Life of a Writer

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

Students

Jennifer Anthony is presenting her ECE thesis, "Taking a Bite out of Literature: The Sound Bite Format in Young Adult Literature," in June at the Children's Literature Association's (ChLA) annual conference. This year's conference, titled "Performing Childhood," is to be held in Manitoba, Canada.

Myra Bellin's essay "Separated at Birth" has been accepted for publication in The Village Rambler, a consumer magazine.

Therese Broderick is serving as Secretary/ Treasurer of the Hudson Valley Writers Guild (www.hvwg.org). On February 5, she read her poems at the indoor farmer's market in Troy, N.Y. Her first poetry chapbook, Nesting Instinct, is in production. Therese is known at Spalding as "Gwen." (top)

Joan Donaldson's picture book manuscript The Secret of the Red Shoes is to be published by Ideal's children's division. Joan's essay "When the Bees Came Looking for Carlos" has been accepted for publication by both Nevada and Kentucky for their 2005 State Reading exams. Her essay first appeared in The Christian Science Monitor in 2002. Joan's series of contemplative essays began with the Easter issue of Ideals magazine. In mid-March, she spoke about writing and teach workshops of Spencerian Script, as featured in her Young Adult novel A Pebble and a Pen, at a charter school in Holland, Mich.

Carrza DuBose is editing his first novel, titled Everything but Love, by Jaleel Humphrey. This is the author's first book, and it is due out in mid-June from Author House.

Stacia Fleegal's poem "The Surprise Party" is forthcoming in the next issue of Earth's Daughters, a feminist literary and arts periodical out of Buffalo, N.Y.

George Getschow is the conference writer in residence for The Literary Nonfiction Writer's Conference of the Southwest at the Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism on July 22-24 in Grapevine, Tex. Guests include Susan Orlean, Alex Kotlowitz, and Paul Hendrickson. The conference is giving cash prizes for the best submissions, and the best literary nonfiction manuscript gets a book contract with UNT Press. Refer to http://mayborninstitute.unt.edu for more information. (top)

Brian Hampton's full-length play Checking In is to receive its world premiere at the Actor's Guild of Lexington in Lexington, Ky. The play is scheduled to run from March 24 through April 17. Brian also appears in the production. For more information please visithttp://www.actorsguildoflexington.org or http://www.brianhampton.net

Marci Johnson's poem "Red Shirt" has been nominated for a 2005 Rhysling Award. The Rhysling Awards recognize the best speculative/science fiction/fantasy/horror poetry published during the previous calendar year.

Lisa Levine's poem "An Ideal Reader" appeared in the February issue of the Downtown Tucsonan, available online at http://www.downtowntucson.org/downtowntucsonan/feb05/outlet.html She was also a featured performer at the Odyssey Storytelling Series' Breast Cancer Stories show, where she shared the story of her mother Diane's diagnosis and treatment. The story, set in Lisa's sophomore year of high school, describes how supporting her mom's fight against cancer set the foundation for a friendship that has long outlasted the recovery. More information is available at http://www.www.odysseystorytelling.com

Michele Ruby's short play "Waiters" has been chosen as part of the Louisville Repertory Company's new play festival and is to be produced in June 2005 at the Mex Theatre.(top)

Colleen Wells's essay "When I'm Eighty-Four" was posted on http://www.VerbSap.com on Febru-ary 4. Her essay "My Headbanging Ethiopian Sons" is forthcoming in Adoptive Families magazine.

Jonathan Weinert's poem "In the Mode of Disappearance" is forthcoming in the Spring 2005 issue of LIT: The New School Literary Journal. His poem "Blazes" is forthcoming in The Louisville Review.

Aimee Zaring's short story "Changing Room" appeared in the Spring 2004 issue of Red Rock Review. She also judged the IUS Fiction Writing Competition in November 2004. (top)

Faculty & Staff

Rane Arroyo has had new poems published in Bayou, The Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review (The Caribbean Issue), Hotel Amerika (the poem was reprinted online by Poetry Daily on Christmas Eve), Midwest Miscellany (featured writer), and The Potomac Review. Two poems were also included in the gay-themed anthology, Bend Don't Shatter. A new online chapbook of experimental poetry, Don Quixote Goes to the Moon, has been scheduled for publication by Ahadada Press. He has also been included in the newest edition of the Heath Anthology. He has two books due out in August 2005: poetry from BkMk Press, The Portable Famine, winner of the John Ciardi Prize; and a book of gay-themed short stories, How to Name a Hurricane, from the University of Arizona Press.

Julie Brickman's lead review, "Leopard, Spots," of Francine Prose's novel, A Changed Man, was published in the Books section of the San Diego Union-Tribune on Sunday, March 6.

