Spring 2014 Program Book in Common: Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers>

The Program Book in Common area for the Spring 2014 residency in Louisville is poetry, and the MFA Program will feature the poetry collection Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, by Frank X Walker, the Spring 2014 Diana M Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence, current Kentucky Poet Laureate, and a 2003 Spalding MFA. Each residency spotlights a different one of the Spalding MFA’s areas of concentration. To prepare for Spring 2014 residency, everyone reads Turn Me Loose, regardless of area of concentration. All students place Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers (University of Georgia Press, 2013) on their reading lists.

On the first day of residency, Friday, May 23, after the general welcome, Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund leads a discussion of Turn Me Loose. Students should prepare oral comments to contribute to that plenary Program Book-in-Common discussion.

On Thursday, May 29, Frank visits the residency to present a talk about his work to MFA students, alumni, and faculty. The community is also invited to this discussion. A reception and book-signing follow this event. The next morning, Friday, May 30, Frank participates in a Q&A session open only to MFA students, alumni, and faculty.

Frank is the author of six poetry collections, including Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride (Old Cove Press, 2010), When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003), which won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 2004; and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000). A 2005 recipient of the Lannan Literary Fellowship in Poetry, Walker is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kentucky and is the editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the new Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture.

As part of our program’s requirements, each ENG613 student who plans to enroll as an ENG622 student during the Spring 2014 residency writes an essay on Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers. Instructions for that essay have been emailed to all ENG613 students who may be attending the Spring 2014 residency. Any student who plans to enroll for the Spring 2014 ENG622 residency course and has not received those instructions should contact Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell at kdriskell@spalding.edu.

Each student BIC essay is included in an electronic workshop booklet with four to six other student essays. About a month before residency, the booklet is sent to students in each group, and it forms the basis for an expository writing workshop held during the residency.

The expository writing workshop for Spring 2014 ENG622 students is conducted by one of our expository writing workshop leaders, and the group meets in a single session. In some cases, the instructor may alert a student to the need for additional instruction and practice in writing critical essays.

During the ENG623 independent study, if a mentor feels that a student needs more help in writing short critical essays, the student is referred to our expository writing consultant for additional tutoring through the mail. Mentors continue to offer responses in terms of both content and style to students about their essays.
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Welcome Back, Carolyn Crimi!

The MFA Program is pleased to announce that Carolyn Crimi is re-joining our Writing for Children and Young Adults faculty. Carolyn, a member of our faculty from 2003 to 2004, will resume teaching for the program during the Summer 2014 residency abroad in Prague and Berlin. She has published more than thirteen books, including Don’t Need Friends (Random House, 1999), Boris and Bella (Harcourt, 2004), Henry and the Buccaneer Bunnies (Candlewick, 2005), Where’s My Mummy? (Candlewick, 2008), Principal Fred Won’t Go to Bed (Marshall Cavendish, 2011), Rock and Roll Mole (Dial, 2011), Dear Tabby (Harper, 2012), and Pugs in a Bug (Dial, 2012). Carolyn received the 2012 Prairie State Award to honor her body of work. Her books have garnered more than 30 state awards and award nominations, including the Kentucky Bluegrass Award, The Arkansas Diamond Primary Book Award, and the Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award. Carolyn enjoys giving author talks at elementary schools all over the country. Carolyn received her MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College in 2000. Her website, www.carolyncrimi.com, gives more details about her books and her background. Students are welcome to post letters about their pets on Carolyn’s blog, deartabbycat.blogspot.com.
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Faculty Announced for Summer 2014 Semester

The faculty for the Summer 2014 residency and independent study are Rachel Harper and Pete Duval, fiction; Maureen Morehead, poetry; Rebecca Walker, creative nonfiction; Carolyn Crimi, writing for children & young adults; Larry Brenner, screenwriting; and Eric Schmiedl, playwriting. In addition, at the residency, Sena Naslund leads a novel chapter workshop, and Kathleen Driskell leads a teaching workshop.

