Fall 2014 Program Book in Common: Esperanza Rising

The middle-grade novel Esperanza Rising, by Pam Munoz Ryan, is the Program Book in Common for Fall 2014. Ryan visits the residency November 19-20 as the Diana M. Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence. Ryan is the recipient of the NEA's Civil and Human Rights Award and the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for Multicultural Literature. Her other selected honors include the PEN USA Award, the Americas Award, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Honor, and the Orbis Pictus Award.

To prepare for residency, students and faculty in all areas of concentration read Esperanza Rising. All students place Esperanza Rising (Scholastic, 2000) on their reading lists. Students enrolled in ENG622 for the Fall residency complete a pre-assignment by writing an essay about Esperanza Rising; further details are below.

On the first day of residency, Friday, November 14, after the general welcome, Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund leads a discussion of Esperanza Rising. Students should prepare oral comments to contribute to that plenary Program Book-in-Common session and bring the book to the session.

On Wednesday, November 19, Ryan visits the residency, presenting a talk about her work to MFA students, alumni, and faculty. The community is also invited to this discussion. A reception and book-signing follow. The next morning, Ryan participates in a Q & A session open only to MFA students, alumni, and faculty.

Set in post-revolutionary Mexico and in California during the Great Depression, Esperanza Rising examines the plight of Mexican farm workers as they struggle to adapt and survive in the United States. Upon publication, Esperanza Rising received a Best Books citation, a starred review from Publishers Weekly, and many other honors including the Pura Belpre award. Esperanza Rising was also commissioned as a play. The novel has been included in school curriculum in literature, social studies, and Spanish across the country.

Ryan is the author of more than forty books, primarily for young people. Her titles include Becoming Naomi Leon, Riding Freedom, Paint the Wind, The Dreamer, and most recently, Echo, forthcoming in February 2015. Her picture books include Tony Baloney, Our California, Hello Ocean, Nacho and Lolita, and Mice and Beans, which was commissioned as an opera.

As a required pre-assignment, each student who is registered in ENG622 for the Fall 2014 residency writes an essay on Esperanza Rising. Instructions for that essay have been emailed to all current ENG613 students who may be attending the residency. Any student who plans to enroll for the ENG622 residency course for Fall 2014 and has not received those instructions should contact Associate Program Director Kathleen Driskell at kdriskell@spalding.edu.

Each ENG622 student's PBIC essay is included in an electronic workshop booklet with four to six other student essays. About a month before the residency, the booklet is sent to students in each group, and it forms the basis for a class held during the residency. Expository Writing classes are conducted by MFA faculty members, and each group meets in a single session.
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Fall 2014 Cross-Genre Lecture Explores the Grimm's Fairy Tales

In addition to sessions focused on Program Book in Common Esperanza Rising, the Fall 2014 residency's cross-genre focus on Writing for Children & Young Adults includes the plenary lecture "Once Upon This Time: The Roots and Re-tellings of the Grimm's Fairy Tales."

In this talk, Kathleen Driskell presents an exploration of the history, contributions to folklore scholarship, and continuing influence of the Grimm's most famous fairy tales. She will also discuss lesser-known tales published throughout the nineteenth century in various editions of the Grimm's Kinder und Hausmarchen. At the end of the lecture, Kathleen gives detailed instructions on the cross-genre assignment.

To prepare for this lecture, before residency, students are required to read a sampling of lesser-known fairy tales, provided in PDF on the MFA portal. While students do not have to print this long handout, they should be able to access it electronically during residency as a reference needed for completing the cross-genre assignment. The cross-genre focal area changes each residency in a rotation among the MFA Program's genres of writing.
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Literary Explorations and Additional Special Lectures at Fall 2014 Residency

The Fall residency features several plenary lectures delivered by MFA faculty members. Nancy McCabe explores the genre of memoir in "The Black Sheep of the Literary Family: In Defense of Memoir," and Kenny Cook covers the Bard in a lecture titled "Shakespeare for Writers." Both lectures are part of the MFA Program's Literary Explorations series, which features literary topics of interest to writers in all areas.

In addition, Leslea Newman offers a lecture titled "The Gender Dance: Picture Books that Challenge Stereotypes" as part of the residency's cross-genre exploration in Writing for Children & Young Adults. The area of focus for cross-genre exploration rotates among areas of concentration each residency.
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MFA Program to Attend Performance of Tribes at Residency

The MFA Program attends a performance of Tribes, a play by Nina Raine, as part of the interrelatedness-of-the-arts focus. Directed by Evan Cabnet, the performance takes place at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, November 16, at Actors Theatre of Louisville. The MFA Program provides tickets to the performance and motorcoach transportation to and from the theatre.

