Willa Cather Newsletter & Review, edited by Ann Romines. The Willa Cather Foundation, May 2017.

 “Determined About Determinism:  Genetic Manipulation, Memory, and Identity in Shaping the Post-Apocalyptic Self in Dark Angel and The Divergent Series.” The Last Midnight: Critical Essays on Apocalyptic Narratives in Millennial Media, McFarland Publishing: 2016.

 “Blurring Boundaries: Women in War in Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife.” Albeit, edited by Tracy Bealer and Natalie Leppard, Fall 2015.

“Creative Genius: Willa Cather’s Characters and the Influence of the American Desert Southwest.” Critical Insights: Southwestern Literature, edited by William Brannon, Grey House/Salem Press, 2016.

 “The Fine Reality of Hunger Satisfied: Food as Metaphorical Substitute in Panem.” Of Bread and Blood: Essays on The Hunger Games Trilogy, McFarland Publishing: 2012.

“Finding Ourselves in Our Food:  MFK Fisher’s The Art of Eating for the 21st Century.” POROI: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Rhetorical Analysis and Invention, edited by A.P. Lamberti, volume 11, issue 1, 2015

 “How War Becomes Love: Donovan Campbell’s Memoir Joker One.”  War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, volume 21, United States Air Force Academy, 2009.

“Telling True War Stories.”  War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, Twentieth Anniversary Edition, United States Air Force Academy, 2008.

“Shoulders to Wings: The Provenance of Winged Imagery from Kate Chopin’s Juvenilia through The Awakening.”  Co-author with Dr. Thomas Bonner, Jr.  I am primary author.  Xavier Review, volume 25, issue 2, Xavier University of Louisiana 2005.

“Fruit Trees and Tamarisk Brooms: Grafting a Unique Perspective of American History in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.”  Willa Cather Newsletter and Review, volume 49, issue 2, The Willa Cather Foundation, 2005.

“Incognito.”  Caesura, volume 25 University of Delaware, 2005. (fiction)

“Lazim Öldürmek.”  Concho River Review, volume 17, issue 1, SASU Press, 2003.

 Other scholarly publications:

“Book Review of Tracy Daugherty, 148 Charles Street, Western American Literature, volume 58, no, 1, Spring 2023.

“Book Review of Lauren Hough, Leaving isn’t the Hardest Thing: Essays” American Book Review. University of Nebraska Press, volume 43, number 3, Fall 2022.

“Mapping Fault Lines in Kate Schifani’s Cartography.” The Wrath-Bearing Tree. July 2022.

“Everyman’s Tale: Ryan Leigh Dostie’s Formation.” Book Review. Consequence Forum. Spring 2021.

“Moral Injury: Invisible War Wounds in Fidelis.” Book Review. Consequence Forum. Fall 2020.

“What if? An Alternate, Warring Future.” Book Review of Empire City by Matt Gallagher. Spring 2020.

“Willa Cather and the Connection to Kyrgyzstan.” Willa Cather Newsletter and Review, volume 57, issue 4, The Willa Cather Foundation, 2015.

“Book Review of Janis Stout, South by Southwest: Katherine Anne Porter and the Burden of Texas History.” Western American Literature, volume 49, issue 1, University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

“Book Review of Ann Moseley and Sarah Cheney Watson, eds., Willa Cather and Aestheticism: From Romanticism to Modernism.” Western American Literature, volume 48, issue 4 Utah State University, 2014.

“Book Review of Steven Trout On the Battlefield of Memory: The First World War and American Remembrance.” War, Literature, and the Arts: An International Journal of the Humanities, volume 23, United States Air Force Academy, 2013.

 “Book Review of Lou Halsell Rodenberger's Jane Gilmore Rushing: A West Texas Writer and Her Work.” Western American Literature, volume 43, issue 4, Utah State University, 2009.

“Summer.” Facts on File Companion to the American Novel, Facts on File, Inc., April 2006. (by request from series editor)

“Book Review of Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory.” War, Literature, and the Arts:  An International Journal of the Humanities, (Fall/Winter 2000) United States Air Force Academy, 2000.

