Marriage of Figaro Performance and Lecture
MFAers attend a dress rehearsal of The Marriage of Figaro, the comic opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, during the Fall 2011 residency. The performance, staged by the Kentucky Opera, takes place at 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 16, at the Brown Theatre. The opera is sung in Italian with English supertitles.

Before coming to the residency, students are encouraged to read the libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, based on the play by Beaumarchais. The libretto can be found on Blackboard at MFA IN WRITING PROGRAM>SEMESTERS >FALL 2011, along with a synopsis and further materials provided by Kentucky Opera.

To prepare MFAers for the performance, on Tuesday, November 15, Kimcherie Lloyd, Director of Orchestral Studies and Opera Theatre at the University of  Louisville School of Music, delivers a plenary lecture about opera. An interrelatedness-of-the-arts discussion on the final day of residency affords students and faculty the opportunity to comment on the performance and how it might relate to their own writing life. The session also invites students and faculty to share other experiences with other arts that have influenced their writing lives and practices.
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MFA Program Celebrates Its 10th Birthday, Announces Gift
The MFA Program celebrates its tenth anniversary with a party, reading, and announcement of a donor gift at 3:30 p.m. Sunday, November 13, in the Egan Leadership Center.

The celebration features 10-minute readings by faculty members Silas House, Maureen Morehead, Eric Schmiedl, and Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund. Spalding University President Tori Murden McClure, herself an MFA alumna, will make remarks.

A panel of alumni representing the program’s original four areas of concentration will speak briefly. Panelists include Terry Price (fiction); Frank X. Walker (poetry); Diana M. Raab (creative nonfiction), and Kelly Creagh (writing for children and young adults).

In addition, Raab will be recognized for a monetary gift to the program to fund a lecture series beginning with the May 2012 residency. Each spring, a major author will be named The Diana M. Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence at Spalding University. The author will present a public lecture at Spalding and meet privately with Spalding MFA students and faculty. The recipient for Spring 2012 is to be announced at a later date. Raab was a member of the MFA program’s first incoming class in 2001.

A reception and cake-cutting begins at 4:45 p.m. in the ELC lobby.
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MFA10 Webpage Displays Birthday Greetings, Song: spalding.edu/mfa10
MFAers are invited to view the MFA birthday webpage at http://www.spalding.edu/mfa10. The page includes video clips of birthday greetings and slideshows of pictures from past residencies. Highlights include "Happy Birthday," sung in Italian by the alumni who traveled to Italy with the summer residency group, and a video with an original birthday song written by GEORGE SCHRICKER (Fall 2010).

The MFA staff invites all students, faculty, and alumni to record brief videos of greetings or to send pictures or written greetings. See the website for instructions about how to post these greetings.
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Spalding Implements New Printing Procedures
Spalding University has implemented a new campus print system. Printing is no longer free on campus, although students are given a starter balance of pages.

Students print from kiosks that are located around campus. Students may also print from home, Spalding computers or personal laptops on campus, or USB drives and pick up the printed pages at one of the kiosks. Color printing is available as well.

Students are given a starter balance of 50 pages. After that, the cost is 8 cents for black and white (12 cents for double-sided printing) and 45 cents for color printing, well below the printing costs at print shops in town. Concurrent with the change, Spalding has eliminated the technology fee previously assessed with each course.

MFA students will probably print fewer than 50 pages for residency assignments. Many assignments can be emailed or handwritten, although students will need to print their one-page revision for the Revision Workshop. Because students have the 50-page credit, the easiest way to print from the kiosk is to go to www.wepanow.com before residency and obtain a password.

To obtain the password, in the upper-right corner of the wepanow.com page, click on "Forgot Your Password?" On the next screen, students enter their Spalding email address (which can be accessed from the portal if this account is not forwarded to a home email account). After receiving the return email, students write down the password in a place that is available during residency.

Students who wish to print more than 50 pages may purchase print cards or use a credit card. The MFA staff recommends that students view the how-to videos near the bottom of the following page: http://spalding.edu/about/technology/campus-printing/ MFA faculty will receive further information on campus printing at the residency.
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New Approaches to Residency Scheduling
Students and faculty will notice a number of changes in the fall residency schedule. For dinner on opening day, Friday, November 11, students sit with their Workshop leaders and other Workshop members. In response to comments that the first Saturday is often too full, lunch and dinner are on your own, except for new students, who are invited to a catered dinner with Karen Mann and Katy Yocom at the Brown Hotel at 7 p.m.

