Vol. 23 No. 2
April 2013

MFA Course Reorganization

Compassion Conference

Welcome! Shane McCrae

Arts Event: Spring

Homecoming 2013

Spring 2013: FBICs

Summer 2013 BICs

Summer PBIC essay: ENG620s

Summer Guest Lecturers

Ireland Walking Tour

AWP Conference Recap

AWP 2014

Support Spalding: Donate through GoodSearch

Alumni Assoc

Students

Faculty and Staff

Alumni

Personals

Reminders and Notes

Spalding MFA Home

Previous Newsletters

MFA Course Reorganization
Beginning with the Fall 2013 semester, the MFA Program is repackaging its course offerings in order to provide more flexibility for students and faculty and create more efficiency in administrative practices with student records, financial aid, and registration. The content of the courses and the amount of work required remain the same.
      Through Summer 2013, MFA students have been required to complete four core courses that included four residencies, four independent study sessions, and a capstone graduation residency. These courses culminated in a 64-hour degree.
      These four core courses have been reorganized into nine courses by dividing the residencies and the independent study sessions into separate courses so that each component (residency or independent study) is a distinct course. Each semester normally includes two sessions: the residency session, followed by the independent study session. The final residency, ENG645: Graduation Residency, which has always included additional graduation requirements, is now a 5-hour course. This change means that students may receive federal student loans when registered for the required graduation residency.
      In the past, in some cases, students have completed a residency but could not complete the independent study. Now, a student can receive credit separately for each part of the semester.
      The degree requirements remain the same; however, these courses culminate in a 65-hour degree. Students enrolled in the program before the Fall 2013 semester are grandfathered into the 64-hour degree. (top)

Spring 2013 Residency and the Compassion Conference, May 17-18

The 2013 International Summit Conference on Compassionate Organizations takes place in Louisville over the opening weekend of residency, with many events taking place on Spalding’s campus. MFA events are to proceed as regularly scheduled. All MFA events on Friday, May 17, through noon Saturday, May 18, take place at the Brown Hotel. Friday events at the Brown include the new student orientation, opening dinner, and the welcome session and Program Book in Common discussion.
      Spalding hosts the Compassion Conference after being named the first compassionate university in the United States, as confirmed by the Compassionate Action Network, in 2011. This designation recognizes Spalding for our history of compassion through service and for our pledge to work diligently to expand our capacity for compassion as individuals and as a community of learning, both in the classroom and out in the world.
      From its founding in 2001 by Sena Jeter Naslund and Karen Mann, the MFA in Writing Program has instituted a compassionate, emotionally supportive approach to education while upholding its allegiance to academic excellence. (top)

Welcome to Shane McCrae, New Faculty Member in Poetry for Spring 2013

The MFA Program is happy to announce that Shane McCrae will join our poetry faculty with the Spring 2013 semester.
      Shane’s first book of poems, Mule, was published in 2011 by the Cleveland State University Poetry Center. His second collection of poems, Blood, was recently released by Noemi Press. He is also the author of three poetry chapbooks, most recently Nonfiction, published by Black Lawrence Press. Shane’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in many literary magazines, including American Poetry Review, Smartish Pace, and West Branch. Shane was recently awarded a 2013 NEA Creative Writing Fellowship. In 2011, he received the Whiting Writer’s Award. His other honors include being named a finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award and a finalist for the PEN Center USA Literary Award. Shane holds an MFA from the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop as well as a JD from Harvard Law School.   (top)

Arts Event for Spring 2013 Residency: The Louisville Leopard Percussionists

As part of the MFA Program’s emphasis on the interrelatedness of the arts, faculty and students at the Spring 2013 residency attend a performance by the Louisville Leopard Percussionists, an improvisational group made up of local elementary and middle-school children. 
      The Leopards are a performing ensemble of about sixty-five student-musicians, ages seven to twelve. Led by director Diane Downs, the Leopards learn, perform, and improvise on jazz compositions using instruments such as marimba, xylophone, vibraphone, drum set, timbales, congas, bongos, and piano. The June 2010 issue of Louisville Magazine listed the Leopards as number eight of fifty experiences everyone in Louisville should have to be a true Louisvillian. Los Angeles studio musician Brad Dutz calls them “groovy kids playing difficult music.” The Leopards once opened for the acclaimed alt-country group My Morning Jacket.
      The Leopards have starred in an HBO Family special. In an article titled “Performers to Be Jazzed About,” The Washington Post wrote, “To hear these kids play ‘Take Five’ entirely on percussion is pretty stunning.” The Post article continues, “Did we mention they’ve learned songs by Santana and Duke Ellington by ear?”
      The MFA Program attends a private performance by the Leopards at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21, at First Unitarian Church, near campus. (top)

Spring 2013 Residency: Brown Hotel Reservations, Homecoming Events, and the Final Weekend

