Dr. Abby Manzella
Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing
Fall 2026 TU 1:20-2:20PM and by appt.
BA, Middlebury College; MLitt, Bread Loaf School of English; MA, University of Virginia; PhD, Tufts University
Abby Manzella is the author of the forthcoming short story collection Ripples into the Wild (Cornerstone Press 2027) as well as the scholarly book Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Displacements (OSU Press), which won the Society for the Study of American Women Writers Book Award, was awarded the Honorable Mention for the MLA Book Prize for Independent Scholars, and was selected as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title. Her creative writing was awarded a 2025 Pushcart Prize. Her writing was also twice named to the Wigleaf Top 50 Longlist, recognized by the CRAFT Hybrid Writing Contest, and placed as a finalist in The Forge Literary Magazine Flash CNF Competition and the Raleigh Review Flash Fiction Prize. Her stories, essays, interviews, and reviews have been published by places such as The Threepenny Review, The Massachusetts Review, Pleiades, Superstition Review, Literary Hub, Electric Lit, CRAFT Literary, Catapult, Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, and The Boston Globe. You can hear her read her work on Micro the podcast via Literary Hub. She teaches creative writing, American literature, and film. She is the advisor for the Practicum at the Writers' Colony at Dairy Hollow in Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
Fellowships and Awards:
Nancy Ludmerer Flash Fiction and Nonfiction Fellowship for Porches Writing Retreat
Winner of a Pushcart Prize
Artist-in-Residence, Plyspace in Muncie, Indiana
Fellow, Institute for Humanities Research at Arizona State University
Middlebury Scholarship to attend Bread Loaf Writers' Conference
Invited Speaker for The NYU Journal of International Law and Politics Journal (JILP) Symposium
University Grants:
SAH International Travel Grant 2027
Academic Innovation Award 2025
Arts and Humanities Mini-Grant 2025