The opening Workshop session takes place on the first Saturday morning, and the course orientation is moved to Monday afternoon. On many days, a faculty lecture will follow Workshop before the lunch break, allowing the day's studies to be more evenly divided between morning and afternoon. Lunch breaks are shorter, allowing more flexible time in the evenings. Two of the three student readings will take place at 8:30 p.m. at the Brown Hotel.

Students and faculty will have a chance to comment on the changes in the Residency Curriculum and Events Evaluation at the end of residency. (top)

2012 AWP Conference: Register Now
2012 Annual Conference & Bookfair
February 29-March 3, 2012
Chicago, Illinois
Hilton Chicago & Palmer House Hilton
http://www.awpwriter.org/conference/index.php

AWP’s Conference & Bookfair includes more than four hundred events and more than fifteen hundred presenters. Registration is open and hotel rooms are filling up fast. The MFA Program is a sponsor of the conference and pays registration for current students. Travel, lodging, and housing at students’ expense. Many alumni and faculty also attend.

Students who wish to take advantage of the free registration should email Katy Yocom at kyocom@spalding.edu. Faculty who are attending should check with Karen  about possible reimbursement of expenses.
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Faculty/Guest Books/Scripts in Common for Fall 2011

In addition to the Program Book in Common, Gregory Orr's The Caged Owl, students also read a Faculty Book/Script in Common in their area of concentration. The Faculty Books/Scripts in Common are:

• Fiction: John Pipkin, Woodsburner
• Poetry: Debra Kang Dean, Precipitates
• Creative Nonfiction: Molly Peacock, The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: Lesléa Newman, Hachiko Waits (W4C&YA students read book and watch the movie Hachi: A Dog's Tale, starring Richard Gere.)
• Playwriting/Screenwriting: Rebecca Gilman's Spinning Into Butter (The play is available on amazon.com; also read the screenplay and watch the movie Spinning Into Butter. The screenplay has been emailed to dramatic writing students and is posted on BB.)

Check Out the MFA Blog
MFA faculty and alumni are now blogging at blog.spalding.edu/mfainwriting. New posts are added weekly. The comment feature is now available.
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Facebook Fanpage Now Posting Contest and Other Information
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.

MFAers are invited 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 mfanewsletter@spalding.edu.
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Faculty Advisory Committee(FAC) for Fall Semester 2011
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.

• Kirby Gann, fiction
• Debra Kang Dean, poetry
• Dianne Aprile, creative nonfiction
• Joyce McDonald, writing for children and young adults
• Helena Kriel, playwriting/screenwriting

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

Connie Abston had a poem published in The Louisville Review and also had one selected for Accents Publishing’s forthcoming anthology of short of poems. She was also an international merit award winner in The Atlanta Review’s 2011 International Poetry Competition.
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Farah Bagharib-Kaltz, a first-semester student in screenwriting, is excited to announce that her children’s book “The Bird Who Was Afraid of Heights” was recently launched in the iTunes store. In 2008, she received the First Time Writers and Illustrators Publishing grant and had the book published by Straits Times Press in Singapore. While printed copies of the book are only available in Singapore, the story can now live globally with this interactive mobile application. Download it by opening the App Store on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and searching for the title.
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October 2011 was an exciting month for Kristin Brace. She started a new job as Program Assistant for the Community Literacy Initiative at the Literacy Center of West Michigan, where she previously served as an adult literacy tutor. She taught a creative writing workshop for adult learners at the Literacy Center on October 11. She organized, hosted, and shared work at an Emerging Writers Reading in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on October 22. Also, she has accepted a teaching position at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where she will teach Freshman Composition beginning in January 2012.
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Fourth-year fiction student Drema Drudge has another essay in the Chicken Soup for the Soul anthology series in The Magic of Mothers and Daughters edition, due out March 2012. This is Drema’s fourth story in Chicken Soup. Drema is also thrilled to be teaching two classes of writing at her alma mater, Manchester College, even if they are early morning classes.
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Fourth-year fiction/CNF student Carolyn Flynn received a glowing review from The Review Review for “Pound of Flesh,” an essay written in her first semester, mentored by CNF faculty member Robert Finch. Reviewer Renee Beauregard described the piece, published in The Tampa Review, as a “lovely, complex, and endlessly interesting essay about capitalism.” The piece wove together Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, the current economic crisis, and moments from her childhood, creating what Beauregard called “a hybrid of truth and feeling.” Beauregard concluded, “The essay paints the philosophy of capitalism as a tragedy—a beautiful, sad tragedy—and I can write with complete honesty that I have never been more interested in the subject than I was as I read this piece.”
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Vanessa Gonzales, a fourth-semester fiction student, announces that her short story “Reply All” is being published in the winter issue of Pilot Pocket Book. Vanessa wrote “Reply All” while working with Phil Deaver during her third semester. You can find her quirky musings at: www.vanessagonzales.com.
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Eva Sage Gordon’s short story “How to Keep Your Heart Broken from 18 to 25” will be published in Volume 7 of The Chaffey Review, the print literary journal published by Chaffey College in Southern California. http://www1.chaffey.edu/english/

