Welcome to New Faculty Members for Fall 2012

Ten additional faculty members are joining the Spalding MFA in Writing Program with the Fall 2012 residency, due to large summer and fall enrollments with growth in particular areas of concentration, as well as to a large number of requests from current faculty for released time to work on their own projects. The MFA Program is happy to welcome David-Matthew Barnes, Mary Clyde, Leslie Daniels, Pete Duval, Gabriel Jason Dean, Garret Freymann-Weyr, Edie Hemingway, Fenton Johnson, and Rebecca Walker.

Leslie Daniels, MA, MFA, will mentor students in fiction. Leslie’s first novel, Cleaning Nabokov’s House, was published by Simon & Schuster/Touchstone in 2011 and came out in paperback in 2012. Cleaning Nabokov’s House has been translated into in four languages and was recently optioned for film. Prior to the book’s publication, Leslie worked in publishing for two decades, first as an assistant, then as a literary agent in New York. Throughout her tenure as a literary agent, Leslie nurtured the work and careers of many writers, working closely with writers to shape and edit their work. Leslie received a BA in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in psychology from the New School for Social Research, and an MFA in creative writing from Vermont College. She has taught writing workshops at the University of Pennsylvania writing conference, Eastern Washington University MFA program, Franklin & Marshall College, and others. She was the 2011 Walton Award visiting writer at the University of Arkansas. She is on faculty at The Squaw Valley Writers Conference. Between 2005 and 2010, Leslie served as the fiction editor for Green Mountains Review. Leslie is currently the artistic advisor to the Finger Lakes literary festival, Spring Writes. She has published stories or essays in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, New Ohio Review, and The Florida Review, among others. Her one-act play was produced by The Shooting Gallery in New York City. She has been nominated for Best American Essays, four times for the Pushcart Prize, and for the Best of the Associated Writing Programs. Leslie is at work on a novel and a play. She lives in Ithaca, New York.
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Gabriel Jason Dean, MFA, will mentor playwriting students. He also works in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. Gabriel is a New York / Austin-based playwright who originally hails from Atlanta, Georgia. His plays have been produced or developed at Theatre Row, Hangar Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, the Lark, New York Stage & Film, People’s Light, ASSITEJ International, The Kennedy Center, Oregon Shakespeare, Dallas Children’s Theatre, A Red Orchid Theatre, Aurora Theatre, Dad’s Garage Theatre, Actor’s Express, Horizon Theatre, Illinois Shakespeare Festival, FronteraFest, Source Festival, and Essential Theatre. Gabriel received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF 2012 Paula Vogel Prize and the Theatre for Young Audiences Award and was runner-up for the National Steinberg Award. In 2011, he received the Kennedy Center’s ACTF Ken Ludwig Prize for a body of work from an emerging writer and was runner-up for the Princess Grace Award. His script for children The Transition of Doodle Pequeño received the 2011 New England Theatre Conference Aurand Harris Award and was selected for the 2012 Kennedy Center New Visions / New Voices Conference with People’s Light and Theatre Company. He is the recipient of the 2010 Essential Theatre New Play Prize and won the 2010 Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival. His scripts are available through Dramatic Publishing, Playscripts and Samuel French. Gabriel’s poetry, fiction, and journalism have been published in Snake Nation Review, The Tower, Eclectica Magazine, The Melic Review, and Creative Loafing. He received the Porter Fleming Prize for Fiction and the Sidney Lanier Prize for Poetry. He has a BA from Ogle-thorpe University and earned his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at The University of Texas, Austin.
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Pete Duval, MA, will mentor fiction students at Spalding. His story collection, Rear View, won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize for Fiction and the Connecticut Book Award for fiction and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. His work has appeared in a variety of national and international journals, most recently Alaska Quarterly Review, Meridian, Witness, and Appalachian Heritage. “Common Area,” a short story, won Grain Magazine’s 2011 Short Grain fiction competition; his 248-word story “Still Life” was awarded first prize in Florida State University’s World’s Best Short-Short Story Contest. A new story collection, Strange Mercies, was a finalist for The Hudson Prize for Fiction at Black Lawrence Press and the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest. Twice honored with Connecticut Artist grants and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Pete teaches writing and film studies at West Chester University. He edits and designs books for the newly re-emergent Story Line Press and serves as technical editor for Mezzo Cammin, the online journal of formalist poetry by women. He holds master’s degrees in creative writing from Boston University, in literature from University of Illinois, and in film studies from New York University. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, the poet Kim Bridgford, and their son, Nick.
