Vol. 9 No. 1
December 2005

Book in Common

Faculty/Guest Book in Common

AWP Connference in Austin, March 2006

Kentuckiana Metroversity

Graduate Assistantships for May 2006

Alumni Manuscript Review

Possible Alumni Book-Length Workshop

Spring 2006 Retreat

New Discussion Board Topics

High Horse, Faculty Anthology

Life of a Writer

     Students

     Faculty and Staff

    Alumni

Change of Address

Personals

Reminders and Notes

Spalding Home

MFA Home

Previous Newsletters

July 2003

August 2003

October 2003

November 2003

February 2004

May 2004

August 2004

September 2004

October 2004

January 2005

Febrary 2005

March 2005

April 2005

July 2005

September 2005

October 2005

Book in Common Is Susan Vreeland’s Life Studies

For the May 2006 residency, the MFA Program’s Book in Common is the story collection, Life Studies, by fiction writer Susan Vreeland. A plenary discussion takes place Friday, May 18. All students and faculty, regardless of concentration, read the book in advance of the residency and all prepare comments to add to the discussion.

Toward the end of the residency, Vreeland, a best-selling author and two-time winner of the Theodore Geisel Award, comes to Spalding’s campus to talk about her work as a writer, with a focus on Life Studies, which reveals Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painters from points of view of people who knew them and shows that ordinary people can have profound encounters with art. Vreeland’s novel Girl in Hyacinth Blue was a 1999 Finalist for Book Sense Book of the Year and was made into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. She has also published The Passion of Artemisia (2002) and The Forest Lover (2004). Vreeland’s novels have been translated into twenty-five languages, and her short fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, New England Review, Confrontation, Alaska Quarterly Review, Calyx, Crescent Review and other journals. She lives in San Diego with her husband.

First-semester students write an essay about the Book in Common, which is mailed to the MFA Office by January 27. During the May residency, these students meet with Marcia Dalton, the MFA Program’s Expository Writing Coach, who conducts small workshops about critical writing techniques.
All students should adjust this semester’s reading lists adding Life Studies to their cumulative bibliographies.

The suggested edition of Life Studies (ISBN: 0143036106) is a paperback published by Viking Penguin in November 2005. To view an image gallery of the paintings referred to in Life Studies, see http://www.svreeland.com/ls-paintings.html (top)

Faculty/Guest Books in Common for Spring 2006

Students read the Faculty/Guest Book in Common in the area of concentration that they are to study in the spring semester in preparation for a discussion with the author at the spring 2006 residency.

• Fiction: Blackberries, Blackberries by Crystal Wilkinson
• Poetry: Laughing Sickness by Kathleen Driskell (Note: this title has changed since the residency.) To order, send check for $10 made out to Fleur-de-Lis Press to Liz Nethery, Spalding University, 851 S. Fourth St., Louisville, KY 40203, or order from amazon.com
• Nonfiction: The Eye Is Not Enough by Dianne Aprile. To order, email mlhess@mlhess.win.nett
• Writing for Children: The Flag Maker by Susan Campbell Bartoletti
• Playwriting: TBA
• Screenwriting: Mama’s Boy by Sam Zalutsky (Script to be mailed to all screenwriting students.) (top)

AWP Conference & Bookfair in Austin, March 8-11

All Spalding MFA students and faculty are members of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP), which holds a professional conference and book fair each year. In 2006, the AWP Conference takes place March 8-11 in Austin, Texas. MFA Program membership allows up to 25 students to be registered at no charge. Those planning to attend should contact Karen Mann (kmann@spalding.edu) in the MFA Office to add their names to the registration list.

Spalding’s MFA in Writing Program is an annual sponsor of this event, and the MFA Program and The Louisville Review have adjoining booths at the conference book fair.

To celebrate the publication of High Horse, Fleur-de-Lis Press is hosting an invitation-only reception at the conference. Students, alumni, and faculty who are attending the confernec should contact Kathleen Driskell for information about the reception.