The Summer 2014 residency takes place in Prague and Berlin, July 10-22. The deadline for returning students to register for courses and sign up for travel is February 1. The application deadline for incoming students is also February 1. Applicants may inquire with the MFA Office to request an extension of the deadline.
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AWP 2014: Spalding MFA Gathering in Seattle

MFAers are invited to visit Spalding’s Bookfair booth and enjoy a program-sponsored get-together at the 2014 AWP Conference & Bookfair, February 26–March 1 at the Washington State Convention Center & Sheraton Seattle Hotel.
As a celebratory gathering, Spalding is sponsoring an event 4:30–5:45 p.m. Friday, February 28, at the Scott James Bookfair Stage. Alums, faculty, students, and friends are cordially invited to listen to brief readings by Sena Naslund, Kathleen Driskell, and faculty members Dianne Aprile, K.L. Cook, and Greg Pape, then adjourn to Spalding’s Bookfair Booth 506 for a celebratory glass of champagne and a delicious treat!

Conference information is available at https://www.awpwriter.org/awp_conference/overview.
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Fleur-de-Lis Press Book Wins Ippy Award

Housed in the Spalding MFA Program, Fleur-de-Lis Press is pleased to announce that the short-story collection City of Brotherly Love, by Ned Bachus, has been awarded a gold medal in literary fiction for 2013 by the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Fleur-de-Lis published the collection in 2012.

The awards, also known as the “IPPY” Awards, recognize excellence in independent publishing and are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers. Last year’s IPPY gold medal winner in literary fiction, Jaimy Gordon, went on to receive the National Book Award.  

Sena Naslund, editor of Fleur-de-Lis Press, says of Bachus’s stories: “The people you meet in these stories are just like you and me. How do we negotiate between what’s inside us and the world outside? That is the central question of realistic, day to day living and of these eleven honest and evocative stories in City of Brotherly Love. What I know, and what you will find out, is that my life is variously enriched by reading Ned Bachus’s superb stories.”

Fleur-de-Lis Press, founded by Sena Naslund and Karen Mann in 1996, specializes in publishing first books by authors whose work has previously appeared in The Louisville Review. In addition to City of Brotherly Love, Fleur-de-Lis’ backlist includes first books by Kathleen Driskell and faculty members Robin Lippincott and Jody Lisberger. The press also published The Moon with the Sun in her Eye, poems by Nana Lampton (P ’04) and Mirel’s Daughter, a novel by Kay Gill (F ’11).
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Teaching Workshop Offered during Spring 2014 Residency

Students interested in taking the Teaching Seminar during the Spring 2014 residency should contact Kathleen Driskell (kdriskell@spalding.edu) by February 28. Students must have completed ENG612, ENG613, ENG622, and ENG623 to be eligible to register. Alums may take the teaching practicum as a post-graduate semester.

ENG662 is a 3-hour course (or a 5-hour course for those attending their graduation residency). During residency, students meet in a cross-genre teaching workshop that takes the place of the genre workshop. Students submit a worksheet in a genre other than their major concentration area and have opportunities to teach a workshop session and lead a writing exercise for their peers. A guided discussion on best teaching practices follows each session. In addition to the workshop, teaching students attend lectures outside their major areas of concentration to gain a wider view of the other genres they may be required to teach in introductory-level creative writing courses. The number of residency reports required remains the same as for students enrolled in the other courses.

The residency course is limited to six students and is filled by seniority, on a first-come, first-served basis for those students who meet the prerequisites.
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Kathleen Driskell's New Online Office Hours

Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell’s new online office hours are 10:00–11:00 a.m. EST on Tuesdays and 3:00–4:00  p.m. EST on Wednesdays and are convened through Google Hangouts. A few minutes before each session, Kathleen will email the Google Hangout link to all students and faculty. Those wishing to join her in the Google Hangout can simply click through the link to drop in, provided they have joined Google+ and downloaded the Hangouts plugin. An easy-to-follow tutorial, with step-by-step directions to download the plugin, is available on the MFA portal page (left sidebar). All students and faculty with questions or concerns are welcome to drop in at any time during these open office hours.
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Recapping the Fall 2013 Residency

At the Fall 2013 residency, MFAers were asked to reflect on their beliefs, confront the brutality of war, contemplate the books that matter to them, and discuss creativity as a path for dealing with grief and adversity.

