Vol. 12 No. 3
October 2007

Guest Faculty

Reschedule Events

More Guests

Volunteers Needed

Dining and Dessert

Evaluations and Reports

Items to Bring to Residency

Housing Info

New Session for Life After MFA

Admin Building Renamed

ECE Review

Thesis Discussions

Alumni News

Email Issues

Because You Asked

Life of a Writer

     Students

     Faculty and Staff

    Alumni

Pre-reading for Fall 07

Classifieds

Reminders and Notes

AWP Conference 2008

Absentee Ballot for Fall 2007

Apply for Passport Now for Summer 2008

Spalding Home

MFA Home

Previous Newsletters

Guest Workshop Leader for Fall 2007 Residency
The Spalding University brief-residency MFA in Writing Program welcomes Ravi Howard to our Fall 2007 residency faculty. Ravi’s debut novel, Like Trees, Walking, was published in 2007 by Amistad, a division of HarperCollins. He received the 2001 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award for College Writers for his short story “Like Trees, Walking.” The story was recorded by National Public Radio for broadcast in the series Selected Shorts.

After graduating with a BA in Journalism from Howard University, Ravi received an MFA from the University of Virginia. His fiction has appeared in The Massachusetts Review and Callaloo. Ravi has also written and produced programming for NFL Films. He won a Sports Emmy for his work with HBO’s Inside the NFL. Ravi is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and now lives in Mobile with his wife, Laura. (top)

Residency Events Rescheduled
Because of the filming schedule on Bobby Moresco’s current movie, his presentation at the fall residency has been rescheduled to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, November 6, in the ELC lectorium.

The event begins with an interview conducted by screenwriting faculty members Sam Zalutsky and Brad Riddell, followed by questions from the audience. This Q&A period takes the place of the usual closed Q&A session with students and faculty on the morning after a featured speaker’s presentation.

After the event, the evening is free and MFAers eat on their own. A list of restaurants is posted on Blackboard, or you may also ask for suggestions at the Brown.

The reception for students interested in attending a summer residency abroad, which was announced in the previous newsletter, now takes place at 5 p.m. on Friday, November 9. (top)

More Fall 2007 Residency Guests
In addition to Bobby Moresco, Heather Raffo, Kate Gale, Susan Moore, and Charles Pogue, who were previously introduced in On Extended Wings, the Spalding MFA in Writing Program welcomes the following guests to our upcoming fall residency. Students can read more about their presentations in the Residency Lecture Descriptions for Fall 2007, which are posted on Blackboard.

We are pleased to welcome back Susan Campbell Bartoletti, who has written picture books, novels, and nonfiction for young readers, including the Newbery Honor book Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler’s Shadow and a forthcoming historical novel, The Boy Who Dared (Spring 2008). Her work has received dozens of awards and honors, including the ALA Robert F. Sibert Award for Nonfiction, the NCTE Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction, the SCBWI Golden Kite Award for Nonfiction, and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award. Despite writing about depressing subjects such as the horror of the Third Reich in Hitler Youth, famine in Black Potatoes: The Story of the Great Irish Famine, child labor in Kids on Strike! and Growing Up in Coal Country, and the pain of arranged marriages in A Coal Miner’s Bride, she insists that she has a good sense of humor, no doubt a defense mechanism developed as a result of teaching eighth grade for eighteen years. (top)

Gill Holland has worked on more than 50 films, including Sundance favorites Spring Forward, Loggerheads, triple winner Hurricane Streets, the Fox sit-com Greg the Bunny, the Spirit Award winner Sweetland and Emmy-nominated Dear Jesse. He is partner at The Group Entertainment, the KY/NYC management/production company. Half-Norwegian, half North-Carolinian lawyer and former adjunct professor at NYU Graduate Film School, Gill also worked at the French Film Office. He has been on the jury for shorts at Sundance and selection committee for the Academy Awards, Student Division. His record label sonaBLAST! features Kelley McRae, The Old Ceremony, and Irish star Mark Geary.