Spring 2013 Faculty Books/Scripts in Common

• Fiction: A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa, by Elaine
   Orr (Berkeley Trade, 2013)
• Poetry: October Mourning: A Song for Matthew
   Shepard, by Lesléa Newman (Candlewick, 2012)
• Creative Nonfiction: Black, White & Jewish:
   Autobiography of a Shifting Self, by Rebecca Walker
   (Riverhead Trade, 2002)
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: October
   Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard, by Lesléa
   Newman (Candlewick, 2012)
• Playwriting: Qualities of Starlight, by Gabriel Dean
• Screenwriting: Made from Scratch, by DM Barnes

Qualities of Starlight and Made from Scratch can be downloaded by clicking the Preparing for the Spring 2013 Residency link on the MFA portal page. (top)

The Program Book in Common for the Summer 2013 residency in Ireland is James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Near the beginning of residency in Dublin, after the general welcoming, Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund leads a discussion on Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man during a plenary session. To prepare for the residency abroad, all students and faculty read the book.
      Students attending the Summer 2013 residency abroad (July 3–15) are also required to read the “Cyclops” chapter of Ulysses by James Joyce in preparation for a residency lecture by Trinity College professor Sam Slote. This chapter may be downloaded by clicking the Preparing for Summer 2013 Residency link on the MFA portal page. Students will also be asked to read a selection of Yeats’s poems (to be posted at a later date).
      In addition to these program-wide readings, students read both the genre book in common and faculty book in common for the area they are studying during the Summer 2013 semester. A list of titles follows. (top)

Genre Books or Scripts/Films in Common
• Fiction: Antarctica, by Claire Keegan (Grove Press, 2002)
• Poetry: The Wake Forest Series of Irish Poetry, Volume Two, selected and edited by Jefferson Holdridge (Wake Forest UP, 2012)
• Creative Nonfiction: James Joyce: A Life, by Edna O’Brien (Penguin reprint, 2011)
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: Chalkline, by Jane Mitchell (Walker, 2009)
• Screenwriting: View the film Michael Collins, by Neil Jordan
• Playwriting: Playboy of the Western World, by J. M. Synge (Dover, 1993) (top)

Faculty Books or Scripts in Common
• Fiction: White Dog Fell from the Sky,by Eleanor Morse (Viking Adult, 2012)
• Poetry:  News of Home, by Debra Kang Dean (Boa, 1998)
• Creative Nonfiction: The Eye Is Not Enough: On Seeing and Remembering, by Dianne Aprile (Trout Lily Press,
   2000)
• Writing for Children and Young Adults: Road to Tater Hill, by Edie Hemingway (Delacorte, 2009)
• Screenwriting: Frankenswine, by Charlie Schulman
• Playwriting: The Great Man, by Charlie Schulman

Frankenswine and The Great Man can be downloaded by clicking the Preparing for the Summer 2013 Residency link on the MFA portal page. (top)

Program Book-in-Common Essay Due from All MFA Students Enrolled in ENG620 for Summer

All MFA students entering ENG620 in Summer 2013 are required to write and submit a short critical essay on the Program Book in Common, James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  Students submit the essay through email to the MFA Program via mfadropbox@spalding.edu, but not to faculty mentors, no later than May 10. The short critical essays will be discussed in mini workshop sessions during the Summer 2013 residency. Students were emailed details about this assignment by Kathleen Driskell on April 3. (top)

Summer 2013 Residency: Guest Lecturers at Trinity College Dublin

The MFA Program’s Summer 2013 residency in Ireland, July 3–15, includes lectures by two guest speakers at Trinity College in Dublin. Ciarán Wallace, postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of History at Trinity, delivers a lecture on Irish history in the 19th and 20th centuries, touching on key historical events including the Great Famine, the Land War, the campaign for home rule, and the revolutionary period 1916–1922. Ciarán’s research interests focus on urban history during the early modern and modern periods, including the role of civil society in national and community identity formation. He works on the history of Dublin and is interested in Scottish-Irish comparisons, civic pageantry, political cartoons, and ephemera.
      Sam Slote, a Joyce scholar and professor of English at Trinity College, speaks to the MFA Program about James Joyce. Sam has co-edited five volumes on Joyce. His annotated edition of Ulysses was published in 2012 by Alma Classics, containing 9,000 all-new annotations to Joyce’s text. He is a trustee of the International James Joyce Foundation. (top)

Ireland Residency: Walking Tour and Museum Visit

As part of the cultural exploration during the Summer 2013 residency in Ireland, MFAers visit the Dublin Writers Museum and take a literary walking tour of the city. The tour includes references to James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde, Samuel Beckett, George Bernard Shaw, and many other writers. The museum visit and walking tour take place on Saturday, July 6.
      These events are additions to the previously announced slate of cultural explorations. More information about planned events is available online: http://tinyurl.com/c7gtust (top)

