Vol. 9 No. 4
May 2006
New Teaching Practicum: ENG660
Getting the Most out of Residency
Life of a Writer
Change of Address and Personals
Previous Newsletters
Welcome to New MFA Faculty
The Spalding MFA Program welcomes
three new faculty members in May: Doreen Baingana, Candice Ransom,
and Rebecca Walker.
Doreen Baingana, MFA (fiction), has published a book of short stories, Tropical Fish: Stories Out of Entebbe (UMass Press), which won the Associated Writing Programs Award for Short Fiction in 2003. Her fiction has appeared in journals such as Chelsea, Glimmer Train, The Sun, Crab Orchard Review, Meridian, and Potomac Review, and her poetry is included in the anthology Beyond the Frontier. She has won the Washington Independent Writers Fiction prize, was nominated for the Caine Prize in African Writing, and received an artist grant from the District of Columbia Commission of the Arts and Humanities. Doreen received an MFA from the University of Maryland. Originally from Uganda, where she earned a law degree from Makerere University, Kampala, Doreen now lives in Maryland.
Candice Ransom, MFA (writing for children). The author of more than 100 books for children and young adults, Candice Ransom holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College and is currently earning her MA in children’s literature at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She has published widely in all genres, including picture books, The Big Green Pocketbook (HarperCollins), When the Whippoorwill Calls (Morrow), and The Promise Quilt (Walker); easy readers, I Like Shoes (Scholastic); chapter books, Who Needs Third Grade? (Troll), the forthcoming 10-book series Time Spies (Wizards of the Coast/Random); contemporary novels, Ladies and Jellybeans (Macmillan), fantasy and suspense, Key to Griffon’s Lair (Wizards of the Coast), Blackbird Keep (Silhouette); historical novels, Fire in the Sky (Lerner), Between Two Worlds (Scholastic); biography, Listening to Crickets: A Story About Rachel Carson (Carolrhoda); nonfiction, Children of the Civil War (Lerner), Scrapbooking for You (Sterling); and young adult fiction, Kaleidoscope (Crosswinds). More than forty-five of her books have been translated into twelve languages. Her books have been chosen as Pick of the List, ALA Notable for Reluctant Reader, New York Times Ten Best Illustrated Book of the Year, Book of the Month Club selection, Social Studies Book of the Year, IRA Children’s Choice, IRA Teacher’s Choice, Smithsonian Notable, CBC Best Science Book, and numerous starred reviews and state young readers’ lists. She lives in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Rebecca Walker (creative nonfiction) joins the Spalding faculty to lead a residency workshop for the MFA Program this May (she won’t be mentoring students through the semester). Her books include the international bestseller Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self, and she is the editor of two anthologies: What Makes a Man: 22 Writers Imagine the Future and To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. A new memoir, Baby Love, is forthcoming in May 2007 from Riverhead Books. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, Salon.com, Interview, Vibe, Self, Essence, Spin, Ms., Glamour, and Buddhadharma, and her essays are widely anthologized. Rebecca is the recipient of the Alex Award from the American Library Association and of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. She was recently a keynote speaker at the first Conference on Masculinity in the Baltics, convened by the Ministries of Culture and Gender Equality of Estonia. She has been interviewed by Terri Gross and Charlie Rose and was featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Rebecca is at work on a third memoir about her time in Africa and another anthology on new family configurations. She lives in Northern California with the father of her young son.
Book Review on
Vreeland’s Life Studies by Julie Brickman
Julie Brickman published a book review on Susan Vreeland’s
Life Studies in the Sunday Books supplement of the San Diego Union-Tribune
on December 24, 2005. Of the review, Susan Vreeland said, “you ‘got
it’—what I was hoping readers would ‘get.’” To
read the review, click here.
To find out more about Susan Vreeland, see her website at www.svreeland.com
News about
ENG660 Teaching Practicum in Creative Writing
The MFA’s new enrichment course, ENG660: Teaching Practicum in Creative
Writing, is to be offered in the Fall 2006 semester. The course accommodates
five students and students are admitted only after they have successfully
completed the prerequisites of ENG610 and ENG620. If more than five students
register for the course, then students are admitted to ENG660 according
to their seniority in the Program. Though it is unlikely this course will
be offered each semester, the Program plans to schedule the course often
enough for all interested to enroll before they graduate. To be added
to the waiting list for the Fall 2006 offering of ENG660, please email
Kathleen Driskell.