Residency began with a group discussion of the hybrid biography/memoir The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, which examines the satisfactions and consolations of creativity in the life of an aging artist. The book was written by featured author and retired faculty member Molly Peacock. Molly visited campus later in the week and, in a candid and personal address, discussed the process of researching and writing the book as a newcomer to the daunting field of biography. The following morning, in a Q&A session, she revealed that she took a life lesson from Mrs. Delany’s surprising willingness to close doors on parts of her life once they were finished.

Frye Gaillard authored the second book-in-common, The Books That Mattered: A Reader’s Memoir. Gaillard spoke about his reading history and how the literature he read in his youth shaped his understanding of the segregated South in which he was growing up. As a follow-up to his talk, students wrote their own brief essays on books that mattered to them.

Later in the week, MFAers attended the opening performance of War Horse at the Kentucky Center for the Arts. The event fell on the 30th anniversary of the opening of the Kentucky Center. State and local politicians and dignitaries were honored before the performance, and intermission featured champagne and truffles for all.

Agent Joy Harris and publicist Sharyn Rosenblum visited the residency to discuss aspects of the publishing world. And Kathleen Driskell kicked off the new Literary Explorations series with her lecture on “The Enigmatic Life and Poetry of W. B. Yeats.”

MFAers also attended a book launch for This I Believe—Kentucky, hosted by noted radio personality Bob Edwards. Edwards interviewed eight essayists featured in the book, most of whom had ties with the MFA Program: Spalding President Tori Murden McClure (CNF ’05), Sena Naslund, faculty members Silas House (F ’03) and Dianne Aprile, and Kentucky Poet Laureate Frank X. Walker (P ’03). Later, students wrote their own This I Believe essay. Students had the chance to read their essays aloud at the residency’s closing curriculum session, ending the week on a final contemplative note.
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Alums: Mark Your Calendar for MFA Homecoming 2014

MFA alums are invited back to campus for MFA Homecoming, May 29–June 1, featuring an expanded schedule, a host of new events, and a very special rate on rooms at the Brown Hotel!
The Homecoming line-up includes:

• a 10-minute play festival (new this year!)
• alumni workshops
• a lecture by alum Loreen Niewenhuis (F ’07) on “How to connect your work with a targeted audience, and still honor the creative bubble”
• the featured author presentation with Frank W. Walker (P ’03)
• A Celebration of Recently Published Books by Alumni
• SPLoveFest book expo, which  showcases alumni books, literary journals, and other writing and art projects
• an after-party literary reading
• a lecture for alums by a Spalding faculty member
• a smorgasbord of faculty lectures
• a breakfast mixer with MFA faculty, alums, and new grads
• the Un-Conference
• a regional breakout session for those who want to stay connected with other alums in their area
• one-on-one practice pitch sessions with Vickie Weaver for those looking for an agent
• social activities, including a guided walk along the Urban Bourbon Trail, hosted by Omar Figueras (F/CNF ’13)

Creating Community

Santa Visits the Veterans
by Wanda Newell

I retired from the U.S. Air Force in 2005, and for the past seven years, I’ve been a member of several veterans’ organizations, including the local Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). One of our missions is to ensure that veterans in assisted living facilities and nursing homes are not forgotten. Each month, a group of us visits the six facilities in Lawrence County, Tennessee. As I’m responsible for coordinating the visits, I contact the activities director for each facility and make sure we have an updated list of the veterans residing there.  
I also ensure we have something to give the veterans each month. Sometimes we take thank-you cards drawn and colored by schoolchildren. One month we took doilies for everyone to use in their rooms.  Whatever we take is meant to brighten the veterans’ day, but we have found there is nothing more meaningful than just being with them. Many of them have family nearby, but most tell us they don’t get visited as much as they would like. It’s a big treat for them (and me) when December rolls around and our Santa, a Vietnam veteran, pays them a visit.

