Class Notes

Wesley Marshall (Col ’85, Law ’88 CM) was elected to a three-year term as chair of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation Commission, effective July 1. Marshall was appointed to the Commission in 2012. He also served as commission chairman from 2015-2018.

Marshall serves on the executive committee of the Southern Association of Workers’ Compensation Administrators (SAWCA), the board of directors of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions (IAIABC), and the National Association of Workers’ Compensation Judiciary (NAWCJ) and was a founding member of the Virginia Workers’ Compensation American Inn of Court. In 2015, he was inducted as a Fellow in the College of Workers’ Compensation Lawyers.

From 1988 to 2012, he was an attorney in private practice, primarily representing plaintiffs in workers’ compensation, employment matters, and other civil litigation.

Brendan Gillen (Com ’06 CM) has published his debut novel, Static, released via Vine Leaves Press in July.

“A High Fidelity for our millennium…” — Dan LeRoy, author of Dancing to the Drum Machine: How Electronic Percussion Conquered the World and The Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique (33 1/3)

“Static is a heartfelt, moving debut about the downtown New York music scene.” — Elizabeth Gaffney, author of Metropolis and When the World was Young

“Static reverberates with the drumbeat of why we make art.” — Will Musgrove, author of Asphalt Dreaming

For Paul, stealing is easy. When he’s hungry, he strolls into a bodega and steals lunch. When rent’s due, he steals records and flips them for cash. As a lonely kid growing up in Ohio’s Rust Belt, stealing was the only way he could score the hip hop records and production equipment that fueled his musical dreams.

Now he’s in New York City fighting to keep his once-ascendant band alive and his life from falling apart. His bank account is flatlining. The love of his life has broken his heart. Bunky, his bandmate, is ditching him for Eloise, a soulful vagabond with an intoxicating voice. When financial trouble forces his parents from their lifelong home, Paul ramps up his stealing to save his family from collapse. And in a fever of creativity, he begins to steal from the voices in his life to make the music he’s sure will save his soul.

Set against the modern music industry, where a single social post can change your destiny, Static is alive to the weight of familial expectations, the pursuit of our deepest hopes and dreams, and the struggle to make meaningful connections in the anxiety of the digital age.

Originally from Charlottesville, Gillen is based in Brooklyn, New York and earned his M.F.A at City College. His fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions and appears in the Florida Review, Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, Maudlin House, New Delta Review, Taco Bell Quarterly, and X-R-A-Y, among others. Static has earned coverage in Electric Lit, Write or Die, Full-Stop, and elsewhere. As an Emmy-winning writer/director in the film and advertising space, he has written and creative directed content for ESPN, Conde Nast, Fox Sports, US Open, Anheuser-Busch, Resy, and many other brands. You can find him online at bgillen.com and on Twitter/IG @beegillen.

Jules P. Manger (Col ’03, Res ’14 CM) has been recognized by Newsweek in the first annual ranking of America’s Best Prostate Cancer Surgeons.  The list recognizes the 150 best prostate cancer surgeons in America based on outcomes data and peer review.  Dr. Manger lives in Tucson, Arizona with his wife Linda (Williams) Manger (Col ’03 CM) and three sons.

Paul Hodskins (Col ’12 CM) and his wife, Katie, celebrated the birth in August of their son, James Roger “J.R.” Hodskins, who joined two-year-old Addison at home in Leesburg, Virginia.

Arun Rao (Col ’98 CM) has joined Mayer Brown as a partner in its exceptional Global Investigations & White Collar Defense practice, effective October 28. He looks forward to working with his new colleagues and guiding clients through the complexities of the global regulatory environment.

Selina Horsley (Col ’17, Educ ’18 CM) and Benjamin Stone were married April 13, 2024. Selina is the daughter of Garrett Horsley (Col’ 86 CM) and Helen Hamilton Horsley (Col ’87 CM), sister of Lily Horsley (Com ’21), granddaughter of Waller Horsley (Col ‘53, Law ’59), and niece of Stuart Horsley (Col ’82 CM).  Waller Horsley served on the Board of Visitors from 1988-1992. Selina and Ben live in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She is an ESL teacher at East Lake Elementary and he works for Cigna Healthcare.

Marlene Hall (Col ’96 CM) was named one of the top 10 producing real estate agents for the state of Virginia for eXp Realty LLC for the month of June 2024.

Jordan Dotson (Col ’05) has published his debut novel, The Ballad of Falling Rock, a work of literary magical realism available on Sept. 24th from BHC Press:

Truth told, folks still ask if Saul Crabtree sold his soul for the perfect hymn. If he sold it to angels or devils. A Bristol newspaper once asked: “Are his love songs closer to heaven than dying?” Others wonder how he wrote a song so sad, everyone who heard it died of a broken heart.

Yet, more than anything else folks ponder in the town of Trinity, one question lingers: why did this angel-toned preacher’s son, just as his fame seemed ready to light the Appalachian nightsky forever, disappear completely?