Scholarly/Creative Writing presentations:

Caswell, Andrea. “A Craft Chat with MaxieJane Frazier,” Cleaver Magazine.

Former co-editor of MicroLit Almanac

Goodrich Scholarship Program guest lecturer/reader. University of Omaha. October 2023.

“Set Something Free.” Fiction. Western Literature Association Conference, October, 2020.

“At Least I Get to Say Goodbye.” Nonfiction. Western Literature Association Conference, September, 2019.

“Memories Made Present: Jim Burden's Autobiography My Antonia.” Society for the Study of American Women Writers, November 2018.

“Postcards From an American Love Story.” Nonfiction. Western Literature Association Conference, October 2018.

“Her Own “Two or Three Stories:” Willa Cather’s Autobiographical My Ántonia.” Cather Spring Conference, June 2018.

“Silenced Dimensions in Crisis and Conflict.” Association of Writers and Writing Programs. Tampa, FL, March 2018.

“Reading My Ántonia as a War Novel.” 16th International Cather Seminar. Pittsburgh, PA, June 2017.

“Cather’s First War Novel: My Ántonia and the Great War.” Western Literature Association, Big Sky, MT, Sept 2016.

“Decades Since Our Doughboy: One of Ours and the War Years.” Panel member of The Passing Show. 61st Cather Spring Conference.  Red Cloud, NE, June 2016.

 “Origins and Influences:  Willa Cather’s Philosophical Ideas of Artistic Growth in The Song of the Lark.” International Cather Seminar. Red Cloud & Lincoln, June 2015.

“Identifying Identity: Exploring Liminality in Nancy Farmer’s Young Adult Dystopian Scorpion King.”  Genre on the Border: A Roundtable Discussion on teaching Young Adult Literature of the West. Western Literature Association. Victoria, B.C., Canada, November 2014.

“Willa Cather’s Life and Works.”  Invited Lecture and Willa Cather Foundation Board Member Representative.  (Donated an English-language collection of her novels to the Bishkek and Kant libraries in Kyrgyzstan).  American Corner.  Bishkek & Kant, Kyrgyzstan. 2014.

“Finding a Future for the Past: American Women Authors at the Turn From the 19th Century.” Invited Lecturer.  American University of Central Asia. Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. 2013.

“Being Born From Bits: Cather’s Ode to ‘A Silver Cup’ and Sinagua Potsherds.”  Scholars Symposium.  The Willa Cather Foundation, Red Cloud, NE, June 2012.

“Heterotopia in Forming Identity:  The American Southwest in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.”  The Modern Language Association.  Seattle, WA.  January 2012.

“The Self-Reflective Value of Juxtaposition:  Heterotopia in Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House.” Western Literature Association, Missoula, MT, Oct 2011.

“Heterotopia in Inventing the Self:  The American Southwest in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark.”  The 2011 International Cather Seminar.  Northampton, MA, June 2011.

“More than Meals: Food for Movement in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark.”   Western Performances.  Western Literature Association, Prescott, AZ, Oct 2010.

“The Taste of Desire:  Food for the Mind, Body, and Soul in Willa Cather’s The Song of the Lark.”  The American Literature Association Symposium on Fiction.  Savannah, GA, October 2010.

“Meal of Myself: Autobiography and Food in Willa Cather’s Writing.”  Food, Drink, and Willa Cather’s Writing.  The Willa Cather Foundation, Red Cloud, NE, June 2010.

“The Hopeless Hero and The War to End All Wars in Willa Cather’s One of Ours” Society for Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, Colorado Springs, March 2010.

“A Lost Boy:  Finding Place Everywhere in Willa Cather’s One of Ours.” Western American Literature Conference, Spearfish, SD, October 2009.

“Absent Violence and Present Fear in Mary Austin’s Starry Adventure.” Western American Literature Conference, Spearfish, SD, October 2009.

“Anesthetized Action and Titillating Technology:  Avoiding Identity in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep.”  Society for Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, Colorado Springs, March 2009.