Phillis Levin is the author of three books of poetry, Temples and Fields (Georgia, 1988), The Afterimage (Copper Beech, 1995), and Mercury (Penguin 2001), and is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Sonnet (Penguin, 2001). Her honors include the Norma Farber First Book Award, a Fulbright Fellowship to Slovenia, the Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her fourth collection, May Day, is to be published by Penguin in May 2008. She lives in New York City, is a professor of English and Poet-in-Residence at Hofstra University, and also teaches in the graduate writing program at New York University. (top)

Originally from the mountains of Kentucky, George Ella Lyon grew up in a house full of books and music. She was deeply influenced by her parents as readers, her grandparents as storytellers, and by her speech and creative writing teacher, Kathleen Hill. She graduated from Centre College, the University of Arkansas, and Indiana University, where she studied with poet Ruth Stone. George Ella has published thirty-five books for children and adults, including Come a Tide (a Reading Rainbow feature), Borrowed Children (winner of the Golden Kite Award), and two Bluegrass Award winners. Her poems are collected in Mountain, Catalpa, and Where I’m From, Where Poems Come From, a New York Public Library Best Book for Teens and finalist for the Prinz Award. Her most recent titles include Don’t You Remember? (a memoir), No Dessert Forever! and Trucks Roll! (picture books), Sonny’s House of Spies (a novel for young readers), and a reprint of the adult novel With a Hammer for My Heart.

Curt L. Tofteland is in his 20th season as the Producing Artistic Director of Kentucky Shakespeare Festival. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of the critically acclaimed Shakespeare Behind Bars program at the Luther Luckett Correctional Complex in LaGrange, Kentucky. Curt has twenty-nine years of professional theatre experience as an equity actor, director, producer, playwright, master teacher, arts educator, artist-in-residence, coach, workshop facilitator, and college professor. He is a 2007 recipient of the Petra Foundation Fellowship. (top)

Call for Volunteers for Interrelatedness-of-Arts Panel
Students and faculty are asked to participate in a group discussion about how attending or participating in arts other than writing has enriched their lives and work. Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund is to lead the discussion, which takes place at 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, November 10. The discussion begins with a panel of students and faculty members speaking briefly (about 5 minutes each) about their arts experiences and how those experiences have influenced their writing. Students and faculty who wish to serve on the panel should notify Katy Yocom at kyocom@spalding.edu by Monday, October 29, with a brief description of the topic they would like to discuss. A drawing may be held for spots on the panel if more than enough students and faculty express interest in participating. (top)

Dining and Dessert at the Fall 2007 Residency
MFA students and faculty rarely go hungry. The Program provides catered dinners every night of residency except Tuesday. Weekend lunches are catered; for weekday lunches, students receive a voucher to help cover the cost of lunch at nearby restaurants. The voucher is also good for a free lunch in the Spalding cafeteria. Students are on their own for breakfast, which is available for a low price in the Spalding cafeteria 7-9:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Morning and afternoon coffee and tea, afternoon snacks, and receptions most evenings round out the never-ending array of sustenance.

This fall, the Program is taking a new approach to dessert. On many residency evenings, when dinners are followed by faculty or guest readings, dessert (and sometimes coffee) is set up at the readings. This arrangement is intended to lend a greater sense of leisure to the dinner hour while adding a festive touch to the readings.

Lunch vouchers this fall have been increased to $8; previously they were worth $6. The vouchers do not include gratuity. Please treat your servers well! Restaurants do not give change from vouchers.
Caterers include Ladyfingers Catering for lunches and dinners the first Friday, Saturday and Sunday; Bearno’s Pizza on Monday evening; Jarfi’s Catering (Mediterranean specialties) on Wednesday evening, and the Brown Hotel on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. (top)

Evaluations and Reports: Policies and Time to Write
MFA students submit five Lecture Reports through the MFA Evaluations and Reports course on Blackboard during each residency. The Program’s policy is that four of these reports must discuss lectures in the student’s area of concentration. The fifth lecture report may, if students wish, discuss a plenary session. In addition, students complete one Reading Report.

On the Residency Curriculum and Events Evaluation, also submitted through Blackboard, students are asked to rate faculty and guest lectures on the following scale: 4=superior, 3=good, 2=fair, 1=poor, 0=not acceptable. Students also record attendance at graduation readings and lectures. Blank spaces in the Residency Schedule document allow students to keep notes on the ratings and attendance.

