Faculty in Popular Fiction

Faculty publications available online from

the University of Southern Maine Bookstore

David Anthony Durham received an MFA from the University of Maryland. His first novel, Gabriel's Story, received the 2002 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction and a 2002 Alex Award from the American Library Association. It was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times and Publisher's Weekly Best of 2001 pick. His second novel, Walk Through Darkness, was a New York Times Notable Book and a best of 2002 selection from The San Francisco Chronicle, Black Issues Book Review and The Atlanta Journal Constitution. His third, Pride of Carthage, a Book Sense Selection for February 2005, was a bestseller in Chile and Mexico. His most recent work is Acacia, an epic fantasy. His novels have been published in the UK and translated into eight languages: French, German, Italian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. David was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Writer at Colorado College, has run workshops for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation, and is now an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Cal State University in Fresno.

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Nancy Holder’s work has appeared on the USA Today, LA Times, amazon.com, Waldenbooks, LOCUS, and other bestseller lists. A four-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association, she has also received accolades from the American Library Association, the American Reading Association, the New York Public Library, and Romantic Times. She has sold approximately seven dozen book-length projects, many of them set in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Smallville universes. Wicked, her series for Simon and Schuster, was co-authored with her former Maui Writers Retreat student, Debbie Viguie. It has been reissued in two volumes through an exclusive deal with Barnes and Noble. Nancy has also sold approximately two hundred short stories, essays, and articles, and recently turned in a short story about Zorro. She just completed a deal to begin a comic book series for Moonstone Publishing. Her anthology, Outsiders, co-edited with Nancy Kilpatrick, was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award in 2005. Nancy has worked as the fiction editor for a computer game company as well as providing editorial consulting services and ghostwriting for private clients. She also teaches creative writing at the University of California at San Diego.

James Patrick Kelly has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, audioplays, and planetarium shows.  His books include Burn (2005), Strange But Not A Stranger (2002), Think Like A Dinosaur and Other Stories (1997), Wildlife (1994), Heroines (1990), Look Into The Sun (1989), Freedom Beach (in collaboration with John Kessel, 1986) and Planet of Whispers (1984). Although he is primarily known for his science fiction, his work also includes mainstream, fantasy, and horror. His audioplays have been produced by Scifi.com's Seeing Ear Theater and he writes a regular Internet column for Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.  His planetarium show, "Destiny or Discovery," premiered at the Christa McAuliffe Planetarium in 1992.  His books have been reprinted in France, Germany, Italy, Holland, Finland, Spain, Poland, Hungary, Japan, Brazil, Thailand, Croatia, Israel, the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic.  His short stories have appeared in numerous "Best of the Year" collections over the past twenty-six years, and he has won the World Science Fiction Society's Hugo award twice and has been a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula. As part of New Hampshire’s Arts in Education program, he has taught writing in more than forty schools throughout New Hampshire to students from grades 3-12. He has also taught at the University of New Hampshire, SUNY Brockport, NY, Imagination Writers Conference, and the Clarion Writers' Workshop, where he is a member of the Board of Directors.

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Michael Kimball is the author of four novels, Firewater Pond, Green Girls, Mouth to Mouth, and Undone, which received the Fresh Talent Award in the U.K. and remained on the London Times’ top ten bestseller list for two months in 1996. Stage plays include Ghosts of Ocean House, nominated for the 2007 Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America, Best Enemies, and Santa Come Home, all staged in 2006, and The Secret of Comedy, produced in the fall of 2007. Michael has had original screenplays and novels optioned by movie companies and written episodes for the TV series Monsters.

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Kelly Link's debut collection, Stranger Things Happen, was a Firecracker nominee, a Village Voice Favorite Book and a Salon Book of the Year. Salon called the collection "...an alchemical mixture of Borges, Raymond Chandler, and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, the James Tiptree Jr., and the World Fantasy Awards. 

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Julia Spencer-Fleming is a former military brat who grew up in places as diverse as Mobile, Rome, Stuttgart and Syracuse. A graduate of Ithaca College, George Washington University and the University of Maine School of Law, she took up writing while still a stay-at-home mother of three. Her debut novel, In the Bleak Midwinter, won the St. Martin’s/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery contest, the Independent Mystery Booksellers’ Association Dilys Award, and the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for Best First Novel. The third book in her series, Out of the Deep I Cry, was an Edgar and Anthony award finalist. The latest book in her bestselling Clare Fergusson/Russ Van Alstyne series is ALL MORTAL FLESH; an Agatha,Gumshoe and Romantic Times RC Award finalist.  She lives in the country outside Portland (Maine, that is) with her three children, two dogs and one husband..More about Julia

Other faculty who teach Popular Fiction include Alan Davis and Elizabeth Searle (bios under Fiction).

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Creative Nonfiction Faculty

Fiction Faculty

Poetry Faculty

Popular Fiction Faculty