Rank
Professor

Educational Background
PhD Creative Writing, Ohio University

Interests and Specialization
Creative Nonfiction, personal essay, the lyric essay, memoir, the prose poem, and 20th-century African and Jewish American Literature

About

Dr. Rachael Peckham (she/her) teaches courses in the art and literature of creative nonfiction, including autobiography, memoir, and the personal essay. She earned a BA degree in English from Hope College, an MFA in creative writing from Georgia College and State University, and a PhD in creative writing from Ohio University, where she received a Notable Alumni Award in 2017. Dr. Peckham is the author of Alight: Flights of Prose (UnCollected Press 2022) and the chapbook Muck Fire: Prose Poems (Spring Garden Press 2011), which won the Robert Watson Prize. Her essays and short lyric prose largely encircle themes about family, grief, flight, and farming, and her work has appeared in some of the top literary journals and anthologies in the field, including two notable mentions in the Best American Essays series (2012 and 2015).

Since joining Marshall University’s faculty in 2009, Dr. Peckham has been awarded the Distinguished Artists and Scholars Award for junior faculty (2011); the Pickens-Queen Teaching Award (2015); two Marshall University Summer Research Awards (2016 and 2017); the Distinguished John Deaver Drinko Academy Fellowship (2017); the Hedrick Teaching Fellowship (2020-2021); the John Marshall University Scholars Summer Award (2021); and the Hedrick Outstanding Faculty Award (2022-2023). She’s presided over the West Virginia Association of College English Teachers, Marshall’s chapter of the Phi Kappa Phi Honors Society, and has twice served as Coordinator of the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series.