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Garret Freymann-Weyr, MFA, will mentor in the area of writing for children and young adults.Garret has published seven novels, which have been translated into several languages, including Japanese. Her stories have been published in the Greensboro Review and Christopher Street. She is a Printz honor award winner, and her novels have appeared on several “best of” lists, including the ALA, Publishers Weekly, and New York Public Library Best Books of the Year, and the Booklist Editors’ Choice Top of the List. In 2011, her short story “The Ugly Duckling” was shortlisted for the Manchester Fiction Prize, and her first picture book, French Ducks in Venice, was published by Candlewick Press. In 2012, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released a ten-year anniversary edition of My Heartbeat. She has taught creative writing and literature at a variety of colleges, both online and in traditional classrooms. She is a native of New York City, lived in Washington, D.C., for many years, and now makes her home both in Davidson, North Carolina, and Chevy Chase, Maryland. Her MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University is in film and screenwriting. Her website can be found at http://www.freymann-weyr.com.
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Edith M. (Edie) Hemingway, MFA, will mentor Spalding students in writing for children and young adults. Edie is a graduate of Spalding University’s MFA program and is coauthor of two Civil War novels, both licensed by Scholastic Book Fairs and optioned for films. Her most recent middle-grade novel, Road to Tater Hill (Delacorte Press, 2009), won a 2009 Parents’ Choice Gold Award and was listed on Bank Street College’s Best Books List for 2010. In addition to joining the Spalding MFA faculty in W4CYA, Edie is an adjunct instructor for the graduate online certificate program in Writing for Children and Young Adults at McDaniel College, Westminster, Maryland, and she offers creative writing workshops at Misty Hill Lodge, her secluded 1930s log cabin home near Frederick, Maryland. She is the Regional Advisor for the MD/DE/WV chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, a member of the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, D.C., and a contributor to the One Potato…Ten! blog, a group of ten children’s authors and illustrators.
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Fenton Johnson, MFA, will mentor in creative nonfiction and fiction. Fenton’s latest book is Keeping Faith: A Skeptic’s Journey among Christian and Buddhist Monks. Keeping Faith received a Lambda Literary Award for best gay/lesbian nonfiction as well as a Kentucky Literary Award for creative nonfiction. He is the author of Geography of the Heart: A Memoir, which received the American Library Association and Lambda Literary Awards for best gay nonfiction. Johnson received a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship supporting his two current projects: his third novel, The Man Who Loved Birds, and a book of creative nonfiction, Single: For Those Who Have Lived a Long Time Alone, a meditation on what it means to have a vocation of solitude. He publishes opinion essays in leading newspapers on issues involving social justice, environmentalism, and human rights. Johnson is the author of two novels, Crossing the River and Scissors, Paper, Rock. Scissors was nominated for the San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Award and the Boston Review Fisk Award for best fiction. He has been a staff writer at The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to Harper’s Magazine. His short fiction, essays, and features have been widely published and anthologized. Fenton has an active career in writing narration for independent media, including radio, independent documentaries, and personal films. He has contributed commentaries to National Public Radio and wrote the narration for several award-winning public television documentaries. Currently he is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Arizona.
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Rbecca Walker, MFA, will mentor students in creative nonfiction at Spalding. Rebecca is an award-winning writer based in Hawaii. She is the author of the bestselling memoirs Black, White and Jewish and Baby Love and editor of the anthologies To Be Real, What Makes a Man, One Big Happy Family, and, most recently, Black Cool. Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, Bomb, Afar, Greater Good, Newsweek, Real Simple, Glamour, More, Marie Claire, The Washington Post, Vibe, Interview, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and Babble; on CNN, and in literary collections including Erica Jong’s Sugar in My Bowl, and Crush, Unbuttoned, Dirt, Shaking the Tree, The Way We Live Now, Tales from the Couch, Mixed, The Fire This Time, Blended Nation, Adios Barbie, The Modern Jewish Girl’s Guide to Guilt, and In Search of Mary Poppins.

