Help Us Count Your Service Hours

Service to the community is a rich part of Spalding University's heritage that continues through the work of students, faculty, staff, and alumni who give of their time and talents to organizations locally and abroad.

In the 2011-2012 academic year, Spalding students provided service to well over two hundred institutions and organizations, totaling 1.16 million hours, through internships, practicums, work study, and service learning. In order for MFA service hours to be counted along with those of other Spalding students and faculty, the MFA staff asks that students, alums, and faculty report their service hours to the MFA Office.

Reporting your service hours is easy to do. Simply email the details (dates, total number of hours, the organization, and a description of the service) to mfadropbox@spalding.edu with the subject line "service hours." Hours can be added up and reported every few weeks or every few months.

On a related note, with this issue of "On Extended Wings," the MFA Program is instituting a new column called Creating Community. The initial column, by alumna Shannon Cavanaugh (F '13), can be found near the Life of a Writer section of this issue.

Fall 2013 Special Topic Workshop: Place in Fiction and CNF

At the Fall 2013 residency, a special-topics workshop focuses on place in creative nonfiction and fiction. Because students may take one workshop in an area other than their area of concentration during their MFA core studies, this workshop is open to students of any area in any semester. Worksheets for the workshop booklet would be in either fiction or creative nonfiction. Here is a description of the workshop:

Writing About Place. From essays and fiction about home, to travel writing about lands near and far, stories about place, real and imagined, are a vital and colorful through-line in literature.

In this special-topics workshop-open to students of all genres-participants share their adventures of place in first-person essays and nonfiction narratives, or short stories and novel excerpts. From vibrant setting for a story, to the subject itself, place is key. Within this framework, workshop submissions will vary widely, no doubt, and workshop critiques will address all aspects of the piece being discussed. But what links all these workshop pieces will be that place is, to some degree, a character itself, shaping the people in its midst, and, in turn, being shaped by them. Readings will include anthologies about place, the work of travel writers like Pico Iyer and Jan Morris, fiction and creative nonfiction about places found, lost, and yearned for.

If interested, email Karen Mann, Administrative Director, at kmann@spalding.edu with the subject line "special topic workshop" by August 1.
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California Alumni Regional Event a Hit

On Saturday, June 15, seventeen MFA alumni, faculty, and students and five guests met near Los Angeles with Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund and Administrative Director Karen Mann for the MFA Alumni Association's third regional event. The Alumni Association is seeking to hold regional events across the country and has already held two, organized by Marjetta Geerling (W4C&YA '11) in Florida.

The event was organized by Karen Mann, Thea Gavin (P '05), and fiction student Julie Jenner and took place in the Orange Library, located within walking distance of the historic City of Orange. Sena Jeter Naslund opened the event by speaking about what it means to her to be a writer. Then everyone introduced themselves and talked about the best writing advice they'd ever received. Faculty members Julie Brickman, Rachel Harper, and Helena Kriel contributed to the discussion.

After a short break and refreshments, Deirdre Gainor (F '11), Kate Buckley (P '10), Ted Chiles (F '13), Thea Gavin, and fiction student Chella Courington gave brief readings. Attendees lingered well after the scheduled end of the event to visit and make new friends. Karen Mann said, "I saw connections being made across the room. I can see it's a great idea to have these regional alumni events."

Other MFAers attending the event were Nancy O'Connor (W4C&YA '08), fiction student Meg Freeman, writing for children & young adult student Jessica Love Kim, Anna Morrison (W4C&YA '08), screenwriting student Julie Nichols, Bob Shayne (SW '07), creative nonfiction student Sara Truitt, and Deidre Woollard (F '03).

Deirdre Gainor wrote, "The event was intellectually stimulating and emotionally supportive . . . and so much more. Thank you for creating such a positive and powerful hit for all of us." Alumni regional events connect MFAers in their home area, helping them stay in touch with other writers, socialize, and perhaps form local writing groups. Students, faculty, staff, and guests are welcome at alumni regional events. Watch the MFA Alumni Association's Facebook page, the MFA Alumni website (http://www.spaldingmfaalum.com), and the Thursday Memo for announcement of more regional events. Alumni who would like to volunteer to help create a regional event should contact Terry Price at terry@terryprice.net.

Anna Morrison (center) and Nancy O'Connor (right), both W4CYA '08 alums, chat with Anna's guest, Angel.

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The California Regional Alumni Event was not for alums only! Current students Meg Freeman, Sara Truitt, and Chella Courington joined the fun.

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NEW! Google Hangouts Available for MFA Student and Faculty Use

MFA students and faculty may wish to connect through video conferencing using the Google Hangout feature now available through the MFA portal page. To use this feature, students must have a Google+ account. The program is easy to download and use, and it offers Spalding MFAers the opportunity to video chat in real time with a number of people. Kathleen Driskell has convened several chats with new students to great success. Students were able to ask questions in real time and also were introduced to each other before coming to residency in Louisville. Summer 2013 students also logged on for informational chats about their residency abroad in Ireland with Katy Yocom and Kathleen Driskell recently. MFA mentors may wish to ask their mentees to arrange a Google Hangout instead of a phone call for midsemester or end of semester conferences. A tutorial on the Google Hangout is available on the MFA portal page, with screenshots showing how to get Google+ through one's Spalding account.
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Future PGRAs to Have Workshopping Opportunities

Beginning in Fall 2013, alumni who attend residencies as post-graduate residency assistants (PGRAs) will participate as students in workshop, where their own work will receive a full hour of workshop time. Previously, PGRAs sat in workshops as assistants to the workshop leaders. This change is intended to provide a richer and more valuable workshop experience to alumni who serve as PGRAs.

Outside of workshop hours, PGRAs will continue to assist in the MFA office, record lectures, and handle other tasks and responsibilities as assigned by the MFA staff. The pay for PGRAs remains the same: a $200 honorarium, the cost of a shared room at the Brown Hotel for the nine nights of residency (current value $450), and a $300 travel allowance.

PGRAs will be required to submit a worksheet by the announced worksheet deadline; to download, read, and provide written margin comments and overview of students' worksheets; and to prepare to discuss the workshop booklet's frontmatter, which consists of published work selected by the faculty for discussion.

