Vol. 14 No. 1
August 2008

Thursday Memo

About Fall 2008 BIC

Fall Arts Event

ENG660 Offered in Fall

New Expository Writing Consultant

London/Bath Residency Recap

Because You Asked

Life of a Writer

Students

Faculty and Staff

Alumni

Faculty Advisory Committee for Spring 2008

Pre-reading for Fall 2008

Classifieds

Reminders and Notes

Spalding Home

MFA Home

Previous Newsletters

NEW! MFA Staff Publishes Thursday Memo
In an effort to streamline and make our programmatic communications more efficient for MFA students and faculty, the MFA staff will begin publishing the Thursday Memo each Thursday by noon on the announcements page of Blackboard. This memo is filled with general announcements from the MFA staff as well as deadline reminders for Fall and Spring, Summer, and Spring Stretch semesters. Also included will be instructions on how to retrieve Workshop Booklets, pre-reading assignments, and other important documents.

NO other announcements will be posted on any other day of the week in Blackboard, unless extremely urgent information needs to be shared. If the MFA Office has to post an announcement outside the regular Thursday Memo, an email alert is sent to students and faculty.

In posting all announcements once a week in the Thursday Memo, information is delivered to students and faculty in a more systematic way. The Thursday Memo allows students and faculty to have at least one specific time each week to check Blackboard which will provide the most comprehensive information to date.
Past Thursday Memos will be archived on the Announcements Page of Blackboard for referencing.

Fall 2008 Book in Common Is Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto
The MFA Program’s Book in Common selection for the Fall 2008 residency is Bel Canto by Ann Patchett. A plenary discussion takes place Friday, November 14, the first night of fall residency. All students and faculty, regardless of concentration, read the book in advance of the residency and all prepare comments to add to the discussion. On the Tuesday, November 18, Patchett visits Spalding’s campus to talk about her work as a writer, with a focus on her book Bel Canto. During her visit, MFA students and faculty have a closed question-and-answer session with Patchett. Bel Canto won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize in 2002 and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was named the Book Sense Book of the Year. It sold over a million copies in the United States and has been translated into thirty languages.

One of Bel Canto’s most important characters is an opera singer. In an interview, Patchett said, “The best thing I did was to buy a book called Opera 101 by Fred Plotkin. It tells you how to listen and what to listen to. It was my bible.…I also started playing opera all the time and attending operas whenever possible. I absolutely fell in love with opera. … I feel like I learned a second language.”

Patchett was born in Los Angeles in 1963 and raised in Nashville. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. In 1990, she won a residential fellowship to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars.  It was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1992. In 1993, she received a Bunting Fellowship from the Mary Ingrahm Bunting Institute at Radcliffe College. Patchett’s second novel, Taft, was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for the best work of fiction in 1994. Her third novel, The Magician’s Assistant, was short-listed for England’s Orange Prize and earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship.
In 2004, Patchett published Truth & Beauty, a memoir of her friendship with the writer Lucy Grealy. It was named one of the Best Books of the Year by the Chicago Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Entertainment Weekly. Truth & Beauty was also a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Chicago Tribune’s Heartland Prize, the Harold D. Vursell Memorial Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Alex Award from the American Library Association. 

She was the editor for Best American Short Stories 2006.

Patchett has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Gourmet, and Vogue. She lives in Nashville. (top)

Fall 2008 Interrelatedness of the Arts Event: Kentucky Opera
As a companion event to the Program Book in Common, Bel Canto, MFA students and faculty attend a concert performance of the Kentucky Opera. The Bourbon Baroque Ensemble and Kentucky Opera studio artists are to present a collection of Baroque opera pieces, including Telemann’s Don Quixote at the Wedding of the Comachos (sung in German with supertitles). A CD of the opera, listed under its German title, Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho, can be found on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ ref=nb_ss_gw?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=DON+QUICHOTTE+AUF+DER+HOCHZEIT+DES+COMACHO+
The matinee performance takes place at 2 p.m. Saturday, November 15, at the Brown Theatre, next door to the Brown Hotel.

Fall 2008 Course Offering: ENG660: Teaching Practicum
in Creative Writing
Students interested in registering for ENG660: Teaching Practicum in Creative Writing should contact Kathleen Driskell by Spring 2008 midsemester, August 28. The course enrollment is limited to 6 students (a minimum of 4 students is required). Names of those interested in enrolling are placed on a list and register in order of contact date though in some cases student seniority may also be considered for enrollment.

