Homecoming and SPLoveFest
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Spalding MFA in Writing Program. Since the first residency took place in October 2001, 341 writers have graduated from the program, with a graduating class of seventeen set to join their ranks at the spring residency.

The MFA Program warmly invites all 341 alums to join us for Homecoming Friday-Sunday, May 20-22, the final weekend of the spring residency. The slate of activities includes events for all MFAers as well as for alums only. (Details on times and locations forthcoming.)

• Celebration of Recently Published Books by Alumni. At the Brown Hotel on Friday evening, May 20. All are invited and encouraged to attend this reading.
• SPLoveFest. A book fair and author signing immediately after the Celebration of Recently Published Books by Alumni, with hors d'oeuvres and cash bar. All are invited and encouraged to attend.
• After-party at Theater Square Marketplace, next door to the Brown, on Friday night. Everyone welcome. Alums who would like to read at the After-party should contact TENEICE DELGADO (Fall 2006) at teneiced@gmail.com.
• Hosted breakfast for all Homecoming attendees and faculty, as well as for students graduating during the Spring 2011 residency, in the Mansion on Saturday, May 21.
• Pitch sessions with VICKIE WEAVER, author of Billie Girl, for alums who'd like to practice their pitches. (See Soaring, the alumni newsletter, for details.)
• Lecture and Q&A session with New York-based literary agent Lisa Gallagher on Friday, May 20. Open to all.
• Lecture by KENNY COOK on life after the MFA, open to alums and graduating students, on Friday, May 20.
• Dance on Saturday night, May 21, featuring live music by Puddingstone, with alum JOAN DONALDSON on the button accordion and folk harp. Everyone invited.

Call for Exhibitors: SPLoveFest!
Students and alums are invited to participate in SPLoveFest, a book fair and expo on Friday, May 20, at the Brown Hotel, immediately following the Celebration of Recently Published Books by Alumni. Exhibitors at SPLoveFest may offer their books, journals, and anthologies for sale and/or bring promotional material regarding any artistic endeavor such as plays, movies, podcasts, literary services and more. Visual arts are welcomed too! Attendance by all faculty, students and alums is highly encouraged. Hors d'oeuvres and a cash bar will be provided. To reserve a table, email SPLoveFest@gmail.com no later than May 1.
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Spring 2011 Residency Film and Pre-assignment
During the Spring 2011 residency in Louisville, the MFA Program screens the classic French film Rules of the Game, Jean Renoir's controversial film about bourgeois life in France just before World War II.

As a pre-assignment for the Spring 2011 residency in Louisville, all MFA students are asked to choose two of the following three international films and view them before arriving at residency. Students may opt to view two of the following: Marcel Pagno's Manon of the Spring (the original 1952 film), Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck's The Lives of Others (2006), or Frangois Truffaut's The 400 Blows (1959).

At residency, all students are required to attend the screening of Rules of the Game and the interrelatedness of the arts session led by Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund. The interrelatedness of the arts discussion will focus on these international films.
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Spring 2011 MFA Residency Guests
The Spalding MFA Program welcomes back CLAUDIA EMERSON. Claudia is the author of four books of poetry including her most recent title Figure Studies (LSU Press 2008). Her collection Late Wife (LSU Press, 2005) won the Pulitzer Prize in 2006. She was awarded an NEA grant in 1994 and the Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress in 2005. She teaches at Mary Washington University in Fredericksburg, Virginia, and is a former poet laureate of the state of Virginia. Claudia will give a poetry lecture at the Spring 2011 residency.

The Spalding MFA Program welcomes LISA GALLAGHER to the Spring 2011 residency. Lisa is a literary agent at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates in New York. Formerly SVP & Publisher, William Morrow, Gallagher published many New York Times bestselling authors including Brunonia Barry, Tom Franklin, Neil Gaiman, Joe Hill, Sena Jeter Naslund, Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, and Neal Stephenson. Prior to joining William Morrow in 2000, Lisa was Associate Publisher at Bloomsbury USA, following a move to New York from Bloomsbury's London office in 1998. Gallagher was educated at St. Catharine's College, Cambridge, UK.
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Spring 2011 Residency Meals
Early on in the program's history, few restaurants were available for MFAers to eat and so the Program offered many catered meals. Fortunately the choices of nearby locations to eat have increased and those places include menus that suit a wide variety of food preferences. It is no longer necessary to provide as many on-campus meals.