Rebecca has taught and lectured at over three hundred universities and corporate campuses, including Yale, Harvard, Brown, Penn, MIT, University of Utrecht, Microsoft, and the Ministry of Gender and Culture of Estonia, and participated in creative collaborations with other writers and visual artists at The Addison Gallery, Walker Art Center, LA Hammer Museum, New York Jewish Museum, Amsterdam Cultural Education Foundation, and The Fundazione Merz in Turin. She has developed projects for film and television with Nickelodeon and the Kennedy Marshall Company. She is the recipient of MacDowell and Yaddo fellowships and the Alex Award from the American Library Association, and she has appeared on Charlie Rose, Good Morning America, and Oprah. Time magazine named Rebecca one of the most influential leaders of her generation. She holds a BA from Yale, an MFA from Spalding, and an honorary Doctorate of Arts and Letters from the North Carolina School of the Arts. She teaches a yearly master class on memoir writing on Maui (www.writing-in-paradise.com) and is the co-founder of Write to Wellbeing, a start-up bringing voice and sanity to those with the creative itch. Rebecca’s first novel, Adé, is forthcoming from Amazon’s New Harvest imprint in 2013.
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Fall Residency Schedule: Social Hour Moved to Saturday

The traditional student-faculty reception has a new format, a new location, and a new spot in the Fall 2012 residency schedule. Previously held before dinner on the first Friday of residency, the reception has been transformed into a cocktail hour, to take place in the Brown Hotel's South Lobby on the first Saturday of residency, November 10, after the day's curriculum activities conclude. The cocktail hour includes a cash bar, with Brown Hotel banquet staff circulating with trays of hors d'oeuvres. Dinner that night is on your own. The new format is intended to provide a more relaxed and enjoyable context for the gathering.

Aside from this change, the schedule for the first Friday of residency remains as usual: Welcome envelopes are available for pickup after 2 p.m. in the Mansion, and students and faculty are welcome to gather informally in the Mansion that afternoon. New students attend an orientation at 4:00 p.m., and dinner is served at 5:30. Workshop members share a dinner table with their workshop leaders. An opening session and discussion of the Program Book-in-Common conclude the day's activities.
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Adding MFA Student Photos to Profile Page
Students should add pictures to their profile page on the MFA portal page. Your picture will show up when you send email from your Spalding account. It’s easy to do! On the MFA portal page, click on your name (to the upper right). Click on MY PROFILE. Click on EDIT MY PROFILE. Find the PICTURE section and add a picture. You may use the profile page as much or as little as you want.
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Deadline Dates and the MFA Calendar
MFA deadline dates and other MFA information are now available on the MFA calendar on the top left side of the MFA portal page. Mouse over the entries in any particular day to identify dates that are specific to you. Double-click on entries for more information. For longer entries, such as midsemester or end-of-semester entries, there may be a document attached to the date entry that you can open. Future months can be accessed by clicking the forward arrow to the right of the current month.
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Spalding Email Accounts
The MFA staff use student and faculty Spalding email accounts to communicate. Please check your account regularly. To forward your Spalding email to your home email account, see http://spalding.edu/about/technology/portal/. To receive your Spalding email account on your phone (or iPod or iPad), see http://spalding.edu/about/technology/spalding-mobile-access/.
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Check Out the MFA Blog
MFA faculty and alumni blog at blog.spalding.edu/mfainwriting. New posts are added weekly. The comment feature is now available.
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Facebook Fanpage 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. MFAers are invited to share their writerly news on the MFA fanpage. Send news about readings, blog entries, pictures, or other items of interest to mfafacebook@spalding.edu.
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MFA Alumni Association
The website for the MFA Alumni Association is http://www.spaldingmfaalum.com. If you have questions or are interested in working with this group, send Terry Price an email at terry@terryprice.net. Check out the Spalding MFA Alumni Facebook page.
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Alumni Access to MFA News and Residency Lectures
MFA alumni may access the MFA portal page to listen to residency lectures and to see the latest in MFA news. Go to my.spalding.edu. Username: MFAportal and Password: MFAportal! (Note: the password is case sensitive and there is an exclamation mark at the end of it.)