Writing Links and
Resources
The MFA Program thanks David Tipton, MFA poetry student and Spalding Library’s
Sr. Assoc. Librarian for Administration & User Services, Library Webmaster
& Electronic Reserves Administrator, for creating a web page that
is full of links to resources for MFA students and creative writers. This
is a great link for students to bookmark. After following the link, click
on reference, subject web links, MFAW links.
Getting the
Most Out of the Residency
Students should take full advantage of faculty and student lectures; panels;
and faculty, student, and graduation readings while at the residency.
MFA students write five lecture reports and one reading report during
each residency. The Program's policy is that four of these lecture reports
must discuss lectures in the student’s area of concentration. The
fifth lecture report may, at the student's discretion, discuss a plenary
session.
In response to student requests for more time to write reports, the Spring
2006 residency schedule provides two periods for students to write lecture
and reading reports and to complete writing exercises and revisions. The
first of these time periods occurs Wednesday evening; the second period
is on the final Saturday. Extended lunch periods also offer time for evaluation
writing.
Residency
Schedule Information
For the first time, the residency schedule is available before the residency.
The spring 2006 Residency Schedule is to be mailed to students and faculty
by May 15. MFA-ers should print the schedule to bring to the residency.
In case of changes in the schedule during the week before residency, a
list of changes is to be included in the Residency Welcome Packet.
Many residency events have already been announced or discussed in On
Extended Wings. A previously announced gesture drawing session has
been canceled due to scheduling conflicts.
Life of a Writer
Students, faculty, and alumni: Please email writing news to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
Joan Donaldson is to be a guest author at the Michigan Reading Association’s Summer Conference, where she is to teach a writing workshop on creating and maintaining a sense of place. On April 18, Joan was awarded a Kate Garrod Post Education scholarship to be applied to her Spalding tuition. The scholarship is offered by the Woman’s Literary Club of Holland, Michigan.
Lisa Izzi recently attended an event in Menlo Park, California, hosted by the San Mateo County Reading Association called “Dive into New Books.” The speakers—book buyers, librarians, teachers, and literacy professionals—discussed recently published books, their impact on kids, and how to expand a child’s reading life.
Chris Helvey’s article on Louisville stained-glass artist Laura Mentor was published in the Friends of Paul Sawyier Public Library Spring 2006 Newsletter.
Jae Newman’s poem “Note to Kim Jong Il” is forthcoming in the Fall 2006 issue of 5 AM.
Matthew Vetter, in association with One Legged Cow Press, read
from his chapbook Death on the Autobahn and Other Poems April 27
at the Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, Kentucky.
Ellie Bryant spent the month of April at the David and Julia White Artists’ Colony in Costa Rica. Her short story “Dare’s Tractor” was chosen to be included in the forthcoming Tartts2 anthology published by Swallow’s Tale Press. Her story “Bicot” was awarded honorable mention in the Abroad short fiction contest.
Kathleen Driskell gave a talk, “Poetry and the Line,” at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in Bowling Green in early April. She also read at The Jazz Factory in Louisville with Erin Keane (spring 2004) and Laverne Zabielski (spring 04) on April 19. On April 27, she sat on a poetry panel led by Frank X Walker (fall 2003) at the Bluegrass Festival of Books in Lexington, Kentucky.
Robert Finch won a 2006 regional Edward R. Murrow Award for his radio commentary, “Mailbox Spiders,” aired as part of his weekly radio commentaries, “A Cape Cod Notebook,” on WCAI in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The annual Murrow Awards, presented by the Radio-Television News Directors Association, have honored outstanding achievements in electronic journalism since 1971. Bob’s essay won in the Broadcast Writing category for the New England Region and is to be entered in the national competition. A transcript and audio of the essay are available at WCAI’s website, http://www.wgbh.org/cainan/article?item_id=2564028
The paperback edition of Connie May Fowler’s sixth book, The Problem with Murmur Lee, was published in March by Broadway Books. Also in March she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Lee County Public Library System. Hillsborough County recently held a monthlong celebration of her work, which culminated on March 24 with Connie May Fowler Day. Her work continues to be tapped as One Book/One Community choices throughout the country. She has essays forthcoming in BestLife Magazine and Florida Forum. The television show she produces for Vision TV (Central Florida Public Television) just began its second season, featuring her interviews with Tobias Wolff, Nathan Englander, Nikki Giovanni, and Dorothy Allison.