Many students and faculty have commented that they like the flexibility of the "dinner on your own" nights at the residencies. At recent residencies, students have often added their own free evenings to the residency schedule, leaving many empty seats at catered meals. In an effort to be more fiscally responsible and to provide more variety for MFAers, the spring and fall residencies will include more free evenings for students. At the spring residency, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday will be "dinner on your own" nights.

All lunches, except Sunday lunch, which will be the usual genre lunch, will also be "own your own." Residency packets will include four lunch vouchers for $8 off meals at some nearby restaurants.
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Summer 2011 Residency Program Films in Common
The MFA Program has selected two Films in Common for the Summer 2011 residency in Italy. Early in our residency in Rome, Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund leads a discussion of Federico Fellini's films La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2. All students should view these films before coming to the residency. Later in the residency while in Tuscany, Fellini scholar Federico Pacchioni presents a lecture on this important Italian filmmaker.

Both films should be easily accessible for viewing by students. All students should list La Dolce Vita and 8 1/2 as films viewed on their cumulative bibliographies.

Though not required, students and faculty may be interested in viewing the other films screenwriting faculty member Brad Riddell has asked his screenwriting students to view: Umberto D, Cinema Paradiso, Blow Up, and Rome: Open City. MFA students and faculty may also want to read Brad's genre book in common (required of all screenwriting students): The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Gian Piero Brunetta (author), Jeremy Parzen (translator).

Other books and films in common for Summer 2011 students are listed below.

Faculty Books/Scripts in Common for Summer 2011

• Fiction: Mary Waters, The Favorites
• Poetry: Greg Pape, American Flamingo
• Creative Nonfiction: Richard Goodman, A New York Memoir
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: Leslia Newman, Hachiko Waits; please also view the film Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2009)
• Screenwriting: Brad Riddell, Crooked Arrows (posted on BB for download. Please read both versions.)

• Fiction: Italo Calvino, Difficult Loves
• Poetry: Eugenio Montale, Selected Poems
• Creative Nonfiction: Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: Pinocchio (Please purchase the New York Review Books Classics edition in paperback: ISBN-13: 978-1590172896). Also, please view Disney's Pinocchio (1939) before residency
• Screenwriting: The History of Italian Cinema: A Guide to Italian Film from Its Origins to the Twenty-First Century by Gian Piero Brunetta (author), Jeremy Parzen (translator). Also, preview these films before residency: Umberto D, 8 1/2, Cinema Paradiso, Blow Up, and Rome: Open City

Summer 2011 Book in Common Essay Assignment
All students who have completed ENG610 and are entering ENG620 in the Summer 2011 semester with residency in Italy are required to submit an essay written on the Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and 8=. Detailed instructions were emailed to ENG610 students and are also posted on Blackboard.

This essay is due to the MFA Office on May 5 via the digital dropbox under Tools in Blackboard.
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Update on Facebook Fanpage
The MFA Program has begun posting announcements regarding contests, calls for submissions, and grants on the MFA Facebook Fanpage. If you have not already joined, please join the fanpage at http://www.facebook.com/spaldingmfa to access this information. The MFA Program will no longer post such announcements on Blackboard.
Remember the MFA Facebook Fanpage contest. To enter, take a picture of yourself with MFA items, such as T-shirts, bags, or umbrellas. Post the picture to the fanpage at http://www.facebook.com/spaldingmfa or send it to mfafacebook@spalding.edu to be posted on the fanpage.

For each picture posted, the MFA staff enters the name of the MFAer (students, alumni, and faculty) into a drawing for a $100 gift card from the independent bookstore of the winner's choice. Winners are chosen four times a year.  The next drawing for the contest is April 15. Amy Hanridge was the first winner.

To find MFA wear or gear, see http://www.cafepress.com/spaldingmfa.
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2012 AWP Conference Information and Event Proposals
2012 Annual Conference & Bookfair
February 29-March 3, 2012
Chicago, Illinois
Hilton Chicago & Palmer House Hilton

The deadline to submit panel proposals for the 2012 AWP (Association of Writers and Writers Programs) Conference is May 1. For compete information, see http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/2012proposal.php.