The play's synopsis reads, "Billy is the youngest of three adult siblings in a boisterous family. He was born deaf and raised to read lips, but he has never really been heard. When he meets Sylvia, who is losing her hearing and grew up using sign language, he is introduced to new perspectives that tug at the bonds that have defined his life until now. Tribes is an emotionally charged drama about the struggle to find a voice when no
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SpaldingCon: A Post-Graduate Writers' Conference, November 20-22

Spalding MFA alums are invited to come home for the MFA Program's first-ever post-graduate writers' conference November 20-22. Scheduled during the final weekend of the Fall 2014 residency, SpaldingCon offers a rich slate of events for alums, including workshops; a master class led by Sena; publishing talks; a Literary Explorations lecture about Shakespeare; a translation session; faculty readings; free admission to a MidSouth Alumni Regional Event on Saturday afternoon, which includes a talk by a literary agent; an opening lunch; a reception; and the option to attend residency events.

The registration deadline is September 20. For complete information, see http://spalding.edu/academics/mfa-in-writing/mfa-alumni/spaldingcon/.
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Endowed Scholarship Established for Poetry Students

A gift by an anonymous donor has established the Audrey Wasson and Carol Leseure Endowed Scholarship in Poetry. Beginning in Fall 2015, each year, the one-time scholarship will help to fund a new MFA student in poetry who demonstrates financial need.

The new poetry scholarship increases the MFA Program's number of endowed scholarships to five, including the Diana M. Raab Scholarship in Creative Nonfiction, the J. Terry Price Scholarship in Fiction, the Eileen Spinelli Writing for Children Scholarship, and the MFA Alumni Endowed Scholarship. Other scholarships include the Bob Keith Travel Scholarship for summer students, the Kentucky Teachers Scholarship, the MFA in Writing Scholarship Fund for Minorities, and the general MFA in Writing Scholarship Fund.

Scholarships are awarded to incoming students, while returning students have the option to apply for graduate assistantships.
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MFA Program to Sponsor Alumni and Student Registrations for AWP 2015

Alumni who wish to attend the AWP Conference & Bookfair, April 8-11 in Minneapolis, may ask the MFA Program to cover their conference registration fee, and the MFA Program will sponsor the registration of the first 15 alumni who apply. Alums who wish to apply for a registration fee waiver should email Associate Administrative Director Katy Yocom at kyocom@spalding.edu by October 30. Waivers are granted on a first-come, first-served basis. Those who receive a waiver do not register directly with AWP, as the MFA Program arranges their registration. Registration normally costs $230 for nonmembers or $140 for AWP members. (The registration cost for current students is $45.) Alumni are asked to spend a 75-minute session staffing the MFA Program's booth in exchange for a waiver.

The MFA Program also reimburses current students who register for AWP. Students register for the conference directly by going to www.awpwriter.org and choosing AWP Conference. Once registered, students email their electronic receipt to Karen Mann for reimbursement. Students are asked to spend a 75-minute session staffing the MFA booth in exchange for reimbursement. Registration for the conference is now open. The early-bird rate extends through October 30.

Conference attendees make their own travel and hotel arrangements. Conference hotels fill up quickly. Details may be found on the AWP website.
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Creating Community

Making a Difference Close to Home
by Angela Elles (P '14)

This has been a busy year. Not only have I finished my MFA, but also I have been raising a daughter and gathering experiences. Community service is one way to gather experience, meet people, and best of all, help others. I notice more and more how many great ideas are not implemented because extra hands are not available to carry them out. Why doesn't my daughter's elementary school observe Food Day? Why aren't tutors available after school for kids who need help? Why doesn't my child's soccer team have a coach? The simplified answer is that funding for such things is nonexistent. This void prompted me to step in and see what I could do.

Being on the Title 1 Parent Involvement Committee at my daughter's elementary school opened my eyes to the poverty that many members of my community experience. More than 20 percent of my daughter's schoolmates are affected by poverty. Children directly affected by poverty are more likely to fall behind in school. Helping them with their sight words and coaching running club and soccer for a few hours a week is one way to help. I love being a familiar face to so many children in the community. Kids absolutely light up when adults in the community recognize them in public.