The MFA Program considers PGRAs an essential part of residency and greatly values their contributions.
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Fall 2013 Program Books in Common

The Program Books in Common for Fall 2013 are as follows:

• The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72, by Molly Peacock
• The Books that Mattered: A Reader's Memoir, by Frye Gaillard

Summer 2013 Guest Lecturer: Conn Holohan

In addition to previously announced guest lecturers for the Ireland residency, Conn Holohan is scheduled to give a talk on Irish cinematic history. Holohan, director of research at the Huston School of Film & Digital Media, National University of Ireland, Galway, delivers a lecture on key themes or moments in Irish film history, with a specific focus on screenwriting and the role of language in producing a distinctive indigenous cinema. Holohan's research interests include Irish and Spanish cinema, migrant cinema, onscreen sexuality and short films. His current research explores utopian spaces in European film, focusing particularly on road movies. He is the Reviews Editor for the Journal of European Popular Culture.

In preparation for Holohan's lecture, the MFA Program will screen the 2004 film Adam and Paul, directed by Leonard Abrahamson, while in Galway. Screenwriter Mark O'Halloran also stars.

The lecture and screening are intended to complement the MFA program's attendance at the Galway Film Fleadh, an annual international film festival.
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Summer 2013 Optional Excursion: Swift Satire Festival

Students and faculty attending the Ireland residency may attend an excursion to the Swift Satire Festival, on Sunday, July 7, in the village of Trim, County Meath. This excursion is included for playwriting students and faculty and optional for all others.

The Swift Satire Festival brings together distinguished guests from the arts, politics, the media, and comedy to celebrate satire in honor of Jonathan Swift. The excursion includes a guided walking tour of Trim, where Jonathan Swift was vicar beginning in 1700; a visit to Talbot's Castle; a visit to the Swift exhibition in St. Patrick's Cathedral; and a "two-course luncheon with two-course entertainment": the annual Battle of the Books (a satirical joust between Boyne Writers Group and Meath Writers Circle), and the national final of Five Fives (flash drama with five-minute plays written by Irish and English actors). The President of Ireland is scheduled to attend the luncheon.
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Spring Residency: Tim O'Brien, Story Truth, and Beginnings

Acclaimed Vietnam War author Tim O'Brien visited the spring residency as the Diana M. Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence. On Thursday, May 23, at the Brown Hotel, he spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of MFAers and members of the community about the power of story, the (often superior) relationship of story-truth to happening-truth, and the tragedies of war. "A bullet can kill an enemy," O'Brien said. "But a bullet can also make an enemy." O'Brien spoke against war in general, saying his stance was neither liberal nor conservative but instead opposed the hypocrisy of those who advocate warmaking yet leave the fighting to others. The next morning, O'Brien answered questions during a private session for MFA students, faculty, and alumni and offered further revelations about the story-truth and happening-truth of several stories in the Program Book in Common, The Things They Carried.

Earlier in the week, for an interrelatedness-of-the-arts event, MFAers made the short walk to First Unitarian Church to hear a performance by the Louisville Leopard Percussionists, an improvisational jazz ensemble made up of Jefferson County schoolchildren ages seven to twelve. The rousing lineup included performances of rock and jazz tunes from "Low Rider" to "Besame Mucho," as well as original compositions by the beginner and advanced Leopards.

Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund lectured on the dream element in writing and on the importance of the beginnings of short stories. All students completed a cross-genre assignment based on Sena's "Beginnings" lecture.

The spring residency brought 116 students to campus. Several special workshops convened, including a film production seminar led by Sam Zalutsky and Ron Schildknecht, a teaching workshop led by Kathleen Driskell, and a book-length manuscript workshop led by John Pipkin. Homecoming began on Thursday and is discussed in the next article.
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A Record-Breaking Homecoming

More than 100 MFA alums converged in Louisville from points as far-flung as British Columbia and Florida for the Spring 2013 MFA homecoming, led by MFA alumni association director Terry Price (F '06). The homecoming broke all previous attendance records and offered more programming than any before.

Alums began to gather on Thursday evening before Tim O'Brien's presentation in the Brown Hotel's Crystal Ballroom (more on that topic in the article above). The next day featured a full slate of activities, beginning with O'Brien's Q&A session. Small-group alumni workshops, organized by Marjetta Geerling (W4CYA '11), convened with about 30 alumni participants. Screenwriting faculty member Helena Kriel spoke to alums about the inherent rewards of the writing life. And a panel of seven alumni spoke about the ways they have used writing as an avenue to serve their communities-teaching poetry, memoir, and journaling in prisons, substance abuse centers, psychiatric hospitals, and memory care facilities; giving young people a safe space to create art; making a documentary about grief; founding a playwriting organization; and more. Serving on the panel were Sonja de Vries (P '09), Kathryn Eastburn (CNF '06), Ann Eskridge (PW '08), Diana Raab (CNF '03), Barbara Sabol (P '10), Bob Sachs (F '09), and Julie Stewart (F '10).

Later that afternoon, the Celebration of Recently Published Books by Alumni featured readings by Chris Mattingly (P '10), from his poetry collection Scuffletown; Dave Harrity (P '07), from his book of meditations and spiritual exercises, Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand ; Sandi Hutcheson (CNF '12), from her nonfiction book Looks Great Naked (published as Grace Adams); Charlotte Rains Dixon (F '03), from her novel Emma Jean's Bad Behavior; Loreen Niewenhuis (F '07), from her nonfiction narrative A 1,000-Mile Great Lakes Walk; and Ann Eskridge, from The Raven, a work of historical fiction.

SPLoveFest book fair took place next, a lively mix-and-mingle event featuring 16 student and alum exhibitors showing and selling their books and literary journals. Carmichael's Bookstore sold books by the Celebration readers. After a break for dinner, an open-mic alum reading hosted by Teneice Delgado (P '06) concluded the evening.

Saturday's events included a breakfast mixer for alumni, new graduates, faculty and staff, followed by the second annual Un-Conference, led by Erin Keane (P '04) and Teneice Delgado; one-on-one practice sessions for pitching to agents, led by Vickie Weaver (F '05); regional breakout sessions; alumni workshops; and a reading by PGRAs Marjetta Geerling, Barry George (P '09), Dan Nowak (P '07), Katerina Stoykova-Klemer (P '09); Terry Price, and MFA alumni and staff members Gayle Hanratty (F '06) and Ellyn Lichvar (P '07). At the graduation ceremony that followed, 32 new graduates joined the ranks of alumni, and class representative Omar Figueras (F) offered remarks on behalf of his graduating class.
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Creating Community: A New Column

At the spring residency, seven MFA alumni participated in a panel on community service and writing. The panel was so well-received that, beginning with this issue, "On Extended Wings" will include an article by a student, faculty member, or alum on service. Many thanks to Shannon Cavanaugh for writing the first article.