Spalding Reception and Reading at AWP Conference in Boston

On Friday, March 8, approximately 50 Spalding alumni, students, and faculty reconnected at an MFA reception held at the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference in Boston. The event convened in the Hynes Convention Center and began with cocktails and hors d’oeuvres. After forty-five minutes of lively conversation, the group settled in to hear a series of short readings. Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell served as the program’s emcee and first introduced Ned Bachus, who read from his debut short story collection, City of Brotherly Love. Ned’s collection is the most recent publication of Fleur-de-Lis Press, the press of The Louisville Review.
      Following Ned’s reading, fiction faculty member Philip F. Deaver was introduced. In his opening remarks, Phil, the 1988 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction from the University of Georgia Press, congratulated Jacquelin Gorman (F ’09), who was re-cently named a 2012 winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award.
      After Phil read from his fiction, Jackie read from her award-winning manuscript of short stories, The Viewing Room, which was her Spalding MFA creative thesis. The Viewing Room will be published in the fall by the University of Georgia Press. (top)

AWP Accepting Proposals through May 1 for 2014 Conference

Support Spalding: Donate through GoodSearch

Spalding University is now a part of GoodSearch.com, a website that allows users to designate a charity or school and donates a penny to the cause when the user employs the search engine—which is a free service. Users can track their impact with a running calculator of donations. In addition, the sister site GoodShop.com offers more than 100,000 coupons and exclusive deals that allow users to shop online at dozens of retailers such as Amazon, Expedia, Target, and Walgreens; a percentage of every purchase (usually between 1 and 6 percent) is donated to the user’s selected cause. (top)

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

Eileen Baland (P) won the Innovation of the Year Award from the League for Innovation in the Community College for her participation in the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) Writing Initiative at Mountain View College, where she teaches Honors English. The MVC Writing Initiative focuses on improving student writing and creating a culture of writing campuswide.

Cheryl Brandreth (CNF) won first place in the Short Fiction category in the Literary LEO contest on January 23 for “The Tender Reed.” The story can be found online. http://leoweekly.com/ae/literary-leo-2013-1

Laura Caitlin Davis’s (F) short story “Little Girl, Guy,” which was published online (http://millionstories.net/), has been selected for inclusion in the site’s print form, 4 Million Stories. Publication is set for April. (top)

Drema Drudge (F) has been invited to lead a writing workshop at the Manchester Church of the Brethren’s annual “Times of Our Lives” event, scheduled for October 19 in Indiana. 

Alice Jennings (P) gave a reading of her poetry at Susana Wald’s gallery in San Andrés Huayapan, Oaxaca, Mexico, on February 10. She was part of a group reading with Chilean surrealist poet Ludwig Zeller, Canadian poet Beatriz Hausner, and others.

Heather Meyer’s (PW) play Women’s History Month: The Historical Comedybration (with fabulous prizes) was produced at the Bryant Lake Bowl Theater in Minneapolis in March. Also in March, her play Woman with a Bat was part of DC SWAN day in Washington, D.C. Heather has been selected to rewrite The Terminator for the Minneapolis Fringe Festival “Five-Fifths of the Fringe” event in April. Heather will also be a playwright for the Pillsbury House Theatre’s Chicago Avenue Project in May, which connects underserved students with theatre professionals. Heather has officially joined the Minneapolis theatre company Theatre Pro Rata as a company member.

Lisa Veronica Pires (W4CYA) announces her fiction piece “The Summer of Winged Creatures” was selected as a finalist in the Saturday’s Child Magazine fiction contest and will be published in the spring issue. Her short story “The Portrait” was published in November with Gypsy Shadow Publishing. gypsyshadow.com/LVPires.html#top (top)

Angie Mimms (CNF) is one of eighteen community columnists for The Kentucky Enquirer and will develop an article once a month on a topic of her choosing. The newspaper is the Kentucky edition of The Cincinnati Enquirer and is located in Fort Mitchell, Kentucky.

Rosanna Staffa’s (F) adaptation of The Biggest Little House in the Forest by Djemma Bider was seen on stage at the Children’s Theatre Center in Minneapolis January 24–March 17. The play will be included in the Plays for Early Learning anthology published by the University of Minnesota Press.

Dianne Aprile (CNF) reads from her memoir in progress during the “Meet The Author” forum at the Issaquah (Washington) Public Library on April 14. On the evening of April 16, Dianne reads and conducts a writing workshop on journal-keeping at NAMI-Eastside in Redmond, Washington. Dianne will enjoy ten days of solitude at the end of April (a month she considers to be named in her honor) as part of a writing residency on San Juan Island at the University of Washington Whiteley Center.