ENG660 is a 16-hour semester course. During Residency, students meet in a cross-genre teaching workshop and lead discussions on submitted Worksheets. Students attend lectures outside their major areas of concentration in order to gain a wider view of the other genres they may be called upon to teach in introductory-level courses. Students not only benefit from lecture content, they also comment on the teaching methods used during those lectures. The number of residency reports required remains the same as for students enrolled in the other courses.

During the semester, students develop syllabi, lesson plans, teaching diaries, and annotated bibliographies on pedagogical and classroom texts and submit those to the mentor in four course packets. Each student develops a workshop assignment and delivers that curriculum online to other students in ENG660. Each student must also arrange her or his own teaching practicum: in the past, students have taught in university settings, continuing education settings, non-credit courses, and online. Students have also convened beginning writers from their communities to meet as a class in local libraries, work environments, and community centers.  Other teaching options may fit the practicum requirement.

For a final project, students may choose to return to the following residency to teach a 45-minute peer class to MFA students or may write and submit a ten-page teaching reflection paper, referring to readings listed in the Annotated Bibliography. Students submitting the final paper are not required to come to Residency unless they are enrolling in the next semester.

Evaluation includes detailed responses to the packets, residency teaching and workshop evaluations, semester evaluations, and direct teaching observation reports (which are valuable to the portfolios of those seeking teaching positions).
For more information, see the course description and syllabus for ENG660 in Blackboard, and/or contact Kathleen Driskell with questions.

New Expository Writing Consultant
Heather Jones, a Spring 2008 Spalding MFA graduate in playwriting, has agreed to become our new Expository Writing Consultant. Heather brings years of Writing Center experience and in-depth knowledge of our brief-residency program to her new position with the Spalding MFA in Writing Program. We’re very happy to have her working with us.

Heather consults with students through email during their at-home portion of the semester when the mentor refers them to the associate program director for extra help with critical writing. The Exository Writing Coach works closely with students and their mentors to help students improve the development of their short critical essays throughout the semester.

For more information on the role of the Expository Writing Consultant, refer to the MFA Student Handbook. (top)

London/Bath Residency
Though he did not make a personal appearance, William Shakespeare served as the Script-in-Common author for the Summer 2008 residency June 12-24 in London and Bath, England. The residency’s thirty-five students read The Merchant of Venice, viewed the movie before residency, and traveled to Stratford-upon-Avon for a Royal Shakespeare Company performance of the play. A plenary discussion led by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund occurred on the bus ride return to Bath.

During five days of study in London, about half the faculty and students took in a second Shakespeare play, King Lear, at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London, while the rest attended the West End comedy God of Carnage by Tony award-winning playwright Yasmina Reza.

Midway through the residency, students and faculty moved two hours west to the World Heritage city of Bath. Here, workshops, lectures, and readings continued, punctuated by a day’s outing to Thomas Hardy country in Dorset, a southern county whose landscapes and villages Hardy fictionalized in works such as Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Bath Spa University professor Richard Kerridge led the excursion, contextualizing Hardy’s use of landscape and place, particularly the heath, in his fiction and poetry. (top)

Poetry students and faculty were invited to a cross-cultural reading with M.A. poetry students and faculty from Bath Spa University, hosted by Bath Spa poetry instructors Carrie Etter and Tim Liardet. The evening began with a pizza party and ended at a pub.

Poetry student Andrew Najberg said of the event, “We were all a little nervous because I think we all had built up an image of what the other culture’s poetry would sound like. What was most surprising to me was the uniqueness of all of our voices. In the end, the differing cultures didn’t define two groups of poets—rather it highlighted that we were all distinctive and talented poets gathered together in a single forum that transcends such boundaries.”

Poetry alum and PGRA Gwen Broderick added, “How our hosts at Bath Spa University pampered us! Our joint poetry reading there was a warm, sumptuous word-bath: a luxurious immersion into a rich blend of British and American accents floating through sonnets, prose poems, list poems, lyrics, and song. Rejuvenating hospitality!”

The final day of residency found all students and faculty gathered in a simple Quaker meeting house to reflect upon their experience in a group discussion of the interrelatedness of the arts and to read excerpts from their residency journals.
Most MFAers returned to the United States on June 24 to begin the at-home portion of the nine-month summer semester. A few stayed on to vacation in Europe, while program associate Katy Yocom traveled to Barcelona to begin scouting arts events, classroom space, and lodging for the Summer 2009 residency.

