April Sopkin

April Sopkin is an Adjunct Professor at the Department of English within Virginia Commonwealth University’s College of Humanities and Sciences. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction and Nonfiction) and a BA in History from VCU, and specializes in teaching short fiction, creative nonfiction, and narrative structure. Her courses include ENGL 215: Reading Literature, ENGL 307: Writing Fiction, and HONR 398: Space, Place, & Identity.

Her research interests focus on narrative techniques, including point-of-view manipulation, temporal dynamics, and the intersection of speculative fiction with psychological realism. She explores how characters navigate identity, memory, and existential uncertainty through stories like her Pushcart Prize-nominated Drop Velocity and award-winning Private Lives, which blend alien abduction allegories with suburban tension.

Sopkin’s accolades include the 2023 Elizabeth George Foundation grant, 2019–2020 Cabell First Novelist Fellowship, 2019 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest win, 2018 Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and Tin House Summer Workshop scholarships. She served as 2024–2025 Writer-in-Residence at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, where she led workshops on narrative experimentation and nonfiction expansion.

• 2019–2020 Cabell First Novelist Award Fellowship
• 2020 Patricia Aakhus Award winner for fiction
• 2019 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest winner
• 2018 Frank McCourt Memoir Prize recipient
• Residencies at Tin House, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Hypatia-in-the-Woods

Her teaching philosophy emphasizes cross-disciplinary exploration, with courses like Short Story Workshop: One-Day Intensive and Inside + Outside: Writing Your Nonfiction Explorations, encouraging writers to transcend personal limitations through structured experimentation.