In 1938, the decisions Saul makes will alter his family’s story for generations. He and his eerily talented descendants ignite religious fear throughout Red Pine County. They navigate chapels, decaying sanatoriums, high school hallways, and a lingering myth from their Cherokee heritage that follows them wherever they go.

In the end, however, it’s Saul’s precocious grandson, Eli, who must find answers to these heartbreaking questions, who must enter this world rich in music and voices, where people die to hear the unspoken, and salvation is only found in the not-yet sung.

Dotson was born and raised in Appalachian Virginia. After graduating from UVA, he moved to China to study classical poetry and folk music. Over fourteen years in Asia, he worked as a journalist, musician, and writing teacher, and eventually earned his MFA in Fiction from City University of Hong Kong. His lone co-written screenplay won the Jury Award in Narrative Shorts at more than thirty film festivals worldwide, and though he now teaches in Boston, Jordan still considers Southwest Virginia home.

The Ballad of Falling Rock is available wherever books are sold.

“This was the most beautiful story ever written about the saddest song ever sung. I was taken on a journey across generations where love, family and music, however complicated, overpowered all else. I am absolutely blown away…”

—@Kneecolereads

“Even in the novel’s darkest moments, Dotson’s sentences crackle on every page and are infused with a joy and love for the region and its people. This heartbreaking and tender debut is not to be missed.”

—Sybil Baker, author of Apparitions

“A fabulous, wild, and wonderfully spun tale that invites us to see ‘the world through a pool of tears,’ because everything’s ‘just a story in the end.’ A truly original debut, we look forward to much more from this powerful voice of a very talented writer.”

—Xu Xi, author of That Man In Our Lives

“Dotson’s way with words is absolutely breathtaking. I can hear the characters and feel the music. This is a must read book, without doubt.”

—Goodreads Reviewer

“This song of a novel is the perfect harmony of poetic prose and storytelling, as Saul Crabtree’s legacy unfolds across generations. With an ear for the language of Appalachia, and an eye for sensory and historical details, Dotson’s ‘Ballad’ echoes in the mind and on the heart long after the last song is sung.”

—Amy Clark Spain, author and co-editor of Talking Appalachian

Chanlee Luu (Engr ’17 CM) has published her debut poetry collection, The Machine Autocorrects Code to I, coming out on October 8, 2024.  It won the Washington Writers’ Publishing House 2024 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize. The book launch will be held at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. on October 13.

Nerissa Neal Rouzer (Col ’06 CM) and Garett Michael Rouzer (Arch ’05 CM) welcomed a daughter, Alexandra Elise, on April 10, 2024. She joins big brothers Ethan and Owen. The family lives in Charlottesville.

Julie Dauksys (Educ ’99, ’10) has retired after 33 years in public education in both Hopewell city and Hanover County, Virginia. Dauksys served as a literacy specialist and coach in grades K-8 for 27 years. In 2022 she completed her Ph.D. in curriculum, culture, and change at VCU. In retirement,  Dauksys will continue as a part-time associate professor of literacy at Randolph-Macon College and serve as co-president of the Virginia Literacy Educators Association.

Dorothy Shea (Col ’88 CM) was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the next deputy U.S. representative to the United Nations with the rank of ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary.  She was pleased to have several close friends from the UVA class of 1988 in attendance at her Aug. 16 swearing-in ceremony, which U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield officiated.  She took up her new duties in New York on Aug. 19.

Richard B. Miller (Col ’75, CM) retired on July 1, 2024, and is now the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Emeritus Professor at the University of Chicago.  Before coming to Chicago in 2014, Miller taught and served in several administrative roles at Indiana University, starting in 1985.  On May 7 he welcomed his grandson, Declan Ian Miller-Mulcahy, into the world.  Miller is currently finishing a book tentatively entitled, A Simple Twist of Fate: Religion, Moral Luck, and Social Criticism. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, film scholar Barbara Klinger. He can be reached at richardbmiller824@gmail.com.

Luba Shur (Col ’93, Law ’96 CM) has authored a new novel, RULE 23, available for preorder on Amazon and Audible. Liar’s Poker meets Legally Blonde and The Devil Wears Prada in this buzzy satire that tells the tale of one of the greatest grifts enshrined as law. There’s a striving, young associate who’s the book’s antiheroine, a ruthless senior partner eager to exploit her ambition, and a legal system that enables their diabolical schemes like tracks enable a runaway train. Kiiri Sandy—who brought to brilliant life recent hits by David Baldacci, Ruth Reichl, and Maud Ventura—shines as the narrator.

Shur received a B.A. in economics and international relations from UVA and a J.D. from its School of Law, where she served on the Law Review and earned Order of the Coif honors. She launched her career as a two-time federal judicial law clerk and built her career in private practice, at two preeminent BigLaw firms, including tenure as an associate, a counsel, and an equity partner specializing in complex litigation and other dispute resolution. Following these positions, Luba worked as a media law attorney at a government agency and currently works as a broad-based in-house general counsel. She lives in the Washington, D.C. area along with two children, one husband, and zero dogs.