Because You Asked
Q: Are residency evaluations by students anonymous when given to the faculty?
A: Workshop Evaluations, Lecture Reports, and Reading Reports are masked (the student’s name is removed) before they are distributed to faculty. Small Group Discussion evaluations are also masked before being distributed to the group leader.
Occasionally students include their names in the body of the evaluation or report. In this case, the name may not be removed. The MFA staff suggests students enter their names only in the name field on the evaluation or report. (top)

Life of a Writer

Students, faculty, and alumni: Please email writing news to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu

Students

Foust spent a week at Nimrod Hall in July. Nimrod Hall is a writing retreat in the cool mountains of Bath County in western Virginia.

Barry George’s haiku will be featured on the “Daily Haiku” page of Cornell University’s Mann Library web site, http://www.mannlib.cornell.edu/, throughout September. A different haiku will be posted each day of the month.

Colleen S. Harris’s poem “Crochet” will appear in the anthology Wisdom of Our Mothers, to be published by Familia Books. This is the first time Colleen has been compensated for her poetry. She also has written two book chapters, “MLS, MFA: The Librarian Pursuing Creative Writing” and “The Poet-Librarian: Writing and Submitting Work,” which will appear in The Published Librarian: Successful Professional and Personal Writing, a volume edited by Carol Smallwood, which will be published by the American Library Association in 2009. Her poem “Visiting Cary” has been published in issue 96 of Free Verse.

Angela Jackson-Brown was a featured reader for the InKY Reading Series on Friday, May 9. She read from her self-published chapbook, House Repairs. This fall, two of her poems, “Locks” and “Where the Music At” will be published in a new literary magazine called Pet Milk. Angela was also named a fiction editor/eviewer for the literary journal, Sotto Voce.

Trish Lindsey Jaggers traveled to Lexington, Kentucky, to read with thirteen other finalists of the Carnegie Center’s Second Annual “Next Great Writers Competition” (mixed genres) at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning. Winners were announced at the end of the reading. She won second place ($100) for her entry of five poems (from her creative-thesis-in-progress). (top)

Lisa Jayne will begin production of her one-act play, written for Spring 2008’s residency workshop. The piece is titled Broken. This one-act will be performed in September, date soon to be released, at Northland Pioneer College Performing Arts Center in Snowflake, Arizona. Lisa will be involved in the rewriting process as well as performing in the production.

Amina McIntyre’s one act play Two Card Tables and a Clothes Rack was given a staged reading on April 28 at Wabash College Experimental Theater. She was also on a panel discussing writing devices in Suzan-Lori Parks’ play Topdog/Underdog, on March 19 at Wabash College.

Mindy Beth Miller recently received the 2008 Jean Ritchie Fellowship, which is the largest monetary prize for Appalachian literature in the nation. This prize of $1,500 is awarded to an Appalachian writer who shows overwhelming promise in the continuation of great writing in the region. Miller was given the prize June 14 during a banquet at the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, an annual event that honors Appalachian writers. The fellowship is awarded through Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee.

Michael Morris recently spoke at the 11th annual Alabama Writers Symposium held in Harper Lee’s hometown of Monroeville. He discussed writing his Alabama-based novel, A Place Called Wiregrass (HarperCollins, 2002), and provided a reading.

Anna C. Morrison, due to graduate this November in Writing for Children and Young Adults, is glad to announce that her first children’s picture book, Silly Moments, is due to be published at a date still to be determined through Guardian Angel Publishing under their Guardian Angel Pets imprint at www.guardianangelpublishing.com.

Cath(y) Nickola hosts a weekly one-hour radio program dedicated to poetry and the engagement of artists with their communities. The show is called “Lunch Poems with Gigi” and airs at noon every Sunday. You can listen online: WKUF, 94.3, Kettering University, Public Radio, Flint, Michigan. Thanks to Molly Peacock for appearing on the show this week to talk with Gigi about sex & poetry, and despite a few minor problems with equipment the show was a success, which is more than Gigi can say about bad equipment and love. Cath writes, “Molly called it ‘Indie Radio’ and that’s exactly what it is...Great Ideas, Bad Equipment, Low Budget, Terrific Characters. If any of you writers would like to be on the show to talk about your work and involvements, send me your ideas: gghumming@mac.com. The next two weeks Gigi will be interviewing Splovers so listen if you can.” Cath has also received word from The Florida Review that they are publishing three of her poems. (top)

Cristina Trapani-Scott’s short story “It’s Only a Matter of Survival” earned an honorable mention in the Metro Detroit Writers 2008 Members Contest. She read an excerpt from the story at the 2008 Detroit Festival for the Arts on her birthday, June 8. She also learned that her newspaper column “It’s Just Another Day at the Spa,” about her first trip to the “chemo spa,” earned a second place in the serious columns category in the 2008 National Newspaper Association Better Newspaper Contest. On Sunday, Aug. 3, she’ll be a guest on Gigi Humming’s radio show “Lunch Poems with Gigi” on WKUF, 94.3, Kettering University Public Radio in Flint at noon. They will be talking about breast cancer and poetry.