David-Matthew Barnes (PW/SW/W4CYA) has been named the Artistic Director of the Dorothy Nickle Performing Arts Company, a Denver-based theatre company committed to producing theatrical projects celebrating the voices of those often unheard. His two-woman one-act play Relocations was nationally selected by the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center to receive a world premiere in their Rough Writers New Play Festival. His award-winning teen one-act play Johnny Ramirez Really Wants to Kiss Me was selected via national competition for a production this spring at the DC Queer Theatre Festival. His poem Looking for Homer is featured in the current issue of the literary journal Cutthroat.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti (W4CYA) has been named Distinguished Author of the Year by the University of Scranton (Pennsylvania). The award dinner will take place in early September. During March she visited several schools in the Syracuse, New York, area, and during April, she is traveling to schools outside Philadelphia and in Kansas. Then she’s off to Italy for twelve days! She hopes to hand in her next novel before that trip. (top)

Ellie Bryant’s (W4CYA) essay “Rum Running Queen,” a finalist in the Southern Sin competition of Creative Nonfiction magazine, will be included in an anthology of Southern Sin essays to be published by the magazine. Her essay “An Open Shutter: Writing Scenes in Fiction and Creative Nonfiction” will appear in a forthcoming issue of The Atrium: A Journal of Academic Voices. In May, Ellie attends the New England SCBWI conference in Springfield, Massachusetts, and teaches in the New England Young Writers Conference at Bread Loaf in Ripton, Vermont.

On March 13, Kathleen Driskell (P) was invited to talk about her work with Jeff Worley’s poetry master class at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. She was also invited by Western Kentucky University’s Creative Writing Program to give a poetry reading in Bowling Green on March 21. On April 9 at 6:30 p.m., she reads as part of the Kentucky Great Writers Series at the Carnegie Center in Lexington. On April 19, Kathleen presents a talk to writing teachers in Montgomery, Alabama, and on April 20, she is a featured panelist at the Alabama Book Fair, also in Montgomery.

Robin Lippincott (F) is thrilled to announce that Blue Territory, his short, eccentric meditation on the life and work of the abstract expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, will be released by Typecast Publishing in 2014. Also, Robin’s piece of flash fiction, “Blinds,” has just been published in Sawmill Magazine. In an interview for that publication, Robin touted the flash fictions of his former Spalding students Foust and Ted Chiles. (top)

Lesléa Newman (W4CYA) is pleased to announce that her book October Mourning: A Song for Matthew Shepard has received the following honors from the American Library Association: Stonewall Honor Book, LGBT Round Table Rainbow Book, Notable  Social Studies Trade Book for Young People, and Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Best Fiction for Young Adults Book. The audio version of October Mourning received an Audiofile Earphones Award, was selected for the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) Amazing Audiobooks for Teens list, and is a finalist for an Audie Award (multiple-voice performance category). Lesléa’s poem “Teen Angels” was a finalist for the 2013 Provincetown Outermost Cape Poetry Award. Her chapbook I Remember: Hachiko Speaks won the Dog Writers Association of America’s Maxwell Medallion for Best Poetry Book 2012. Lesléa’s picture book A Sweet Passover has been named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book for 2013.
http://tinyurl.com/cjdfnod

Sena Jeter Naslund presented a talk about her novels on March 21 for Catawba College, Salisbury, North Carolina, titled “Reconfiguring Classic Narratives.” On April 19, Sena talks about her most recent novel, Adam & Eve, at the Alabama Book Festival, organized by Jeanie Thompson, in Montgomery.

Jeanie Thompson (P) had three poems from her manuscript The Myth of Water: Poems from the Adult Life of Helen Keller published in the winter issue of the online platform of The Kenyon Review, KROnline,on January 30. Visit the site (http://www.kenyonreview.org/writer/jeanie-thompson/) to read or listen to “The Myth of Water,” “In Which She Puts to Rest the Mirror,” or “Encounter in Montgomery, 1918.” On February 28, Jeanie and others from the BACHE visiting writers series based in Birmingham participated in a memorial tribute to the late Jake Adam York at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Participants read Jake’s poems and talked about his influence on their work and his place in literary letters. Jeanie conducted an interview with Alabama State Council on the Arts Literature fellow Adam Vines (The Coal Life) for Alabama Arts Radio Series, which aired March 10. http://www.arts.alabama.gov/actc/1/radioseries.html (top)

Katy Yocom has articles forthcoming in LEO Weekly’s Locavore Lore column in Apriland in the next issue of Food & Dining magazine. Her F&D article profiles three restaurants new to the Louisville dining scene. Food & Dining can be found in guest rooms at the Brown Hotel, among other venues.

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Alumni

Cynthia Rausch Allar (P ’04) has a poem appearing in Myrrh, Mothwing, Smoke, which is available from Tupelo Press. This is an anthology of erotic poetry submitted for Tupelo’s Winter Poetry Project in 2012. The title for the anthology uses images from Cynthia’s poem, “Ether.”  She finds this almost as exciting as being published in the anthology.

Priscilla Atkins (P ’08) has a poem, “Your Brother’s Premonition,” in the Spring 2013 edition of Prairie Schooner.