Ellie Bryant attended the SCBWI conference in New York City in February. Spalding alums Patti Zelch and Edie Hemingway and MFA student Jenn Spillane also attended. Highlights were talks by authors Gail Carson Levine, Esme Codell, and Jerry Spinelli and by illustrator Susan Jeffers. A Saturday-night art exhibit and auction of works by children's book illustrators was a new event for the annual conference. The Midtown Hilton venue was a great location for dining and urban ogling after presentations.(top)

Debra Kang Dean recently served as judge for the 2004 Two Rivers Review Poetry Prize. "Inside Out," her review of Lucinda Grey's The Woman Who Has Eaten the Moon and Mendi Lewis Obadike's Armor and Flesh, is forthcoming in the North Carolina Literary Review.

Kathleen Driskell, Karen Mann, Sena Jeter Naslund, and Katy Yocom read at the Kentucky Philogical Assocation conference on March 4 at Northern Kentucky University.

Robert Finch's essay, "A Fine Specimen," was published in the Spring 2004 issue of Wabash Magazine, and "Transparent Beauty" in the Winter 2005 issue of RiverStyx. He also taught a workshop on the personal essay at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., last August, and a workshop on "The Memory of Place" at the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance Fall Writing Retreat at the Haystack Mountain School in Deer Isle, Maine, in September 2004. Somewhat to his surprise, he has been doing book reviews for The Weekly Standard, William Kristol's conservative magazine, most recently a review of Richard Rhodes' John James Audubon: The Making of an American in the December 6, 2004, issue. His opinions have only been censored once, when he referred to continuing unsubstantiated sightings of the presumed-extinct Ivory-Billed Woodpecker as "not unlike the ongoing search for WMDs in Iraq." (top)

Kirby Gann's new novel, Our Napoleon in Rags, is scheduled to appear April 15. In a prepub review, Kirkus Reviews says: "Rich, evocative and textured. Impressive and ambitious work from a talent to watch closely."

Richard Goodman is to give a series of readings and lectures for the Alaska Center for the Book in Anchorage, April 14-16. His essay "Homage to Cazzie Russell," about the great University of Michigan basketball star of the 1960s, is to be published in Ann Arbor: A Literary Portrait (U. Michigan Press) in the fall. He was awarded a full fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center for the month of August. His essay about his daughter playing her first school basketball game, "Girls' Basketball as a Metaphor for Life, or, You Should Have Seen My Daughter Play!" is forthcoming in Family Circle magazine.

Roy Hoffman's Chicken Dreaming Corn and Silas House's The Coal Tattoo have been named by the Southeast Booksellers Association as nominees for the 2005 SEBA Book Award, which recognizes great books of Southern origin. Roy is discussing his novel at the festival Much Ado About Books in Jacksonville, Fla., on April 2. Among his recent jornalistic pieces for The Mobile Register were "Mary Ward Brown: Black Belt Storyteller," a profile of an eighty-seven-year-old short story writer in rural Alabama (March 6), and a report from Selma, Ala.'s Edmund Pettus Bridge on the fortieth anniversary of the first attempted civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery (March 7). (top)

Silas House's first novel, Clay's Quilt (2001) has been chosen as the first selection for Lexington, Kentucky's One Book program, which encourages everyone in the city to read the novel. Six hundred copies of the novel are to be passed out to the public at the library and another two hundred copies are to be left on buses and in waiting rooms, affixed with a sticker encouraging people to take the book. A series of public events concerning the novel us to be held in April. Simultaneously, the Lexington Herald-Leader has chosen Clay's Quilt as its April selection for the Herald-Reader Book Club.

Sena Jeter Naslund was recently appointed poet laureate of Kentucky by Governor Ernie Fletcher. In Kentucky, the poet laureate charter includes writers of all literary forms. The appointment is for two years.

Greg Pape is to read from his new book, American Flamingo, at the Crab Orchard Award Series at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale on April 7. Border Crossings is due out in March in the Carnegie Mellon Classic Contemporary Series.(top)

Linda Busby Parker read recently from Seven Laurels at Barnes & Noble, Altanta. On March 10 and 11, she did a series of workshops sponsored by the Brush Creek Writers in Atlanta. Both workshops were on the novel—one on premise and the other on structure. Anyone wanting a copy of the Linda's Kathy Pories interview that is to appear in First Draft, should contact Linda at lbparker@msn.com

Molly Peacock's Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems has been published in the United Kingdom and has received a glowing half-page review in the December 24/31 Times Literary Supplement. She is also the judge of the 2005 Boa Press Poetry competition and gave readings for the Ontario (Canada) Arts Council and the University of Tampa. She is to take part in a celebration for Boulevard magazine and a panel on Canadian New Formalist poetry at the AWP meeting in Vancouver.

Jeanie Thompson taught four creative writing classes to high school students at the University of Montevallo's "Write Connection" on February 25. She also conducted a day-long poetry writing workshop for adult poets at the Breeze Hill Writers' Retreat in Northport, Ala., on February 26. Jeanie contributed a feature story on playwright Rebecca Gilman, who has been commissioned to adapt The Heart is a Lonely Hunter for the stage by The Acting Company, to the Spring 2004 First Draft, the journal of the Alabama Writers' Forum. She has a poem forthcoming in the Spring issue of Maize magazine and was recently appointed to the Media Planning Board of the University of Alabama. Among the journals that the Board oversees is Black Warrior Review, the literary journal that Jeanie and her fellow classmates founded in 1974 when in the MFA Writing Program at Alabama.(top)

Crystal Wilkinson recently spoke at the Kentucky Council on Teachers of English and conducted a one-day workshop at the Writer's Center of Indiana on March 5. Crystal read in the Rufus Reiberg Creative Reading Series at IUPUI on March 10. Both events were in Indianapolis.