Charles White’s short story “Norman Mailer Is Dead” was accepted by VerbSap and appears in the Summer edition. (top)

Dianne Aprile co-led (with writer Jeff Fearnside) an overnight writing workshop at Kentucky’s Bernheim Arboretum on May 17 and 18. She taught a nature writing workshop at Lexington’s Carnegie Center on July 19. Dianne has two nonfiction pieces coming out this month: “Amazing Journey” in Louisville Magazine (June 2008) and “Once Upon a Merger: The Story of Two Colleges and How They Grew” in Bellarmine Magazine (Summer 2008). Dianne also read an essay as part of a “This I Believe” event at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville on June 4. It was hosted by Dan Gediman, creator of the “This I Believe” radio series, an international project based on the popular 1950s radio series of the same name hosted by Edward R. Murrow. These short statements of belief, written by people from all walks of life, are archived at www.ThisIBelieve.org and are featured on public radio in the United States and Canada, as well as in regular broadcasts on NPR. She also was awarded the Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Artist Fellowship ($7,500). (top)

In early June, Ellie Bryant gave a presentation and writing exercise to the entire sixth grade at Vergennes Elementary School in Vergennes, Vermont, all of whom had read her novel, The Black Bonnet. A week later she heard J. K. Rowling speak at Harvard’s 2008 commencement about failure and imagination. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all—in which case you fail by default,” Rowling said. While at Harvard, Ellie read to a group of alumni from her forthcoming book, While in Darkness There Is Light. Later in June she had a jolly good time in London and Bath with Spalding’s summer residency. In July she attended the League of Vermont Writers summer conference and networked with blossoming writers about the virtues of the Spalding MFA in Writing program.

K. L. Cook completed his year’s stint as the Viebranz Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at St. Lawrence University and is now back teaching creative writing and literature at Prescott College. He taught in the summer Spalding residency in London and Bath and gave lectures on “Critiquing the Story,” “Short Story Cycles, Linked Stories, and Novels-in-Stories,” and “Shakespeare for Writers” (all soon-to-be available on the Spalding Blackboard lecture site).

In June, Kathleen Driskell, Molly Peacock and Spalding MFA poetry students Hal Crenshaw, De’Anna Daniels, Mary Kocher, Andrew Najberg, Allison UrzuaBlaul, Anna West, and poetry alum/PGRA Gwen Broderick (Fal 2006) were invited to read their poems with the Creative Writing Poetry faculty and students of Bath Spa University in Bath, England. Kathleen was recently awarded professional development grants from Spalding University and the Kentucky Arts Council to help with the promotion of her book Seed Across Snow forthcoming in February 2009 from Red Hen Press. Her work will be anthologized in Kentucky Burgoo: 25 Contemporary Poets, forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in Fall 2009. (top)

Robin Lippincott’s “Monarchs,” excerpted from his work in progress about the abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, appears in the current issue of Memorious. And on the American Short Fiction website, there’s a brief interview with Robin about the story of his (“A Hard Rain”) they recently published. In June, Robin gave a reading and lecture at the Ocean State Writing Conference in Kingston, Rhode Island (thanks, Jody).

This July, Cathy Medwick gave a talk on book reviewing at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Writers Conference. In August she will speak at The Gathering at Keystone College in Pennsylvania. She urges faculty and students to read the extraordinary original essays in O Magazine’s Memoir Feast, for which which she wrote the (anonymous) introduction. As always, her reviews appear on the “BibliO” page of O’s Reading Room section.

Sena Jeter Naslund reads excerpts from her three most recent novels Ahab’s Wife, Four Spirits, and Abundance: A Novel of Marie Antoinette with Jody Lisberger on August 19 at Falmouth Bookstore (Maine), 6:30 p.m., and at the Portland Library at noon, August 20. After the summer MFA residency in London and Bath, Sena and her daughter Flora drove the western coast of Ireland and attended the Abbey Theatre (Three Sisters by Checkhov) in Dublin. They also visited five prehistoric caves in the Dordogne Valley of France to research cave art from 12,000 to 24,000 years old as an aspect of Sena’s next novel, Adam & Eve. Sena also spent a week writing on the island of Styco off the coast of Ireland, near the city of Gotenburg. Sena says, “The summer residencies abroad are so invigorating and inspiring; they leave me chomping at the bit to get to my own research and writing.”