Deborah Begel’s (CNF ’06) video about water contamination on Navajo lands, “Four Stories About Water,” won a People’s Shortee Prize at the Taos Shortz Film Festival after a March 7 showing. Two other film festivals are showing the production. “Think Outside the Mine: A Documentary Film Festival Featuring Contemporary Films About Uranium” screened the video on March 30. It also was shown at the third annual Human Rights Film Festival at Arizona State University April 5. At each showing, Begel spoke.

Sarah H. Boatwright (P ’12) is pleased to report that her poem “Impressed” will appear in a collaborative creative writing and visual art project called Mirror Images. This project, created by the Writer’s and Artist’s Guilds of Greenwood, South Carolina, pairs writers and artists who exchange one piece of their work to serve as inspiration for a new piece of work by each. The original and new pieces will appear in a special exhibit at Greenwood’s Arts Center Gallery from July 15–Aug. 20. Sarah teaches English at Piedmont Technical College and Lander University. She recently served as a panel judge for Lander University’s student academic showcase, which featured the best academic and creative writing submitted by Lander students. 

Kristin Brace (F ’12) has a poem forthcoming in The Louisville Review. She is on the planning committee and the panel of preliminary judges for the first annual flash fiction contest hosted by the Literacy Center of West Michigan.

David Carren’s (SW ’05) play, Hollyweird, is nearing its world premiere in late April on the stage of the Albert L. Jeffers Theatre at University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg. In this comedy of Hollywood manners, the walk of fame is paved with homicide as a screenwriter and her brother accidentally murder their way to success and stardom. Peter Mikolasky directs the production. The play is based on David’s experiences working as a writer/producer on shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation; Walker, Texas Ranger; and Diagnosis Murder. As David explains: “In this piece, I’ve mixed homicide and humor with a healthy dose of family dysfunction and authentic Hollywood shenanigans. Except for the murders, everything that happens in Hollyweird happened to me during the course of my career. My play is as much a cautionary tale as a memoir. We should always be wary of what we wish for.” The play runs April 23–28 at the university.

Sonja de Vries (P ’09) recently traveled to Jenin, Palestine, in the occupied West Bank, where she broadcast her literary radio show Ignite the Ink, reading from her blog about her participation in the Jenin Freedom Bus. In the United States, her show is a regular offering of Crescent Hill Radio, which is based in Louisville and offers local and regional music as well as live weekly shows. Sonja also is happy to announce that her second chapbook, Stealing Lorca’s Bones, will be released in September by Finishing Line Press. She recently began working as a contracted poet with the Kentucky Center’s “Healing and Arts” program and is facilitating poetry workshops for Veterans Administration facilities, Our Lady of Peace, and Volunteers of America. She facilitates a poetry workshop for teens at the Alternative Placement Services.

Daniel DiStasio’s (F ’06) short story “Stone in Your Knife Stream” is available in print and can be viewed online in Quay: A journal of the Arts (quayjournal.org/). He will present his novel Facing the Furies at the Key West Book Fair, April 13.

Kathryn Eastburn (CNF ’06) is writing the script for a 56-minute documentary film from the Voices of Grief project, exploring cultural stigmas surrounding death and grief, while also celebrating the courage to grieve and help others grieve naturally and openly (voicesofgrief.org/). Kathryn will be a panelist at the upcoming Pikes Peak Writers Conference (April 19–21), where she will teach a two-hour session on writing personal narrative, plus a preview course, Giving Yourself Permission to Write the Truth. She is on the faculty of Denver’s Lighthouse Writers Workshop (https://lighthousewriters.org/) where, this spring, she will teach Intermediate/Advanced Personal Essay, Introduction to Personal Narrative, and a new course called Reckoning With Memoir: Writing Life Stories with Honesty, Compassion and Reliability. Kathryn’s weekly personal essay/column, The Middle Distance, is podcast every Friday and broadcast on public radio KRCC in Colorado Springs each Saturday. http://radiocoloradocollege.org/

An excerpt from Satin Doll, a play written by Ann Eskridge (PW ’08), was chosen for a March 15 reading at the 2013 DramaFest sponsored by Marygrove College in Detroit. The play is an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion and places the story in a modern African-American context.

Stacia M. Fleegal (P ’06) recently represented the York Daily Record/Sunday News as a judge for the annual Pennsylvania Scholastic Writing contest. Through the newspaper’s blog platform, she’s also developing Versify, a regional poetry blog, and has established a prompt-based Poem of the Month contest for readers. All submissions are published, but one winner each month is interviewed, featured in a separate post, and offered a chance to select a prompt for the next month’s contest. Stacia had a poem appear in the most recent issue of Lunch Ticket, a biannual journal published by the MFA community of Antioch University of Los Angeles. She has three poems forthcoming in the fourth print edition of UCity Review, and a poem will appear in the Bourbon for Blood anthology forthcoming from Winged City Press and Two Cups Press. Stacia says the most awesome news is that her “writing spouse forever” Teneice Durrant Delgado (P ’06), an editor at Winged City Press, has offered to publish a chapbook of her poems about (re)discovering lost love and giving birth to her preemie Jackson “Jax” Harrison Moore. Jax was born three months early and spent 87 days in neonatal intensive care at York Hospital, so proceeds will be used to offset Jax’s medical expenses. The chapbook, titled Antidote, became available as an e-book on February 11, Jax’s original due date. Perfect-bound and limited-edition handmade signed copies are available. In related news, Jax has been discharged from the NICU and is a happy, healthy, and chill little dude. His mama is learning to type one-handed and can’t stop writing poems for him. See http://www.staciamfleegal.com/ and http://www.wingedcitypress.com/