Alumni

Amy Clark (October 2004) attended the RopeWalk Winter Retreat in New Harmony, Indiana, where she studied with the poet Richard Jackson. Her writing group, The First Thursday Salon, is to give a reading at 7:30 p.m.on March 18 at Neshui Press in St. Louis. She has a poem forthcoming in The Louisville Review. (top)

Holly Brockman (October 2003) reviewed Wendell Berry's newest novel, Hannah Coulter, for The Courier-Journal on February 6.

Susan Christerson Brown (October 2003) has work forthcoming in the May/June issue of Spirituality & Health magazine. "Bongeunsa Temple" is about exploring a Buddhist monastery on a recent visit to Seoul, South Korea.

Bobbi Buchanan (November 2004) attended a reading by Wendell Berry, Barbara Kingsolver, and Davis McCombs on March 4 in Lexington, Ky. She recently led a writing class for a continuing education course on public relations and marketing at Bellarmine University and is to teach "Newsletters from Start to Finish" for the School of Continuing & Professional Studies this summer. She has also been working with a youth group at the Plymouth Community Renewal Center in downtown Louisville. The youth group is working to launch a newsletter as part of a leadership development project. GreenPrints, a magazine of personal garden writing, has accepted Bobbi's essay "Family Tree" for publication.(top)

Erin Keane (May 2004) read at the Jazz Factory's Jazz and the Spoken Word event in January and is reading at the Tsunami of Compassion Tour at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. On March 10, she was a panelist and featured reader for "Women and Their Words," as part of the Morrison Gallery Series at Elizabethtown Community and Technical College. She is to read at the Gallery Soleil in Lexington for the Kentucky Women Writers Conference on March 25.

Richard Newman (October 2004) has poems forthcoming in Boulevard, The Louisville Review, Southern Poetry Review, and an anthology of ghost poems called Chance of a Ghost (Helicon 9 Editions). His newest chapbook, Monster Gallery: 19 Terrifying and Amazing Monster Sonnets! is now available through Snark Publishing (http://www.snarkpub.com).

Jim Robertson (October 2004) was recently promoted to managing editor of Culture & Leisure magazine and has submitted to The Mobile Register a book review of Jennifer Haigh's Baker Towers that is to be featured on an upcoming Sunday Books page. Jim recently started the website http://www.jimrobertsonlaw.comwhich he hopes to expand to encompass not just legal matters, but literary ones as well.(top)

Pam Steele (May 2004) and Erin Keane (May 2004) recently celebrated a year of organizing the InKY Reading Series at the Rudyard Kipling in Louisville. The event featured readings by Silas House and Paul Hiers (May 2004).

Kenda-Ruth (October 2004) gave a lecture on The Hero's Journey to Art for the Children's Market, a class in the University of Washington Extension Program. The lecture reviewed Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces and applied Campbell's Hero's Journey outline to Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are.

Kathleen Thompson (October 2003) recently judged the Grace Schley Knight Prize competition, an annual award from The Poetry Society of Georgia, in Savannah. Two of her poems have been accepted by the online magazine, Thicket, and may be viewed at http://www.athicket.com (top)

Change of Address

Molly Peacock's new email address is molly@mollypeacock.org

Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to Idore Anschell on the death of her sister Sydney Anschell Steuer on February 14.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Joanne Oldham on the death of her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Scott Oldham, on February 16.

Our sincere gratitude to Diana M. Raab for endowing the Diana M Raab Scholarship, which is to be awarded to creative nonfiction students beginning in 2006.

Reminders and Notes

May 2005 Book in Common
Students and faculty read the Book in Common in preparation for group discussion at the May 2005 residency.

The May 2005 Book in Common is the play Getting Out by Marsha Norman. For a copy of Getting Out, purchase Norman’s anthology Four Plays, published by Theatre Communications Group in 1995 (ISBN: 0930452844). It is available online from Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and alibris.com, as well as other bookstores. (top)

May 2005 Faculty Books in Common
Students read the book in their area of concentration in preparation for a discussion with the author at the May 2005 residency.

Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) Members
for October 2004 Semester

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 October semester do not need to re-file for the May semester.

Students who did not receive financial aid through loans in fall and wish to receive a loan for the spring semester may fill out the FAFSA at www.fafsa.ed.gov .(top)

For help with financial aid questions, call Jodie Huff at (800) 896-8941 ext. 2731 or (502) 585-9911, ext. 2731 or email jhuff@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.

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 Verna Austen at mfanewsletter@spalding.edu

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