AWP's Conference & Bookfair includes more than four hundred events and more than fifteen hundred presenters. The proposal process is competitive, so it's important that all individuals submitting a proposal are familiar with AWP's guidelines and expectations.

The MFA Program is a sponsor of the conference and pays registration for current students. Travel, lodging, and housing are taken care of the students. Many alumni and faculty also attend.
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New Closure Conference Policy for Summer/Spring-Stretch
The MFA Program has revised its closure conference policy for all summer and spring stretch students and faculty members. Students and faculty members will no longer wait to have their closure conferences at residency. Summer and Spring Stretch students and mentors will now conclude their semester with a telephone closure conference of 15-20 minutes. The call should occur between the student's receipt of the fifth packet response and the end of the semester. The schedule is noted on the course syllabus. The student initiates arranging the date and time of the call. See the MFA Student Handbook for details on the closure conference.
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Italy Residency
Forty-nine students are set to travel to Italy for the summer residency abroad, making it the largest student group for a summer residency yet. The group size means accommodations are full at Spannocchia, the Tuscan organic farm where the program will spend the final week of the residency. Most students will share a room with another student at Spannocchia. Most faculty members will share rooms as well. Students traveling to Italy will view the Program Films in Common and read the faculty and area books or scripts in common in their area of concentration before coming to Italy. These works are listed above.
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Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) for Fall 2010
FAC members are announced by the MFA Office at the beginning of each semester. The Program Director consults with the FAC about recommendations for admissions and about programmatic and administrative development and changes. Both faculty and students are invited to make suggestions to the FAC for exploration by the Program Director and larger faculty. However, students and faculty should directly and immediately consult the Associate Program Director about any issues concerning specific individual's' performance in the program.

• Rachel Harper, fiction
• Greg Pape, poetry
• Nancy McCabe, creative nonfiction
• Ellie Bryant, writing for children and young adults
• Brad Riddell, playwriting/screenwriting

www.facebook.com/SpaldingMFA and mfafacebook@spalding.edu
MFAers have a new way to share their writerly news on the MFA fanpage (http://www.facebook.com/SpaldingMFA). 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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Life of a Writer

JERRIOD AVANT got his first publication after an army of rejectionscause for exclamation! Carpe Articulum Literary Review has published his poem titled "Silent Orchestra." Carpe Articulum is a cross-genre, international literary review that distributes in the U.S., U.K., Europe, Australia, Canada, India, Russia, and Israel. The quarterly publication is translated into French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and Hindi. To purchase the March issue or make a subscription, visit: http://www.carpearticulum.com. Shortly after that, he learned his poems "Control" and "A Poet's Night" were accepted for publication in Accents Publishing's upcoming anthology of fifty-word poems. (top)

EILEEN BALAND won the Most Highly Commended Prize for her poem "Kamikaze Bird" in the 2010 Tom Howard Poetry Contest, as well as two Very Highly Commended prizes for her poems "387 Miles From Home" and "Dialogue for Oboe and Piano." Eileen is assistant professor of English at East Texas Baptist University. Eileen participated in a poetry reading on March 24 at Teaspirations, a tea house in Marshall, Texas, where she read her winning poems from the 2010 Tom Howard Poetry Competition. (top)

BECKY BROWDER's short story "Chicky Babes" has been named one of two finalists for the John Steinbeck Award and will be published in the upcoming issue of Reed Magazine. The John Steinbeck Award is sponsored by Reed Magazine, the Center for Steinbeck Studies, San Jose State University and the National Steinbeck Center. Becky wrote "Chicky Babes" while working with MARY WATERS during the Spring Stretch 2010 Semester. (top)

SHANNON CAVANAUGH, a third-semester fiction student, announces that her short-fiction story "The Stranger with the Gold Buttons" appears in the anthology Mysteries of the Ozarks. It's her first fiction publication, but also her first attempt to publish a fiction story. Ozark Writers Inc. and High Hill Press are set to publish the anthology in October 2011. Cavanaugh started writing her story under the guidance of mentor RACHEL HARPER, workshopped the story in Spring 2010 with NEELA VASWANI and CRYSTAL WILKINSON, and made final revisions with mentor MARY WATERS. The story is based on hand-me-down tales from her grandmother surviving on a farm during the Great Depression in the Ozarks, an actual button box Cavanaugh inherited from her great grandmother and Cavanaugh's tomboyish waysknowing the woods, the wildlife, and the old ways.(top)

