Megan Paonessa

Megan PaonessaMarquette University

Marquette Hall, 241

MilwaukeeWI53201United States of America(414) 288-3996megan.paonessa@marquette.edu

Teaching Assistant Professor

English

I teach creative writing because I love witnessing the moment when a student falls in love with the power of language. To trick them down the English rabbit hole, I force them into reading contemporary, new voices who are experimenting with form and subject matter, hoping by pushing them outside their comfort zones I can introduce students to new ways of looking at story. My favorite stories to teach cross genres or use fabulist, surreal, or oddly ordinary lives to connect to personal truths. In mimicking what we read, I encourage students to push the boundaries of a typical story arc and find what interests them about language – a description full of weighted images and implications, Woody Allen-type dialogue, full of wit, unexpected or unreliable endings, suspense that builds and intensifies before a fantastic payoff. These outsider fictions help students let down their walls and locate the stories hiding inside them. Oftentimes, they fail. But we learn best when we learn from our failures.

My fiction writing also tends toward the fabulist. I enjoy exploring ways in which our mental health and imagination affect our physical and natural world, encouraging readers to reconsider how we judge one another and the world we’ve created. Most recently, my work has won such accolades as the 2022 TL;DR Press 1,000 Word Herd Flash Fiction Competition, the Moving Words 2021 Chapbook Contest, as well as a spot on the 2023 Micro Madness shortlist. My short fiction has appeared in The Adirondack Review, PANK, Identity Theory, fwriction : review, and more. In addition to fiction, I’m a big fan of the personal narrative. My creative nonfiction won the Hayden’s Ferry Review 25^th Anniversary Award and has been published in Cambridge University’s Public Humanities special edition, The Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, Scary Mommy, and as a ghostwriter for many popular online outlets. I earned my MFA from the University of Alabama, and a double BA in English and Fine Art from the University of Notre Dame.

Courses Taught

• Foundations in Rhetoric
• Creative Writing: Fiction, Poetry and Creative Nonfiction

Publications

Textbook:

https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Time-Twenty-First-Century/dp/0817359427, co-written with editor Robin Behn, University of Alabama Press, 2020

Fiction:

“Flawless,” Inter et Inter, May 2023

“Riedichi,” winner of the TL;DR Press Flash Fiction Contest, June 2022

“Mother Gardener,” Identity Theory, November 2021

“The Great Reimagining of Greenletter Avenue,” winner of Moving Words chapbook contest, forthcoming

“My Mother, the Psychic,” ARZONO Press 2021 Annual Anthology, June 2021

“Cloudspire,” finalist in Reedsy’s post-apocalyptic climate change contest, April 2021

“A Condition Known as Solitary Disassociation and Privation,” Adirondack Review, Winter 2020

“Color Wheel,” Flying House, October 2013

“Catch & Release,” Picayune Literary Magazine, May 2013

“Alcohol Memory,” Liver of Dixie – Stories from Egan’s, May 2013

“Paper Bag Dragon,” fwriction : review, April 2013

“PARKING $20––EZ OUT,” Specter Literary Magazine, September 2012

“Two Years in Tuscaloosa,” Tuscaloosa Runs This, May 2011 eBook, on PANK, and in print   

     February 2012, Broken Futon Press

“Paper Cutouts,” Red Lightbulbs, May 2011

“Vacancies,” Camera Obscura, April 2011

“Overexposed, Mending into White,” 5923 Quarterly, March 2011

“Release,” Flying House, Winter 2010

Creative Nonfiction:

“Reading and Writing with the Times: What Covid-19 taught me about my creative writing

Classroom,” Journal for Research and Practice in College Teaching, forthcoming

Postpartum Depression: How I Finally Came Up for Air, Scary Mommy, May 2016

Why SAHMs Get Depressed, Scary Mommy, March 2016

“The baby that didn’t make it,” Hayden’s Ferry Review 25^th Anniversary Award Winner, May

2012

Honors and Awards

• Author’s League Fund Award Winner, Summer 2024
• 2023 Micro Madness shortlist winner, Summer 2023
• Professional Development Award winner, Marquette University, Spring 2023
• NTT Scholarly Research Award winner, Marquette University, 2022-23
• Winner of the 2022 TL;DR Press 1,000 Word Herd Flash Fiction Competition
• Center for Peacekeeping research grant, Marquette University, Spring 2022
• NTT Scholarly Research Award winner, Marquette University, 2021-22
• Finalist in Reedsy’s post-apocalyptic climate change contest, 2021
• Honorable Mention in the NYC Midnight Short Story Contest, 2020
• Faculty Excellence Award, North Central College, 2019
• Hayden’s Ferry Review 25^th Anniversary Award Winner, 2012
• Poets & Writers Grants, 2013, 2010
• Capstone International Travel Grant, 2010, University of Alabama
• Graduate Council Travel Grants 2010, 2009, University of Alabama
• Graduate Council Fellowship, 2008, University of Alabama

Additional Information

Office Hours

Spring 2025

• TuTh 12:30-1:45

Teaching Schedule

Spring 2025

• 1001/119 TuTh 9:30-10:45 Olin Engineering 170
  • Foundations in Rhetoric
• 1001/120 TuTh 11:00-12:15 Olin Engineering 170
  • Foundations in Rhetoric
• 3250/101 TuTh 3:30-4:45 David Strauz CN233
  • Lifewriting, Creativity and Community
• 4250/101 TuTh 2:00-3:15 David Strauz CN233
  • Creative Writing: Fiction