Writing Professor Imagines New Worlds

Emrys Donaldson (SUNY Geneseo photo)

Building fictional worlds comes naturally to Emrys Donaldson, Geneseo’s new assistant professor of English and creative writing.

“My own writing typically uses a climate-changed near-future setting with specific speculative elements,” he says. What does that mean? Well, for example, his recent short story collection The Iridescents (Texas Review Press, 2026) includes “a world where the dominant species is radioactive 300-year-old giant crustaceans. I enjoyed figuring out how they might interact with other nuclear-infused megafauna.”

Those “heckin-big bois of the sea” aren’t outliers in Donaldson’s universe, odd as they may sound. Another short story imagines an inhabited world inside the arcade game Big Buck Hunter III—a world that just might represent the afterlife.

Donaldson’s weird and wonderful world-building skills are enlivening Geneseo’s creative writing classes, and the students are there for it.

“Some students are writing contemporary realistic fiction, but others are writing sci-fi or fantasy or speculative stories—one even said he was writing a fatalistic noir,” says Donaldson. “They’re really excited that they’re allowed to do that.”  

Students want to write genre fiction, says Alice Rutkowski, professor and chair in English and creative writing. “That’s what they all read, and a lot of them are already writing in those genres by themselves. Now they’ll have the tools to figure out how to do it well.”

Donaldson, who joined the SUNY Geneseo faculty in Fall 2025, has long experience teaching creative writing, most recently at the University of Alabama. He’s particularly enthused about Geneseo’s two-semester Advanced Fiction Workshop. Teaching students how to develop narrative settings, imaginary worlds, and constructed languages prompts them to approach their writing with a wider perspective.

Media-savvy students are already familiar with crossovers between books, games, movies, and podcasts, Donaldson says, and he encourages them to explore all sorts of fictional forms. Class discussions have touched on nontraditional genres such as fanfiction, and one student, he says, “even built out a very extensive Dungeons & Dragons world.”

“Professor Donaldson is very open to any genre of writing, literally anything,” says Michaela Lewis-Hardies ’26, a communication and English (creative writing) double major in Donaldson’s Advanced Fiction Workshop. Her first story assignment was a time-traveling romantasy, something she says she might not have attempted with a different professor.

Donaldson’s own short fiction and essays have appeared in publications such as LitHub, TriQuarterly, The Rumpus, and Electric Literature. His work is often informed by a queer viewpoint; for instance, The Iridescents highlights how the LGBTQ+ community transforms everyday acts of support and survival into miracles.

In addition to their forays into fictional realms, senior English and creative writing majors get guidance from Donaldson on professionalization—defining what they want for their career and their writing after graduation. The limitlessness of that can feel overwhelming, but Donaldson finds Geneseo students are better prepared than most.

“It’s been wonderful to see how curious they are, and how willing they are to speak their minds,” he says.

And how ready they are to write new worlds into being.

Learn more about Geneseo’s creative writing program.