Image, a print journal produced in conjunction with the Center for Religious Humanism at Seattle Pacific University, selects from among its contributors to feature an artist of the month. Elaine Neil Orr was recently honored. You can see the article and read her story, “Day Lilies,” here: http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month. Since the publication of Gods of Noonday, Orr has been writing and publishing creative nonfiction (“Dieting in Africa, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and “My Life with Hair,” both in The Missouri Review; “Southern Nigerian” in Southern Cultures; and “Light Studies” in The Louisville Review) and fiction (stories in Image, Southern Cultures, and forthcoming in Shenandoah) and some poetry about kidney failure and dialysis (in Cold Mountain Review). Her primary project is an historical novel set in 1855 in Yoruba land (southwestern Nigeria). In November 2007, her adult son accompanied her on a research trip to Nigeria. She finished a draft of the novel and will be spending the year working on revisions, beginning at the 2008 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College in August. (top)

Alumni

Cynthia Allar’s (Spring 2004) poem “Deniable Contrast” will be published in volume 13 of the journal Off the Rocks.

Verna Austen (Fall 2005) has poems in the new Flying Island and Barnwood Poetry Mag which is online at http://web.mac.com/tomkoontz/Site_3/Contents.html

In June, Deborah Begel (Spring 2006) spent two weeks in New York City helping the Lower Eastside Girls Club produce a 22-minute audio documentary about the girls’ trip to New Orleans last spring. This podcast should appear on GirlsClub.org once the zine and video productions are complete.

Gwen Broderick (Fall 2006) gave a talk to a poetry class at the Summer Academy for Youth at The College of Saint Rose (www.strose.edu) in Albany, New York. Her poem “Lake of Childhood” was displayed in the “VisuaLit” exhibition at the Arts Society of Kingston (www.askforarts.org) in New York. She served as a PGRA with Spalding’s MFA summer residency in London and Bath, England.

Bobbi Buchanan’s (Fall 2004) essay “Stomping Ground” was accepted for publication by Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal and will appear in the September/October issue. Bobbi continues work on New Southerner (newsoutherner.com), now in its fourth year. The third annual anthology will be published at the end of the summer and features the work of many Spalding students and alumni.

John Caperton’s (Spring 2006) short story, “Dr. Peppers in the Fridge” was awarded an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s April 2008 Family Matters contest.

Amy Clark (Fall 2004) has a poem, “Our Friends in Minnesota,” forthcoming in Tuesday; An Art Project. Her manuscript Stray Home was a finalist for the Vassar Miller poetry prize.

David Carren (Fall 2005) has completed his first feature film as a director. The Red Queen, an action thriller, stars Valente Rodriquez (The George Lopez Show), Harley Jane Kozak (Parenthood) and Estephania LeBaron (The Alamo). The project was shot in Edinburg, Texas, June 2 to July 7 and was a co-production between the University of Texas Pan American Theater Department and Green Queen productions. David wrote the screenplay from a story by himself and Jack R. Stanley and the executive producers were Stanley and Dr. Marian Monta. (top)

Dave DeGolyer (Fall 2006) is the new communications manager for the Steuben County Conference & Visitor’s Bureau and is very excited about the opportunity (any freelance travel writers out there who have a niche or a special interest let him know and he’ll see if he can find a story to pitch you). A guest lecturer for Elmira College’s Crafting the Vision class, a mixed media course that blends visual and literary art, he reinvented his graduate lecture on the many uses of similes in poetry and prose writing. Dave was the featured poet at Poets and Prose II, a public reading at Rural Research Labratories (a community artist collective associated with the Arnot Art Museum) and was awarded a four-week artist colony residency fellowship by the Ucross Foundation (November 2008) for poems from his YA novel-in-verse, A Boy Called Mo. Dave also received a grant from Highlights Foundation to attend the Highlights Founders workshop, “Plotting the Novel.” Under his pseudonym, Lafayette Wattles, his photo “Still Standing” appears in Juked (under Moment, photo #342). Lafayette is the featured poet for the July 2008 Issue of Chantarelle’s Notebook. He recently placed 20 new poems with a number of journals, including Stirring (May 2008); drown in my own fears (June 2008); Segue (August 2008); Magnolia, formerly known as Artistry of Life (Autumn 2008); Word Riot (forthcoming 2008); Not Just Air (Issue 8); Eight Octaves Review (August 2008); The Big Toe Review (forthcoming 2008); Inch (Issue #8 forthcoming 2008); and Boxcar Poetry Review (May 2008 & July 2008).

