All Herbert Postdoctoral Fellows work in the Judith Anderson Herbert Writing Center, providing individual consultations with undergraduate and graduate writers from across the campus and contributing to the development of additional resources for writers. Below, read about some of the projects each has worked on for the Herbert Writing Center and about their scholarly background.
Rachel Bryan
Rachel contributes to the Herbert Writing Center’s new writing consultant training program and provides writing consultations for graduate students and students working on application materials. She is also contributing to the development of a guide for writers about using AI in application materials.
Rachel completed her Ph.D. at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2023 with a concurrent certificate in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation, Bone Tired: Resisting Labor in Southern Women’s Fiction, explores the aesthetics and social contexts of women refusing gendered and informal labor in southern literature from Depression-era fiction to the present day. Her essay on grief and adult daughters in Eudora Welty’s and Jesmyn Ward’s fiction appeared in The Eudora Welty Review, and she has volunteered as the Vice President of the Flannery O’Connor Society since 2023.
Grant Currier
For the Herbert Writing Center, Grant has collaborated on workshops with UTK’s Office of Undergraduate Research, Fellowships, and Service Learning to support Gilman scholarship applicants. He is also developing resources to help grant and scholarship applicants communicate their research to multiple audiences.
Grant is a writer, educator, and researcher with a deep commitment to storytelling and its cultural impact. As a Fulbright Grantee at the University of Debrecen, he initiated the IEAS Writers Salon and the Conference on Creativity and Practice, both of which foster cross-cultural literary dialogues. The stories of his Hungarian-American family and his Rust Belt childhood inspire his fiction, which has appeared in The Tusculum Review, The Table Review, Saranac Review, Nimrod International Journal, Grand Little Things, South Dakota Review, Waxwing, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and elsewhere. His as-yet-unpublished short story collection “We Will Not Grieve” has been recognized twice as a semi-finalist for the Iron Horse Literary Review First Book Prize and once for the Orison Fiction Prize. Additionally, he was a finalist for The Tusculum Review’s 2025 Chapbook contest.
Amanda Gaines
As a Herbert Postdoctoral Fellow, Amanda serves as a writing consultant trainer, guiding new consultants on best practices. She has co-created workshops for students preparing materials for Alt-Ac job searches, completed an analysis and proposed redesign for the Herbert Writing Center’s website, and is collaborating on a qualitative research study of students’ attitudes towards AI and writing.
Amanda is an Appalachian writer with a Ph.D. in creative writing from Oklahoma State University. Her nonfiction and poetry are published in Pleaides, Potomac Review, Barrelhouse, Fugue, december, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Willow Springs, Redivider, New Orleans Review, Southeast Review, The Southern Review, Juked, Rattle, Cleaver, SmokeLong Quarterly, Ninth Letter, among others. Her essays “Purplest’ and “Flea” were listed as notable in 2022 and 2024’s Best American Essays, respectively. Her creative work and scholarship consider gender, cultural mythos, and popular culture.
Samuel Granoff
For the Herbert Writing Center, Sam is developing a collaboration with UTK’s Center for Global Engagement / Programs Abroad office to provide specialized support for students studying abroad, including pre-departure workshops, overseas writing consultations, and reflective writing upon return.
Sam holds a PhD in English Literature from Florida State University, as well as degrees from Columbia University, Duke University, and the University of San Francisco (the latter two at which he played baseball). Last year, he served as a Fulbright Fellow through the Université Paris-Saclay, researching for a novel set during the First World War. He has previously taught abroad with Semester at Sea, covering ten countries in one hundred days, and played professional baseball overseas.
Emily Jalloul
As a Herbert Postdoctoral Fellow, Emily enjoys working closely with students on graduate and application materials such as research statements and CVs. She has also designed and led writing workshops and developed website content. She is currently collaborating with UTK’s Office of Undergraduate Research, Fellowships, and Service Learning to develop resources for consultants who work with grant and fellowship applicants.
Emily is a Lebanese-American poet from South Florida. She earned her PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she currently lives. Her previous work has been published or is forthcoming in Oxford American, What Things Cost: an anthology for the people, and Arkansas International, as well as others.
Minadora Macheret
Minadora enjoys working with graduate students on their theses and dissertations and with writers preparing application materials for graduate school, scholarships/fellowships, and the workforce. She has co-created workshops that help students during the dissertation/thesis writing process and that support graduate students on the job market. She is co-developing a consultant-run writing center blog and faculty-facing writing center newsletter.
Minadora is a poet and essayist who received her PhD in Creative Writing from the University of North Texas, where she specialized in poetry with a secondary focus in Literature of the Shoah. Her poetry has been selected for the Academy of American Poets’ Prize, and she received the James Merrill Poetry Fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. Her nonfiction was chosen for Orison’s Best Spiritual Literature of 2024 anthology. Her work has been published in Brevity, South Dakota Review, Salamander, and other journals. She is the author of the chapbook, Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
Kyle Macy
Kyle serves as a writing consultant trainer, where he collaborates with new graduate consultants as they develop practical and ethically-grounded approaches to writing instruction and pedagogical training. He chaired the 2024-2025 Writing Consultant Awards process and has assisted in the hiring process for new consultants. As part of the Herbert Writing Center Social Club, Kyle also helps host movie and trivia nights. He believes writing centers aren’t merely places of work—they are spaces brimming with potential to enrich connections and develop community.
Kyle is a fiction writer who holds a PhD in English from the University at Albany SUNY. His research interrogates intersections of conspiratorial narratives, cultic communities, and romantic constructions of authorship throughout American culture. He is at work on a novel.
Torre Puckett
Torre contributes to improving access for disabled consultees, staff, and consultants as part of the Herbert Writing Center’s access improvement team. She serves as a coach in the new consultant training program and also assists Knoxville high schoolers with their college application journey through her work with the Flagship Writing Project.
Torre’s research interests are at the intersection of horror literature, especially of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and disability studies; as a scholar, she is particularly interested in questions of monstrosity, reproductive futurity, the history of science, and genre theory. Her current project examines the influence of eugenic history and theory in horror fiction. As a writing center practitioner, she is passionate about using her expertise in disability to improve accessibility outcomes for consultees and staff. She did her graduate work at the University of Michigan, where she taught first-year writing and spearheaded the accessibility improvement project at the Sweetland Center for Writing. Her publications may be found in the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies and the Journal of Contemporary Drama in English.
Valerie Voight
In her work for the Herbert Writing Center, Valerie has concentrated on the intersection of writing studies and ed tech. She has participated in instructional pilots involving the use of GenAI and PowerNotes, facilitated workshops on digital learning tools for faculty and graduate students, and contributed to the Herbert Writing Center’s ongoing Reflections on AI qualitative research study and to the creation of digital assignment planners for students.
Valerie received her PhD from the University of Virginia, where she specialized in post-Reformation English romance. Her research interests include early modern literature and religious culture, digital rhetoric, and digital pedagogy. Her work has appeared in Comparative Drama and the Sidney Journal.