All but graduating students write an Editorial Reading Report, based on reading for The Louisville Review. This paper form is turned in at the end of the week.

In response to student requests for more time to write, the fall residency schedule provides two periods for students to write evaluations and reports and to do the craft lecture exercise and revision. The first of these time periods occurs Friday late afternoon; the second period is during lunch on the last Saturday. (top)

What to Bring to Residency
A checklist of documents to bring to the residency is posted in Blackboard in the MFA in Writing Program course under Residency/Fall Residency 2007. For further suggestions of what to bring to the residency, see the MFA Student Handbook, page 65.

Fall Residency 2007 Housing Information
Brown Hotel policies
Students staying at the Brown Hotel should note the Brown’s cancellation and early-departure policies. Students who cancel with less than 24 hours’ notice are billed for one night’s stay. Students who check out early without giving the hotel 24 hours’ notice must pay a $50 early check-out fee, plus tax. (top)

Morrison Hall
Students staying at Morrison Hall, the on-campus dormitory, please remember to bring twin sheets and a pillowcase, as well as towels and shower shoes.

Additional Life After MFA Session for Graduating Students
In the past, graduating students have met during class orientations to discuss life after the MFA with faculty members. In addition to this session, graduating students at the Fall 2007 residency are to meet with Post-Graduate Residency Assistants while other students are in group conferences to discuss the transition from student to alumnus. (top)

This session, which was suggested by our Spring 2007 graduates, might include discussion about how to continue setting writing goals without a packet mailing schedule, how to keep in touch with other MFAers, and how to find support from other writers.

Graduate Assistantships Awarded for Fall 2007
The MFA Office announces the awarding of the following graduate assistantships for Fall 2007.

Student Editor of The Louisville Review: Linda Cruise, Andrew Gates, Patty Houston, Matt Vetter
Student Assistant Editor of The Louisville Review: Grace Farag, Keith Nixon, Savannah Sipple, Allison UrzuaBlaul
Office Assistant: Amanda Forsting, John Schuler
Publications Assistant: Cristina Trapani-Scott
Writing Center Assistant: Kit Willihnganz (top)

Administration Building Renamed Mansion Building
The Spalding campus building that was previously known as the Administration Building is now the Mansion Building. The new name refers to the fact that the building has grown up around an early twentieth-century mansion (where the MFA welcome reception is always held).
The Mansion Building also houses several classrooms and the Learning Resource Center, where students and faculty can make copies.

ECEs for Review
Students who would like to review Extended Critical Essays from previous semesters may do so in the MFA Office; however, all ECEs must remain in the MFA Office. (top)

Reminder: Thesis Discussion
During their fifth residency, graduating students meet with their mentor and two students for a 40-minute discussion of the Creative Thesis. The Thesis Discussion is a pleasant conversation about what the student has accomplished by producing a completed thesis of original writing.

At the beginning of the Thesis Discussion, the author speaks briefly about the literary influences on the writing in the thesis and about the processes of writing and revising the work. The author also speaks about a feature of the thesis that is a particular source of pride or of a sense of accomplishment. The author should prepare a few questions to ask the readers. Student readers prepare for the Thesis Discussion by carefully reading the thesis and taking notes for comments/questions to make during the discussion. The mentor facilitates and participates in the discussion. This is not a workshop session. The author does not make substantive changes to the thesis after the Thesis Discussion.(top)

Alumni Now Have Access to Blackboard
The Program is pleased to add the use of Blackboard to our list of alumni opportunities. As of October 14, MFA graduates have access to Blackboard, which offers them an easy way to stay in touch with other alumni. The alumni section contains a link to On Extended Wings, an alumni discussion board, email access with current email addresses for students and alums, and information about how to apply to be a Post Graduate Residency Assistant. The MFA staff welcomes ideas to add to the offerings for alumni.