Fiction student CORRINE JACKSON announces that her young adult novel If I Lie sold to Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, for publication in Fall 2012. She originally workshopped the beginning of this novel at the Spring 2010 residency in Louisville and wrote the novel over the course of the semester under the mentorship of MARY YUKARI WATERS. Following on the heels of that news, she learned her YA paranormal romance trilogy sold in a three-book deal to Megan Records at Kensington/Kteen. The first novel, Touched, is about a girl who has the power to heal people with her touch, but at a steep cost because every illness or injury she heals becomes her own. She has also recently joined the Bookanistas (http://www.thebookanistas.com/), a group of YA writers banding together to write positive reviews. These reviews and the authors will be featured on The Reading Room (http://www.thereadingroom.com/book_clubs/view/1435/The-Bookanistas), a new community for readers. Lastly, she has joined the planning committee for Litquake, San Francisco's annual literary festival that culminates in Lit Crawl, a massive literary crawl that encompasses 300+ authors, 14,000+ people, and 50+ venues (http://litquake.org/). (top)

KELLY R. LYNN, a creative nonfiction student set to graduate in Fall 2011, announces that her poem, "How Not to Plant a Forsythia," was accepted for publication in the March 2011 issue of WITH, a quarterly anthology. The collaboration features the work of five writers and artwork by members of All Along Press in Kelly's native Saint Louis; in fact, until a few months ago, she lived just three blocks west and one block north of the press. Copies are available for purchase here: http://allalongpress.com/blog/news/with-issue-1-is-out/. In addition, Kelly's creative nonfiction essay, "Eating Jesus," was published in Thysia Magazine's first issue, "The Inaugural Light": http://www.thysiamag.com/klynn.html. (top)

Fiction student ERIN REID participated in the Coffeehouse Writers Series at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama, featuring public readings by North Alabama writers. She read two poems, "Sugar People" and "The Weeping Camel," with the regional poetry group, The Coweeta Poets, in celebration of their new chapbook, which includes six of her poems. Its title, Something More Solid than Earth, is taken from her poem, "Cullman Pond." She also read from her short story, "The Resurrection and the Life," which will be published in the spring issue of The Louisville Review. This is her first publication and was her first story "workshopped" with faculty mentor ROBIN LIPPINCOTT. She appreciates the efforts of Rose Norman to offer a public venue for local writers, as well as her neighborhood writing group, the BWFFs, whose eclectic work was also featured in the series, and who have been her writing family for more than five years. (top)

STEPHEN WOODWARD has created a personal website with an assortment of his writing at www.stephenwoodward.info. The site includes excerpts from a novel, short stories, movie script, and news articles. (top)

Faculty and Staff

DIANNE APRILE gave a reading at the University of Pittsburgh-Bradford on March 24, at the invitation of Writing Program director NANCY MCCABE. Dianne also met with Nancy's Writing from the Self class. Much of the rest of the day was spent at Olean, New York, at St. Bonaventure University, where writer Thomas Merton lived and taught before deciding to enter Kentucky's Abbey of Gethsemani. While there, the library director gave Dianne and Nancy a tour of the university's Merton holdings. (top)

SUSAN CAMPBELL BARTOLETTI's article, "The Extreme Sport of Research," was published in the Horn Book Magazine (March/April 2011). She spent time speaking to students in McAllen (Texas) and Dallas (Texas) schools. She also addressed readers in Shelbyville, Indiana, where her book The Boy Who Dared (Scholastic 2009) was selected as a Shelby County Community-Wide Read. In April she will keynote at the Youth Services Section Conference in Rochester, New York, and in early May at the SMLS (School Media Library Section) Conference in Buffalo, New York. (top)

ELLIE BRYANT was interviewed by fifth-grade student Faith Pearson for a school literary magazine article on a "famous Vermont author." (top)

K. L. COOK's short story "Filament" appeared in the March issue of (#147) of One Story. An interview with Kenny about the story appears at the One Story website (http://one-story.com/index.php?page=current). The title story from his new collection, "Love Song for the Quarantined," will appear in the spring issue of The Louisville Review. March 4-5, he was a guest faculty member at the Arizona State University Writers' Conference, "Desert Nights, Rising Stars," teaching workshops on artistic misbehavior and reading like a writer. (top)

