Vol. 8 No. 1
July 2005
Life of a Writer
Previous Newsletters
Book
in Common for Fall 2005 Is Writing from the Center
For the October 2005 residency,
the MFA Program's Book in Common is Writing from the Center, a collection
of essays from Scott Russell Sanders. A plenary discussion is to take
place Friday, October 28, 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 Wednesday of the residency, Sanders, author of twenty books of nonfiction
and fiction and Distinguished Professor of English at Indiana University
Bloomington, visits Spalding's campus to talk about his work as a writer,
with a focus on his book Writing from the Center, winner of the Great
Lakes Book Award in 1996. The following morning, students and faculty
are to have a closed question and answer session with Sanders.
Writing from the Center is published by Indiana University Press (Reprint
edition 1997 ISBN: 0253211433) and is available online from BN.com, Amazon.com,
and alibris.com as well as other bookstores.
Current first semester students are required to wrte a 2-4 page essay
on Writing from the Center and send it to the MFA Office by midsemester
August 8; these essays are forwarded to the MFA Program's Expository
Writing Coach, Marcia Dalton, who conducts small workshops during the
fall residency for ENG620 students
.
All students should adjust this semester's reading lists in order
to add Writing from the Center to their cumulative bibliographies.
A leading voice in environmental concerns, Scott Russell Sanders received
a BA from Brown in 1967 (English) and a PhD from Cambridge in 1971 (English).
He joined IU in 1971. He holds honorary degrees from Otterbein College,
Unity College, and Berea College. Sanders has been granted fellowships
in support of his writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Indiana Arts Commission, the Lilly Endowment, and the Guggenheim Foundation.
His book The Paradise of Bombs won the Associated Writing Programs Award
in Creative Nonfiction in 1987; Staying Put won the Ohioana Book Award
in 1994; for his collected work in nonfiction, he was honored in 1995
with a Lannan Literary Award. His most recent books are The Force of Spirit
(Beacon Press, 2000) and A Private History of Awe (forthcoming from Farrar,
Straus, and Giroux, 2006). (top)
Faculty/Guest
Books in Common for Fall 2005
Students read the Faculty Book in Common in the area of concentration
that they are to study in the fall semester in preparation for a discussion
with the author at the fall 2005 residency.
Harmonic Convergence
Writers Retreat a Success
Alumni, current students, and MFA staff took part in the first Harmonic
Convergence Writers Retreat May 31-June 3 in New Harmony, Indiana. As
the mood hit, participants spent their time reading, writing, sleeping,
dining, walking through the town's many parks and garden-lined streets,
and socializing. An evening reading session sprang into being, during
which everyone shared from work in progress--sometimes from work written
that very day.
Participants said they particularly enjoyed the evening readings, the
small group size, and the opportunity to be with their community of writers.
Leslie Townsend (May 2004) commented, "Great opportunity for relaxed
schedule, concentrated writing time, and intimate fellowship with peers
and faculty in a lovely historic setting." And Thelma Wyland
(October 2003) said simply, "It was like coming home."
"It's amazing," Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund says,
"I got a ton of writing done and felt refreshed, too. Harmonic Convergence
gave me a chance to chat--at last. I'm definitely going to be there after
the residency next spring."
The MFA Office has already reserved rooms for the 2006 Harmonic Convergence
Writers Retreat. More information is forthcoming. (top)
Graduate
Assistantship Information for Fall 2005
The deadline to apply for a graduate assistantship for the fall 2005 semester
is August 8. For a description of positions and the application, 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.
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)
MFA-ers may order High Horse: Contemporary Writing by the MFA Faculty of Spalding University by sending a check for $14 for each book to Louisville Review, Spalding University, 851 S. Fourth St., Louisville, KY 40203.
Life of a Writer
Students, faculty, and alumni: Please email writing news to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
Helen Idore Anschell's poem "Instructions I Hear from
Her" is to be published in Coffee House Magazine (Scotland)
in May 2006. This magazine has competitions and welcomes submissions.
Details can be found at http://www.cinnamonpress.com
Verna Austen's short story "Fish Gutz" has been
accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of the online journal The
Dead Mule, available at http://www.deadmule.com
Therese (Gwen) Broderick was the featured poet at the historic Caffe Lena (http://www.caffelena.org) in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Gwen also attended the annual conference of the International Women's Writing Guild (http://www.iwwg.org). She invites everyone to visit her new poetry blog at poetry.blog-city.com
Mark Brown was the featured poet at 6th & Main Coffeehouse, in Shelbyville, Ky., on July 10. (top)
David Bennett Carren's feature film, Mr. Hell, premiered at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston on May 20. David co-wrote, produced, and also played the part of V.C. or Vacuum Cleaner. In June, David also wrote, directed, and produced Phenomena Police, a reality series pilot for Sky Way Productions, a Houston-based video/film production company. The series focuses on a team of active duty police officers who investigate the paranormal. The initial episode is based on an authenticated case that occurred at a home in Cypress, Texas.