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Tell Us About Your Service Projects!
Spalding University tallies students' service hours and has the goal of reaching 1.3 million hours this year. MFA students report their service hours by emailing mfadropbox@spalding.edu with the subject line "service hours." Include the dates of service, total number of hours, the organization, and a brief description of the service. Hours can be added up and reported every few weeks or every few months.
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Deadline dates
MFA deadlines are found in course syllabi (for deadlines involving the independent study course) and on the portal’s “Preparing for the Residency” page (for deadlines related to an upcoming residency). Students are responsible for keeping track of and meeting all deadlines that apply to them. As a courtesy, some deadline reminders appear in the Thursday Memo, but students should not rely solely on the Thursday Memo for deadline information. Faculty find deadline information via the “Faculty” link on the MFA portal page, as well as in course syllabi and on the “Preparing for the Residency” page.
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My Profile on MFA portal page
MFA students and faculty should add their pictures to their profile page on the MFA portal page. This picture shows up when emailing from Spalding email accounts. It's easy to do! On the MFA portal page, click on your name (to the upper right). Click on MY PROFILE. Click on EDIT MY PROFILE. Find the PICTURE section and add the picture.
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Spalding Email Accounts
The MFA staff use student and faculty Spalding email accounts to communicate. Please check your account regularly. To forward your Spalding email to your home email account, see http://spalding.edu/about/technology/portal/. To receive your Spalding email account on your phone (or iPod or iPad), see http://spalding.edu/about/technology/spalding-mobile-access/.
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Check Out the MFA Blog
MFA faculty and alumni blog at blog.spalding.edu/mfainwriting. New posts are added weekly. The comment feature is now available.
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Facebook Fanpage Posts Contest and Other Information
The MFA Program has begun posting announcements regarding contests, calls for submissions, and grants on the MFA Facebook Fanpage. MFAers are invited to share their writerly news on the MFA fanpage. Send news about readings, blog entries, pictures, or other items of interest to mfafacebook@spalding.edu.
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MFA Alumni Association
The website for the MFA Alumni Association is http://www.spaldingmfaalum.com. If you have questions or are interested in working with this group, send Terry Price an email at terry@terryprice.net. Check out the Spalding MFA Alumni Facebook page.
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Alumni Access to MFA News and Residency Lectures
MFA alumni may access the MFA portal page to listen to residency lectures and to see the latest in MFA news. Go to my.spalding.edu. Username: MFAportal and Password: MFAportal! (Note: the password is case sensitive and there is an exclamation mark at the end of it.)

Life of a Writer

Karylanne Geary (CNF) will be presenting her feminist literary analysis, “Ball Cutters and Matriarchal Juggernauts: Rape Culture in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” as part of the 2014 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture since 1900. The conference will be held February 20–22 at the University of Louisville.
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Holly Gleason (CNF/F) wrote the Patty Griffin cover story in the current Lone Star Music magazine and has a feature profile on award-winning songwriter Matraca Berg in the Oxford American’s music issue, on stands through March.
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Jeffrey Fischer-Smith’s (PW) short play, Reservations, was included in The Secret Theatre’s Long Island City One-Act Play Festival in January. The play was performed four times over a two-week period. The play formerly called Edgar & Mae) was workshopped at last year’s summer residency in Ireland.
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Alice-Catherine Jennings’s (P) poem “Henry VIII—The Manticore” is forthcoming in the May 2014 issue of First Literary Review-East. In addition, she hosts a virtual literary salon every month via a Facebook group. Upcoming book selections include Paradise Lost by John Milton (March 15) and The Iliad of Homer and Omerus by Derek Walcott (May 1). Free and open to readers worldwide. Message alice.jennings104@facebook.com to join.
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Kendra Langdon Juskus’s (P) poems “Laundry” and “Little Boy” were published in the Fall 2013 issue of Fifth Wednesday Journal (http://www.fifthwednesdayjournal.com/order/issus/fall_2013.shtml), under the guest poetry editorship of Jackie K. White. Fifth Wednesday Journal is an independent literary journal out of Lisle, Illinois, committed to the idea that contemporary literature and photography are essential components of a vibrant and enduring culture. Kendra also participated in a Fifth Wednesday Journal-sponsored reading in Illinois in December.
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Journey McAndrews (P) was awarded a 2013 Artist Enrichment Grant from the Kentucky Foundation for Women to help further her work on a collection of poetry exploring the lives and relationships of four women from Central Kentucky. For more information, contact Journey at mcandrews.jw@gmail.com.
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Heather Meyer’s (PW) new short satire, Dream Job, is currently being produced as part of the Raucous Caucus Political Theater Festival in Minneapolis. She’s also been selected to stay up all night to write a play as part of Theatre Unbound’s 24hr Theater Project. This spring, Heather will reprise her role as producer/director/writer in the remount of her play Women’s History Month: The Historical Comedybration (with fabulous prizes), performing in Minneapolis in March, www.comedybration.com. In other time zones, Heather’s play Stepmother’s Manifesto will premiere at Left Coast Theater in San Francisco this March and April.
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Jami Powell (CNF) was recently named a nonfiction finalist in the 2013 New Southerner Literary Contest. Her essay “American Coot” appears in the 2013 New Southerner Literary Edition and is also available online at http://newsoutherner.com.
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Atul Rao’s (SW) streak of writing children’s television continues as his episodes of Ella the Elephant will air on Disney Channel in Spring 2014, and Transformers: Rescuebots, Season 2, is now airing on the Hub. In October he was hired as a writer on a new preschool show called You and Me, through DHX Media & CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), writing multiple episodes on this mixed-media show. It is described as Mr. Rogers meets Blues Clues meets Adventure Time as each episode takes the audience on interactive adventures in a world of puppets, animation, and fun characters. The show begins airing in September. If that weren’t enough on his plate, he is working as a development producer with wrestling entrepreneur Carl DeMarco (former present of WWE) on a new CGI family comedy series about . . . you guessed it . . . wrestling.
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Alumni