Volunteering helped me see the lack of resources that teachers, therapists, and community organizations are operating with. I'm now on the board for the Women's Giving Circle of Jefferson County, Indiana, which pools the financial strength of women of all generations and means to award yearly grants specifically benefiting women and children. This year, several elementary students were given soccer cleats, and Girls Inc. was able to implement the "GoGirlGo!" physical activity and nutritional education program. My role on the board for the Giving Circle involves marketing and public relations, in hopes of recruiting new members and ensuring membership renewal. Once again, writing and communication prove vital for bringing people together for positive change. All that needs doing, both for myself and in the world at large, often overwhelms me. There is much to fix. Focusing on my own small radius of those in need seems to be the best way to "make a difference."

on Facebook:
Women's Giving Circle of Jefferson County, Indiana
Madison Handmade Market

Life of a Writer

Brittany Bryant (P) will have her nonfiction essay "The Second Chance" and three poems, "Zemblanity," "Sunday Afternoon," and "The Problem with Being a Romantic Is," featured in the 2014 edition of Envoi, which will be made available for the Kindle on Amazon this fall.
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Jessica Evans (F) has recently been awarded an Honorable Mention for her flash fiction piece, "Double Back Mule" from the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky. Her poem "chapped" is slated to appear in the poetry journal Adanna, publishing this fall.
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Jeffrey Fischer-Smith's (PW) short play "Reservations" is now available on Amazon in an anthology of one-acts, The LIC One Act Play Festival Vol. 2 2014, and in the inaugural issue of Qu: A Literary Journal at Queens University of Charlotte Low-Residency MFA Program. "Reservations" also will be included in four festivals in September and October: Pegasus Theater Company's Tapas, The Eighth Annual New Short Play Festival, in Guerneville in the Russian River Valley of Sonoma County, California; the Northern Arizona Playwriting Showcase, a collaboration between Northern Arizona University's creative writing program and Theatrikos Theater Company, in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona; Short + Sweet Theatre Malaysia at The Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre; and Short + Sweet Theatre Hobart at The Playhouse Theatre in Tasmania, Australia.
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Karyl Anne Geary (CNF) accepted an adjunct teaching position at Ivy Tech Community College in Sellersburg, Indiana. Her lyric essay "Retrograded Mercury" was published in Stonecoast Review's second issue (http://stonecoastreview.com/?p=469). She read the essay in April as part of the inaugural Spalding at the Speed: A Gathering of MFA and Community Writers event, and emceed the July Spalding at the Speed. She has also launched a blog, http://karylannewrites.wordpress.com, about trying to balance a literary life within the constraints of "real life."
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Hugh Moffatt (SW) spent eight weeks touring Europe in February and March behind the release of his 10th CD, "Only Along for the Ride." He performed for audiences in England, Scotland, Switzerland, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway. Hugh is now producing the Pulp Friction 10-Minute Play Festival as part of the Proto-Pulp Book show on September 13. Pulp Friction will run four original plays by Tennessee playwrights continuously during the afternoon on an open stage. The plays were written for adults but okay for children and can be performed without any tech and minimal props and costumes. One of the plays is Hugh's "The Truth," which was first workshopped during his Fall 2013 playwriting residency at Spalding. The artistic director and director of the plays is Tennessee theater veteran Tom Angland, who selected the material. (https://www.facebook.com/pages/Proto-Pulp-book-show/197808956958002)
In addition, Nashville artist Julie Sola is working on illustrating the first two books in Hugh's children's picture-book series, "Dissolvo Dog." Initial images and stories for these books will be displayed at the Proto Pulp book show. Publication is set for November. Hugh has also been volunteering occasionally at the Metro Prison in Nashville, where he has assisted and subbed for the creative writing class conducted by Spalding MFA grad Catherine Randall.
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Lisa Veronica Pires's (W4CYA) debut young adult novel, Extension, was released from Crescent Moon Press on June 15. Extension was workshopped at the Paris residency in 2012.
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Anna Urquhart (F) has had two essays selected for publication on her recent experiences in the Czech Republic, where she traveled with Spalding this past summer. The first essay is titled "Swallows in Terezin" and describes her experience at the Nazi ghetto and concentration camp. The second is titled "Prague: The Fairy Tale City (Or Is It?)" and is a reflection on her experience in Prague. Both pieces will appear in the November edition of Fine Living Lancaster magazine.
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Mark Vorenkamp (F) is proud to announce that his feature "Future-proofing Your Setting," based on his ECE, appears in the October issue of The Writer Magazine. The issue is now available.