Spam Controls Interfere with Email
Email communications have become more difficult as Internet service providers tighten their spam control measures. Students and faculty may always use Blackboard’s email tool to communicate with the MFA Office. Another tool, Messages (an intra-Blackboard message system), also eliminates the possibility that email might fail. (top)

Possible Gmail Workaround
Spalding’s problems communicating with Gmail continue, but a student has identified a possible workaround. Spalding’s server routinely rejects Gmail messages that are sent using the “Reply” button. Messages seem to have a better chance of making it to Spalding if Gmail users send a new message using the “Compose Message” function every time. (top)

Because You Asked
Q: Can I pay the summer residency travel deposit with my student loan?
A: Yes. Students attending summer semester pay a $500 nonrefundable travel deposit several months before the semester begins. Students who take out loans may ask that the travel deposit be charged to their student account, where it is covered by student loan funds. This arrangement allows summer-semester students to avoid making a cash outlay.

Students should note that incoming, first-time MFA students pay a $500 tuition deposit (separate from the travel deposit). Unlike the travel deposit, the tuition deposit cannot be covered by loans. (top)

Q: How can I get a letter of recommendation?
A: Students seeking letters of recommendation or wishing to refer prospective employers to MFA faculty or leaders for telephone endorsements should ask those persons most directly familiar with their work to supply such letters or to serve as references. A student’s thesis advisor is the most appropriate person to ask for a recommendation. Other faculty who have served as mentors would also be in a position to offer meaningful supportive statements. Sometimes students may have felt special rapport with a recent workshop leader and wish to ask that person for a recommendation that would include statements not only about the quality of writing but also about oral communication skills in a group situation. Usually, endorsements from people with whom you have not worked directly can only seem pro forma to prospective employers and do not carry the appropriate authority. (top)

Students seeking a recommendation should make a request directly to the faculty member, not to the MFA Office. The student should help the faculty member to write convincingly by offering a description of the job and how the student himself or herself feels that the educational experience with the recommender has prepared the student for the particular position.

Giving a faculty member plenty of lead time and including information about the recommendation’s due date and the exact address and title of the person to whom it is to be directed also facilitates matters.

It is always courteous to inform and thank recommenders when a position has been secured. And it is encouraging to other MFA alumni to send in a notice of new employment to the Life of a Writer section of the MFA newsletter On Extended Wings. We all want to hear of your successes. (top)

Life of a Writer

Students, faculty, and alumni: Please email writing news to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu

Students

For Hope College’s French Cultural Studies Colloquium, on October 10, Priscilla Atkins co-presented “The French Muse: On Inspiration and Translation.” Her talk explored the ways in which studying French language and literature has influenced her own writing.

Two of Tay Berryhill’s essays have been published: “White Matter” in the fall issue of flashquake (www.flashquake.org) and “Caged Spirit” in the Autumnal Equinox issue of Cezanne’s Carrot (www.cezannescarrot.org). Her flash fiction story “Baggage Handler” appears in the fall issue of DiddleDog (www.diddledog.com). Whortleberry Press published her short story “The Healing Arts” in their September issue. Her story “Teeth” is forthcoming in the October 30th issue of Clockwise Cat (www.clockwisecat.blogspot.com). (top)

Nancy Jo Cegla is to have a Roundtable Reading of her work at the Playwrights’ Center (PWC) in Minneapolis in late March 2008.

Linda Cruise presented a creative writing workshop for the 5th graders at Camel’s Hump Middle School, in Richmond, Vermont, on September 28. As well as discussing basic story elements with the students and some practical tips for improving their writing, she stressed the importance of developing strong writing skills. She emphasized the importance of good writing skills to succeed in all academic subjects, as well as future careers, whether or not they intend to become writers. The students were then given the opportunity to randomly choose one conflict, one setting, and one character (from three distinct bags), before connecting the three elements in an original short story. Linda returns to the school in mid-October as a guest listener, when the students present their stories at a public reading. (top)

Karen George’s poem “Botany Lesson, a First Date,” was published in an anthology, New Growth, Recent Kentucky Writings, edited by Charlie Sweet and Hal Blythe through the Jesse Stuart Foundation. The poetry was selected by Frank X Walker (Spring 2003) and the fiction by Silas House.

On September 30, Joan Gumbs attended the 11th Annual Herstory Writers Workshop in Stony Brook, New York. Workshop leader Erika Duncan started Herstory in the Southampton Cultural Center in 1996. She is the author of the novels A Wreath of Pale White Roses and Those Giants: Let Them Rise, as well as Unless Soul Clap its Hands, Portraits and Passages, a book of essays. Current members include Peg Murray, Lonnie Mathis (who is involved in the Prison Project), Sandra Dunn, Sunita S. Mukhi, and Nina Wolff, among others.