A paperback edition of Roy Hoffman’s novel, Chicken Dreaming Corn, was published by University of Georgia Press on March 1. He gave presentations of the novel at the Virginia Festival of the Book in Charlottesville on March 24; the Alabama Festival of the Book in Montgomery on April 22; and at the banquet of the Friends of the Library of Foley, Alabama, on April 30. On April 23, Roy’s article, “Made in Alabama: The Gay Talese Story,” appeared as a Sunday front page feature in the Mobile Press-Register, based on a recent evening Roy visited with Gay Talese in Manhattan. Roy appeared on C-Span 2’s Book TV, April 30, for a brief, prerecorded conversation about his nonfiction collection, Back Home. The segment, taped on Book TV’s Book Bus, will be repeated at undetermined times.
Sena Jeter Naslund, as Kentucky Poet Laureate, has given a number of presentations this spring throughout Kentucky: Hazard Community College; Somerset Writers’ Conference; Pine Mountain Writers’ Conference, Evening at the Library in Paducah; Collegiate School, Louisville; Kentucky Poetry Day, Frankfort; Poetry Out Loud judge, Frankfort. In New York City, she read from Four Spirits at a fundraiser for the Sixteenth Street Foundation, and she spoke at Motlow College, Lynchburg, Tenn. Sena also gave a seminar on Four Spirits at the University of Louisville and was a keynote speaker at U of L’s Twentieth-Century Literature Conference. Currently Sena is reading galleys for her forthcoming novel Abundance, A Novel of Marie Antoinette, and she is working on the play script for Four Spirits, with co-author Elaine Hughes, and on the script for Ahab’s Wife: The Musical, with composer/lyricist Frank Richmond. (A preview of the muscial is to be staged at 3 p.m. Sunday, May 21, at the upcoming residency.) Sena is looking forward to the Harmonic Convergence Retreat following the May residency where she begin the next (unnamed) novel and then travel to Sweden, Russia, and Portugal for research.
Jeanie Thompson’s poems from the “Litany for a Vanishing Landscape” series have been included in an online anthology initiative by Alabama Poet Laureate Sue Brannan Walker (www.suebwalker.com). Jeanie has poems archived on line at www.StorySouth.com and www.athicket.com In her capacity as director of the Alabama Writers’ Forum, she conducted radio interviews with Anita Miller Garner and Peter Huggins, both 2006 Alabama State Council on the Arts Artist Fellowship Recipients in Literature, for the Alabama Arts Radio Series. These interviews aired on WTSU-FM public radio (89.9) in March. Jeanie attended the AWP conference in Austin to represent Spalding’s MFA Program and also to promote the Alabama Writers’ Forum, which had a table in the Book Fair. She guest-edited poetry for the Spring 2006 issue of The Louisville Review.
Neela Vaswani’s story “The Pelvis Series” has been awarded an O. Henry Prize and appears in O. Henry Prize Stories 2006, due out in May from Random House. “The Pelvis Series” originally appeared in Epoch.
Katy Yocom’s radio commentary “Potty Politics on Diversity
Day,” about Gov. Ernie Fletcher’s decision to rescind employment
protection for gay and transgendered state employees, airs on Louisville
public radio station 89.3 WFPL in June. Katy shares a slide show of
her India trip at 12:15 p.m. Wednesday, May 24, in the ELC Lectorium
for those MFA-ers who are interested.
Mr. Hell, the horror feature David Carren (fall 2005) co-wrote and produced for Jack Rhodes Productions, has been released across the country through Maverick Entertainment. The film, which stars Tracy Scoggins, is available in Blockbuster and Hollywood Video stores and on Netflix.
Susan Gilliam (fall 2005) is teaching a course titled “Poetry for All Levels” at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky. She continues to exhibit her paintings and drawings at various galleries in the Lexington area and hosts periodic Gallery Hop presentations at her studio in downtown Lexington.
Mike Hampton (fall 2005) was an invited guest speaker at the University of Kentucky, where he spoke to a class about the process of getting published. Also, his list “7 Band Names that Would Be Impossible to Book” has been accepted for publication in Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney’s Book of Lists by Vintage. The anthology is set for publication in September of this year. Mike’s short-short stories “The Blessed Event” and “What They Don’t Tell You” were both named finalists in The World’s Best Short Short Story contest by Robert Olen Butler and will appear in the September issue of The Southeast Review.