Kristin Brace’s (F ’12) interview was posted on November 12 on The Writers Job, a new website created by the Purdue MFA in Creative Writing program. Her poem “Empty Boats” appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of The Louisville Review, and her interview with poet Jack Ridl was featured on the Colorado Review blog on October 29. Five poems were published in vol. 36, issue 2 (Fall 2013) of The Chariton Review: “Portrait of Valentine Gode-Darel,” “The Year of the Cicada,” “sometimes a sadness comes of which you feel ashamed,” “Age Sixteen: The Spring of No Return,” and “The Geography of Now.”
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Becky Browder’s (F ’12) short story “The Russian Bride” appears in the January 2014 issue of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. Becky worked on the story with her final semester mentor, K. L. Cook, and workshop leader Phil Deaver. “The Russian Bride” also received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train’s 2012 Family Matters Competition and was a Finalist in the 2012 William Faulkner/William Wisdom Short Story Competition.
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Shannon Cavanaugh (F ’13) had two short stories published in New Southerner’s December issue. The stories “Buck Snort” and “Pull Me a Green Onion” placed as finalists in the journal’s recent literary competition. They were published under the pen name Fate Thompson. Cavanaugh and other writers read from their works at a special reading held in Louisville on January 18. In another competition, Cavanaugh’s creative nonfiction piece “Death on a Creek Bank” won first place as best nature article, and her short story “The Communion” won honorable mention in the Gene Andereck Short Story category. Both were judged by the Ozarks Writers League.
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Thea Gavin (P ’05) had two poems recently published: “Growing Giant Pumpkins” in the Fall issue of Greenprints, and “Drifting through Cottonwood Duff” in the Summer issue of the Naugatuck River Review. She has two poems forthcoming: “Succession” will be published in Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry 9.1, and “Dolor, Inc.” in Workers Write! More Tales from the Cubicle. Her essay about hiking barefoot across the Grand Canyon has been accepted for the 2014 Vishnu Temple Press anthology of Grand Canyon essays, edited by Rick Kempa. Another essay, “The First Barefoot Steps,” appeared on December 10 on the Barefoot Beginner website. Thea’s panel proposal “Voices from the Outpost: Wild Words for Wallowa County, OR” was accepted for the 2014 AWP conference in Seattle. She continues to blog about her adventures at Barefoot Wandering and Writing.
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Robert X. Golphin (SW ’13) is the writer-director of “The Counterparts,” a narrative web series in which he stars opposite Kristen Gabrielle Sledge (daughter of Grammy-nominated international recording artist Kathy Sledge of Sister Sledge). The slice-of-life domestic drama is executive produced by international recording artist Julie McKnight (an MTV2 Music Award winner who has written and/or performed with Earth, Wind and Fire; The Emotions; and her former husband, Brian McKnight). The series premiered online January 3. A trailer and poster for the film have been released at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJkOrFRGfT0.
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Michael Wayne Hampton (F ’05) signed to the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency, which also represents authors such as Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston. His agent, Roz Foster, is currently in the process of selling his punk-rock YA novel The Dream Academy. His tweet essay “1985” appeared in the November newsletter for Creative Non-fiction.
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Colleen S. Harris-Keith (P ’09) ran off and married the love of her life, Jed Waters Harris-Keith, on April 27, 2013. Jed will be starting his MFA at Spalding in summer 2014. Colleen reports that she has accepted a position as a member of the library faculty at California State University – Channel Islands, which she will begin July 1. In writing news, Colleen’s poetry manuscript, Rise Fall Rise, was selected as a semifinalist for the 2013 Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award.