Daniel DiStasio’s (Fall 2006) short story collection “The Happiness Stories” was a finalist for the Hudson Prize by Black Lawrence Press. He has been hired as an adjunct professor at Florida Keys Community College to teach creative writing. Dan is heading back to Peru to lead his sixth hike along the Inca Trail, a fertile journey, which has produced two short stories and a travelogue (Pinyon 2007, Gertrude 2008, The Out Traveler 2006). He is working on a new travel feature on off-beat Peru for 2009.

Kathryn Eastburn (Spring 2006) recently taught a two-hour seminar on sacred harp singing in Galveston, Texas, in support of her new book, A Sacred Feast (University of Nebraska Press). Eastburn taught a creative nonfiction writing workshop at the Colorado College summer session, July 21 through August 8, and a one-day writing seminar, “Truth and Consequences: Writing Creative Nonfiction” open to the Colorado Springs community, on July 26. Her true crime book, Simon Says, is featured in the Da Capo Press Winter catalog in anticipation of the paperback release in January (top) 2009.

Sandra Evans Falconer (May 2005) recently read for the Harbor Hospital breast cancer support group in Baltimore. Sandra’s poems were from her manuscript The Six o’clock Siren, which she completed while at Spalding.

Stacia M. Fleegal’s (Fall 2006) poem about Obama appeared on the July 19th posting of New Verse News (http://newversenews.blogspot.com/2008/07/your-story-of-two-centuries-ten-minutes.html).

Brittany Fonte (Spring 2007) has published two short stories online recently. One, “Catalyst,” can be found at www.42opus.com. The other, “Condensation Hearts,” can be found at www.literarymama.com.

Anne Marie Fowler (Spring 2004) will be moderating a reading panel at the 2009 AWP in Chicago. Presenters will include Debra Kang Dean, Karen An-hwei Lee, Addie Tsai, Cynthia Arrieu-King, and Trangdai Glassey-Tranguyen. They will be reading from Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves, which Anne Marie edited, and other work. Anne Marie also recently started Deep Bowl Press and will soon be accepting poetry and short fiction manuscripts written by women for publication consideration. Deep Bowl Press is housed in O’Fallon, Illinois, where she now lives with her husband and two young daughters.

Lucrecia Guerrero (Fall 2005) facilitated a fiction workshop at the Antioch Writers’ Workshop this July. “Rings,” her short-short story, appears in the Summer 2008 issue—a special fiction edition—of the Antioch Review. “Neon Mist,” another short-short will be published this summer in the debut issue of 94Creations. Antioch Review, Spring 2008, published her book review of In Her Absence by Antonio Muñoz Molina. Guerrero’s interview of K.L. Cook has been accepted by Glimmer Train and will be published in 2008 or 2009. Guerrero continues to teach graduate-level directed courses in creative writing at Antioch University McGregor. In fall semester of 2008 she will teach academic writing around the theme of family in U.S. Latino literature at Denison University as Visiting Assistant Professor.

Mike Hampton’s (Fall 2005) short story “Little Animals” appears in the Spring 2008 issue of The Rio Grande Review, and his short story “Sea Change” appears in the new issue of Shaking Like a Mountain: Literarture about Contemporary Music.

David Harrity (Fall 2007) has recently taken a full-time job as a high school English and creative writing teacher at Lexington Catholic High School. He read at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky, in July and has poems forthcoming from The Xavier Review and Ruminate Magazine.

Rene’ R. Ketterer (Fall 2007) as been granted a courtesy appointment as Assistant Professor of Computer Graphics Technology at Purdue University for the purposes of designing and teaching a course in storytelling for animation and games. The course is targeted for Spring of 2009.

Drew Lackovic’s (Spring 2008) story, “Ice Dune, 1983-2007” will appear in the Summer 2008 issue of 94 Creations. He will also be lecturing and reading excerpts from “(Un/Re/I )Do” in Dave Harrity’s (Fall 2007) class at Lexington Catholic High School on May 23. On June 13, Drew attended a reading by Ann Pancake and Greg Kuzma at the Chautauqua Institute. Also, his story “Everything Ends” will appear in the inaugural issue of A Capella Zoo. (top)

Beth Newberry (Fall 2007) published a review of Ben Harper’s album Lifeline in the February 2008 issue of Sojourners Magazine, a national publication that examines the crossroads of faith, politics, and culture. In April, she was a featured reader at Northern Kentucky University’s celebration of Kentucky Writer’s Day where she read from her essay, “Curve of the Smoke.” Beth is now serving as Managing Editor of Pluck!: The Journal of Affrilachian Arts and Culture, a magazine founded and edited by Frank X Walker (Spring 2003) . In late July, she attended the Appalachian Writers Workshop and studied with nonfiction writer Sharon Hatfield.