Third-semester student Mary Knight, writing for children and young adults, announces that the Lexington Herald-Leader published her essay in the Life and Values section. Mary writes for a new quarterly publication, OnCall, published by UK HealthCare in Lexington, and for Natural Awakenings, a central Kentucky regional magazine that features her profile on Spalding MFA fiction faculty member Silas House in October 2011. Mary also attended the Kentucky Women Writers conference.
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The summer of 2011 was a rich, writing-filled one for Nancy Long. She was one of six participants to read at the Hart Rock Poetry Series in Bloomington, Indiana. She read eight poems, all of them written while attending Spalding. As part of the local Women Writing for a Change – Bloomington community, she co-facilitated a month-long poetry writing circle and attended a writing retreat at St. Mary’s of the Woods. Nancy recently took the plunge and started sending out poems for publication. She is filled with gratitude that some of her poems have found homes in the following publications: the summer issue of Poetry Quarterly, the inaugural issue of Paper Nautilus slated for Fall 2011 and upcoming editions of Weave Magazine and Two Hawks Quarterly.
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Fourth-semester student Susan Mallory announces that her poem, “A Stone for You” was published in the August Arts Issue of Big Sky Journal, published in Bozeman, Montana.
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Fourth-semester student Amy M. Miller announces that her essay “Wear It On Your Sleeve” was published in the September issue of Skirt! Magazine. Find it at http://skirt.com/essays/wear-it-your-sleeve.
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First-semester student Cynthia C. Rand, fiction and poetry, read poems at Poetry Hickory on August 9. One of those poems, “Father’s Day in Asheville” was selected for the 2012 Anthology of Hickory’s Finest Poets. Cynthia also participated in 100 Thousand Poets for Change on September 24 at Taste Full Beans Coffee House in Hickory, North Carolina.
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On October 12, Dianne Aprile gave a lecture in Vancouver, Canada, on the Kentucky monk-writer Thomas Merton, as a guest of the Merton Society of Canada. The lecture took place at 7 p.m. in the Alice Machay Room of the Vancouver (British Columbia) Central Library. Dianne’s poem “Sole Man” appears in the new anthology Bigger Than They Appear: An Anthology of Very Short Poems (Accents Publishing: Lexington, KY). She also recently served on a selection committee for the 2012 Hedgebrook Residency awards for women writers.
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In September, Ellie Bryant published a guest blog at Her Circle e-Zine about writing in a variety of genres, thanks to input from faculty members Richard Goodman and Phil Deaver. Read the entry at http://www.hercircleezine.com/2011/09/09/a-writers-identity-crisis-writing-in-multiple-genres/.
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K. L. Cook announces his new book, Love Songs for the Quarantined, which won the Spokane Prize for Short Fiction, is now available for order on amazon.com by contacting the press at WillowSpringsBooks@gmail.com. An essay about the evolution of Love Songs for the Quarantined is on the Spalding MFA faculty blog: http://blog.spalding.edu/mfainwriting. His essay “The Pleasures of Form” is available on Glimmer Train’s online Bulletin at http://www.glimmertrain.com/b57cook.html. The new issue of the anthology Best of the West 2011, containing Kenny’s story, “Bonnie and Clyde in the Backyard,” has just been published and is available for a 33 percent discount at the press website: http://www.utexas.edu/utpress/books/hor11p.html. To promote the new book, Kenny plans to give several readings, book signings, and workshops this fall. Full information is available in the News/Events section of his website at http://klcook.net/news_events.html.
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Roy Hoffman’s novel Chicken Dreaming Corn (University of Georgia Press, 2004 hardcover, 2006 paperback) has just been released in a Kindle edition: http://www.amazon.com/Chicken-Dreaming-Corn-ebook/dp/B005CWUF7O/ref=sr_1_2_title_1_ke?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1317177363&sr=1-2