Life of a Writer

Shannon Dawn Cavanaugh’s (F) essay “Fire in the Belly” will be featured in the national magazine Mary Jane’s Farm in the Dec.–Jan. issue. Cavanaugh wrote the essay on her on-again, off-again hot love affair with the wood stove that keeps her warm during the winter in the Ozarks. Mary Jane’s Farm is sold at 5,000 locations and has 135,000 subscribers.
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Erin Reid (F) broadcast three original poems on the public radio station (WLRH, 89.3 FM) in Huntsville, Alabama, as part of the Sundial Writers Corner. “Religious Education” was broadcast on October 3, “The Space Between” on August 15, and “Talking House” on June 28. The readings are archived at http://tinyurl.com/9l32o5l. Erin also published “Religious Education” in NO’ALA magazine, Huntsville Edition (July/August 2012) and read it, as well as several other poems including “The Star Listener,” at a public performance by the Coweeta Poets at the University of Alabama/Huntsville Salmon Library as part of the Coffeehouse Writers Series, sponsored by the library and the Women’s Studies Program.
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Dianne Aprile’s (CNF) new book, A Landscape and Its Legacy: The Parklands of Floyds Fork, was #2 on the local bestsellers’ list published on the September 15 book page of The Courier-Journal (www.theparklands.org). Dianne recently attended a reading in Seattle featuring MFA alum Kelly Martineau (CNF ’10). Dianne and Kelly, along with MFA alums Diana Rhodes (CNF ’08) and Susan Detweiler (CNF ’10), meet regularly in a writing group they call SWx2 (Spalding West & Seattle Writers.)
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David-Matthew Barnes (PW/SW/W4CYA) has two poems featured in the next issue of Glitterwolf Magazine (http://glitterwolfmagazine.tumblr.com/): “I Want to Travel Your Body” and “Volatile.” His stage play Temporary Heroes will be performed in Bettendorf, Iowa, during the month of November. His stage play Somebody’s Baby will be performed in Dubbo, Australia, during the month of November. http://tinyurl.com/8pe7cjw
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Maureen Morehead’s (P) poetry collection Late August Blues: The Daylily Poems has been published by Larkspur Press. She taught a creative writing class and gave a reading at Northern Kentucky University and gave the Axton Lecture at the University of Louisville, where she taught a master class.
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Sena Jeter Naslund, in a “Best of Louisville” poll by LEO Magazine, was named Louisville’s favorite author.
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Lesléa Newman (W4CYA) released her teen novel-in-verse October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard on September 25. Lesléa also published her first Huffington Post essay (http://tinyurl.com/8t6ayb4). The book received a starred review in Booklist, which said in part: “Written with love, anger, regret, and other profound emotions, this is a truly important book that deserves the widest readership, not only among independent readers but among students in a classroom setting as well.” Lesléa will be on book tour this fall, traveling to New York City and Long Island; Boston; Las Vegas; Providence and Kingston, Rhode Island; Storrs, Connecticut; and Huntsville, Alabama. Publicity for her new book included a wonderful interview by Spalding alum Dave  DeGolyer (W4CYA/P ’10): http://creativeandhealthy.com/ways-of-understanding/.
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Alumni

