UC Irvine News Brief: Alumna honored for fiction debut

Mattaponi Queen, by Belle Boggs, a 2002 graduate of UCI’s M.F.A. Programs in Writing, has been named one of the best fiction debuts of 2010 by the editors of Poets & Writers magazine. Set on and around Virginia’s Mattaponi Indian Reservation, the collection of stories draws on Boggs’ experiences growing up in King William County, Va. Boggs, who taught writing to Santa Ana children through UCI’s Humanities Out There program, won the 2009 Bakeless Prize for Fiction. She and her husband live in Chatham County, N.C., where she’s working on her next book.