On February 3, at the AWP conference, DEBRA KANG DEAN was a participant in "The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World" panel, which featured contributors to a just-published anthology by that name. On March 3, she did a very brief reading with Ross Gay and Maurice Manning, accompanied by Jason Nyugen on the dan bau, as part of "Between Mountains and Rivers: Towards Co-productive Watersheds in Environmental Sustainability." This program, which she co-organized, was part of a campus-wide conference on diversity at Indiana University. (top)

At the AWP Conference in Washington, D.C., KATHLEEN DRISKELL was re-elected chair of the Low-Residency MFA Program Directors Caucus. She recently was asked by the Kentucky Arts Council to lead a workshop at the Kentucky Crafted Fair in Louisville. She was a visiting writer at Transylvania University and has two poems forthcoming in The Florida Review. (top)

ROBERT FINCH will give a reading at the Provincetown Public Library on Cape Cod on the evening of April 20 as part of the Provincetown Green Arts Festival. Also, a collection of his National Public Radio scripts from his weekly broadcast, "A Cape Cod Notebook," will be published this summer by On-Cape Publications. (top)

RICHARD GOODMAN's essay "Chester and Me" will appear in the spring issue of Chautauqua. He will be a featured author at the Alabama Book Festival in Montgomery on April 16. (top)

ROY HOFFMAN's personal essay about his boyhood home in Mobile, Alabama, "An Empty House Where Time Stands Still," appeared Thanksgiving Day on the cover of the Home & Garden section of The New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/25/garden/25Domestic.html. (top)

SILAS HOUSE was recently commissioned to write an editorial for The New York Times, Sunday edition, which ran February 20. Also in February, House participated in a three-day sit-in at the Kentucky state capitol's governor's office to protest mountaintop removal and gained international media for the issue. Other writers participating include Wendell Berry and Erik Reece. In March, House and Jason Howard were co-finalists for the Roosevelt-Ashe Award for Journalism in Conservation for their work on the book Something's Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal. Berea College has commissioned a play from House to be performed in Spring 2012 at Berea and in Edinburgh, Scotland. (top)

HELENA KRIEL held a workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa, on memoir writing and how the rules for writing screenplays may be applied for this purpose. While in Johannesburg, she worked on completing her own memoir before traveling to India toward the end of January. She was attending the international book fair in Jaipur, and then went to Mumbai for meetings with a film studio. (top)

JODY LISBERGER has sponsored a very successful four-writer series at the University of Rhode Island called "Crossing Borders: Women Writing Their Lives," in conjunction with her honors creative nonfiction course, "Women Writing Their Lives." The visiting writers were Jill Ker Conway (The Road from Coorain), Elaine Orr (Gods of Noonday), Nancy McCabe (Meeting Sophie and Crossing The Blue Willow Bridge: A Journey to My Daughter's Birthplace in China) and Beth Taylor (The Plain Language of Love and Loss). Jody won a grant from the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities to support the series. Jody is also being awarded the University of Rhode Island Diversity Faculty Excellence Prize. (top)

NANCY MCCABE hosted readings by KATHLEEN DRISKELL in February and DIANNE APRILE in March for the Spectrum Arts Series at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford. In March, she also gave a reading at the University of Rhode Island as part of JODY LISBERGER's series "Crossing Borders: Women Writing Their Lives." Her essay "Before and After" is forthcoming in Crazyhorse. (top)

MAUREEN MOREHEAD was named poet laureate of Kentucky for 2011-13.

SENA JETER NASLUND spent a couple of weeks in March at Wolfe Cottage in Fairhope, Alabama, on a solitary writer's retreat provided by the Fairhope Center for the Literary Arts to work on her next novel The Fountain of St. James Court. With ROY HOFFMAN, Sena gave a talk at Fairhope's Page and Palette Bookstore. Sena gives a presentation on Adam & Eve at the Eclipse in Montevallo, Alabama, on April 13, and a talk on Moby-Dick and Ahab's Wife at Eastern Washington University, April 15. On May 7, she presents on Adam & Eve at the 14th Annual Alabama Writers Symposium, in Monroeville (home of Harper Lee), and later in May she will receive the Alabama Governor's Artist Award at a gala event at Alabama Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Montgomery. (top)