Priscilla Atkins (P ’08) has poems in various publications: “Marmalade” in the anthology It’s Animal but Merciful (great weather for MEDIA, 2012); “Might or Might Not” in Cloudbank: Journal of Contemporary Writing 5 (2012); “Cut” in The Citron Review, Summer 2012 ( http://thecitronreview.wordpress.com); and “A Moody Day” in Antiphon, Spring 2012 (antiphon.org.uk).
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David Carren’s (SW ’05) play Hollyweird will have a staged reading on November 12 at 7 p.m. in the main meeting room of the Writers Guild of America headquarters in Los Angeles. He says of the play: “Expect the unexpected in this over-the-top farce set in the land of dreams and fantasy. Hollywood will never be the same after a struggling screenwriter and her confused brother accidentally murder their way to stardom.” The reading is free and open to the public. David’s screenplay Coffin Makers is a semifinalist in the 2012 Austin Film Festival Script Competition. Another of his scripts, Call Me Luke, received third-place honors in the Slamdance Screenwriting Competition.
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Linda Cruise (F ’08) is teaching her course “Developing a Writer’s Craft and Critical Eye” in the Access to C.V.U. continuing education program held in Hinesburg, Vermont. The course, which features college-level content, runs Oct. 8–Nov. 12.
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Stacia M. Fleegal (P ’06) recently had a poem from her series Anti-Memories nominated by Mud Luscious Press for inclusion in Best of the Net 2012, an annual digital anthology by Sundress Publications of the best writing published online in the preceding year. Another Anti-Memories poem was nominated and ultimately included in Best of the Net 2011, published earlier this year. She also had a review published in the latest issue of Poemeleon. With fellow Spalding alumni Teneice Durrant Delgado (P ’06) and John Steele (F ’06), she published the 25th issue of Blood Lotus, the online literary journal she co-founded with Delgado in 2006. Finally, Stacia spoke to an enthusiastic small press publishing class at York College on October 1 about her experiences in academic, literary, and journalistic publishing.
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Barry George (P ’09) has a poem included in Haiku 21, an anthology of international haiku published by Modern Haiku Press (2012). His essay “Shiki the Tanka Poet,” which first appeared in The Writer’s Chronicle, will also be published by Gusts, the journal of Tanka Canada.
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Karen George’s (F ’09) poem “Aperture” will appear in the “Animals in the City” issue of qarrtsiluni. She spent a week at the Writers in the Heartland residency near Gilmore, Illinois, working on a poetry collection.
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George Getschow (CNF ’05) is the writer-in-residence of the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. He is also the principal lecturer at the Mayborn School of Journalism and a writing coach for a number of newspapers. The conference annually awards cash prizes for stories and book contracts.
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Eva Sage Gordon (F ’12) is presenting her paper, “The New Structural Comedy of Midnight in Paris” at the 3rd International Humor in Literature Conference in Istanbul in October. In March, she will be presenting her paper, “I Want to Stay and I Don’t Know Why I Can’t: The Essential Voice of Sally Draper in Mad Men,” at the Devils and Dolls: Dichotomous Depictions of ‘The Child’ conference in Bristol, England. In other news, Eva has co-founded a bilingual literary magazine, Penumbra, out of Saint Louis University’s Madrid, Spain, campus. The magazine is seeking submissions of fiction, flash fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and artwork (written works may be in English or Spanish). Penumbra will be published in print and online, once in December and once in May. Visit the magazine online and read submission guidelines: http://penumbramagazine.wordpress.com/. Submit to penumbramadrid@gmail.com.
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Patty Houston (F ’08) will present two papers at the upcoming Modern Language Association Conference in Cincinnati, Nov. 8–11. Her papers are “Reflections on Gifts, on Why We Really Write” and “Genre Theory in Classroom Practice: Teaching the Multi-genre Research Project.” 
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Kaylene Johnson (CNF ’03) was recently the keynote speaker for Pioneers of Alaska annual convention where she discussed her book Trails Across Time: History of an Alaska Mountain Corridor. An article about Johnson’s book Canyons and Ice: The Wilderness Travels of Dick Griffith was recently featured on the front page of the Alaska Star. A review of the book said it was “skillfully documented, artfully told.” In celebration of Alaska Book Week October 6–13, Johnson will be a panelist in a discussion of “Writing Readable Alaska History.” Johnson has been invited by Alaska’s 49 Writers to give one of a series of craft talks slated for the fall. She will discuss the “Art of Nonfiction: Writing Biography, History and Memoir.” She is also a featured author for the Alaska Literacy Council’s annual conference in October.
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Teddy Jones’ (F ’12) novel Halfwide was published in September (Lofland Literary Editions) and is available in both print and e-book versions at Amazon and independent bookstores. Her short story “Crossing the Vermilion Border” was published in Issue 2 of 94 Creations in August. Her novel Jackson’s Pond was shortlisted for finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition (www.wordsandmusic.org), and in that same competition, her short story “Crossing the Vermilion Border” was also shortlisted for finalist. She attended a master class on the novel with instructor Summer Wood at the Taos Summer Writer’s Conference in July, where her novel The Goods was workshopped. “Spring Storms,” a short story, was accepted for publication in the online journal Persimmon Tree (www.persimmontree.org) in its Spring 2013 issue.
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Claudia Labin’s (F ’07) play “No Place like Home” was performed over two weekends at the IndyFringe theatre in Indianapolis this past spring.
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Elaine Drennon Little (F’10) has received a contract from Wido Publishing for her novel Water Under the Bridge, which is a revised version of her graduation thesis. An exuberant Elaine says: “It is now more than my graduating thesis, the twice-as-long-novel that grew from my thesis, or the whatever-my-family-thought-I-was-doing-on-the-computer-every-day!” The book will be available in electronic and print form.