Each year at AWP, thousands of writers and teachers from writing programs come together to present writing, critical papers, and panel discussions on creative writing. Running alongside the conference is the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) conference and a Pedagogy Forum on creative writing. All Spalding MFA students should be familiar with AWP and its support services to members, which includes a jobs listing and dossier support. To find out more about the organization and the conference, go to http://www.awpwriter.org (top)

Kentuckiana Metroversity 2006 Writing Competition

MFA Students are strongly encouraged to enter the 2006 Kentuckiana Metroversity Writing Competi-tion, which is open to any student registered during the 2005-06 academic year. In the past, Spalding MFA students have regularly taken prizes for their writing, and the Program looks forward to more of our students winning recognition in this annual competition.
Entries are accepted in four categories: poetry, short fiction, creative nonfiction/essay, and research. Prizes of $100 (first place) and $50 (second place) is to be awarded in each category in two separate divisions—undergraduate and graduate. The judges are published writers outside Metroversity. An entry must meet the judge’s minimum standards to be considered for an award. MFA students may enter up to 2 works in each category, except for poetry (up to 5 poems). Entries must be unpublished but can be submitted simultaneously to other publications or competitions. Manuscripts must be typed, double spaced (poetry may be single spaced). Submit two copies of each entry (a poem is an entry). To obtain the official Metroversity entry form that must be attached to each entry, email Karen Mann at kmann@spalding.edu. A student’s name must not appear anywhere on the manuscript; however, the title of the work must be on each page. Manuscripts are not returned.

MFA students must send their entries directly to Jean Tucker, Competition Coordinator, Jefferson Community College, 109 E. Broadway, Louisville, KY 40202. The postmark deadline for all entries is February 13, 2006.

Winners are notified by e-mail and are honored at an awards ceremony and public reading in April (winners are not required to attend). For a list of winners, students may e-mail the competition coordinator after March 31. Entries that do not follow guidelines are disqualified. (top)

Graduate Assistantship Information for Spring 2006

The deadline to apply for a graduate assistantship for the spring semester 2006 is January 27.

To access a new description of positions and the application form, see the MFA forms page at http://www.spalding.edu/mfaforms

For those students who have previous publishing experience and who work in Photoshop and programs like Quark Xpress or Adobe InDesign, please see the information for the position of Publications Assistant for The Louisville Review and Fleur-de-Lis Press. (top)

Manuscript Review Program for MFA Alumni

MFA alumni who wish to receive feedback on book-length manuscripts—or alumni who wish to offer critiques—should take advantage of the Manuscript Review program, led by Maureen Mahoney Gillis (May 2004). In this program, open only to alumni (both as writers and critiquers), Maureen matches authors of book-length manuscripts in any area of concentration with readers who volunteer to critique the manuscript in depth. The program allows alumni to receive feedback at a high level on book-length works. Anyone interested in participating should contact Maureen at moberngillis@snet.net (top)

Possible Book-length Workshop for MFA Alumni

The MFA Program is considering the possibility of offering an Alumni Book-length Manusript Work-shop in fall 2006. Alumni who are interested should contact Karen Mann (kmann@spalding.edu). Several alums have already expressed an interest. The Workshop is for book-length projects in fiction, nonfiction, or writing for children. The project should be a manuscript in the alum’s area of study that was worked on during the program or developed since graduation from the program.

Such a Workshop requires a big commitment of time, as the participants must read four or five other manuscripts but provides a wonderful way to zero in on what works and what doesn’t work in the manuscript. (top)

Spring 2006 Alumni Harmonic Convergence Retreat

Alumni, and other MFA-ers, are invited to a quiet, unscheduled week of writing and relaxation from May 28 through June 3, immediately following the spring 2006 residency in New Harmony, Indiana.