Albert DeGenova was selected to be one of six Chicago poets featured in an hour-long reading at the Chicago Blues Festival. This year was the first time the music festival (which draws hundreds of thousands of people) included poetry.
Daniel DiStasio won second place in the Key West Writers Guild's 2005 contest for his short story "Like Walking on Air."
Chris Helvey's short story "Los Abejas" was published in the Summer 2005 edition of Modern Mountain Magazine.
Beth Newberry was a featured reader in the InKY Reading Series in Louisville with Leslie Townsend (May 2004) and faculty member Dianne Aprile. In June, Beth won third place for Minority/ Women's Affairs Reporting in the magazine division in the 2004 Society of Professional Journalists awards sponsored by the Louisville Metro chapter. (top)
Rebecca J. Norris won the 2005 Writers' League of Texas novel manuscript contest for children's genre. Rebecca's article "A Fountain of Youth" is to appear in Positive Teen Magazine.
Joe Peacock's short story 'My Brother's Devil' shared first place in the Sara Jean McDowell Writing Contest last summer. His poem "November 4, 1950" won third place and his short story "Pale Flag" won honorable mention in the 2005 Literary LEO Writing Contest.
Stephanie Pruitt hosted a Tsunami of Compassion poetry reading at Vanderbilt University. Pruitt and fellow Spalding student Parneshia Jones were two of the six featured poets. Stephanie was also selected as a Cave Canem Fellow and attended the Cave Canem Workshop/Retreat at The University of Pittsburgh (http://www.cavecanempoets.org/). During the month of July, she will be running a summer creative writing camp for young people in kindergarten through sixth grade in conjunction with Nashville public schools.(top)
David Tipton won first place in the 2005 Metroversity Writing Competition for his poem "Femme dans l'atelier, 1956," not second place as was previously reported.
Jonathan Weinert's review of Lisa Lubasch's To Tell the Lamp appears in the current issue of Harvard Review No. 28. His poem "Variation on the Theme I Am" is forthcoming in American Letters & Commentary. His review of Laura Kasischke's Gardening in the Dark has been accepted for the fall 2005 issue of Pleiades, and his review of Mary Ann Samyn's Purr is slated to appear in Harvard Review No. 29. Joseph Housley, the poetry editor of LIT, read from Jonathan's poem "In the Mode of Disappearance" at the CLMP Magathon at the New York Public Library in Manhattan on June 4.
Dianne Aprile read her creative nonfiction work at the InKY Reading
Series on July 8 at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville. The theme was 'Stranger
Than Fiction.' (top)
Ellie Bryant's story "Chrysalis"' was a finalist in the
2005 Raymond Carver Short Story competition and appeared in both online
and print editions of the May issue of Carve Magazine. Her story
"Leather" was accepted for the premier (May) edition of the
new literary magazine The Teacher's Voice. Also in May, Ellie served
on the faculty panel of the New England Young Writers' Conference at Bread
Loaf in Robert Frost country.
Debra Kang Dean attended a celebration of poetry at Mt. Wachusett Community College on April 27, where she gave a brief reading and participated in a poetry panel. In June, Debra participated in a reading of poems included in the "Birds, Feathers & Flight" exhibit, which featured work by writers and visual artists living in New England. Three of her poems are included in the current issue of The Louisville Review. Later this summer, she and her husband are moving to Bloomington, Ind., where she is to teach this fall.
Kirby Gann's novel The Barbarian Parade: Or, Pursuit of the Un-American Dream is July's featured book on Bookclub@KET, a monthly discussion of books by Kentucky authors on Kentucky Educational Television. The program airs Sunday, July 17, at 3/2 p.m. CT on KET2.(top)
Richard Goodman wrote the prologue and chapter introductions for the new Oxford Essential Writer's Reference. The first two chapters of his book The Bicycle Diaries is to be published in the Summer 2005 issue of ducts.org. (http://www.ducts.org/) Richard's 'Painted Words: A Bibliophile Visits the Metropolitan Museum of Art' and his profile of the California bookmaker Julie Chen are forthcoming in the July/ August issue of Fine Books & Collections.
Karen Mann's story "The Woman Who Lived in a Church" appears in the latest issue of The Louisville Review.
Greg Pape's poem "Small Pleasures" was read by Garrison Keillor on the "Writers' Almanac" in June.