Teaching Yoga Behind Bars
by Shannon Cavanaugh (F '13)

"I have been in prison for seventeen years. Living in such a dark and despicable place for so long can drain the spirit. The sun rarely shines here. Yoga is the best thing that has happened to me in prison."

Dennis is serving 22 years for armed burglary. He is one of 860 men locked away at the medium-security prison in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. Their crimes range from murder and rape to robbery and selling drugs. I have volunteered to teach yoga behind bars for one year. To get to my class, I must clear five electronically locked security gates, searches, and the glares of guards who wonder why a woman is teaching yoga to male prisoners. Yes, I wear yoga clothes, but then I put a dress over all that and another top and often wear a scarf around my neck or hips. My goal is not to distract, but instruct.

Class is held each Thursday from 12:30-2:00 p.m. in the chapel. The prison has allowed me only 15 mats even though 55 men are signed up and more want in. The prisoners are allowed in yoga based on the number of times they show up. Often they miss lunch to attend. Many times a prisoner won't get into class, but I give them a mark on the attendance sheet to acknowledge their effort. I hand them what I call a "joy" card. They are brightly colored cards with a positive affirmation. Each week we exchange them along with a handshake, a smile and "Welcome."

During our time, we practice meditation, pranayama and asanas, all to connect their breath with their body and mind-to release negative energy. They are not told to do anything. It is the only place and time in the week they have a choice. The circle forms our sangha, our tribe. You can feel the energy change, settling from prison chaos to the heartbeats of compassion. During class, I often read poetry. Favorites include Rumi, Mary Oliver's line "what will you do with this one precious life" and the poem "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley. I put to use that MFA degree from Spalding in a creative way maybe not on the page, but in purpose. Many of my students suffer from anxiety, depression, anger and physical pain. Some are even afraid to close their eyes in relaxation. Students have told me they are taking their yoga off the mat and into their lives, learning to push the pause button with mindful awareness to avoid fights and difficult situations with cell mates and guards.

Last week, I chose the theme "letting go of what no longer serves you in your life" from habits to emotions. They each set an intention. Half way through our Warrior II poses, I asked them to come into a restful child's pose. It is the closest any human can get to being back in the womb in innocence. The young man next to me is 25 and serving a life sentence for first-degree murder. His body shook as he wept. This is why I teach yoga behind bars.

Note: The U.S. has only 4 percent of the world's entire population, yet has locked up 25 percent of the world's prisoners. In the U.S. today, there are 2.25 million people (1 in 100 adults) in prison. Another 7.3 million people (1 in 31 adults) are under correctional supervision. Give Back Yoga (http://givebackyoga.org), a non-profit organization, reports that 60 percent of prisoners released from prison will return to prison within three years because they did not receive any rehabilitation while incarcerated. However, new studies show that yoga and meditation can reduce anxiety and depression for prisoners who live in overcrowded conditions that can perpetuate more stress, violence, and addiction. From this new physical and mental practice, prisoners are less likely to reoffend once they re-enter society. One such study supporting that belief took place in North Carolina and showed that of those who attended yoga classes, only 25.2 percent were re-incarcerated.
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Deadline Dates and the MFA Calendar
MFA deadline dates and other MFA information are now available on the MFA calendar on the top left side of the MFA portal page. Mouse over the entries in any particular day to identify dates that are specific to you. Double-click on entries for more information. For longer entries, such as midsemester or end-of-semester entries, there may be a document attached to the date entry that you can open. Future months can be accessed by clicking the forward arrow to the right of the current month.
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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