Colleen Harris’ poem “Passionfruit” is to be published in the Fall 2007 issue of Poetry Midwest.

David Harrity’s book, Morning and What Has Come Since, was recently nominated for the Book of the Year Citation at the Conference of Christianity and Literature. This winter, he will be teaching poetry workshops at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky, and at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky. (top)

Trish Lindsey Jaggers’ poem “Complementary” was accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of The Louisville Review.

Russ Kesler has a poem, “I Sit in the Wheelchair,” in Descant 2007.

Amina McIntyre’s short play “Point of View” is to be produced in Wabash College’s Studio One Acts November 8-9, in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Nicole Moro read from her memoir and collection of poems for Professor Margaux Fragoso’s undergraduate creative writing class at Binghamton University in late September. (top)

Keith Nixon attended the Kentucky Film Lab seminar for the Production Track on September 14-16. It was a fabulous way to network with other members of the filmmaking community in Louisville. Participating in the KY Film Lab afforded him the opportunity to meet with industry professionals who exposed him to the post-screenwriting process. Attending the KY Film Lab also led to another opportunity to take the “Let’s Make a Movie” course through the Professional Development department at University of Louisville. The class is making a 20-minute student film that is scheduled to go direct to DVD on December 12.

Kim Stinson-Hawn attended the Kentucky Women Writer’s Conference in Lexington, on September 29. The playwriting workshop at the conference was led by Nathalie Handal, who lives and works in New York City. (top)

Faculty & Staff

Dianne Aprile’s essay, “Throwing Words Away,” was named a finalist in the 2008 The New Letters Dorothy Churchhill Cappon Essay Contest. Her article on a trip to Compiegne, France, the setting for the Poulenc opera Dialogues with the Carmelites, appears in the fall issue of Pitch magazine. Dianne also taught a writing workshop at a retreat center in Colorado Springs on September 21-23. She led a writing workshop in Louisville on September 24 for breast cancer survivors, funded by a Susan B. Komen grant. She produced (and read at) a Jazz & Spoken Word event on Aug. 29 at The Jazz Factory, celebrating the Peace Education movement in Louisville, and featuring a reading of a song from Antoinette!, the musical, by Sena Jeter Naslund. (top)

K. L. Cook’s novel, The Girl from Charnelle, won the 2007 WILLA Award for Contemporary Fiction. The WILLA Awards, named after Willa Cather, are chosen by a panel of 21 distinguished librarians. His article “A Family Theme, A Family Secret” was featured in the fall Glimmer Train’s Writers Ask. He was a guest author at Simpson College on October 18.

Nancy McCabe has been promoted to associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, where she directs the creative writing program and has been appointed interim director of composition. She also is co-chair of One Book Bradford, a community-wide reading initiative. In October, she gave a reading from her work at the International Conference on Adoption and Culture in Pittsburgh.

On Saturday, October 13th, Spalding’s Writing-for-Children students (current and alumni) were well represented at the highly competitive annual Rutgers One-on-One Plus Conference, sponsored by the Rutgers University Council on Children’s Literature. Dave DeGolyer (Fall 2006), Jenn Sherlock (Fall 2006), Kit Willihnganz, Patti Zelch (Fall 2003), Edie Hemingway (Spring 2004), and Betsy Woods Atkinson (Spring 2004) had an opportunity to meet and talk with more than sixty children’s book editors and agents and thirty published authors who volunteered their time to mentor aspiring writers. Council member and mentor Joyce McDonald was on hand to greet them and answer their questions. The one-day conference included one-on-one mentoring, discussion groups, a panel, and guest speakers. Former writing for children instructor Susan Campbell Bartoletti was also one of this year’s mentors. (top)

l-r in picture: Dave Degolyer, Jenn Sherlock, Joyce McDonald, Kit Willihnganz, Patti Zelch, and Edie Hemingway

Sena Jeter Naslund recently gave presentations at the Ben May Library, Mobile, Alabama; the Southern Literary Festival, Nashville; and the Lowell Lecture, Cape Cod Community College. On Saturday, November 17, she gives a joint presentation at 2:15 p.m. at the Courthouse Executive Center for the Vero Beach Book Festival in Vero Beach, Florida, with her brother John Sims Jeter, author of his first novel . . . And the Angels Sang (Livington Press, 2007).