Richard Newman (Fall 2004) has poems forthcoming in Boulevard, Crab Orchard Review, Pleiades, Unsplendid, and the anthology Seriously Funny: Poems About Love, God, War, Art, Sex, Madness, and Everything Else (University of Georgia Press, 2009).

Frances Nicholson’s (Spring 2004) poem “Taking the Wheel” will be included in Cinnamon Press’ upcoming anthology In the Telling. Her chapbook, Smoke and Mirrors, was a semi-finalist for the 2008 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. She studied with Claudia Rankine at the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference at the end of July. (top)

Loreen Niewenhuis’s (Spring 2007) short story “Years and Months” has been accepted by The Antioch Review for publication in their Summer 2008 issue. And her story “The Girl with the Mechanical Leg” will appear in the Fall edition of the Bellevue Literary Review.

Zola Troutman Noble (Spring 2005) recently received a NEH Grant to attend the Ferrum Institute, “Regional Studies and the Liberal Arts: Appalachia Up Close,” at Ferrum College, Ferrum, Virginia. Her project for the institute was to research and write an article for The Smithfield Review on the life of an early German immigrant to Appalachia, Heinrich Adam Herrmann. In addition, Noble has two essays forthcoming, one in the inaugural issue of 94Creations titled “Sitting in Church” and one in Women. Period.

Deanna Northrup’s (Fall 2006) essay “Lorraine Lopez’s Fabulous First Line” was published in the Summer 2008 issue of The First Line. Her short story “A Memory of Bluebirds” was accepted for the premier issue of O Tempora and her short story “Comfort Food” will appear in the August issue of Amarillo Bay. She taught a middle school writing camp in June and attended the University of Iowa Summer Writing Festival in July.

Linda Busby Parker (Fall 2003) just completed teaching a special topics course for the University of South Alabama on “Plots & Storylines in Short Stories and Novels.” She taught the course on an accelerated schedule—meeting twice a week during the month of June for three hours every meeting. (top)

Diana M. Raab (Fall 2003). Regina’s Closet: Finding My Grandmother’s Secret Journal won the 2008 National Indie Award for Excellence in Memoir. On July 26, she did a book signing at Barnes and Noble in Santa Barbara, California. In June, she taught a one-week memoir workshop at The Santa Barbara Writers’ Conference. Her second memoir, Breast Cancer Orchids, was a finalist in the PNWA Writing Awards in the memoir category. She is currently updating her book Getting Pregnant and Staying Pregnant for its 20th anniversary edition, due out in 2009, working in collaboration with Dr. Errol Norwitz, co-director, Division of Maternal Fetal Medicine at Yale-New Haven Hospital.

Sonia Rapaport (Spring 2007) attended Sewanee Writers’ Conference in poetry this past July. She recently moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she will be teaching Healing through Poetry workshops in the fall.

Dawn Shamp (Spring 2005) was feted at a reception and presentation of the first “Making Democracy Work” Award from the League of Women Voters of NC (Orange, Durham, Chatham County chapters) on May 15 for her contribution to a renewed awareness of the struggle for women’s suffrage through her recently published historical novel, On Account of Conspicuous Women. She is also the guest food columnist in the Summer 2008 issue of New Southerner (www.newsoutherner.com). Her article, “Melt-in-Your-Mouth Mealtime Misnomers,” appears under the Pickin’s & Fixin’s heading.

Heather Shaw (Fall 2004) recently visited the Emily Dickinson home and museum in Amherst, Massachusetts. Heather completed a 10-week songwriting course and will be recording a song in the next few weeks with singer/songwriter Robin Lane of Robin Lane and the Chartbusters.

Julia Schuster’s (Spring 2007) novel, Flowers for Elvis, is to be published by Belle Bridge Books for release in April 2009. In June, Julia completed the West Tennessee Writing Project’s Summer Invitational Institute at the University of Tennessee at Martin, where she earned certification as a State of Tennessee Writing Teacher Consultant. This program, funded by the National Writing Project, supports teachers in their efforts to better equip students with creative and academic writing skills.