Barry George (P ’09) has written a review for Gusts of Claire Everett’s book of tanka, Twelve Moons. Barry’s haiku sequence “Atlantic City” appeared in Frogpond. One of his haiku was featured, in Chinese translation, in the blog Neverending Story. In addition, several haiku were selected for the anthology Now This: Contemporary Poems of Beginnings, Renewals, and Firsts.

Karen George’s (F ’09) chapbook Inner Passage received honorable mention in Accents Publishing’s Poetry Chapbook Contest. Her prose poems “The Dead Live at Hemlock Lodge, Natural Bridge, Kentucky” and “Vibrato” have been accepted for the next issue of Border Crossing, her poems “Chairs with Views” and “Molting” for the April issue of Blast Furnace, and her prose poem “Waiting for the light to change” for the March issue of Permafrost. In February, she was invited to a Northern Kentucky University class to discuss editing and submitting for publication.

Bill Goodman (CNF ’12), public affairs host and managing editor for Kentucky Educational Television, is one of five individuals selected for induction this year into the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame. Since 1996, Bill has been the host and managing editor of the Emmy Award-winning public affairs series Kentucky Tonight. Additionally, he serves as host for Education Matters and public affairs special programming, including KET’s election night coverage. KET Executive Director Shae Hopkins said of Bill’s work: “While bringing an exceptional depth of knowledge to every subject he covers, Bill shines as an interviewer, masterfully eliciting thoughtful discussions and balancing multiple sides of often complex topics so that we, the public, can have a better understanding of the individual, story and issues. That’s no easy task, and Kentucky is better for his unwavering commitment and professionalism.”

Joan Gumbs (F ’09) is pleased to announce the second annual Content Writers’ Retreat in Montego Bay, Jamaica. The successful inaugural retreat was given an affirmative review in the local newspaper, Western Mirror. Joan, who expects this year’s retreat to be bigger and better, is inviting her fellow Spalding alums to participate in a week of relaxation and fun while honing their writing craft. There will be excursions to Ocho Rios and Negril and opportunities to visit museums and other popular Jamaican attractions. contentretreat.com/Home.html

Dave Harrity’s (P ’07) book Making Manifest: On Faith, Creativity, and the Kingdom at Hand is available for preorder. The book of twenty-eight spiritual meditations and writing exercises walks individuals and communities through using creative practices as spiritual disciplines and formation techniques. This year, Dave is traveling the country and conducting workshops on faith, imagination, peacemaking, and creativity. The media house he founded last year, Antler, will be launching a publishing platform later this year. To find out more about Antler or to order Making Manifest, visit http://thisisantler.com/.

Chris Helvey (F ’06) provided “writing and creative services” (a.k.a. ghostwriting) for Timeless Thread, Wanting to Be the Best, a memoir from Elmer Whitaker, a Kentucky banker, coal baron, and Thoroughbred owner. Chris’s short story “Crème Brulee” was selected as a finalist in the 2012 New Southerner fiction contest and was published in the New Southerner 2012 Literary Edition. Issue 5 of his literary journal Trajectory was published in December and featured an interview with Spalding’s own Sheldon Lee Compton (F ’07), author of The Same Terrible Storm (Foxhead Books).

Stephanie C. Horton (F ’06) has published a children’s book through One Moore Book Publishers, an independent press devoted to publishing educational cultural stories for children in countries with low literacy rates. The book, titled What Happened to Red Rooster When a Visitor Came, is part of the Liberia Signature Series, a venture to aid in the dissemination of culturally sensitive texts to revitalize the educational system during Liberia’s post-war reconstruction. 

Patty Houston’s (F ’08) story “The Other Ten Percent Don’t Have Arms” was selected by New Delta Review for publication in their recently released anthology Best of The Web 2010-2013.   

A condensed version of Sandi Hutcheson’s (CNF ’12) graduating student lecture, “Muzzling the Bitter B*tch/Managing the Angry Voice in Memoir,” will be published in the Southern Sin special issue of Creative Nonfiction magazine, due out this spring. In addition, her creative thesis Looks Great Naked (published under the name Grace Adams) was released in January and is a bestseller on Amazon.