Richard Newman (fall 2004) has poems forthcoming in New Letters and 32 Poems.
Pamela Steele’s (spring 2004) book-length poetry manuscript, Paper Bird, is forthcoming from Ice River Press in fall 2006. Her poem “To the Woman Single Again” appeared in the latest issue of Open 24 Hours.
Spring
2006 Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC)
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
individuals’ performance in the program.
• Connie May Fowler, Fiction
• Greg Pape, Poetry
• Dianne Aprile, Creative Nonfiction
• Luke Wallin, Writing for Children
• Charlie Schulman, Playwriting/Screenwriting (top)
Books in Common
for Spring ’06
Students read the Book in Common, Life Studies by Susan Vreeland,
and the Faculty/Guest Book in Common in the area of concentration that
they are to study in the spring semester in preparation for a discussion
with the author at the spring 2006 residency.
• Fiction: Blackberries, Blackberries by Crystal
Wilkinson
• Poetry: Laughing Sickness by Kathleen Driskell.
To order, send check for $10 made out to Fleur-de-Lis Press to Liz Nethery,
Spalding University, 851 S. Fourth St., Louisville, KY 40203, or order
from amazon.com
• Nonfiction: The Eye Is Not Enough by Dianne Aprile.
To order, email mlhess@mlhess.win.net
• Writing for Children: The Flag Maker by Susan Campbell
Bartoletti
• Playwriting: Character Assassins by Charles Schulman
(The script is mailed to students.)
• Screenwriting: Obscenity by Claudia Johnson and
Matt Stevens (The script is mailed to students.) (top)
Announcement:
Books in Common for Fall ’06
All students and faculty read the Book in Common, Migration: New
and Selected Poems by W. S. Merwin, and students read the Faculty/Guest
Book in Common in the area of concentration they are to study in the
fall semester in preparation for a discussion with authors at the fall
2006 residency.
Fiction: Kenny Cook’s The Girl from Charnelle
Poetry: Richard Cecil’s Twenty First Century Blues
Creative Nonfiction: Molly Peacock’s Paradise, Piece
by Piece (available for purchase at the upcoming residency)
Writing for Children: Candice Ransom’s Finding Day’s
Bottom (available for purchase only from the Spalding bookstore
beginning in June. The bookstore ships to any US location.)
Playwriting: TBA
Screenwriting: Sam Zalutsky’s Mama’s Boy (to
be mailed by the MFA Office)
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 Spring
2006 semester need to re-file for the fallr semester. (top)
For help with financial aid questions, call Vicki Montgomery at 800-896-8941 ext. 2731 or 502-585-9911, ext. 2731 or email vmontgomery@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 Cindy
Schnell, Donor Relations Coordinator in the office of Development and
Alumni Relations. Email: cschnell@spalding.edu
Phone: (800) 896-8941, ext. 2505 or (502) 585-9911, ext. 2505.
MFA Students/Faculty/Alums Discussion Board. The MFA Discussion Board is off to an energetic start. Currently, the most active topic is Publishing Opportunities, which lists contests and calls for submission, for example, a call for submissions from Alligator Juniper, the national literary journal at Prescott College, where Kenny Cook is fiction and creative nonfiction editor. Students and faculty are welcome to post information in this area and others. See the MFA Discussion Board at:
http://eres.spalding.edu/bboard.asp?cid=246&cname=ENG001MFAFor easy access to the Discussion Board, students and faculty are encouraged
to bookmark the site. (top)
Online information: MFA in Writing forms, deadlines, and other student and faculty information are available online at http://www.spalding.edu/mfaforms Newsletters are at http://www.spalding.edu/mfanewsletter For convenience, bookmark these two pages. Both web addresses are case sensitive. The MFA Office is happy to mail program forms or the newsletter, if requested. Email kyocom@spalding.edu. (top)
Life of a Writer is an important newsletter column that reports
on experiences around the writing life of our students, faculty, and
alums.
Email submissions to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
Life of a Writer pieces should be written as a paragraph in third person. It is helpful for alums to include their graduation semester, such as Jake Doe (October 2003). Spell out month and state names. Include title of piece, publishers, date of publication, and Website addresses, when appropriate. (top)
Below is a list of some of the kinds of activities that might be included in the Life of a Writer column.
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
Email Life of a Writer information to Jamey Temple at mfanewsletter@spalding.edu