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Heather Jones (PW ’08) took her play The Hoarder’s Child to the Asheville Fringe Festival, where the piece won Most Inspiring Work; she also self-published the play, and it can be purchased on blurb.com. Her play Ventriloquy, based on Charles Brockden Brown’s 1798 novel Wieland, was presented as a staged reading in the Reading on the Rocks series at the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. Heather read her poem “The Acrobat” at a poetry reading event at the Morean Arts Center in St. Pete, and she read excerpts from her novel-in-progress, Tennessee Murder Ballad, as the featured reader at St. Pete fiction open mic, Wordier than Thou. This past year she began teaching composition at University of South Florida-St. Pete, along with literature classes and intro to creative writing. She began teaching dramatic writing in January. Heather also co-founded Keep St. Pete Lit, a literary organization with a mission to preserve the past and foster the future of literature and writing in St. Pete. KSP-Lit hosted or co-hosted 13 events between August and December, beginning with a city-wide book club reading Kerouac’s On the Road, and including an evening of poetry in the local nature preserve.
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Teddy Jones’s (F ’12) novel, Jackson’s Pond, Texas was published in trade paperback and e-book by MidTown Publishing in October. The release carries cover blurbs by three Spalding faculty who mentored her during the novel’s development—Robin Lippincott, Philip F. Deaver, and Eleanor Morse.
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Nancy Chen Long (P ’12) is ecstatic that Red Bird Chapbooks has published her first chapbook, Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone. The chapbook contains poems she wrote as part of the 2013 Pulitzer Remix Project (http://www.pulitzerremix.com/), sponsored by Found Poetry Review (http://www.foundpoetryreview.com). For the project, poets wrote one poem a day from a Pulitzer Prize-winning work of fiction. Nancy was assigned the 1949 Pulitzer winner Guard of Honor, by James Gould Cozzens. Poets were challenged to create poems that varied in topic and theme from the original text, rather than merely regurgitating the novels in poetic form. More information about Nancy’s chapbook can be found at http://www.redbirdchapbooks.com/nancy-chen-long.html. Nancy also recently published poems in Sycamore Review, Cold Mountain Review, Naugatuck River Review, and Stone Highway Review. The poem “Curry” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by The Louisville Review. During the fall and winter, Nancy, along with other members of Spalding’s own Brewhouse Poets, read at the Spoken Word Stage, one of the events at the Bloomington (Indiana) Fourth-Street Arts Fair. She also read at the annual reading of the Five Woman Poets, a local poetry group comprised of women of a certain age. And she did an extended reading as a featured reader at the Fountain Square Poetry Series, sponsored by the local Writers Guild, in which she read along with three other poets interspersed with music by the Bloomington Peace Choir. For the creative nonfiction writers of the community, she coordinated a CNF workshop and served as a participant in a panel discussion on CNF (along with Alyce Miller, who teaches at IU, and Alex Chambers, a PhD student), in which she discussed the process of publication in journals and small presses, including a survey of online resources.
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Marilyn Moss (CNF ’09) was honored to have her new book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist & Designer, chosen for the New York Times 2013 Holiday Gift Guide (http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/holiday-gift-guide/#/?page=books).
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Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (W4CYA ’03) sold two more YA novels to Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan, writing as S.A. Bodeen. Last fall she went on the Fierce Reads tours for her latest release, The Fallout, visiting eight cities in nine days, including the Austin Teen Book Fest. She was also a presenter at the Heartland Fall Forum for Independent Booksellers in Chicago, Wordstock in Portland, and the Indiana Federation of Libraries annual conference, where she received the Young Hoosier Award for her first YA novel, The Compound. Last fall she also accepted the Oregon Spirit Award for her novel The Raft and went on weeklong school visit trips to Indiana and Texas.
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Amy Watkins’s (P ’06) essay “The Myth of the Starfish” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine. Her poetry chapbook, Milk and Water, will be published by Yellow Flag Press early in 2014.