Linda Busby Parker participated on the panel "The First Year After Publication of a First Novel" at the Eugene Walter Writers Festival in Mobile. Sena Jeter Naslund was the keynote speaker at the conference and Roy Hoffman was on a panel for nonfiction writers. Linda participated in the Daphne Public Library's "Spring Into Reading Festival" and served on other conference panels including the Alabama Writer's Symposium's "The Wild Ride from Manuscript to First Novel." Spalding's own Jeanie Thompson is the founder of the conference, which celebrated its eighth annual symposium. Linda conducted a writing workshop sponsored by the Tennessee Writers Alliance and the Brush Creek Writers in Murfreesboro, Tennessee and led a workshop for young writers at the Daphne Public Library. (top)
Crystal Wilkinson and Frank X Walker (May 2003) read on July 9 in Frankfort at the Kentucky Historical Society's program, "Of Pen and Place: Kentucky Authors Reading." They joined George Ella Lyon, Bobbie Ann Mason, and other Kentucky writers in reading both their own work and also the work of a Kentucky writer from the past who inspired them.
Sam Zalutsky's short film SuperStore aired on WNET's
Reel New York (http://www.thirteen.org/reelnewyork).
Bobbi Buchanan (November 2004) and Ellen Anderson launched the online magazine New Southerner in June. New Southerner features literary journalism and how-to articles that encourage self-sufficiency, conservation, neighborliness and support of local communities. The inaugural issue included an essay by Silas House and an excerpt from Leslie Townsend's memoir-in-progress, Body Beautiful. The magazine is currently free and available online at http://www.newsoutherner.com Bobbi's essay 'Cake and the Crumbs of Sustenance' is forthcoming in Arable.
Liz Djupe (May 2004) attended the writing conference "Mixing Research with Imagination," held in Boyds Mills, Penn.
Sandra Evans Falconer (May 2005) read her poem "Crush" at the second annual fundraiser for breast cancer at The Healing Path in Baltimore, Md.
Anne Marie Fowler (May 2004) was hired as an online adjunct instructor at Northwestern State University and has been contracted as a contributing writer to the Dictionary of Literary Biography--American Romance Writers. During National Poetry Month, she served as judge for the second annual "Magic of Poetry" contest. She also convened a poetry writing workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. The workshop will be an annual event and travels each year to a different area of the country. If you would like more information about next year's workshop, please email annemariefowler@hotmail.com
David Hassler (May 2004), Paul Hiers (May 2004), and Lauren Titus (May 2005) read their fiction at the "Jazz and the Spoken Word" reading series on July 6 at the Jazz Factory in Louisville.(top)
Bonnie Omer Johnson (November 2004) will be a guest author at "Kentucky's Retreat for Women Writers"' at Kentucky Wesleyan College on August 4-6 in Owensboro. More information about the retreat is available on the college website: www.kwc.edu
Kaylene Johnson's (October 2003) book Trails Across Time: History of an Alaska Mountain Corridor was released July 1 by the KMTA Corridor Communities Association.
Marci Rae Johnson (May 2005) is starting a poetry reading and workshop series called "The Poetry Factory" in St. Joseph Michigan. The first season will begin January 2006. More information will be available soon at www.poetryfactory.net.
Erin Keane (May 2004) recently published poems in spring issues of The Heartland Review and Strange Horizons (http://www.strangehorizons.com/2005/20050509/orpheus-p.shtml). Her review of Jane Hicks' book of poems, Blood and Bone Remember (Jesse Stuart Foundation), is forthcoming in Now & Then, an Appalachian studies journal. Erin was a guest lecturer at the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts creative writing program and is to teach an interdisciplinary seminar on 'Contemporary American Music and Its Impact on American Writing' at Bellarmine University.
Cyn Kitchen (May 2005) has been hired as an adjunct English professor at Carl Sandburg College in Galesburg, Ill. (top)
Richard Newman's (October 2004) poem "'Grampa's Liquor Bottles," from his new book Borrowed Towns, was selected to appear on Poetry Daily (http://www.poems.com). He also has a new website: http://www.vacuumpacked.net
Joanne Oldham (May 2005) read at The Jazz Factory in Louisville as part of "Jazz and the Spoken Word."
Mary C. O'Malley (October 2004) won second place for "The Baker's Daughter" in Cleveland State University's literary magazine Whiskey Island.
Diana Raab (October 2003) attended an interview and reading by Thomas Steinbeck (son of John Steinbeck) in Santa Barbara, Calif. Diana has an editorial forthcoming in the July/August 2005 issue of Poets & Writers. Her essay, "Greetings from the Red State" is to be published in the January 2006 issue of The Palo Alto Review and her essay, "Watch This," won the Florida State Freelance Writing Award.
