Rebecca Lehmann

What career pathway have you pursued since your time at UW?
After leaving the UW with my BA, I did an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and then a PhD in creative writing at Florida State University, and pursued a career in academia. I’m currently an associate professor of English at Saint Mary’s College in Notre Dame, Indiana. At the same time, I’ve pursued a career as a writer, first as a poet, publishing three books of poetry, and more recently as a novelist. My debut novel, The Beheading Game, will be out in March 2026 from Crown, an imprint of Penguin Random House. The novel is a speculative fiction re-telling of the execution of Anne Boleyn, Henry VIII’s second wife, in which Anne wakes up after her execution, beheaded but still alive, then escapes from the Tower of London, sews her head back on, and goes on a revenge quest to kill Henry VIII.

What did you enjoy about the English major?
I loved how the English Department, and particularly the creative writing end of things, still felt small, even though the UW is such a large university. Getting to take small, seminar style creative writing workshops with UW Writing Fellows (including Erika Meitner!) and English faculty (like Amy Quan Barry and Ron Wallace) was critical in preparing me for my MFA at Iowa. In my senior year, I took an advanced poetry workshop and out of the twelve or so students in the course, five ended up doing MFA’s at Iowa. It was like someone had sprinkled magic dust on the workshop. I’m still in touch with many of those writers, and it’s wild to think we’ve now known each other for twenty years, since we were undergrads.

Did your time in the English major provide any skillset that you find useful in your career? How do you find yourself reflecting on your time as an English major now that you are in a career?
Well, I became an English professor and a writer, so I’m using pretty much all the skills I picked up in my English major. You can’t get much more English major-y than the path I’ve taken!

What advice would you offer the current English majors or those considering joining the major?
Be curious and take classes about things outside of your niche area of interest. I came into the English major interested in writing poetry and reading contemporary poetry. I took plenty of poetry workshops, and read a lot of contemporary poetry, but I also once accidentally signed up for a fiction workshop. I literally realized I was in the wrong course when the instructor, a UW Writing Fellow, launched into a lecture on the short story during the first class meeting, and I thought, “Oh no, what have I done?” I was so panicked! But, I stuck it out, and while it took me a lot of years to come back to fiction writing after that course was over, I did eventually do so, and I was glad to have those skills under my belt.