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Susan Campbell Bartoletti was re-elected to another two-year term as a trustee for the Highlights Foundation (www.HighlightsFoundation.org) and will meet with Trustee president and former Highlights for Children publisher Kent Brown to discuss future program planning. In December, she turned in a still-untitled nonfiction book on the subject of Mary Mallon, better known as “Typhoid Mary,” to be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2015. This spring, she will be speaking at Harding University (Searcy, Arkansas), at a Holocaust program at the Phoenix Public Library (Arizona), at the John F. Kennedy Library (Boston), at Lock Haven University (Lock Haven, Pennsylvania), and at the Eastern Pennsylvania SCBWI retreat (Boyds Mills, Pennsylvania). When she’s not traveling, she’ll be abridging Oliver Stone’s and Peter Kuznick’s The Untold History of the United States for a younger audience and taking notes and dreaming about her next novel.
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Gabriel Dean’s play Qualities of Starlight recently swept the B. Iden Payne Awards in Austin, Texas. It garnered Outstanding Production of a Comedy, Vortext Rep Theatre; Outstanding Direction of a Comedy, Rudy Ramirez; Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy, Toby Minor; Outstanding Ensemble Performance, Jennifer Underwood and Dennis Bailey; Outstanding Set Design, Ann Marie Gordon; Outstanding Original Script, Gabriel Jason Dean; Special Certificate, Helen Parish, Props. Gabriel was also commissioned by The Flea in New York City to write a play as part of their upcoming Mysteries Play Project in 2014. His play Javaaneh (In Bloom) had its Broadway option renewed by producer Ken Davenport. Gabriel’s play Terminus was read on November 11 at the Lark Play Development Center in NYC and is scheduled for reading in March at the Playwright’s Center in Minneapolis. He was recently named a 2014 Dramatist’s Guild Fellow. His play D’Angelico was optioned for film by Riovey Films; Gabriel will write the screenplay. During the spring semester, Gabriel is teaching playwriting as a guest artist at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania.
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Robin Lippincott’s personal essay about Janis Joplin, growing up in Central Florida in the 1960s, and more, which he read from a few residencies ago, has been published in the latest issue of Bloom Literary Journal (Vol. 9). His graphic short story, “When It Dawns on Them,” edited by alum Kristin Matly Dennis and illustrated by alum AshleyRose Sullivan, and from which he also read at residency, is now available as an e-book on Amazon.
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Eleanor Morse’s third novel, White Dog Fell from the Sky, was published in paperback through Penguin Books in late 2013. She’ll be giving talks in seven cities in southern California in May. When details and dates are firmed up, they will be posted at www.eleanormorse.com.
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Sena Jeter Naslund made a January visit to Phoenix and Tuscon, Arizona, to speak with five separate book clubs, sponsored by Northern Trust Bank, as well as with high school students, to discuss her most recent novel, The Fountain of St. James Court; or, Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman. On Feb. 8, Sena presents a talk and slide show to the Birmingham Alliance Francais (and the general public) about the paintings of Elisabeth Vigee-Le Brun, the favorite portrait painter of Marie Antoinette and the protagonist referenced in the subtitle of Sena’s new novel. During her fall book tour, Sena showed slides and spoke at several art museums, including the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., and the art museums of New Orleans and Salt Lake City.
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Lesléa Newman’s novel-in-verse October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard has received the following honors: Winner, Florida Council Teachers of English Joan F. Kaywell Award, 2014; Nominee, Missouri Association of School Librarians Gateway Readers Award, 2014-2015; Texas Library Association TAYSHAS High School Reading List, 2014; and Finalist, Eliot Rosewater Indiana High School Award, 2014-2015.
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Katy Yocom was awarded a writing residency at I.S.L.A.N.D. Hill House in northern Michigan, where she spent two snowy weeks in late January and early February working on a revision in the excellent company of Maryann Lesert (F ’03) and Julie Brickman. She recently finished a stint as guest fiction editor of the Spring 2014 issue of The Louisville Review. Her profile of chef Louis Retailleau appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of Food & Dining Magazine, and her profile of chef Fernando Martinez is forthcoming in the Spring 2014 issue.  Her essay about revising a novel appeared on the MFA faculty blog in January.  Katy will teach a freshman seminar titled “Food: A Cultural Exploration” at Bellarmine University this fall.
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Personals