Michael Jackman’s (P ’12) poem “Ice bound Sister” is forthcoming in The New Sound: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Arts & Literature (April 2013). He has three poems, “Number 40 Bus,” “Lyre and Rosary,” and “Goat and Kids,”forthcoming in A Narrow Fellow (Fall 2013). Michael’s poem “Thug Faced Moon”was set for organ and soprano by composer Rachel Short and included in her senior recital at Indiana University Southeast.

Bridgett Jensen (CNF ’08) has been awarded the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Spring 2013 Orlando Prize for Creative Nonfiction for her essay “Lift,” to be published in The Los Angeles Review as well as on the AROHO Website.

Marci Rae Johnson (P ’05) participated in the panel “Faithful Niche or Faithful Kitsch? The Necessity of Christian Literary Publishing” at the 2013 AWP conference, where she also participated in a reading for Old Flame, an anthology of the best of the first ten years of 32 Poems. She appeared on an editing panel at Taylor University’s Making Literature Conference in early March. Her critical work has appeared on the Voltage Poetry website this year, and her poems have appeared in Rock & Sling journal.

Kelly R. Lynn (CNF ’11) announces that her poem “Claudia” appeared in Blood Lotus #23, the literary journal co-founded by fellow Spalding graduates Stacia Fleegal (P ’06) and Teneice Delgado (P ’06). Kelly’s poem “Semaphore” was selected for publication in the Bourbon for Blood anthology, due out July 2013.

Kelly Martineau (CNF ’10) was nominated for a 2013 Pushcart Prize for her essay “Bounty and Burden,” which will be republished in Quiddity this spring and in the online journal Redux later this year. Her essay “Cooley’s Law of Gravity” appeared in Utter Magazine Volume 2 in January.

Michael Morris’s (F/PW ’10) novel Man in the Blue Moon was recently named a Best Book of 2012 by Publishers Weekly. A reviewer with the Florida Times Union praised this novel and Michael’s other body of work, saying: “A Place Called Wiregrass and Slow Way Home were both showered with critical acclaim. His 2004 novella Live Like You Were Dying was a finalist for the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. Look for Man in the Blue Moon to eclipse them all.” 

Frances Nicholson’s (P ’04) chapbook In Breath was recently named a quarterfinalist for the Codhill Press Chapbook Prize. She continues as a Los Angeles-area theater critic and columnist for newspapers of the San Gabriel Valley News Group and for The Stage Struck Review (https://stagestruckreview.com/), her popular blog. Her recent critique of the play Doctor! Doctor! was featured as both the “Saturday Saying” and “Critique of the Week” at the prestigious Southern California theatrical website L.A. Bitter Lemons. In January this same website also listed the essay Frances posted on her blog concerning her mother’s recent death, “...And Now, the Critic Returns to the Dilemma...,” as recommended reading. 

Loreen Niewenhuis (F ’07) is happy to announce that her book A 1000-Mile Great Lakes Walk will be released in June. She has collaborated with her publisher to do a limited “pre-release” of the book to selected indie bookstores that actively hand-sold her first book. Those stories now have the item in stock. Loreen’s pre-release book tour begins this month and takes her throughout the Great Lakes region. Updates on Loreen’s appearances and activism on behalf of the Great Lakes are available via her Facebook page. http://www.facebook.com/LakeTrek

Joe Peacock’s (F ’08) short story “Old” has been accepted by Ragnarok the e-lit Journal for its Spring 2013 edition. The journal is produced by Valhalla Press, and Joe invites everyone to access his story online (see URL below). He encourages his fellow writers to keep writing and submitting, noting that “Old” was accepted on its thirtieth submission. Joe continues to revise and reconfigure his novel in manuscript, The Ninth Life of Remy Zen-Cat, and is currently searching for an agent to represent it. In 2012 he began work on a memoir, tentatively titled My Brother, My Mother, My Self. www.valhallapress.com/ragnarok.php

Diana M. Raab (CNF ’03) taught journaling and memoir writing in February at the Santa Barbara Healing Sanctuary. She will be teaching The Essentials of Memoir Writing at the new Summer Writing Institute in Santa Barbara (July 28–Aug. 3). She writes a regular column, The Mindful Word, for the Santa Barbara Sentinel and continues to be a regular blogger on the Huffington Post. Her poem “Saturned” appears in the current spring issue of Prairie Wolf Press. Her poems “Abandoned Love,” “Bathing Suit Blues,” and “Bed Making” will be published in April in the South Florida Arts Journal.