FARAH BAGHARIB-KALTZ's (F) picture book, The Bird Who Was Afraid of Heights, has been selected as a featured title for young readers in READ! Singapore 2013. This annual nationwide campaign by the National Library Board focuses on forging a strong reading culture in Singapore. As a featured author, she will be reading and conducting writing workshops for children at schools and community libraries across the island.
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BROOKE BULLMAN (F) was the writer-in-residence at the New York Mills Cultural Center in Minnesota during the month of March (http://kulcher.org/welcome-march-visiting-artist/). In June, Brooke was named a 2014 Literature Fellow by the Alabama State Council on the Arts (http://www.arts.state.al.us/grants/ASCA_Announces_June_2013_Grants.pdf). The fellowship is awarded to individual artists of all disciplines living Alabama and provides a $5,000 grant to be used in support of the artist's career. Both short stories included in Brooke's applications were mentored by Rachel Harper.
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CHELLA COURINGTON (F) recently published five flash fictions: a reprint of "Important Facts Remembered from Biology 250" in Flash Flood (http://flashfloodjournal.blogspot.com/2013/04/important-facts-remembered-from-biology.html); "The Tip of a Cigar" in Crack the Spine (http://issuu.com/crackthespine/docs/issue_61?e= 3842308/2602101); "If You Don't Please" in Doorknobs & BodyPaint (http://www.iceflow.com/doorknobs/DOORBODY2.html); and "Smack" and "The Long & Short of It" in Nano Fiction. Forthcoming in the Bloomsday issue of riverbabble are "Balzac and Dogs" and "White Space."
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LAURA CAITLIN DAVIS' (F) short story "Shaken-Boyfriend Syndrome" appears in Issue 3 of 94 Creations literary journal, which you can find at http://94creations.com. 94 Creations was founded by Spalding MFA alum ADRIENA DAME (F '07) and is home to a melange of offbeat short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction that is often overlooked in mainstream publishing venues as well as more conventional literary landscapes.
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DREMA DRUDGE (F '13) has an essay forthcoming in Chicken Soup for the Soul: Reader's Choice 20th Anniversary Edition. It was released on June 25. Drema also has an essay forthcoming in Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive collection. In addition, she has a short story coming out in the Spring/Summer 2013 issue of Penumbra.
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J. GABRIEL GATES' (W4C) fifth novel, Shadow Train: The Tracks Book Three (HCI Books) hit store shelves on June 4. It is the final installment of a YA urban fantasy trilogy featuring martial arts, mysticism, star-crossed love, and supernatural evil. http://www.jgabrielgates.com
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ALICE CATHERINE JENNING'S (P) poetry has recently been published in the following publications: "Five Tudor Poems" online in The Fertile Source (http://www.fertilesource.com), and "Blue of Nothing" in Poetry at Round Top 2013. Her poem "Cafe Brujula" is forthcoming in the Hawai'i Review and "Catherine on the Royal Progress North" in Penumbra. She is also the founder of the Global Reading Group, an online group free and open to interested readers worldwide. Future reads include The Aeneid of Virgil and Dead Souls, by Nikolai Gogol. You can email Alice at alicejjennings@gmail.com for more information.
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DEB JELLETT (F) has had two nonfiction pieces ("Southerness" and "Daddy Elvis") accepted by The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature (http://www.deadmule.com/). She has won prizes in the Alabama Writers Conclave 2013 contest for her stories "Becoming Marilyn" (short fiction) and "Nekkid Grandpa" (Humor) and for the first chapter of her novel The Just Deserts Murders. Two other stories, "The Lover" and "The Great Hershey Kisses Caper," were awarded honorable mentions.
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CHRISTI KELLY'S (P) poem "Breakup by One-Line Email" will appear in a forthcoming issue of Wisconsin Review.
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AMY M. MILLER (CNF) was recently awarded one of four scholarships to attend the second annual River Teeth Nonfiction Conference at Ashland University. During the weekend conference, she had a manuscript consultation with Hope Edelman and enjoyed readings and lectures by notable nonfiction writers Scott Russell Sanders, Rebecca McClannahan, River Teeth editor Joe Mackall, and many others. Nonfiction writers came from all over the country to the conference, and she had a great experience.
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KIIETTI L. WALKER-PARKER (F/P) presented a paper titled "Kathryn Stockett's Contribution to the Voiceless and Bodiless Presence of African American Women, Bare-Life, in The Help by Way of an Inauthentic Voice" at the 65th Annual Conference of The Association of College English Teachers of Alabama (ACETA) at Samford University on March 9. Kiietti was also the winner of two outstanding essay awards sponsored by ACETA: 2012 William J. Calvert Award for an outstanding scholarly or theoretical essay and the 2012 James Woodall Award for an outstanding pedagogical essay open to English teachers and graduate students.
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REBA WHITE WILLIAMS (F) has written a mystery novel, Restrike, Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery No. 1, published by Delos, a fiction subsidiary of Axios Press. Coleman is editor of ArtSmart, a trendy magazine, and Dinah owns a fine art print gallery. After a mysterious billionaire arrives to found a museum dedicated to prints, theft, fraud and murder invade the quiet world of prints. At personal risk, Coleman and Dinah set out to right the wrongs they have encountered. Williams draws on her knowledge and experience to set Restrike in the New York art world; her second novel in the series, Fatal Impressions, is due for publication in Spring 2014.
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DAVE H. WILLIAMS (CNF) has written a memoir, Small Victories: A Print Collector's Story, to be published by David R. Godine in early 2014. Small Victories tells how two novices, Reba and Dave Williams, built the best and biggest collection of fine art prints by American artists outside of a few museums. The story begins with Dave learning the definition of a print, a few early purchases, then Reba's idea to create a major collection, which launches Dave on an acquisition binge. Both are employed on Wall Street, but Reba abandons her Harvard MBA-based career and returns to school to earn a Ph.D. in Art History-all part of her enthusiasm for researching the work of less-well-known artists that became the distinguishing feature of their collection. Over nearly forty years, the couple acquired some six thousand prints and curated seventeen exhibits from their collection that traveled to more than one hundred museums worldwide.
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DIANNE APRILE (CNF) was delighted to learn that the book she co-wrote and edited, A Landscape and Its Legacy: The Parklands of Floyds Fork, has won two book awards: a Gold Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards and a Silver Medal in the Green Living/Sustainability Category of the 2013 Nautilus Book Awards. Dianne was invited to be the featured reader at the Sammamish (Washington) Public Library Authors Forum on June 18. Her memoir excerpt, "The Water Bearer," will be published in the next issue of The Louisville Review. Dianne gave a "Meet the Author" reading and Q&A on June 18 at the Sammamish Library in King County (Seattle), the concluding event of her 2012 Artist Trust fellowship.
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DAVID-MATTHEW BARNES (PW/SW/W4CYA) wrote and directed the dramatic short film Threnody (http://www.threnodythefilm.com), which is currently being scheduled for screenings at film festivals around the world. Monologues from his plays Baby in the Basement and Better Places to Go will be featured in the collection Audition Monologues for Young Women, published this fall by Meriwether Publishing. His next novel, Mind Fields (written as Dylan Madrid) will be available in paperback and e-book from Bold Strokes Books in September. His poem "This Man's Watch" is featured in the current issue of the literary journal Chelsea Station.