We are saddened by the death of David Tipton (P ’06), of Louisville, who passed away Saturday, January 4.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Donna McClanahan-Crow (CNF) on the death of her mother, Dorothy Crowe, on December 30, and her father, James H. Crowe, on January 5.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Michael Malone (CNF ’10) on the death of his father, Donald Luther Malone, who died Dec. 1.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Becky Browder (F ’12) on the death of her mother, Audrey Moore Johnson, on December 4.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Karen Mann on the death of her brother, Bill Mann, on November 9.
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Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) for Fall 2013

FAC members are announced by the MFA Office at the beginning of each semester. The Program Directors consult 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.

• Rachel Harper, fiction
• Jeanie Thompson, poetry
• Nancy McCabe, creative nonfiction
• Edie Hemingway, writing for children and young adults:
• Gabriel Dean, playwriting/screenwriting

Reminders and Notes

Financial Aid: The MFA Program offers scholarships to students entering their first semester in the program. Returning students who desire financial assistance other than student loans should apply for graduate assistantships. Applications for scholarships and assistantships should be directed to the MFA Office (mfa@spalding.edu). Information for assistantships is on the MFA portal page.

Federal student loans are available to all eligible graduate students and are available for the fall, spring, or summer semesters. For help with financial aid questions, call Michelle Standridge at 800-896-8941, ext. 4333 or 502-873-4333 or email mstandridge@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

Student Loans for Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters: Fill out the FAFSA for the 2013-14 school year, using 2012 tax information. Refer to MFA Financial Aid FAQs on the MFA portal page.

Student Loans for Summer 2014 semester: Fill out the FAFSA for the 2014-2015 school year, using 2013 tax information. Refer to MFA Financial Aid FAQs on the MFA portal page.
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Classifieds in the newsletter: Submissions of writing-related advertisements, such as calls for submission, services for writers, etc., may be made to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu.
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Newsletter Archive: Newsletters are archived online at www2.spalding.edu/newsletter/menu.htm.
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Life of a Writer: Please remember to email Life of a Writer news to the program because this is a vital part of our community—sharing writing successes. The program wants to share good news with everyone and compiles records of publications, presentations, readings, employment, and other related information on faculty, students, and alums.

Life of a Writer pieces should be written as a paragraph in third person. Include area of concentration in parenthesis after name. For example, (F) for fiction, (P) for poetry, (CNF) for creative nonfiction; (W4C) for writing for children and young adults, (SW) for screenwriting, and (PW) for playwriting. For alumni, please include the year of graduation, such as Jake Doe (SW ’08). Spell out month and state names. Include title(s) of the work, publishers, date of publication, and complete web site addresses when appropriate. Send to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu.

Examples of kinds of activities that might be included in the Life of a Writer column are publishing in journals or magazines or in book form, winning awards or other prizes, giving a public reading, visiting a classroom to talk about writing, judging a writing competition, attending a writers conference, serving on a panel about writing, or volunteering in a project about writing or literacy.
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About The Masthead: The image in our masthead is the emblem of a photograph of a Louisville fountain, "River Horse," by Louisville sculptor Barney Bright. The sculpture references both the location of Louisville as a river city on the banks of the Ohio and as the host, for more than 125 years, of the Kentucky Derby. The winged horse Pegasus, of Greek mythology, has long been associated with the literary arts and the wings of poesy.
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Sena Jeter Naslund, Program Director
Karen J. Mann, Administrative Director
Kathleen Driskell, Associate Program Director
Katy Yocom, Associate Administrative Director
Ellyn Lichvar, Administrative Assistant
Mark Ervin, Newsletter Editor
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Direct No.	Person	Toll Free Ext. 800-896-8941
502-873-4400	Katy Yocom	4400
502-873-4396	Kathleen Driskell	4396
502-873-4398	Ellyn Lichvar	4398
502-873-4399	Karen Mann	4399
502-873-4333	Michelle Standridge	4333

Email Life of a Writer information, Because You Asked questions, or classifieds to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
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