Helena Kriel spent the month of August teaching in Johannesburg, South Africa. She taught workshops on the foundations of film writing. She also taught memoir workshops, applying the principles of dramatic film writing to the memoir format. Students came from varied backgrounds, some from the cities, some from the township areas. There were white, black, Indian, and mulatto students all bringing their truth and their lives to the page.
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Joyce McDonald’s young adult novel, Swallowing Stones, is among those selected by Random House Children’s Books to launch its new trade paperback imprint, Ember. The imprint is planned to be ahome for previous award winners and consistent bestsellers.
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Eleanor Morse read new work at the Three Fish Gallery in Portland, Maine, on September 22. On October 15, she reads excerpts from her novel Chopin’s Garden at an event on Peaks Island, Maine, in support of the War Resisters League.
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Sena Jeter Naslund celebrated the paperback publication by Perennial of her most recent novel, Adam & Eve, at the Festival of Books in New York and also gave a talk to a Louisville community book club meeting at Buck’s Restaurant on September 14. At the IdeaFestival in Louisville, she participated in a screenwriting panel discussion led by Brad Riddell, and she attended the International New Film Festival in Chicago for a week in October. On October 26, she gives a convocation presentation with alum Nana Lampton at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. Sena rejoices in the completion on August 30 of the first draft of her next novel, The Fountain of St. James Court (including Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman), and she is currently hard at work on the first revision, due at her publisher on August 31, 2012.
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Lesléa Newman has sold the Swedish translation rights to her middle grade novel, Hachiko Waits. Her poems “Daddy’s Girl,” “Education,” and “Soon” have been accepted for publication in the literary journal Big Scream. Her essay “Beaming on the Bima” has been posted on the Jewish Writing Project website http://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/beaming-on-the-bima/. Her picture book A Kiss on the Keppie has been accepted for publication by Shofar Books, a division of Marshall Cavendish (“keppie” is an affectionate diminutive from the Yiddish word “kop,” which means “head”). And finally, she recently traveled to New York City to attend a staged reading of A Letter to Harvey Milk, a new musical based on her short story by the same name. Find out more at http://broadwayworld.com/article/Leslie-Kritzer-Jeff-Keller-Lead-A-LETTER-TO-HARVEY-MILK-20110920.
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Katy Yocom continues to write for Food & Dining Magazine. Current and past issues can be found on Facebook at Food & Dining Magazine—click the Magazine link. The current (Fall 2011) issue contains her articles on Harvest, a locavore restaurant, and Eddie Merlot’s, a regional steak place. Her article about Louisville’s “new pizza revolution” will appear in the Winter edition (forthcoming in November). Food & Dining is distributed free locally and can be found, among other places, in rooms at the Brown Hotel.
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Alumni