Jane Kennedy Stuppin (May 2004) performed a selection of her poetry to music at the Sonoma County Museum. Jane is to host an event at her home on Sunday, August 28, with Dana Gioia as the honored guest. Dana Gioia is a poet and chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts and will give a one hour talk followed by questions and answers. A sit down dinner is included in the festivities. Anyone in the San Francisco area who wishes to attend, phone (707) 527-5412. Proceeds from the event will be used to produce the Sonoma County Book Festival, which takes place on September 10 in Santa Rosa's courthouse square.
Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen's (May 2003) latest picture book The Best Worst Brother was released in June from Woodbine House. Stephanie travels to Asia next March for a weeklong author visit at the Singapore American School. She is to also visit schools in Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.
Leslie Townsend's (May 2004) excerpt from her memoir, Body Beautiful, was published in the inaugural issue of New Southerner. An excerpt has also been accepted for publication in the next issue of Arable, a literary journal. In July, Leslie was one of the featured readers of the InKY reading series at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville.(top)
K. Nicole Wilson's (May 2005) poems "Dirge," "Song and Dance," and "Unfinished Works" are forthcoming in the poetry anthology Open Windows from Ghost Road Press out of Denver.
Patti Zelch's (October 2003) short story "Patrick's Special Day" has been accepted for publication by Blooming Tree Press. The story will appear in its Summer Shorts Anthology, set to be released in the spring. Patti's essay "The Rationale of a Writer" appeared in the March/April 2005 issue of Working Writer.
Robin Heald's new address is 14 Pinto Lane, Rolling Hills Estates, CA 90274
Liz Djupe's zip code has been changed. Her new address is 2110 Warrington Court, Glenview, IL 60026-1329.
Our heartfelt sympathy to Mary Clyde on the death of her father, Evan Peterson, on April 24.
Our heartfelt sympathy to Rane Arroyo on the recent death of his grandmother, Juanita Serrano de Jesus.
Congratulations to Michi Haza Lafuente (October 2004) on her marriage
on December 18 to Pablo Lafuente. (top)
Both students and faculty are invited to make suggestions to the FAC for exploration by the Program Director or Associate Program Director and larger faculty. However, students and faculty should directly and immediately consult the Program Director about any issues concerning specific individuals' performance in the program. (top)
Financial Aid: The The MFA Program offers scholarships to students
entering their first semester in the program. Returning students who
desire financial assistance should apply for graduate assistantships.
Applications for scholarships and assistantships should be directed
to the MFA Office. Check the Tuition and Fees page on the MFA website
(http://www.spalding.edu/mfaforms) for deadlines.
Federal student loans, which are handled through Spalding's financial
aid office and not through the MFA program, are available to all eligible
graduate students.
Students need to re-file the FAFSA for each new school year (the school
year is fall/spring). Students who received finanical aid for the May
2005 semester need to re-file for the October semester. (top)
For help with financial aid questions, call Kristan Adams at (800) 896-8941 ext. 2359 or (502) 585-9911, ext. 2359 or email kadams@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov (top)
Deferment Form. For students who receive notice their loans have gone into repayment while still enrolled in school. Fill out deferment form (click here) and fax to Jennifer Gohmann at 502-992-2424. Include the address and/or fax number of where the deferment form should go to in Section 7 (on the 2nd page). For multiple loans, fill out one deferment form per loan company. On the fax cover sheet, state that you are an MFA student. If you have questions, Jennifer's email is jgohmann@spalding.edu
MFA Scholarship Fund: Donations to the MFA in Writing Scholarship Fund may be made "in honor of" or "in memory of" a friend or loved one or organization. To make a donation, contact Theresa Raidy in the Advancement Office. Email: traidy@spalding.edu. Phone: (800) 896-8941, ext. 2601, or (502) 585-9911, ext. 2601.
Online information: MFA in Writing forms, deadlines, and other student and faculty information are available online at http://www.spalding.edu/mfaforms Newsletters are at http://www.spalding.edu/mfanewsletter For convenience, bookmark these two pages. Both web addresses are case sensitive. The MFA Office is happy to mail program forms or the newsletter, if requested. Email kyocom@spalding.edu. (top)
Life of a Writer is an important newsletter column that reports
on experiences around the writing life of our students, faculty, and
alums.
Email submissions to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
Life of a Writer pieces should be written as a paragraph in third person. It is helpful for alums to include their graduation semester, such as Jake Doe (October 2003). Spell out month and state names. Include publishers, date of publication, and Website addresses, when appropriate.
Below is a list of some of the kinds of activities that might be included in the Life of a Writer column.
Sena Jeter Naslund, Program Director
Karen Mann, Administrative
Director
Kathleen Driskell,
Associate Program Director
Katy Yocom, Program
Associate
Liz Nethery,
The Louisville Review, editorial assistant, and office assistant
Email Life of a Writer information to Jamey Temple at mfanewsletter@spalding.edu