Bob Sachs (F ’09) garnered third place in the 2013 Literary LEO writing contest with his story “Alterations.”
This is Bob’s eleventh published short story since graduating from the Spalding MFA program. Direct links to his published stories are available on his website.
http://www.roberthsachs.com/

George Schricker (W4CYA ’10) will lead two storytelling retreats this spring at Moon Tree Studios in Donaldson, Indiana. Both retreats feature George’s multi-arts storytelling method, The Story Inside. Participants draw, sculpt, move to music, vocalize, and gesture while creating original stories, provoking a playful and stimulating approach to creativity. The workshop is helpful for adults who wish to improve communication skills, refocus life goals, or discover new ways to tap the creative mind. The May 10–12 session is for beginning storytellers; the June 28–30 session is specifically for teachers and mental health professionals. More information is available from the Moon Tree Studios website. http://www.moontreestudios.org/

Frank X Walker (P ’03) has been named Kentucky Poet Laureate and will be installed in a special ceremony at the state capitol in late April. A poet, author, and teacher, he becomes the first black writer named to the position and also the youngest Kentucky poet laureate. He succeeds Spalding faculty member Maureen Morehead (P) and follows in the Spalding tradition of Sena Jeter Naslund, who was Kentucky Poet Laureate during 2005-2006. Frank teaches at the University of Kentucky and is the author of five poetry collections: I Dedicate This Ride (Old Cove Press, 2010); When Winter Come: the Ascension of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2008); Black Box (Old Cove Press, 2005); Buffalo Dance: The Journey of York (University Press of Kentucky, 2003); and Affrilachia (Old Cove Press, 2000). His sixth full collection, titled Turn Me Loose: The Unghosting of Medgar Evers, is due in the spring from the University of Georgia Press. Frank created the term “Affrilachia” to unify Appalachian and African-American culture and history, and he is the editor and publisher of PLUCK!, the new Journal of Affrilachian Art & Culture. As poet laureate, Frank will promote the literary arts through readings at meetings, seminars, and conferences across the state throughout 2013-14. He especially hopes to connect with young students and individuals who may not understand their own literary potential. He issued a statement that read, in part: “I grew up in the projects so I want to tell them, ‘Your circumstance is not an excuse.’ If you commit to something, if you work hard and have discipline, you can accomplish anything.”

Jonathan Weinert (P ’05) is pleased to announce the release of his new poetry chapbook, Thirteen Small Apostrophes, by Back Pages Books. Details online at http://www.jonathanweinert.net/. Jonathan has a poem forthcoming in Pleiades.

Stephen Woodward’s (F ’11) screenplay Crush recently won the Write Movies International Screenwriting Competition. He was awarded a cash prize and will receive representation by an agent. Stephen says the best aspect is that the sponsor of the contest is a script consulting firm. They will help him develop Crush and then will pitch it to producers and directors. Stephen says he will miss MFA homecoming festivities because he’s heading to Los Angeles to pursue avenues in screenwriting. Additional information on the competition is available online. http://tinyurl.com/cued9x9 (top)

Editor’s note: To accommodate layout and design needs for On Extended Wings, some especially long hyperlinks have been shortened to the “tiny URL” format.
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Personals

Our heartfelt sympathy to Michael Jackman (P ’12) on the January 31 death of his father, Walter Morris Jackman.

Congratulations to Andrew Najberg (P ’10) and his wife, Amber Cooley, on the February 14 birth of their daughter, Gillian Marie Najberg.

Classifieds

Online Poetry Workshop for Spalding Alumni
Are you looking for a place to workshop your poems after graduation? An online poetry workshop for Spalding alumni is being formed. To join, contact Nancy Long (nlong@spalding.edu).
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Find Your Extraordinary Time at Historic New Harmony: July 28-Aug. 2
Interested in developing a consistent writing practice? Need help slowing down? Curious about how to spark your own inspiration, even on days when you just don’t feel like there’s any to be found? At the Extraordinary Time Writer’s Retreat you’ll learn dependable, proven techniques for calming your mind, reducing stress, hushing your inner critic, feeling grounded, and sharpening your focus. You’ll also learn how to use your body as a way into your writing.If you love to write and are aching for someone to show you how to get on track; if you’re curious about the mind-body connection or about how your health and lifestyle impact your creativity; if you need a nurturing getaway that offers a dynamic blend of craft and mind-body workshops, holistic health talks, gentle yoga, peaceful natural settings for reflection, solitude for writing; not to mention three award-winning, supportive, quirky coaches, then Extraordinary Time Writer’s Retreat in New Harmony, Indiana, is for you.To learn more, visit http://extraordinarytimeretreat.com. ContactDave DeGolyer, 37 N. Holcomb Rd., Clarkston, MI 48346. coaches@extraordinarytimeretreat.com
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Reminders and Notes

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: spalding.edu/about/technology/portal/. To receive your Spalding email account on your phone (or iPod or iPad): 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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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.) The portal works best in Firefox or Chrome. IE sometimes presents problems with the lecture pop-ups. Safari often has problems. Tech support is available at techsupport@spalding.edu.
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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.

• Phil Deaver, fiction
• Maureen Morehead , poetry
• Nancy McCabe, creative nonfiction
• Susan Campbell Bartoletti, writing for children and young adults:
• Larry Brenner, playwriting/screenwriting

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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 Spring 2013 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.
 
For Summer 2013 and Fall 2013 semesters: Fill out the FAFSA for the 2013-14 school year, using 2012 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 www.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. 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

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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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