Screenwriting instructor Brad Riddell has been hired by Paramount and Montecito Pictures to write a sequel to the 2000 comedy Road Trip. This will be Brad’s third sequel, along with one prequel, but he hopes to someday sell an original quel of his own. (top)

Jeanie Thompson presented at the Southern Women Writers’ Conference at Berry College on September 28 as part of a panel on All Out of Faith: Southern Women Writers on Spirituality. She has two new poems online at www.storysouth.com in the September issue. Two poems from Jeanie’s Helen Keller sequence, “This Day,” are to be performed October 27 in Theater Tuscaloosa’s Page to Stage Inaugural production. Her current book project for the Alabama Writers’ Forum and Alabama State Council on the Arts is editing an anthology of 10 years of the Harper Lee Award winners.

Katy Yocom spent two weeks in August as writer in residence at the Kimmel-Harding-Nelson Center for the Arts, in Nebraska City, Nebraska. While she was there, she finished the first draft of her novel in progress. It was the most productive period of her writing life to date. (top)

Alumni

Bobbi Buchanan’s (Fall 2004) quarterly e-zine, New Southerner, has a new anthology of all work published online over the past year. The anthology is available for purchase at newsoutherner.com, Carmichael’s in Louisville and other independent bookstores. Bobbi, along with contributing editor Leslie Smith Townsend (Spring 2004) and assistant editor Ellen Anderson, participated in a reading October 14 at Carmichael’s on Frankfort Avenue. Bobbi’s essay “A Life Away,” which was part of her creative thesis, won the Southern Women Writers Conference’s Emerging Writers Contest. She participated in a reading September 29 at Berry College, Mount Berry, Georgia. Part of Bobbi’s op-ed piece that appeared in The New York Times, “Don’t Hang Up—That’s My Mom Calling,” is included in a new textbook called Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric with Readings.

Dave DeGolyer (Fall 2006) was recently a guest reader at the Elmira Council of the Arts’ “Four Fridays” as part of their poetry series. In September, Dave learned that he had been accepted as a participant in the RUCCL One-on-One Plus Conference, where he had the opportunity to catch up with present and past Spalding faculty Joyce McDonald and Susan Campbell Bartoletti, as well as with Writing for Children alums Jenn Sherlock (Fall 2006), Patti Zelch (Fall 2003), and Edie Hemingway (Spring 2004). Under the pseudonym of Lafayette Wattles, his poems “Bus Ride Home” and “Fish Jumping” appear online in the current issue of Prick of the Spindle, his poem “Mud” appears in the fifth issue of Shit Creek Review, and his poem, “Outside Disney World,” appears in the October issue of Eclectica. (top)

Daniel DiStasio (Fall 2005) has had three stories accepted for publication. “Happiness” was chosen by The Summerset Review for winter 2008. “Kizhi Island” is to appear in The Louisville Review in spring 2008. “The Rock that Hit His Head” appears in The Chaffin Journal. Solares Hill, Key West’s arts and culture weekly which published his award-winning story “Halong Bay” in 2003, ran a short piece about Daniel, noting he has had six stories accepted for publication in 2007.

Kathryn Eastburn (Spring 2006) attended the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association meeting in Denver on September 28 to promote her forthcoming book, Simon Says: A True Story of Boys, Guns and Murder (Da Capo Press/ Perseus Books). The release date for the book is January 1, 2008. Eastburn’s second book, A Sacred Feast, is currently in production at University of Nebraska Press.

Thea Gavin (Spring 2005) spent the first week of October at the Imnaha Writers’ Retreat—a remote cabin on the Imnaha River in northeastern Oregon sponsored by Fishtrap, Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to “promoting clear thinking and good writing in and about the West.” (top)

Chris Helvey (Fall 2006) had his short story “Conscientious Objectors” selected for inclusion in Best New Writing 2007 (Hopewell Publications).