Two of David B. Carren’s (Fall 2005) original screenplays have been selected as semi-finalists in this year’s Austin Film Festival Script Competition. Call Me Luke was nominated in the Drama and Latitude categories, and Mutant Snakeoid Zombie Bikers was nominated in the Dark Heroes Studios Sci-Fi category. The finalists were to be announced in late September and the winners October 22. Find out more at http://www.austinfilmfestival.com/new/2011_semifinalists_secondround.
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Amy M. Clark (Fall 2004) has poems in the current issues of Cave Wall and The Cresset. Her book of poems, Stray Home (University of North Texas Press), was selected by the Massachusetts Center for the Book as a Must-Read Book for 2011 and was promoted in libraries throughout the state.
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Linda Cruise (May 2008) teaches a college-level, six-week course, “Creative Writing: Developing a Writer’s Craft & Critical Eye” at Champlain Valley Union High School’s adult-continuing education program, in Hinesburg, Vermont, starting October 4. Class format consists of lecture, focusing on various story elements and aspects of craft, followed by discussion of pre-assigned reading material. She provides individual feedback of each student’s writing, with the goal of highlighting essential craft techniques, used in fiction and creative nonfiction writing. Students are asked to keep up with the weekly reading material (a short story) and submit personal writing pieces (either fiction or creative nonfiction).
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On September 24, Sonja de Vries (Fall 2009) and Katerina Stoykova-Klemer (Fall 2009) joined in the biggest poetry event in history, spanning ninety-seven countries across the globe and 450 cities. From Kabul, Afghanistan, and Bogota, Columbia, to Louisville, Kentucky, this event celebrated the role of poetry and poets in creating a more just society. The event was at La Casita in Old Louisville and included thirteen local poets and four bands. Donations went to the work of La Casita.
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Adriena Dame (Fall 2007) announces her new role as a board member for the Kentucky Foundation for Women, where she is recognized as a writer, jewelry artist (http://www.damejoyas.com), teaching professional, and activist. She is also the writing coach for Generation iSpeak (www.generationispeak.org), a youth poetry organization she recently accompanied to the Brave New Voices Festival and Poetry Slam in San Francisco, California.
In addition, she is the founder of The Mixed Nuts Writers Group, and she leads a workshop for educators and college students titled “Eat, Peek, Sniff . . . A Rendezvous with the Senses.” Her short story cycle, Laughing Matters, is scheduled for release in March 2012.
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Daniel DiStasio’s (Fall 2006)novel Four Furies was contracted for publication by Vagabondage Press LLC. Vagabondage Press is an independent publisher of literary fiction and literary quality genre fiction. It is slated to be available in print and digitally in 2012. Daniel first developed Four Furies at Spalding’s Post-Grad Novel Workshop under the direction of Roy Hoffman assisted by Karen Mann. Daniel wishes to thank all the members of the workshop and many other Spalding colleagues for their support in developing this book.
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Stacia M. Fleegal (Fall 2006) has three poems from her series Anti-Memories forthcoming in the next issue of UCity Review. Her second full-length collection of poems, Versus, was also recently reviewed in Gloom Cupboard. Lastly, she is now doing editorial and digital media work for the Los Angeles Review. Keep up with her at http://www.staciamfleegal.com.
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Bob Foshee (Spring 2011) is teaching composition to freshmen at Bellarmine University in Louisville, Kentucky.
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On September 20 at Concordia University, Irvine, California, Thea Gavin (Spring 2005) delivered a combination poetry reading/slide show, which highlighted some of the places, plants, and creatures of the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, where she was artist-in-residence from June 6-27. She originally gave this presentation at the historic North Rim Lodge at Bright Angel Point on June 26. Her blog about “Barefoot Wandering and Writing: Wild Orange County and Beyond” can be found at http://www.theagavin.com.
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Karen George (Spring 2009) participated in a Chicago weekend poetry workshop with Fran Quinn and Li-Young Lee and attended the Kentucky Women Writers Conference in Lexington. She read from her poetry chapbook Into the Heartland at Finishing Line Press Night of the First Friday reading series in Aquarius Star/Om Cafe, as well as reading in the Bon Mot/ley reading series at the Clifton Cultural Arts Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. Her poems “Vigils,” “Memory Coils,” and “Imprints” appeared in the Summer Issue 6 of Still: The Journal at http://www.stilljournal.net. “Memory Coils” originated as an ekphrastic cross-genre exercise during the residency, in which students visited the Speed Art Museum. Her short story “The Floating Child” was selected as winner of the Next Great Writer Competition sponsored by the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. She wrote the story during her first residency working with faculty member Jody Lisberger.
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Tara Goldstein’s (Fall 2006) theatre company, Gailey Road Productions (http://www.gaileyroad.com), recently held a five-day workshop of Tara’s new play, Ana’s Shadow. Ana’s Shadow is the sequel to Harriet’s House, which Gailey Road staged in July 2010 in Toronto. The workshop ended with a public work-in-progress reading of the play on August 26, which attracted about 70 people. Ana’s Shadow continues the story of Harriet; her new wife, Marty; and Harriet’s three daughters, Luisa, Ana, and Clare. Tara hopes to stage Ana’s Shadow in the spring of 2013.