“Joining Forces With the Eternal: Mary Hunter Austin’s Collaboration With Ancestral Memory and the Western Landscape.”  Western American Literature Conference. Boulder, CO, October 2008.

“Sorting Out Religion and Racial Memory in Mary Austin’s Earth Horizon.”  South Central Conference on Christianity in Literature, Taos, NM, April 2007

“Shoulders to Wings: the Provenance of Winged Imagery from Kate Chopin’s Juvenilia through The Awakening.”  Plenary speaker.  Invited to speak on published article. South Central Conference on Christianity in Literature, New Orleans, LA, April 2006.

“Fruit Trees and Tamarisk Brooms: Grafting a Unique Perspective of American History in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop.” Special Session: America as a Space of Memory.  Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, WI, November 200.

“A Room With No View: The Bleak Interior of Characters in Edith Wharton’s Twilight Sleep.” Special Session: Remembering Identity: The Impact of WWI on Expatriate Fictional and Autobiographical Memory.  Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, WI, November 2005.

“Post Modernity in the Looking Glass:  Mirrored Doubles in Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre.” Special Session: Looking Backward: Edwardians, Moderns, and the` 19th Century.  Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, MO, November 2004.

“Identity Crisis:  Turn-of-the-Century Social Theory Critique in Anzia Yezierska’s Bread Givers” Division Panel: Jewish American Literature.  Central New York Conference on Language and Literature (CNYCLL), Cortland, NY, October 2000.

“The Presence of Park:  Anzia Yezierska’s Social Theory Engagement in Bread Givers.”  Keynote presenter for U.S. Air Force Academy American Studies Group spring dinner, Manitou Springs, CO, April 2002.

Professional Background/Teaching Experience:

  • June 2020-present Birch Bark Editing: freelance editor, coach, teacher

  • April 2017-present: adjunct instructor SNHU (ENG 510, ENG 520, ENG 529, ENG 530, ENG 532, ENG 550, LIT 502)

  • October 2019-present: team lead (SNHU)

  • June 2020-present teaching freelance courses (on flash/writing/publishing topics), Birch Bark Editing

  • June 2014-June 2017, July 2008 – June 2012, January 2000-June 2002:  Senior Military Faculty/Assistant/Associate Professor of English—USAFA, CO

  • Core courses: Introductory Composition and Research; Literature and Intermediate Composition; and Language, Literature and Leadership: Advanced Writing and Speaking every semester

  • Majors’ enrichment courses including American Modernism, 19th-Century American Novels, American Literature survey, Food Literature in America, Seminar on Race, Gender, Class, Culture, Asian-American Literature

  • Interests in American (turn of the last century), autobiography/memory, Willa Cather, Modernism, food in literature, young adult literature, race/gender/identity/culture

  • Supervised strategic and day-to-day academic operations for 36 faculty over 239 sections supporting more than 3,800 students

  • Served as Faculty Senator representing terminal-degree-holding military faculty

  • Led Faculty Forum as President, 2011-2012 representing faculty concerns to Dean

  • Guided quarterly awards program as company grade officer board president

  • Advised U.S. Air Force Academy Board of senior decision makers as well as English department's Executive and Curriculum Committees

  • Advised more than 30 undergraduate English majors

  • Served on graduate scholarship committee for Wolfe/Lawson scholarships

  • Led 115 cadets in basic training and CPME as Associate Air Officer Commanding

Course Directing (U.S. Air Force Academy):  I have been the course director and designer for multi-instructor and single instructor courses at USAFA for a total of 14 course directorships:

·         English 380: Race, Gender, Class, and Culture (2011)

·         English 383: Literature and Science (3 sections, 2010-2012)

·         English 390: American and Anglophone Modernism (selected for Spring 2017)

·         English 390A: Nineteenth-Century American Novels (2010)

·         English 390A: American Modernist Novels (Spring 2016)

·         English 470: American Literature (4 sections 2009, 2010, 2012, 2015)