Edie Hemingway (Spring 2004) has received a contract from Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House, for her middle grade novel and creative thesis, Tater Hill. The publication date is set for fall 2009.

Cyn Kitchen (Spring 2005) was invited to read at Knox College for the Caxton Club series. Her recent publications include essays, “Disaster Preparedness” in Blood Lotus and “You Made It Whatever It Is” in keepgoing.org, and a short story, “Ashes Ashes,” that appears in the Fall 2007 issue of The Louisville Review. She has work forthcoming in Minnetonka Review, New Southerner 2006-2007 Anthology, and Women. Period. An Anthology. Cyn is in her second year of teaching fiction and nonfiction writing as well as introductory literature courses at Knox College in Galesburg, Ill. She blogs at www.cynkitchen.blogs.com and www.kitchencynk.blogspot.com.

Claudia Labin’s (Spring 2007) short story “Roumania” is to appear in the December issue of Front and Center. Her interview with Will Allison on his debut novel, What You Have Left, is to be published in The South Carolina Review. (top)

Kathleen Thompson (Fall 2003) participated in a poetry reading and signing at Jonathan Benton Booksellers in Birmingham on October 7 from Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry. On October 10, she presented a poetry program to five classes during Arts Alive, a full day of celebrating the arts—painting, music, dance, and drama—at Our Lady of the Valley School.

Leslie Smith Townsend’s essays, “Scrambling for Satisfaction” and “Which Side Are You On: The Doolittles’ Silas House and Jason Howard Use Music to Fight Mountaintop Removal Mining,” are published in the 2006-2007 print anthology of New Southerner, edited by Bobbi Buchanan (Fall 2004). Her work, “The Road to Envy Recovery” and “Conventional vs. Organic: The High Price of Cheap Food” with Ellen Anderson, can be found online, Fall 2007, at www.newsoutherner.com. Both Leslie and Bobbi Buchanan read and signed copies of New Southerner on October 14 at Carmichaels’ Bookstore, Frankfort Avenue, in Louisville. (top)

Amy Watkins (Copeland) (Spring 2006) has poems in forthcoming issues of Bayou Magazine, Mississippi Crow, and Apalachee Review.

Vickie Weaver’s (Fall 2005) as yet unpublished novel, Below the Heart, placed in the top ten manuscripts of The Parthenon Prize for Fiction 2007. (top)

Books/Scripts in Common for Fall
The cross-genre areas for Fall 2007 are screenwriting and playwriting. Students and faculty read a play and a screenplay and view the movie before coming to residency. The scripts are discussed at the first-night discussion led by Sena and Kathleen. (Bring the scripts.)

Script in Common for Screenwriting
Robert Moresco, co-writer of Crash, is our guest screenwriter. The script is posted on Blackboard under Residency/Fall Residency 2007/ Residency Documents for students and faculty to download and read, and all students and faculty are to watch the movie before coming to residency. (top)

Script in Common for Playwriting
Heather Raffo: 9 Parts of Desire: A Play. The script can be purchased from online sources such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you may ask your local bookseller to order it for you . (ISBN 0810123452) (top)

Faculty/Guest Books in Common for Fall 2007
Students read the Faculty/Guest Books in Common in their Fall 2007 area of concentration in preparation for a discussion with authors at the Fall 2007 residency.

Fiction: Rachel Harper’s Brass Ankle Blues
Poetry: Debra Kang Dean’s Precipitates
Creative Nonfiction: Richard Goodman’s French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France
Writing for Children: Ellie Bryant’s Father by Blood
Playwriting: Eric Schmiedl’s Denise Druczweski’s Inferno
Screenwriting: Charles Pogue’s Dragonheart

Students should check Blackboard for a complete list of pre-reading assignments. (top)

Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) for Spring 2007

FAC members are announced by the MFA Office at the beginning of each semester. The Program Director consults with the FAC about recommendations for admissions and about programmatic and administrative development and changes. Both faculty and students are invited to make suggestions to the FAC for exploration by the Program Director and larger faculty. However, students and faculty should directly and immediately consult the Associate Program Director about any issues concerning specific individuals’ performance in the program.