Tara has also just finished proofreading galleys of her upcoming book, Staging Harriet’s House: Writing and Producing Research-Informed Theatre, which publishes this fall with Peter Lang. The book provides an overview of the world of research-informed theatre and tells the story of how Tara came to write and produce Harriet’s House. In a discussion of learning to become a playwright, Tara writes about her experience in the Spalding MFA program and discusses her work with Spalding mentors Claudia Johnson, Eric Schmiedl and Rane Arroyo. Spalding classmate
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Jeanne Haggard’s (Fall 2006) recent directorial work on The Laramie Project: Ten Years Later is also featured.
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Brian Hampton (Fall 2006) is having productions of his play The Jungle Fun Room at Matoaca High School in Chesterfield, Virginia, November 17-19 and the one-act adaptation with William Byrd High School in Vinton, Virginia, where they will compete in the Virginia High School League one-act play competition on October 22.
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Amy Hanridge (Spring 2011) published a short story titled “Starter” in the Journal of Healthcare, Science and the Humanities in October. The story can be found in print and online in the Conference Proceedings edition at this link: http://www.nmvaa.org/nmi/subPage.php?sp=13
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Chris Helvey (Fall 2006) reports his story “Work Gloves” was published by The Dos Passos Review (Vol. 8, No.1). His chapbook On The Boulevard was published and released by Finishing Line Press.

Edie Hemingway (May 2004) participated in a panel discussion at Hood College (Frederick, Maryland) on October 3, following the screening of the documentary film Library of the Early Mind, which focuses on the significance of children’s literature in modern culture.
Other participants include the film’s director, Ted Delaney; children’s book illustrator Susan Detwiler; and children’s librarian and member of the 2011 Newbery Selection Committee, Julie Dietzel-Glair.

In July, Edie invited Stephanie Stuve-Bodeen (May 2003) and Betsy Woods (May 2004) to speak at the Maryland/Delaware/West Virginia Society of Children Book Writers and Illustrators Conference. Stephanie and her Feiwel & Friends editor, Liz Szabla, led the young adult writing track, and Betsy presented a series of three sessions on creativity.
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Angela Jackson-Brown’s (Fall 2009) short story, “Shhhhhh…Don’t Disturb the Crazy People” appears in the Fall 2011 edition of The Louisville Review.
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Marci Rae Johnson (Spring 2005) has a poem upcoming in Strange Horizons. She has recently been appointed Poetry Editor for The Cresset, a journal of arts, politics, culture, and science published by Valparaiso University, where she teaches in the Freshman Core program and the English department.
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Cyn Kitchen (Spring 2005) has nonfiction pieces appearing in several places this fall. Her essay, “It Could Be Worse,” publishes in Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting. The forthcoming anthology, Easy to Love but Hard to Raise, plays host to her essay, “A Lightbulb Moment.”

Additionally, Cyn’s essay, “Living in River City on Mother’s Day” is set to appear in The Mom Egg (http://themomegg.com). A related essay, “Laundry Room with a View” is slated to appear in Motif 3: Work. These last two works are from Cyn’s book-length nonfiction manuscript, Disaster Preparedness, chronicling her experience as the mother of a Marine who did a tour of duty in Iraq.
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Katrina Kittle (Fall 2008) is thrilled that her first book for younger audiences was released in October. Reasons to Be Happy is being published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky and is for middle school students.
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Jill Koren’s (Spring 2008) chapbook, While the Water Rises Around Us, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Pre-orders are now possible at: http://www.finishinglinepress.com/NewReleasesandForthcomingTitles.htm. The book is due to be released December 2.

Jill also recently emceed an open mic at Village Lights Bookstore in Madison, Indiana, and coordinated a group of four local poets to read for a South of Main Arts in the Alley (SoMaA) event September 23. Jill, recently appointed Permanent MC Extraordinaire, hosts the next open mic at Village Lights on October 28.
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Caroline LeBlanc (Spring 2011) attended the August 2011 AROHO (A Room of Her Own) retreat at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. The wonderful group of 90 women writers included such well-known writers as Mary Johnson, Breena Clark, Bhanu Kapil, Marilynne Robinson, Leslie Ullman and Kate Gale.