·         English 411: Language, Literature, and Leadership (multi-instructor 2008-2010)

·         English 495: Asian American Literature (2002)

·         English 499: Independent Study (4 sections, Willa Cather, Memory, Identity, and Food Literature)

 Core Courses (U.S. Air Force Academy):

·         English 111: Introductory Composition and Research (7 semesters)

·         English 211: Literature and Intermediate Composition (5 semesters)

·         English 411: Language, Literature and Leadership: Advanced Writing and Speaking (11 semesters)

Other professional work:

Co- -Editor Spring Conference issue of the Willa Cather Newsletter & Review, Spring 2017.

Board representative for The Willa Cather Foundation working with U.S. Embassy to gain permission for the Publishers and Book Sellers Association in the Kyrgyzstan to translate Willa Cather’s My Ántonia for a non-profit effort to translate quality literature into the Kyrgyz language and donate to local schools, 2015

Co-director, Willa Cather and World War I. Willa Cather Foundation Spring Symposium. Red Cloud, 2016.

Session Chair. “Voice and The Song of the Lark.” International Cather Seminar. Lincoln, NE, June 2015.

Photo #28. “Afghanistan: The Long Withdrawal.” The Atlantic, Photo. Sept. 2, 2014.

Invited panel expert. “One of Ours: Willa Cather Pioneer & Pulitzer Winner.”  American Women Writer’s National Museum.  Washington D.C., 2013.

Panel Organizer. “Global Art, Western American Context.” Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2014.

Panel Chair. “Remembering the American West.” Modern Language Association. Boston, MA, January 2013.

Panel Chair.  “Transitions and Legacies.”  Western Literature Association.  Lubbock, TX November 2012.

Invited Scholar. “Visionary Landscapes: Willa Cather and the Search for Place in the West.” Idaho Humanities Institute Summer Seminar. Caldwell, ID, 2012.

Copy/Content Editor “NCAA Certification Report.” USAFA. Spring 2010.

Copy/Content Editor “USAFA Research Report.”  USAFA. 2009.

“Losing Control: Gothic Technology”.  Panel Chair. Society for Interdisciplinary Study of Social Imagery, Colorado Springs, CO, March 2009.

Copy Editor “Domestic Preparedness.”  Chapter within Textbooks of Military Medicine: Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare. Ed. Lieutenant Colonel Shirley D. Tuorinsky.  Washington D.C.: Office of the Surgeon General and TMM Publications, 2008.

“Remembering Identity:  The Impact of World War I and National History on Expatriate Fictional and Autobiographical Memory.”  Panel Chair.  Midwest Modern Language Association, Milwaukee, WI, November 2005. 

Professional Societies
Association of Writers and Writing Programs (2018-present)
Author's Guild (2018-present)
Modern Language Association (MLA) (1999-present)
Sigma Tau Delta (English Honor Society)
Western American Literature Association (WLA)
Willa Cather Foundation (2008-Present) (Board Member)

Professional Background
Air Force Public Affairs Officer 1991-1998 (Denver & Colorado Springs, Colorado,  Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Naples, Italy, Incirlik, Turkey)
Graduate Student 1998-1999 (University of Washington, Seattle, Washington)
Instructor/Assistant Professor of English, U.S. Air Force Academy, CO 1999-2002
Air Force Public Affairs Officer 2002-2003 (Seoul, South Korea)
Ph.D. Candidate 2003-2006 (University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware)
Air Force Public Affairs Officer 2006-2008 (Pentagon, Washington D.C. and Kabul, Afghanistan)
Assistant Professor of English 2008-2010 (USAFA)
Associate Professor of English 2010-2012 (USAFA)
Public Affairs Officer 2012-2014 (Pentagon, Washington D.C. and Transit Center at Manas, Kyrgyzstan)
Associate Professor of English 2014-2017 (USAFA)
Senior Military Faculty 2015-2017 (USAFA)
MFA Candidate 2018-2020 (Bennington Writing Seminars)
Book Development Certificate Program 2022 (Queens University of Charlotte)