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SUSAN CAMPBELL BARTOLETTI (W4CYA) just received a contract offer from Houghton Mifflin for her next nonfiction book. (She isn't disclosing the subject yet, but her family is relieved that it won't involve the sort of research she did for They Called Themselves the KKK [Houghton, 2010].) She sold Korean foreign rights for her Sibert- and Orbis Pictus-medal winning nonfiction book Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, 1845 to 1850, published by Houghton Mifflin in 2001. The audio version of her nonfiction Growing Up in Coal Country (Houghton Mifflin, 1997) was just released and earned a starred review from School Library Journal (April). She'll be speaking to teachers and aspiring teachers about Common Core Standards and nonfiction books and nonfiction writing in the classroom at the Oswego Writing Institute, Oswego University, New York, in August.
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GABRIEL JASON DEAN (SW/PW) was named a Core Writer at the Playwright's Center in Minneapolis. His play for children, The Transition of Doodle Pequeno, was recently published by Dramatic Publishing and awarded the 2013 American Alliance for Theatre and Education Distinguished Play Award and read at People's Light and Theatre in Malvern, Pennsylvania. His play Qualities Of Starlight scored rave reviews at the Vortex Rep in Austin, Texas. From BroadwayWorld.com: "Dean's script is overall incredibly smart, effective, memorable, and honest. He's created a distinct work akin to a modern Long Day's Journey Into Night with a peppering of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? If work like this continues, Gabriel Jason Dean is sure to be thought of as a great modern American playwright." Gabriel was commissioned by the National One-Minute Play Festival to author two plays about his hometown of Atlanta, which debuted in June at Actor's Express. His play Terminus was selected for development at the annual PlayPenn Conference in Philadelphia in July. In August, along with two-time Drama Desk nominee, director Ed Iskandar, Gabriel will be in residence at Dartmouth College with New York Theatre Workshop to develop his play Bacha Bazi (Boy Play) for production in the 2014-15 season. http://gabrieljasondean.net
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KATHLEEN DRISKELL (P) led the workshop "Polishing the Notes" for the Books-in-Progress Conference at The Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning, June 7-8, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poem "In Praise" is forthcoming from Pembroke Magazine. Her poem "Love Poetry" will appear in a book that combines poetry, prose, and images and is edited by Spalding MFA faculty member Dianne Aprile and nationally renowned visual artist Julius Friedman. At the Spalding University Commencement on June 1, Kathleen received the Outstanding Faculty Award for 2013 by the Spalding University Board of Trustees. This is the highest honor bestowed upon a faculty member at Spalding.
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EDIE HEMINGWAY (W4CYA) recently spent a week as Author-In-Residence at Yellow Springs Elementary School in Maryland, conducting writing workshops with the fifth graders. As a member of Authors for Earth Day, an organization supporting conservation through literacy, Edie pledged to donate 30 percent of her income from this school visit to a nonprofit conservation organization voted on by the students. On day two, the writing exercise focused on making an emotional connection with a place and using specific sensory details to describe a place that is close to their hearts. In conjunction with that exercise, the fifth graders voted to have Edie send her donation on their behalf to The Assateague Coastal Trust, located in the Delmarva (Delaware, Maryland, Virginia) coastal area-a fragile, constantly changing ecosystem. Assateague Island, part of that coastal area, is also home to the famous wild ponies immortalized in Marguerite Henry's Misty of Chincoteague.
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ROY HOFFMAN'S (CNF/F) review of Susan Straight's novel Between Heaven and Here appeared in the New York Times Book Review on February 15 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/17/books/review/between-heaven-and-here-by-susan-straight.html?_r=0). Roy's review of Jill McCorkle's novel Life After Life, was in the New York Times Book Review, May10 (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/books/review/life-after-life-by-jill-mccorkle.html).
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JODY LISBERGER (F) is honored to have been named the Susan Currier Visiting Professor for Teaching Excellence at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California, for the fall of 2013. She will stay out west for the Spring 2014 semester to revise her novel. In March, she gave a talk at the Annual New England Modern Language Association (NeMLA) conference in Boston on "Feminist Co-Mentoring as a Model for Changing Institutional Behavior." In October 2012, she gave a presentation at the National Women's Studies Association in Oakland on "'Disposable Women,' Border Mentalities, and Militarization in Academia: The Deep Structures in Exploitative Institutional Patterns." Her short story collection, Remember Love, is now available on Kindle.
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ELEANOR MORSE'S (F) recent novel, White Dog Fell from the Sky (Penguin 2013), was a Publishers Weekly "Pick of the Week." The audio version received an Earphones Award from AudioFile Magazine in March, and the U.K. print edition was released in early April. Reviews and a list of appearances can be found at http://www.eleanormorse.com.
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LESLEA NEWMAN (W4CYA) is so pleased that her teen novel-in-verse, October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, has been given the following awards: Massachusetts Book Awards 2013 "Must Read" Book, finalist for 2014 New York State Reading Association Charlotte Book Award, and winner, 2013 International Reading Association Young Adults' Choices Reading List Award. This past spring, Leslea delivered the University of Alberta Visiting Human Rights Lectureship and gave her presentation, "He Continues to Make a Difference: The Story of Matthew Shepard," at Jericho High School; Middlebury College; Joliet Junior College; New England Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators Conference; Massachusetts Poetry Festival; Massachusetts Librarian Conference; Peaks Island Public Library; Waynflete Academy in Portland, Maine; Williston Northampton Academy in Easthampton, Massachusetts; and Books of Wonder in New York City. Her poem "Upon Hearing that the Second Avenue Deli Is Being Replaced by Chase Manhattan Bank" was published in Napalm Health Spa Report 2013: Long Poem Masterpieces Of The Postbeats (http://www.poetspath.com/napalm/_special_edition_nhs_2013/). And her essay "Coming Full Circle: Stonewall, My Mother, and Me" was recently published in the Huffington Post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/leslea-newman/coming-full-circle-stonewall_b_3403261.html).
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MOLLY PEACOCK (P/CNF) spent National Poetry Month visiting Calgary and Salt Lake City. She's lecturing now on late-life creativity-any surprise? And she will appear at the Kentucky Women Writers Conference on September 20 and 21. http://www.mollypeacock.com
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KATY YOCOM has been named Associate Administrative Director of Spalding's MFA in Writing program. Her article "Local Learning Curve" was published in the Locavore Lore column of LEO Weekly, June 26. Her profiles of Louisville-area restaurants Louis Le Francais, Charim Korean, and Havana Rumba Express & Tapas Bar are forthcoming from Food & Dining magazine. She was recently awarded a two-week residency at Hopscotch House, a program of the Kentucky Foundation for Women, in August to work on a revision of her novel.
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SAM ZALUTSKY (SW) is currently finishing the Kickstarter campaign for his new short film, How to Make it to the Promised Land, which he showed an excerpt of at residency, and is working with his sound designer and composer to finish the short.
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Alumni