All MFA-ers and their guests are welcome. The trip for 2006 is for 7 days/6 nights, Sunday, May 28, through Saturday, June 3. The package price of $775 includes a single room for six nights at the New Harmony Inn, motorcoach transportation both ways between Louisville and New Harmony, brunch at the scenic Overlook Restaurant on the drive to New Harmony, and a Tuesday-night dinner at the Red Geranium restaurant. Other meals are “on your own.” We need at least 16 participants. The entire MFA staff is attending for all or part of the week.

Please send the reservation along with a $200 deposit to the MFA Office by January 14. The full balance is due March 29. Make checks payable to Spalding University. Note MFA Writers Retreat on the check. Send to Katy Yocom. Options for a double room or for a shorter stay are available. For details, contact Karen or Katy.

For information about New Harmony, see http://www.newharmony.org For information about the New Harmony Inn and Conference Center, see http://www.newharmonyinn.com

New Topics on the MFA Discussion Board

Three topics have been added to the MFA discussion board: Conferences and Fellowships, Approaching Agents and Editors, and On Writing. This last topic is a place to exchange tips, exercises, and thoughts on the practice of writing.

Students, alumni, and faculty are all welcome to post to the board, which is located at http://eres.spalding.edu/bboard.asp?cid=246&cname=ENG001MFA The page can be bookmarked for easy access.

Life of a Writer

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

Students

Glenny Brock won a scholarship to attend the Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference at Harvard University. Between packets, Glenny is the editor-in-chief of Birmingham Weekly.

Therese (Gwen) Broderick was re-elected last November to another one-year term as Secretary/ Treasurer of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild (http://www.hvwg.org) in upstate New York. She presented her annual report to a meeting of forty members. Since last summer, Therese has updated her blog almost daily at http://poetry.blog-city.com

Renee Culver has been invited to give a reading and conduct a fiction workshop at the Appomattox Literary Festival in Richmond, Va., this December. (top)

Bob Darnell’s commentary “Dog Powered Flight” aired on Friday, December 2, on Louisville’s radio station WFPL.

Constance Darnell’s essay “Fighting the Giant of Fear” has been published in a new book Stones to Defeat the Giant edited by Betty Whitworth and published by McDowell Publishers.

Teneice Delgado, Stacia M. Fleegal, and K. Nicole Wilson (May 2005) have established the new online literary journal Blood Lotus. For submission guidelines, please email bloodlotusjournal@gmail.com or visit the website http://bloodlotus.org (top)

Ann E. Eskridge’s play Downhearted Blues is to be read on December 12 at Meadowbrook Theatre in Rochester, Mich., with a full equity cast. Downhearted Blues was developed with Claudia Hunter Johnson and was Ann’s creative writing project in her first-semester playwriting session.

Chris Helvey read three of his poems during the Open Mike segment of the InKY Reading Series at the Rudyard Kipling on December 9.

Claudia Labin’s short play “The Apartment” is to be produced during the first two weekends of April by the Oaklandon Civic Theatre in Indianapolis.

Rosanne Osborne collaborated with composer Jerry Cauley to write “Whisper of Creation,” an anthem commissioned for the Festival of Faith and the Arts at Emmanuel Baptist Church, Alexandria, La., in October. The anthem was sung by the sanctuary choir on the final Sunday of the festival. (top)

Terry Price has been added as a mentor to The Writer’s Loft: Middle Tennessee State University’s Low-Residency Creative Writing certificate program, beginning with the January 2006 semester. Terry is to join a fiction faculty that includes Charlotte Rains Dixon (October 2003), Linda Busby Parker (October 2003), Betsy Woods Atkinson (May 2004), and Cate McGowan (May 2003). The Writer’s Loft program was created and fostered by Roy Burkhead (May 2004).

Sonia Rapaport (Peltzer) is to present a paper at the AWP Annual Conference Pedagogy Forum. Her poem “Persephone: Man’s Curse” was chosen as Honorable Mention in Daybreak Press Dancing Galliard Sonnet Contest.