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Kelly Martineau’s (CNF ’10) essay “Bounty and Burden” was exhibited in “A Celebration of Washington Artists,” on display July through October in the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle. The exhibit featured a select number of the state’s emerging and established literary, media, and visual artists. Kelly also performed her essay at the Exhibit Reception on September 7.
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Jae Newman’s (P ’06) first full-length collection of poems, Postage, will be published in 2014 through Antler (www.thisisantler.com). His poetry has appeared recently in The Buffalo News and is forthcoming in Rock & Sling and Cresset. Newman is currently working on an MA in theology at Northeastern Seminary. 
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Richard Newman (P ’04) has poems recently appearing or forthcoming in Anti-, Briar Cliff Review, Crab Orchard Review, and JMWW. On October 11, Garrison Keillor featured another poem from Richard’s second poetry collection, Domestic Fugues, on The Writer’s Almanac.
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Frances Nicholson (P ’04) was the narrator for the Friends of Music concert/celebration of Benjamin Britten’s 100th Birthday. Held in Pasadena, California, it was the first of over 1,200 worldwide events honoring the composer. As a part of Britten’s rarely produced cantata “The Company of Angels,” Frances read works by John Donne, Edmund Spencer, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina Rossetti, and several others in between choral settings of other English poets’ works on the subject of angels. The cantata was originally commissioned by the BBC in 1937, and the 2012 concert took place on September 29, the 75th anniversary of the piece’s first broadcast. The concert was recorded live for publication.
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Joe Peacock (F ’08) will welcome Louisville resident and bestselling author Will Lavender (Obedience and Dominance) to his creative writing class at Indiana University Southeast. Joe and his students are excited about this visit by the former IUS professor whose Dominance has drawn rave reviews from Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, and The New York Times Book Review. Also, Joe will join his writing group, The Grasmere Writers, at The Bard’s Town Restaurant, Pub and Theatre in Louisville on October 17 for a dramatic reading of their new short stories. The presentation will be in the upstairs theater at 7 p.m. Everyone is welcome.
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Mary Popham (F ’03) has recorded nine chapters from her manuscript, Back Home in Landing Run, for the Kentucky Series of Central Kentucky Radio Eye, Inc. who offer services for the blind and disabled in households, nursing homes, and hospitals. She continues to write book reviews for The (Louisville) Courier-Journal.
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Michele Ruby (F ’06) has published a short story “Ah, No Choo” in Harpur Palate (Summer and Fall 2012). Cleavage, her collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Prize. She is teaching fiction writing at Bellarmine University, and she recently attended the Kentucky Women Writers’ Conference. Her writing group, The Grasmere Writers—all Spalding folk: Rick Neumayer (F), Joe Peacock (F ’08), and Bob Sachs (F ’09)—is presenting a dramatic reading at The Bard’s Town Restaurant, Pub and Theatre in Louisville on Wednesday, Oct. 17, at 7 p.m. They’ve developed a distinctive, lively reading style in which they each take a role to voice the dialogue in each other’s stories.
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Robert Sachs (F ’09) has published a short story, “History Lesson,” in Issue No. 2 of Northern Liberties Review, a quarterly online journal of fiction, poetry, creative writing, and art. His writing group, The Grasmere Writers, is presenting a dramatic reading at the Bard’s Town Restaurant, Pub and Theatre in Louisville on Wednesday, Oct. 17.
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Alan Samry’s (CNF ’12) personal essay “Shedding our Shells” was published in the Fall 2012 issue of Obsession: An Online Literary Magazine. http://obsessionlitmag.com/05_Shedding%20Shells.html
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Graham Shelby (CNF ’10) recently has performed in multiple venues as a professional storyteller, presenting Japanese ghost stories at the Frazier History Museum, Blackacre Nature Preserve, and the University of Louisville. Graham interviewed Kentucky author Jim Higdon about Higdon’s book The Cornbread Mafia as part of the Writer’s Block Festival in Louisville.
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AshleyRose Sullivan’s (F ’10) comic essay “Those Were The Days” (creative nonfiction) was recently published in Typecast Press’ online magazine Sawmill. http://www.sawmillmagazine.com/those-were-the-days/
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Kathleen Thompson (F ’03) re-upped her Spalding spirit by participating in Ellie Bryant’s scintillating cross-genre workshop in July in Paris. Her submission for critique was creative nonfiction. Kathleen was one of about a dozen readers for the “My Favorite Poem” annual event at the Alabama School of Fine Arts in September.
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Cristina Trapani-Scott (F/P ’09) received a scholarship to attend the Midwest Writers Workshop in Muncie, Indiana, in July. While there, she visited with fellow Spalding alum Vickie Weaver (F ’05), which made for a perfect start to a wonderful weekend focused on writing and pitching. Cristina also joined the faculty of Adrian College. She teaches writing there and at Baker College of Auburn Hills, where she recently received an Adjunct of the Quarter Award. She recently was listed in the Michigan Poetry Library, a repository of Michigan poetics that has catalogued nearly 400 poets with Michigan ties and highlights Michigan’s poetry history.
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Vickie Weaver (F ’05) was part of a writer’s panel at the 2012 Writers’ Conference at The Crump Theatre in Columbus, Indiana, on October 6.
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Jonathan Weinert (P ’05) was awarded a 2012 Artist Fellowship in Poetry from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His chapbook, Thirteen Small Apostrophes, is forthcoming from Back Pages Books this fall.
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Colleen Wells (CNF ’10) has two poems, “PICU” and “My Favorite Pair of Blue Jeans,” chosen for publication in Vine Leaves Literary Journal issue #4. They will also appear in The Best of Vine Leaves Literary Journal 2012. www.vineleavesliteraryjournal.com.
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Reminders and Notes