PRISCILLA ATKINS (P '08) has several poems published: "Delores," in The Apple Valley Review: A Journal of Contemporary Literature (Spring 2013); "Piano Before Breakfast," in Superstition Review (Issue 11); "Conversation with Pallas Holed Up Somewhere Between the Rocky Mountains and Infinity" and "Pierogi" in Kudzu (2013).
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COLE BELLAMY'S (P '10) chapbook, American Museum, was published by Beauty Is Beauty Press on June 7. This is Cole's third chapbook. It is available at the website http://www.beautyisbeautypress.com.
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SARAH H. BOATWRIGHT (P '12) will be teaching a five-week course at Immanuel Lutheran Church, where she is a member. The course, entitled Making a Joyful Noise: The Poetry of Lutheran Hymns, will feature discussions on the rhyme, meter, and diction of selected hymn texts. By examining hymns as poems, Sarah hopes to enrich her students' worship experiences and further their knowledge of Lutheran hymns.
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HOLLY BROCKMAN-JOHNSON'S (F/CNF '03) extended critical essay titled What We Need Is Here: How Wendell Berry Discovers Possibility Through Community, was accepted and presented at the Southeastern Conference on Christianity and Literature's annual conference at Covenant College atop Lookout Mountain on April 11. Holly's recent creative nonfiction has appeared in The Cape Cod Times, where she is a regular theater critic; Beyond the Gates, a Naples, Florida-based lifestyle publication; and http://www.louisvilleky.com, where she is the occasional blogger. Holly continues to trade time between Hyannisport and Louisville while her daughter studies at The Boston Ballet School.
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KATE BUCKLEY (P '10) attended the Kentucky Women Writers Conference in Lexington this past September, where she studied with Kim Addonizio. Kate then traveled to Nashville where she was a featured author at The Southern Festival of Books, giving a reading then participating in a panel with fellow poets Charlotte Pence and Adam Vines ("Zooming In: Poems of Seeing the Eternal in the Everyday"). Kate served as a guest lecturer for the nonprofit group Women Wonder Writers (which mentors at-risk young girls through writing and the arts) this past November in Moreno Valley, California. She traveled back to Nashville in January to give a reading at the Scarritt-Bennett Center and read for the Vinatero Poetry Series (Los Angeles) in February. She gave a reading with poet Eric Morago on "Poems of Seduction and Betrayal" for the PondWater Society (Los Angeles) in April. Kate had a poem, "Janus," and an essay, a feature on Tennessee's Poet Laureate, Maggie Vaughn, published in 2nd & Church (Fall 2012) as well as an essay on the literary inspiration of the South ("A Literary Landscape") published in the Spring 2013 edition of the same publication. Recently, she was honored to have her biography and selected poems from her books A Wild Region (Moon Tide Press 2008) and Follow Me Down (Tebot Bach 2009) archived on the Poetry Foundation's website (http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/kate-buckley).
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ROY BURKHEAD (F '04) recently published Issue 3 of 2nd & Church, a literary journal by, for, and about writers and readers. Issue 4 is in production now, coming out in late July 2013. CHARLOTTE RAINS DIXON (F '03) has a column in both issues. An excerpt from TERRY PRICE'S (F '06) novel-in-progress An Angel's Share appeared in Issue 3. In that same issue, JULIA WATTS (F '05) conducted a Q&A with MICHAEL MORRIS (F/PW '10) and reviewed his latest novel, Man in the Blue Moon. And KATE BUCKLEY (P '10) wrote the CNF piece "A Literary Landscape." In May, Roy traveled to Chicago, where he interviewed those running the Ernest Hemingway Birthplace and Museum for a story in 2nd & Church's fifth issue, the Hemingway issue. And in April, Roy participated in Writer's Day at the John Early Museum Magnet Middle School in Nashville. Area journalists, authors, publishers, and booksellers met with the middle schoolers in small groups to answer their questions about the writing and publishing professions.
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DAVID CARREN'S (SW '05) essay, "The Small World of the Big Western," was published in the second issue of the new, peer-reviewed Online Journal of Art and Design. The journal is published four times a year in January, April, July and October, accepting articles in three languages; English, Italian and Turkish. The link for David's article is http://ojad.emu.edu.tr/.
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CARLA CUSTANCE (SW '13) was invited to Vancouver for the PRAXIS Summer reading series and had her comedy screenplay, Resurrecting Jane Doe, read by professional actors. This was the conclusion of the screenwriting competition/fellowship she won last fall.
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SUSAN DETWEILER (CNF/W4C '10) published an essay titled "Under the Cloud" in the Missouri Review (Winter 2012).
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JOAN DONALDSON'S (CNF/W4C '08) collection of farming essays, Wedded to the Land: Stories from a Simple Life on an Organic Fruit Farm, was released this spring by Westbow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson. A Simple Life Magazine also published her work in their spring and summer issues, and a feature about her farm recently aired on WMUK.org, a NPR affiliate. Joan will have a section of one of her essays that first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor published in the textbook The Writer's World: Paragraphs and Essays, edition 4. She will also facilitate a workshop at the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference.
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ANN ESKRIDGE (PW '08) was chosen as a 2013 Fellow with the Black Metropolis Research Consortium in Chicago. The Consortium consists of the archival holdings and material from fourteen universities and institutions about African American and African diasporic culture in Chicago. Eskridge will be researching the role of the Pekin Theater, a black-owned theater, in the creation of a black Tin Pan Alley in Chicago during the early part of the 20th century. Her project: "From Coon to Rag."
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OMAR FIGUERAS (F/CNF '13), presented his graduation lecture, "Mischief and Treachery Knocking at Your Door: Trickster Myth in the American South," at L'Universite Catholique de Lille, France for their conference "Southern Short Fiction: Representation and Rewriting of Myth," June 20-22. Omar joined alum EVA SAGE GORDON (F '12) at the 16th annual Great Writing International Creative Writing Conference at Imperial College London, June 29-30.
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THEA GAVIN (P '05) had her review of Don Thompson's poetry book Everything Barren Will Be Blessed (Pinyon Publishing) published on Ruminate's web site in April. She was accepted for a June writing residency at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony in Temecula, California, where she planned to work on final revisions to her middle-grade novel, Louie's Treasure. Her wildflower poem "My Southern California Neighbors" appears as a preface to the Laguna Wilderness Press field guide Wildflowers of Orange County and the Santa Ana Mountains by Robert Allen and Fred Roberts. Two poems "Elderberry Caution" and "Elderberry Along the Trail" appeared in the May/June newsletter of the California Native Plant Society, Orange County chapter.
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KAREN GEORGE'S (F '09) poem "Cloverleaves" appeared in the Spring issue of Kudzu, and her poem "Ouroboros" will be published in the next issue of Wind Magazine. Her poem "Calving at Alaska's Glacier Bay" and an essay on what drew her to poetry was published in the anthology Follow the Thread, published in conjunction with the Hocking Hills Power of Poetry Festival. She was selected for a Kentucky Foundation for Women writer's residency at Hopscotch House in Louisville.
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JACKIE GORMAN (F '10) has a short story in the Spring Issue of The Journal Magazine (http://thejournalmag.org/archives/tag/37-2-spring-2013). This is the first story of her collection, which won the 2012 Flannery O'Connor award and will be published by University of Georgia Press in September.