LESLIA NEWMAN is having a busy spring, giving readings and lectures at University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, Marquette University, and Central Washington University. In addition, she is giving her talk, "He Continues to Make a Difference: The Story of Matthew Shepard" at Holyoke High School in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and the MacDuffie School in Springfield, Massachusetts, and spending two days at Woodland Elementary School in Milford, Massachusetts, giving her presentation, "Books, Books, Book!" to the entire student population. On the publication front, her poem, "I Want to Stay Up Talking But . . ." has been accepted for publication in Lavender Review, and her poem, "13 Ways of Looking at 9/11" has been accepted for publication in the anthology Milk and Honey. Lastly, she has sold the Chinese rights to her middle-grade novel, Hachiko Waits. (top)

On November 30, GREG PAPE read in the University of Montana Distinguished Faculty Lecture series. He has a chapbook titled Animal Time coming out from Accents Publishing on May 15. He also has poems forthcoming in Good Poems, edited by Garrison Keillor; The Florida Review; Sugar House Review, and Willow Springs. He recently served as judge for the state finals of the Poetry Out Loud! competition. (top)

MOLLY PEACOCK is celebrating The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72 with a series of events in April: The National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., on April 10; The Corner Bookstore in New York City on April 14; The Boston Athenfum in Boston on April 22; The Philadelphia Central Library in Philadelphia on April 25; Le Poisson Rouge in New York City on May 10. (top)

JOHN PIPKIN has been appointed Writer-in-Residence at Southwestern University for 2011-2013. He currently holds the Dobie-Paisano Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of Texas in Austin, and he was recently one of the featured speakers at the 2011 SMU Literary Festival in Dallas. He was also a panelist for the "Craft of Writing Historical Fiction" session at AWP in February. (top)

CHARLIE SCHULMAN's musical The Fartiste will be presented at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 14, at The Snapple Center, 210 West Broadway (on 50th Street) in New York City. Admission is $15. For reservations call (212) 989-6706 or email reservations@musicalmondays.org. The Fartiste is a true story about Moulin Rouge performer Joseph Pujol, who dazzled Paris in the late 1800s with his musical ass. The show was awarded "Outstanding Musical" at the NYC Fringe Festival and was called, "Accomplished, Sophisticated and Strangely Touching" by the New York Post. Come see the show's first concert performance this year as it heads to opening Off-Broadway in the Fall of 2011. (top)

LUKE WALLIN announces that his new audio book with music, MONSTER: Three Stories and Three Songs, is now available for one free non-commercial download, along with its cover art and back text. Be patient: It's 1:07:26 in time, and 92.7 MB, he reports, so it takes a little while to download. The links are: http://www.sendspace.com/folder/us66no and http://www.sendspace.com/file/6inu5r. For more, visit http://lukewallin.com. (top)

Alumni

AMY WATKINS COPELAND (Spring 2006) has just started a new job teaching composition at Full Sail University. Best of all, half her hours are work-from-home, which means more flexibility for writing time. She also has poems forthcoming in Generations Magazine and Accents Publishing's anthology of very short poems. She continues to co-edit and host Red Lion Square, a free, weekly poetry podcast at www.redlionsq.com. (top)

ALBERT DEGENOVA (Spring 2005) has published a new chapbook, Postcards to Jack (Naked Mannikin Press), a collection of haibun and poems focused on place and travel. He was also recently asked to curate a series of poetry readings that were held in conjunction with a stage production of "The Beats" in Chicago; his task was to help make the connection between living and working poets with the Beat legacy. He continues to edit and publish After Hours magazine, which celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2010. (top)

HELEN JONES (Spring 2008) announces that her essay "On Waiting" will be published October 2011 in the anthology Waiting and Being: Sketches by Mary Cobb with writings of friends. NANA LAMPTON wrote the foreword; DIANNE APRILE reviewed it in the Courier-Journal. Jones participated in signings at the Kentucky School of Art, the Filson Club, and Carmichael's. (top)

RUSS KESLER (Spring 2009) published a poem, "Death and Variations," in the Winter/Spring 2011 issue of Subtropics magazine. (top)