Caroline has also written, directed, and produced a short video, “Tara & I,” in partnership with JT Lee and Gerard Moses of Studio24, Syracuse, New York (http://studio24m.com/default.aspx). In Studio 24’s Saturday Workshops, she and other writers and actors read and perform each other’s original work. Caroline continues to offer Writing for Your Life writing circles for soldiers and their family members at Fort Drum, New York.
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Maryann Lesert (Fall 2003) attended the Prague Summer Program at St. Charles University, Czech Republic, participating in a novel workshop (with Melissa Pritchard, who previously mentored at Spalding) and a Czech Literature class that examined the roles of art, music, and literature in creating modern Czech identity and socio-political change. Maryann also enjoyed—from a distance—summer productions of her short plays If, When, and Only and Bump, produced at Los Angeles City College and in Oakland, California, by the Fog City Bandits.
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Amina S. McIntyre’s (Fall 2009) play In the Garden was produced at Lenoir-Rhyne University from September 28 to October 2.
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Deborah (Zarka) Miller-Fox (Fall 2005) delivered the commencement address for Arcanum High School in June. In August, she was the keynote speaker for the Anderson University fall faculty retreat, and in February she speaks about her young adult novel to members of the Belles Lettres club in Anderson, Indiana.
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Michael Morris (Spring 2010) wrote an essay on grandparents that was published in the Los Angeles Times, the Dallas Morning News, the Denver Post and the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. His novel, Slow Way Home, is about a young boy caught up in the middle of a custody battle between his grandparents and his addicted mother. Read the essays at http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jul/15/opinion/la-oe-morris-grandparents-20110715.
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Beth Newberry’s (Fall 2007)  essay “Center of the Compass” was named in a list of the notable essays of the past year in the 2011 edition of The Best American Essays. It appeared in last spring’s The Louisville Review.
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Mary Popham (Fall 2003) published an essay online for Young Writers Connection, “I Always Knew I Was a Writer,” February 2011; published a letter to Courier-Journal’s Reader’s Forum, “Sign Power Pledge,” Nov 23, 2010; read from short story, “The Sawmill and the Moonshine,” at the Mother Lodge Festival at The Rudyard Kipling, Louisville, Kentucky, on Oct 1, 2010. She continues to write book reviews for the Courier-Journal, Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews.
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Diana Raab (October 2003) spoke on September 15 at the Camarillo Library in California on “The Scoop on Writing Memoir.” Her poem “The Typewriter” appeared in the anthology Many Windows. Her essay “How Writing Heals” appeared in Whole Woman Village Post. Her self-help memoir, Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey, which she began at Spalding, won the 2011 Mom’s Choice Award for Best Adult Memoir/Biography. She has two articles forthcoming in The Huffington Post in October, “Thank You Cancer” (health vertical) and “Writers and Their Dark Places” (boomer vertical). She’s compiled and edited a forthcoming anthology called Writers On The Edge: 22 Writers Speak on Addiction and Dependency (Modern History Press, February 2012), with a foreword from Jerry Stahl and submissions from Molly Peacock, Gregory Orr, B.H. Fairchild, Scott Russell Sanders, Denise Duhamel, David Huddle, and Chase Twichell amongst others.
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Kathleen Thompson (Fall 2003) had an essay, “Thumbs Up, Palmer,” published in the first issue of the new weekly, September 1-8, WELD for Birmingham. Glenny Brock (Spring 2007) is the founding editor. Kathleen also read poetry at the Limestone Dust Poetry Festival.
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Christamar Varicella (Fall 2004) has a short story coming out in the October 2011 issue of Birmingham Arts Journal (http://www.birminghamartsjournal.com/). “The Floating Dock” was submitted for workshop to leaders Melissa Pritchard and Ellie Bryant during the Fall 2002 residency under the title “Nerve Endings.” For Christamar, the experience was a breakthrough, both for his story and for his development as a writer, and he wishes to thank Ellie, Melissa, and everyone in the class for their support and insight.
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Colleen Wells (Fall 2010) attended the Indiana University Writer’s Conference in Bloomington, Indiana, in June. In August she began teaching composition part-time at Ivy Tech State College in Bloomington. On September 16, Colleen attended Kathleen Adam’s workshop, “Journal Writing as a Therapeutic Tool,” in Indianapolis. Her essay “My Corner of the Universe” has been selected for a collection of writings called The Tao of Place, edited by Colleen Sell, who is seeking a publisher for the book. Read more at http://www.ColleenWells.net.
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Corrections

None

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Personals

Congratulations to Kiietti Walker-Parker and her husband, Arbie, on the birth of their son, Aiidin Aliinde Grant Parker, on September 29.

Our heartfelt sympathy to Susan Campbell Bartoletti on the death of her father, William E. Jenkins, on October 15.

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Classifieds

None

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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 Fall 2011 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 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. 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
Nancy Long, Web Editor
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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

Direct No.	Person	Toll Free Ext. 800-896-8941
502-873-4400	Katy Yocom	4400
502-873-4396	Kathleen Driskell	4396
502-873-4397	Gayle Hanratty	4397
502-873-4398	Louisville Review	4398
502-873-4399	Karen Mann	4399
502-873-4330	Vickie Montgomery	4330

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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