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BRIAN HAMPTON (PW '06) will be producing his third annual new play festival, The Puzzle, this June in NYC. Among nine other new plays and musicals, his one-act play "Gossip" will have its New York premiere in the festival. Also, Brian's full-length play "The Jungle Fun Room" (which was his primary focus at Spalding) will be published this year with Original Works Publishing.
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COLLEEN S. HARRIS (P '09) has married and is now Colleen S. Harris-Keith. Most recently, she co-authored a book chapter, "Leveraging Learning Theory and Learning Management Systems in Higher Education: The Critical Role of Instructor Facilitation" in Learning Management Systems and Instructional Design: Best Practices in Online Education, published by IGI Global. She also presented two papers at the Fifth Annual Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries conference in Rome the first week of June, titled "The Relationship Between Career Trajectory and Perceptions of Skill Development Relevant to the Academic Library Directorship" and "Designing an Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study: Challenges and Opportunities for LIS Researchers."
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DAVE HARRITY (P '07) recently accepted an assistant professor of English position at Campbellsville University. To help promote his latest book Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and The Kingdom at Hand, he has been conducting workshops across the country, most recently in New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Texas, and California. He also read with other Spalding alums at the Celebration of Recently Published Books-a lovely event in which he was honored to be included. He continues refining and developing his spiritual formation organization ANTLER (http://www.thisisantler.com).
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PATTY HOUSTON'S (F '08) short story "Q-Tip Heads" is forthcoming in the Fall 2013 issue of the Greensboro Review.
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RENE R. (KETTERER) IRVINE (SW/PW '07) contributed a guest editorial titled "Treasured Friendships" to the May 12 edition of the Catholic Moment, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Lafayette-in-Indiana.
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ANGELA JACKSON-BROWN'S (F '09) novel will be published by WiDo Publishing by the end of the year or the beginning of next year. For more information, go to http://www.angelajacksonbrown.com. Also, three of her poems, "I Belong to Pan," "Play Me One of Those Old School Joints: And I'll Be Yours Tonight," and "Real Talk About Back in the Day," were recently published by the online literary journal Identity Theory.
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KAYLENE JOHNSON'S (CNF '03) Canyons and Ice: The Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith was chosen as a "2012 Best Book of the Year" by the Guide to Outdoor Literature website (http://www.ronwatters.com/BkNews12.htm). The book was also featured in an article about Griffith in the June issue of Alaska magazine. Canyons and Ice was reviewed on The National Parks Traveler website (http://www.nationalparkstraveler.com) and is featured in "Spotlight on Books" in Alaska 49 Writers, a showcase of books by Alaskan authors. In addition, Johnson's A Tender Distance, a memoir written as part of Spalding's MFA in Writing program, was re-released by Graphic Arts Books, a subsidiary of Ingram Books. To join in a new conversation about raising sons in today's modern culture, please join Kaylene's blog "A Tender Distance: Mothers' Letters to Our Sons" at http://www.kaylene.us/blog.
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MARCI RAE JOHNSON'S (P '05) poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Redivider, The Curator, After Hours, Everyday Poems, The Christian Century, and The Other Journal. Her critical work has recently appeared on the 32 Poems blog. Marci teaches in the English department at Valparaiso University and recently developed and taught a class titled "Introduction to Literary Editing and Publishing."
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ERIN KEANE (P '04) appeared on a panel of poets at the annual Kentucky Women's Book Festival at the University of Louisville in May. She is happy to announce that Typecast Publishing will release her third collection of poems, "Demolition of the Promised Land," in February. The book includes, but is not limited to, poems about Bruce Springsteen. Her poem "The Living Dead" (about zombies, not Bruce Springsteen) appeared in the December 12 issue of The Collagist. She is also excited to announce the launch of a new short-fiction show for public radio this year. Unbound debuted in Louisville on WFPL (89.3 FM) in June and will be available for national syndication through Public Radio Exchange later this year. Hosted by Keane, the first season will feature faculty members Silas House, Neela Vaswani, and Kirby Gann as well as alum Jackie Gorman.
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KYLE KIRKLEY'S (F '13) short story "Everything is Negotiable" will be published in Upstreet Magazine's (http://www.upstreet-mag.org) ninth anthology in July. This is his first publication credit.
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CYN KITCHEN (F '05) accepted a tenure-line position in teaching at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. She has been teaching at Knox since '06, and this latest appointment comes after a nationwide search to fill the position. Cyn has developed a literature course, "Flannery O'Connor and the 'Christ-Haunted' South," which she will be teaching for the first time this fall. Her interest in Flannery O'Connor began while at Spalding and was the subject of her extended critical essay. In June, Cyn attended the Wet Mountain Valley Writers Workshop in Westcliffe, Colorado, where she got to spend a week in the classroom of Dorothy Allison.
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DARLYN FINCH KUHN (CNF/P '09) has been selected by http://www.orlandomagazine.com to write their "On the Town," "World of Good," "Short List," and "Arts Preview" articles on a monthly basis.
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ELAINE DRENNON LITTLE'S (F '10) novel, A Southern Place, will be released by Wido Publishing on August 6. The first draft of the book was the culmination of her work at Spalding. For a good synopsis and ordering info, go here: http://widopublishing.com/a-southern-place-by-elaine-drennon-little/. She is currently in the process of setting up a book launch and virtual tour.
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NANCY LONG (P '12) received notification that her poem "Lessons" was a finalist in the 2013 Cultural Center of Cape Cod Poetry Competition. She is delighted to report that several others poems have been accepted for publication in The Found Poetry Review, Paper Nautilus, and Referential Magazine. In April, she was a participant in the Pulitzer Remix project, a Poetry Month project sponsored by The Found Poetry Review (http://www.foundpoetryreview.com). Eighty-five poets across seven countries each created a poem a day using one of the eighty-five Pulitzer Prize fiction books as their source text. Nancy's assigned book was Guard of Honor, the 1949 Pulitzer winner by James Gould Cozzens. Also in April, she co-facilitated a workshop on ekphrastic writing at the Monroe County Public Library. For the Spaldingite-initiated blog Poetry Matters (http://readwritepoetry.blogspot.com), she interviewed poet Ryan Teitman and reviewed Teitman's debut poetry collection Litany for the City.
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JOANN LOVERDE-DROPP (P '10) was the poetry selection judge for the 2013 Georgia Author of the Year Awards. JoAnn is the poetry workshop facilitator for the Georgia Writers Association and teaches composition at Southern Polytechnic State University and National American University Online.
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DE'ANNA LYNNE (P '10), a.k.a. De'Anna L. Daniels, had an excerpt of her play "Dear Uncle Langston," a work in progress, included as part of The Puzzle staged readings festival June 24-29, at Marble Collegiate Church, New York City.