Colleen Wells attended the North Carolina Writer’s Network annual fall conference in Asheville. Susan Orlean was the keynote speaker. Colleen’s personal essay “Laughing Out Loud” was published on October 25 by the e-zine VerbSap (http://www.verbsap.com). (top)

Faculty & Staff

Dianne Aprile contributed a first-person piece to the December issue of Louisville Magazine as part of a feature on favorite Kentucky-made holiday gifts. Dianne also gave a talk in November on the writing of Thomas Merton at Midway Christian Church in Midway, Ky., at the invitation of Ouita Michel, the chef/owner of Holly Hill Inn and daughter of MFA alumna Pam Sexton. Dianne also read from an essay on Hiroshima, titled “The Illuminated Map,” on December 7 at The Jazz Factory’s “Jazz & Spoken Word,” where Frederick Smock, a past MFA residency guest lecturer, also read.

Julie Brickman reviewed three novels for the Sunday Books section of the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Unfolding Secrets,” a review of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See, appeared on July 3. “Sudden Losses,” a review of The Painted Drum by Louise Ehrdrich, appeared September 4. And her review of Gotz and Meyer by David Albahari, translated from the Serbian by Ellen Elias-Bursac, is scheduled to run December 18. (top)

Ellie Bryant read on December 9 at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York, along with other contributors to the literary magazine The Teacher’s Voice. In November, she presented an all-day in-service workshop on writing instruction to the faculty of Lamoille Union High School in Vermont.

Richard Cecil was awarded an Indiana Arts & Humanities travel grant for a project titled My Odyssey: In the Footsteps of Odysseus. He is to visit Corfu, Ithaca, and the Athens Museum of Archaelogy among many other stops on his journey.

Two of Kathleen Driskell’s poems, “Ring” and “My Neighbor’s Flock of Peacocks Wander Over for Another Visit,” were nominated by the editors of PoemMemoirStory (PMS) for the Pushcart Prize. In October, Kathleen served as a literary grant reviewer for the Kentucky Foundation for Women.

Richard Goodman’s essay, “A Big Wonderful Tree Falling Down,” has just been accepted for publication by Ascent. He read an excerpt from the essay at the recent Spalding residency. (top)

Roy Hoffman’s review of the novel The Widow of the South, by Robert Hicks, appeared on Saturday, November 12, on the books page of the Los Angeles Times. An interview with Roy about his novel, Chicken Dreaming Corn, originally in http://southernscribe.com, is in the newly published book, Inner Voices, Inner Views: Conversations With Southern Writers, by Pam Kingsbury (Enolam Press).

Joyce McDonald was the co-chair for this year’s One-on-One Plus Conference, sponsored by the Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature, held on October 15. “One-on-One” is a unique one day conference that gives aspiring children’s book writers an opportunity to work one-on-one with editors, agents, and published authors. Joyce’s Swallowing Stones has been chosen as one of the “100 Best of the Best for the 21st Century (1994-2003)” by the American Library Association’s Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). Joyce’s latest novel, Devil on My Heels (Delacorte/Random House), was released on November 9 in paperback (Dell Laurel-Leaf).

Cathleen Medwick’s article on winter reading, “Seductions for a Snowy Afternoon,” appears in the December issue of O, The Oprah Magazine. A short interview, along with “before and after” photographs of her hair makeover, appears in the January issue, available in mid-December.
Elaine Orr was in residence for two weeks in December at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst. She worked on a collection of inter-related short stories titled Tennis Lessons and on a nineteenth-century novel, Searching for Lurana, set in present day Nigeria. (top)

Katy Yocom’s (October 2003) essay “Tough Luck” appeared in the December issue of Louisville Magazine. She also contributed two short pieces on Kentucky-made gifts as a part of a feature article for that issue. Over Thanksgiving, Katy received a tour of the Benedictine abbey from Brother Columba McNeill during a visit to her hometown of Atchison, Kan.