NANA LAMPTON (Spring 2004) announces the publication of her chapbook Bloom on a Split Board (Accents Publishing, Spalding Series) in January 2011. The editor is KATERINA STOYKOVA-KLEMER, fall 2009 graduate in poetry and creative nonfiction. The chapbook was reviewed in The Courier-Journal on January 29. (top)

JOE PEACOCK (Fall 2008) was invited by the writing program chairs at Indiana University Southeast to teach an introductory creative writing class this past semester. He found it challenging and exciting. In addition, his book review of Pat Conroy's My Reading Life was accepted by Southern Humanities Review and will be published this fall. The Grasmere WritersMICHELE RUBY, BOB SACHS, RICK NEUMAYER, and Joe (all Spalding people)presented a dramatic reading of their short stories on March 23 at the Bard's Town in Louisville, Kentucky. (top)

MATT RYAN's (Fall 2006) book Read This Or You're Dead to Me: prose poems and flash fictions will be published this fall by Hopewell Publications. Certain parts of this book violate provisions of the Patriot Act. Most of it violates the laws of decency. (top)

HEATHER SHAW (Fall 2004) recently attended Brad Watson's reading from his novel Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives at Newtonville Books in Newton, Massachusetts. She highly recommends this wonderful book of stories. Heather's furniture store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was recently named to the list of "Best Home Dicor in Boston" on CBS/WBZ Channel 4. She and her husband, Jeremy, are planning a spring poetry reading series at the store when the giant snow mountain in the parking lot finally melts. (top)

STEPHANIE STUVE-BODEEN (May 2003) recently returned from a school visit trip to Brazil, where she presented at four international schools. Her latest picture book, A Small Brown Dog with a Wet Pink Nose (which she worked on while at Spalding), is a finalist for the 2011 Oregon Book Award, and her YA novel The Compound is a finalist for over a dozen state reader awards, including Connecticut's Nutmeg Award and Maryland's Black-Eyed Susan Award. Her latest YA novel, The Gardener, was named an ALA Quick Pick for Reluctant Readers and is a featured title in Scholastic Book Fairs. (top)

Though she'll never be on the Food Channel, VICKIE WEAVER (Fall 2005) baked a cherry pie on Indianapolis WISH-TV February 14 to promote her novel, Billie Girl. A link to the interview is on Vickie's website, www.vickieweaver.com. Later that week, Vickie had a booth at the Savannah Book Festival, enjoyed True Southern Hospitality, and sold lots of books! (top)

Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to VICKIE WEAVER on the death of her father, Gibson McConnell, on February 25.

Our heartfelt sympathy to SHAWNA CASEY KEHLER on the death of her mother.

Mary Mann Coulson, mother of KAREN MANN, died on April 1. To read about Mary, see http://www.ghherrmann.com/sitemaker/sites/GHHerr1/obit.cgi?user=349430MannCoulson. (top)

Spalding's Flickr Group

The MFA Program has a Flickr group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/spaldingmfa/. The MFA staff encourages all students and faculty to join the group and post their MFA-related photos. (Photos may also be posted, or linked to, on the MFA Facebook Fanpage by emailing the information to mfafacebook@spalding.edu.) (top)

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 Blackboard under SEMESTERS/ [your semester]/ DOCUMENTS: GENERAL INTEREST.

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. 2731 or email vmontgomery@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.
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All Spring students: Fill out the FAFSA for the 10-11 school year, using 2009 tax information.

All Summer (and Spring-Stretch) students: Fill out the FAFSA for the 11-12 school year, using 2010 tax information.

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

Online information: Newsletters are archived online at spalding.edu/mfanewsletter.
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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 communitysharing 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. If you are an alum, please alum include your graduation semester, such as Jake Doe (Fall 2003). 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, Program Associate
Gayle Hanratty, Administrative Assistant
Carolyn Flynn, Newsletter Editor

Master of Fine Arts in Writing •Spalding University
851 S. Fourth St. • Louisville, KY 40203
(800) 896-8941, ext. 2423 or (502) 585-9911, ext. 2423
mfa@spalding.edu • www.spalding.edu/mfa

On Extended Wings archives: To see previous issues of the newsletter, click here

Sena Jeter Naslund, Program Director
Karen Mann, Administrative Director
Kathleen Driskell, Associate Program Director
Katy Yocom, Program Associate
Gayle Hanratty, Administrative Assistant

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

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