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MARILYN MOSS'S (CNF '09) upcoming 304-page book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist & Designer, which explores the fifty-year life and work of one of America's most innovative fabric artists and designers, will be published in July (http://www.billmosstents.com). The article she co-authored on Joyce Banda, "Dancing for Democracy: Understanding Malawi's First Female President," appeared in the Spring 2013 issue of Orbis (http://freepdfhosting.com/f0c3b7490a.pdf). At present, she is writing her memoir, From the Appalachian Mountains to the Camden Hills. Some of the memoir essays were published in the Herald Gazette and in a chapbook, "Walkabout." She is also writing a children's book. Her son, Jeff Moss, graphic design artist, is the illustrator.
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LINDA BUSBY PARKER (F '03) continues to teach creative writing in the English department at the University of South Alabama (Mobile) and to serve as a mentor in The Writer's Loft at Middle Tennessee State University. Recent publications include "An excerpt from The Fifth Season, a novel-in-process" in Oracle Fine Arts Review, Spring 2013; "The Purple Piano," a short story in Literary Mobile, 10th anniversary edition, Negative Capability Press, February 2013; "Writing on Alabama's Gulf Coast-the Pensters," in 2nd & Church, a magazine for writers, Summer 2013. Recent speaking engagements include "Books That Changed Me" for the Baldwin Writers' Group on March 16 and reading an excerpt from her novel-in-process, Shallow Graves, at the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers on April 16. On July 12-14, she will conduct a three-part workshop on creative nonfiction at the Alabama Writers Conclave in Fairhope. The sessions include "Personal Essays and Memoir: Stories From Our Lives," "A Life Story Told in Vignettes," and "Objectivity as a Narrative Strategy." Just for fun, she has formed a book club that meets once a month. The group began by reading and discussing memoir and now is working its way through short story collections. They celebrate good books over lunch and frequently noontime wine.
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JOE PEACOCK (F '08) has had his literary piece on Tim O'Brien accepted by The Literary Yard, an online publication out of India. The essay, "Will the Real Tim O'Brien Please Stand Up: Story Truth and Happening Truth in The Things They Carried," was published in March of this year and can be accessed at http://literaryyard.com. In addition, Joe's "On the Street" is the cover photograph of the Summer 2013 issue of Trajectory. Joe continues working on a memoir, Four Seasons of Three Lives.
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MOLLY POWER (F '06) has had her short story "Dark Bread" published in Yuan Yang, Journal of Hong Kong and International Writing, in its Centenary Celebration volume of 2013.
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REBEKAH REAVES (SW '12) has had an exciting start to the 2013 screenwriting contest season. Her romantic comedy, The Morning After, won best comedy in the Script Exposure Screenwriting Competition. Reaves' thesis script, Offsides, a sports drama, has advanced to the semifinals in both the Write Movies and CineStory Screenplay Contests, earning Reaves an invitation to the upcoming CineStory Screenwriting Retreat in Idyllwild, California.
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MARITZA RODRIGUEZ (SW '10) has completed the MS Ed in Online Teaching & Learning Program at California State University, East Bay. For her capstone project, Maritza designed an online course in screenwriting that teaches the eight-sequence structure that was used in the early days of cinema.
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MICHELE RUBY (F/P '05) has a short story, "Conch Salad," online in the June issue of Alimentum, The Literature of Food at http://www.alimentumjournal.com. She attended Spalding's homecoming in May and thoroughly enjoyed the sessions, the speakers, and the wonderful workshop with Jackie Gorman, Michael Jackman, and Bonnie Johnson.
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GRAHAM SHELBY (CNF '10) interviewed The Things They Carried author Tim O' Brien for http://www.louisville.com/. O'Brien was the Diana M. Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence at the Spalding MFA Spring residency. Also, Graham's travel essay, "Triplets Take Chicago," (http://www.kentucky.com/2013/06/09/2671652/summer-travel-seeing-chicago-with.html) appeared in the June 9 edition of the Lexington Herald-Leader.
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STEPHANIE STUVE-BODEEN'S (W4C '03) latest YA novel The Raft (written as S.A. Bodeen) won the 2012 Oregon Spirit Award and was named a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year. She will be at ALA signing galleys of her forthcoming YA novel, The Fallout, and in the fall she will be part of Macmillan's Fierce Reads tour.
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GRETCHEN TREMOULET (F '07) has self-published her novel, Beindor of Red Duck, on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle formats.
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PATSI B. TROLLINGER (W4CYA '13) will give a presentation in Boston during the November conference of the National Council of Teachers of English. She will collaborate with two other children's authors, Tracy Barrett and Kristin Tubb, to discuss visual literacy as a tool for helping teachers connect children with books. Visual literacy is one element of the new Common Core standards that apply to K-12 schools nationwide. http://www.patsibtrollinger.com
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COLLEEN WELLS (CNF '10) had a personal essay, "A Family Without Borders," appear in the June/July issue of Bloom magazine (http://www.magbloom.com/category/home-family/). During the spring semester she became an advisor for Ivy Student Voice, the new student newspaper for Ivy Tech Community College, where she teaches composition and works as a tutor in Bloomington, Indiana. Ivy Student Voice launched its inaugural issue in April.
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THELMA WYLAND (F '03) wrote a series of haiku, set to music by Frank Richmond and sung by the choir on May 12 at Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church in Louisville. Artist Ann Adamek painted watercolors inspired by the haiku, which were projected on the wall during the performance.
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AIMEE ZARING (F '05) is working on a manuscript of refugee stories and recipes, tentatively titled The Kitchen Refuge: How Kentucky's Resettled Refugees Are Reinventing Home and Southern Comfort Food, to be published by University Press of Kentucky. To learn more about this project, funded in part by the Kentucky Foundation for Women, visit http://www.thekitchenrefuge.com.
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Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to CATT FOY (F) on the death of her father, John Anastasios Anthony, who was born February 6, 1935, and died April 13, 2013.

Our heartfelt sympathy to LUKE WALLIN (CNF, F, W4C) on the loss of his mother, Ruth McMullan Wallin, 1914-2013, in April.

It is with great sadness that the MFA staff announces that our student VICKI COMBS passed away Thursday, June 13. Vicki started the program in Summer 2010 and was unable to return after her first semester because of being diagnosed with cancer. We were glad to see Vicki, briefly, at the spring residency, when she came to the Tim O'Brien event. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to her husband, John Combs.
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Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) for Spring 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.

• John Pipkin and Mary Clyde, fiction
• Debra Kang Dean, poetry
• Roy Hoffman, creative nonfiction
• Leslea Newman, writing for children and young adults:
• David-Matthew Barnes, 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 Vickie Montgomery at 800-896-8941, ext. 4330 or 502-873-4330 or email vmontgomery@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

For Summer 2013 and Fall 2013 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.
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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.

Like our Facebook page
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Online newsletters 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
Taj Whitesell, 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
502-873-4330	Vickie Montgomery	4330

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