Amanda Sledz (Spring 2004) was nominated for a 2009 Pushcart Prize for the personal essay “One Goddess.” An excerpt from her novel Psychopomp is forthcoming in the 2008 Voicecatcher Anthology. She has also started MadKat Press, LLC, with fellow Spalding alumna Kathryn Seyerle (Fall 2004), to create and distribute unique book arts interpretations of personal essays and poems. Amanda and Kathryn plan to sell the handcrafted books at the monthly Last Thursday event in Portland’s Alberta Arts district, and through a website. Those interested can read about the (slow, but steady) progress of the press at http://www.madkatpress.com. Amanda is currently seeking a publisher for Psychopomp and is at work on a second novel titled Hive. (top)

Kim Stinson-Hawn (Fall 2007) recently accepted a teaching position at Catawba Valley Community College in Hickory, North Carolina, where she is to begin teaching theatre appreciation and English courses this fall. Before moving, she is directing the Second Annual Quilt Play Festival in Berea, Kentucky, presented at 8 p.m. Friday, August 1, in the Woods-Penn Building on the Berea College Campus. Selecting this year’s ten plays was challenging for Kim and the reading committee, as they received 165 plays from all over the United States as well as from several foreign countries. More information on the Festival can be found at http://www.bereaartscouncil.org.

Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (Spring 2003) was named a Flying Start author by Publisher’s Weekly for her YA novel The Compound, which received a PW starred review. (top)

Kathleen Thompson (Spring 2003) read at the Huntsville-Madison County Library on June 22 along with other poets included in Whatever Remembers My Name: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry. In her role as “Road Scholar” with Alabama Humanities Foundation, she led a workshop for the Alabama State Poetry Society on July 23, “Lost and Found: In Pursuit of the Divine Detail.” Her poetry book, The Shortest Distance, is forthcoming from Coosa River Books in 2009.

Sharon Thomson (Fall 2004) has a chapter from her memoir, Map of a Small World, published in the summer issue of Ducts.org (http://www.ducts.org/content/). Her essay “Lost in Portugal” appeared in the Fall 2007 issue of The Louisville Review. She is on the faculty of The Women’s Institute for Social Transformation, specializing in integrating literary and performing arts into community development projects.

Below the Heart, Vickie Weaver’s (Fall 2005) novel-in-progress, was a semifinalist in the 2008 Mary McCarthy Fiction Prize, sponsored by Sarabande Books.

Jonathan Weinert (Fall 2005) has a poem forthcoming in Blackbird: An Online Journal of Literature and the Arts (http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/).

Jim Wilson (Spring 2007) taught creative writing in the Chickasaw Summer Art Academy, July 14-25, in Ada, Oklahoma. The Academy was sponsored by the Chickasaw Nation’s Division of Arts and Humanities and was held on the campus East Central University in Ada. The course emphasized creative nonfiction from contemporary American Indian writers and included guest presentations from Linda Hogan (Chickasaw Nation Writer in Residence), LeAnne Howe (Choctaw writer and Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Illinois), and Lorie Robins (Chickasaw Nation Story-Teller in Residence). The students completed creative writing projects for public performance on closing night and for inclusion in a post-Academy anthology edited by Jim.

Laverne Zabielski (Spring 2004) is the new owner, publisher, and editor of the Motley County Tribune, a community newspaper in rural West Texas. In June she won 2nd place in editorial writing from the Houston Press Club.

Remember the MFA Alumni have a website http:/www.spaldingmfaalum.com.

Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to Juyanne James on the death of her father, Oscar James, on June 5.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Nancy McCabe on the death of her mother on July 29. (top)

Books/Scripts in Common for Fall 2008
All students and faculty read the Book in Common, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, in preparation for a book discussion led by Sena Jeter Naslund on the first night of residency. (Bring the book to this session.)

Fall 2008 Faculty Books/Scripts in Common
Students read the Faculty Book/Script in Common in the area of concentration they are to study in the Fall 2008 semester in preparation for a discussion with authors at the Fall 2008 residency. (Bring the book to the residency session.)

During the spring semester, students also write a 2-4 page short critical essay on the Faculty Book in Common. In one of their packets, students submit the essay to their mentors as one of the 8-10 critical essays required during ENG610 and ENG620. ENG 630 and ENG640 students should add this requirement to their semester plan and send it to the mentor during the semester. All MFA students add the book/script to their cumulative bibliographies.

Students attending the Spring residency may purchase Fall faculty books in common at the Spalding bookstore. (top)