Alumni

Jennifer Anthony (May 2005) participated in a Highlights Foundation workshop titled, “Writing to a New Level: A Working Writer’s Workshop for All Muses.” The four-day workshop, led by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, was held at the home of the Founders of Highlights for Children in northeastern Pennsylvania, amidst the Pocono Mountains and its timid black bears. Jennifer has also published two more travel stories for the webzine http://www.tangodiva.com

Kimberly Crum (October 2003) celebrates two years as part time faculty at Spalding University where she teaches writing and literature for the Department of Liberal Studies. Kimberly continues to write and read her radio essays on Louisville’s NPR affiliate, WFPL 89.3. Her essay titled, “Cradle of the Blues” appears in the October/November issue of Bobbi Buchanan’s (May 2005) e-zine, http://newsoutherner.com (top)

Daniel DiStasio’s (October 2005) two poems “Passing Myself” and “Day in Laramie” are forthcoming in Magazine Six, a new literary magazine funded by the Florida Council for the Arts. Dan read from his collection of short stories, On the Rock: Key West and taught a class in fiction writing at Florida Keys Community College.

Charlotte Rains Dixon (October 2003) recently had a piece published in the online travel magazine, Pology. The article told of her visit to Archer City, Texas, where she spoke to the creative non-fiction students of fellow alum George Getschow (May 2005) last July. She continues to teach creative writing at the Loft, the certificate program at Middle Tennessee State University, and also teaches privately. (top)

Anne Marie Fowler (May 2004) has recently contracted with Whitman Publishing (an imprint of EBSCO Publishing) to create content on Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation and Cao Xueqin’s Dream of the Red Chamber.

Willow Hambrick (October 2005) recently delivered a lecture on incarnational poetry at the Baptist Seminary of Kentucky, in Lexington. At the conclusion of the lecture, she was asked to give a reading of her own incarnational poems.

Paul Hiers (May 2004) visited the Indiana Writer’s Center to discuss plot and his short story, “A Small Tan Button” (published in the Spring 2003 issue of The Louisville Review) with David Hassler’s (May 2004) fiction class. After much reflection on the drive home from Indiana, Paul determined that the story does have a plot after all.

Erin Keane (May 2004) has been awarded a Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts fellowship residency to work on her novel in verse. Erin is to spend a month (June-July 2006) in residency in Nebraska City. (top)

Cyn Kitchen’s (May 2005) editorial essay “Witness to a Family’s Crushing Grief” appeared in the Sunday, November 13 edition of Chicago Tribune. Cyn wrote the essay after participating in a ceremony honoring the homecoming of the first soldier from her community to die in combat since Vietnam.

Richard Newman (October 2004) has poems appearing in The Melic Review’s “Death Issue” and a new anthology of ghost poems called Ghost of a Chance (Helicon Nine Editions). Also, U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser picked a poem from Richard’s new book to feature in his “American Life in Poetry” newspaper column. (top)

Zola Troutman Noble’s (May 2005) essay, “Back Road Attractions,” was published in the October/November issue of the online magazine New Southerner, available at http://www.newsoutherner.com

Joanne Oldham (May 2005) recently presented her MFA graduation lecture, “Word and Image: The Interplay of Language and Art–A Look at Comics and Graphic Novels” to the Query Group, a group that meets monthly for discussion of various topics. In October, she attended Molly Peacock’s one-woman show, “The Shimmering Verge,” at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington. Most recently, Joanne attended a lecture sponsored by the School of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville. The lecture was presented by Ivan Brunetti, a graduate of the University of Chicago where he has been an adjunct professor of Comics and Cartooning. Brunetti, the author of Schizo, also teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago and is the editor of An Anthology of Graphic Fiction to be published by the Yale University Press.