Faculty Advisory Committee FAC) for Spring 2012
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.

• Robin Lippincott, fiction
• Greg Pape , poetry
• Richard Goodman, creative nonfiction
• Ellie Bryant, writing for children and young adults:
• Sam Zalutsky, playwriting/screenwriting

Financial Aid: The MFA Program offers scholarships to students entering their first semester in the program. Returning students who desire financial assistance other than student loans should apply for graduate assistantships. Applications for scholarships and assistantships should be directed to the MFA Office (mfa@spalding.edu). Information for assistantships is on the MFA portal page.

Federal student loans are available to all eligible graduate students and are available for the fall, spring, or summer semesters. For help with financial aid questions, call Vickie Montgomery at 800-896-8941, ext. 4330 or 502-873-4330 or email vmontgomery@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.
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For Fall 2012 semester: Fill out the FAFSA for the 2012-13 school year, using 2011 tax information. Refer to MFA Financial Aid FAQs on the MFA portal page.

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 www2.spalding.edu/newsletter/menu.htm.
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Life of a Writer: Please remember to email Life of a Writer news to the program because this is a vital part of our community—sharing writing successes. The program wants to share good news with everyone and compiles records of publications, presentations, readings, employment, and other related information on faculty, students, and alums.

Life of a Writer pieces should be written as a paragraph in third person. Include area of concentration in parenthesis after name. For example, (F) for fiction, (P) for poetry, (CNF) for creative nonfiction; (W4C) for writing for children and young adults, (SW) for screenwriting, and (PW) for playwriting. For alumni, please include the year of graduation, such as Jake Doe (SW ’08). Spell out month and state names. Include title(s) of the work, publishers, date of publication, and complete web site addresses when appropriate. Send to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu.

Examples of kinds of activities that might be included in the Life of a Writer column are publishing in journals or magazines or in book form, winning awards or other prizes, giving a public reading, visiting a classroom to talk about writing, judging a writing competition, attending a writers conference, serving on a panel about writing, or volunteering in a project about writing or literacy.
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About The Masthead: The image in our masthead is the emblem of a photograph of a Louisville fountain, "River Horse," by Louisville sculptor Barney Bright. The sculpture references both the location of Louisville as a river city on the banks of the Ohio and as the host, for more than 125 years, of the Kentucky Derby. The winged horse Pegasus, of Greek mythology, has long been associated with the literary arts and the wings of poesy.
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Sena Jeter Naslund, Program Director
Karen J. Mann, Administrative Director
Kathleen Driskell, Associate Program Director
Katy Yocom, Program Associate
Ellyn Lichvar, Administrative Assistant
Gayle Hanratty, Administrative Assistant

Patsi Trollinger, Newsletter Editor
Nancy Long, Web Editor
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Direct No.	Person	Toll Free Ext. 800-896-8941
502-873-4400	Katy Yocom	4400
502-873-4396	Kathleen Driskell	4396
502-873-4397	Gayle Hanratty	4397
502-873-4398	Ellyn Lichvar	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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