Linda Busby Parker’s (October 2003) article, “Read Like a Writer,” is in the January 2006 issue of Writer’s Digest with Jane Smiley on the front cover. Linda’s piece follows Smiley’s interview about what makes a good novel. Her article about university presses and their editors is in the fall issue of First Draft. For that piece, Linda interviewed two university press editors–one from the University of Alabama Press and one from Southeast Missouri State University Press. She is to read at one of Mobile’s historical homes/museums on January 8. This is a new writers’ reading series at Oakleigh. The concept is to enjoy a Sunday afternoon of history and literature and was begun by a public relations company in Mobile. In January, she also visits a couple of local book clubs. (top)

Diana M. Raab (October 2003) is to teach the new Personal Narrative Series at the University of California, Santa Barbara extension beginning January. The credited classes are offered over three semesters and include journaling, essays, and memoir. For more information, check out the website: http://www.unex.ucsb.edu Diana is also writing a weekly personal narrative column for Ink Byte, an on-line newsletter for writers.

Jim Robertson (November 2004) continues to peddle his first novel manuscript, with several encouraging rejection letters from top agents. In the meantime, he interviewed Nicholas Sparks for his local newspaper, the Mobile Register, and was told by the Warner Books’ publicity department it was one of the best pieces done on their prolific author in the past ten years. However, Warner did not bite on Jim’s suggestion that they publish his first novel as a way of saying “thank you.”

Heather Shaw (November 2004) has been named Food Editor at New Southerner magazine. Her next column, “Chocolate Romance,” appears in the Jan/Feb issue, part of a series of recipes and essays she is compiling into a cookbook. Along with writing her regular cooking column, she selects recipes and food essays for publication, with a particular interest in Southern cooking and in recipes using fresh, inexpensive ingredients. She welcomes queries for 500-700 word food-related articles at heathershaw@newsoutherner.com (top)

Amanda Sledz’s (October 2004) paper “Of Maus and Men: What Graphic Novels Have to Teach Writers of Creative Nonfiction” has been accepted at the 2006 Popular Culture and American Culture Associations’ national meeting, which is held in Atlanta. She is part of a panel on comic book scholarship. As part of her paper’s acceptance, it is also considered for the M. Thomas Inge Award for Comics Scholarship.

Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (May 2003) recently participated in the B. Dalton Book Fair in Vancouver, Wash., with twenty other children’s authors from the Pacific Northwest. In October, she expanded her artistic horizons by appearing as an extra in the Hallmark/CBS television movie adaptation of Terry Kay’s award-winning novel The Valley of Light. She plans to use the experience as research for a future writing project.

Kathleen Thompson (October 2003) led two sixth- grade classes in a poetry exercise at Our Lady of the Valley School, Birmingham. These bright students (including her grandson Nicholas) had just finished an intense month- long unit in astronomy and were very comfortable with Ted Kooser’s “Flying at Night,” both its language and the application of Wordsworth’s definition of poetry to it. Each student began a first draft of a poem which is to be entered in the annual student competition for The Alabama State Poetry Society.

Frank X Walker was awarded a Lannan Literary Fellowship for $75,000. The Lannan awards recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential for continued outstanding work. (top)

Change of Address

Joyce McDonald’s new address is 2955 Long Way, Easton, PA 18040. Her phone number is (610) 253-1775, her fax is (610) 253-1187, and cell phone is (908) 461-0598.

CoCo Harris-Ogugua’s new address is 9532 Dayton Ave N, Seattle, WA 98103.

Lisa Marzano’s new address is 1118 Rachel Anne Drive, Belmont, NC 28012.

Sonia Peltzer’s new address is 406 W. 8th St, Newton, NC 28658. Her new email is soniaar0328@yahoo.com (top)

Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to Anne Marie Fowler on the death of her father-in-law, Ronald D. Fowler, on November 28.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Robert Finch on the death of his mother, Fritzi Finch.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Nancy Jo Cegla on the death of her father, Leo Joseph Cegla, on December 5. (top)


Reminders and Notes

Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) Members
FAC members are announced by the MFA Office at the beginning of each semester. The Program Director consults with the FAC about recommendations for admissions and about programmatic and administrative development and changes. Both faculty and students are invited to make suggestions to the FAC for exploration by the Program Director and larger faculty. However, students and faculty should directly and immediately consult the Associate Program Director about any issues concerning specific individuals’ performance in the program.

for October 2005 Semester