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Dianne Aprile was the featured writer in August at a Seattle Salon, hosted by poet Ann Teplick. Dianne read from her work, talked about writing and Spalding's MFA program, and sold books! Her collaborative book project with photographer Julius Friedman is in print now. She edited and contributed to The Book, which will be on display in Louisville in September at a contributors' reading at the Portland Museum. Dianne also taught a one-day course on flash nonfiction at Seattle's Richard Hugo House on May 17 and is teaching a six-week class there this fall on Walking and Writing. She will attend the three-day Lit Fuse poetry festival in eastern Washington in September.
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David-Matthew Barnes's new novel, Stronger Than This (written in epistolary form), was recently published by Bold Strokes Books. Excerpts from two of his stage plays, Baby in the Basement and Better Places to Go, are featured in the new collection Audition Monologues for Young Women (Meriwether Publishing). David-Matthew recently served as a Young Author Critique Mentor for the Colorado Teen Literature Conference. He will be directing the world premieres of three new plays as part of the Rocky Mountain Short Play Festival. He recently created Bloom, a teen web series that starts production this fall in Denver. He has just been commissioned by Emmy Award-winning producer Paco Aguilar to write Out of Body, a paranormal feature film that goes into production this fall in Los Angeles.
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Roy Hoffman was interviewed about his novel, Come Landfall, by Spalding MFA grad Bill Goodman on Kentucky's public TV station, KET, which aired July 13, http://video.ket.org/video/2365289268/, and by MFA grad Katerina Stoykova-Klemer on her radio show, Accents, which aired May 30, http://katerinaklemer.com/audio/accents_053014.mp3, after spending a day in Lexington with colleague Karen Mann, who presented her novel, The Woman of La Mancha. Concerning Come Landfall, Roy served on a panel, "On the Fringes of War," at the Decatur Book Festival on August 30, and is the featured author of "A Moveable Feast," a luncheon and signing sponsored by Litchfield Books, Pawleys Island, South Carolina, at 11:00 a.m. on September 12. Roy's review of Frances Mayes's Under Magnolia was in the New York Times Book Review on June 15, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/15/books/review/under-magnolia-by-frances-mayes.html. On July 20, he led a discussion in Mobile about the film Au Revoir Les Enfants as part of a series at Spring Hill College on the films of Vichy France.
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Robin Lippincott's short-story collection, which has been out of print for several years, is now available as an e-book under its original title, The 'I' Rejected. The story Robin read at the spring residency, "Chez Isabella, ca. 1990" received an Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction contest, as his story "The Gravediggers" did previously: close, but no cigar. Also, Robin will be a judge for the Drue Heinz Literature Prize once again this year.
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Nancy McCabe's book, From Little Houses to Little Women: Revisiting a Literary Childhood, is now available for pre-order from online booksellers or directly from the University of Missouri Press. It will be released in November. Nancy's craft essay "Crossing the Nonfiction Line: Autobiographical Fiction and Fictionalized Memoir," an adaptation of a lecture she gave as a writer-in-residence at the Chautauqua Institution in the summer of 2013, appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of Voices de la Luna. Her flash fiction piece "After the Coma" was in the Winter 2013/14 Citron Review, and her essay "Gifts" is in the current issue of Chautauqua. "Gifts" is also due to be reprinted in the anthology Every Father's Daughter: Essays about Fathers by Daughters, with an introduction by Philip Lopate, to be published by McPherson and Company next spring. Her essay "The Baby Room" is forthcoming in Oh Baby! Stories about Tiny Humans from In Fact Books. Nancy serves as a peer reviewer for University of Missouri Press, with three books she recently reviewed in print or forthcoming. Last spring, she was promoted to full professor at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, and her author website is now up at http://www.nancymccabe.net.
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Sena Jeter Naslund lectured and read from her novels at the SouthEast Regional alumni gathering A Natural Retreat for Writers, held August 22 at Monte Sano State Park, near Huntsville, Alabama. Organized by Erin Reid, Brooke Bullman, and Kiietti Walker-Parker, the event drew fifty participants. From 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on  October 5 and 6, Sena will autograph copies of her novels at the Saint James Art Fair, in front of the Conrad-Caldwell Mansion, corner of Magnolia and St. James in Louisville. Sena is also speaking and reading on the evening Wednesday, October 8, at the Center for Fiction in New York; on Monday, October 20, in St. Louis, for River Styx; and on Tuesday, October 28, with Karen Mann at the Carnegie Center in Lexington, Kentucky.
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Jeanie Thompson was a finalist in the Richard Peterson Poetry Prize of Crab Orchard Review. Her winning poem, "Coming through Fire," from her manuscript The Myth of Water: Poems from the Life of Helen Keller, will appear in the Winter/Spring 2015 issue of COR. Finalists receive a $500 cash award upon publication. "To Lesbos," from Jeanie's first collection, How to Enter the River, will be reprinted in a retrospective anthology commemorating the best of the journal Porch/Salt River Review, edited by James Cervantes. The anthology will debut at AWP 2015.
Jeanie presented a workshop called "Writing the Historical Persona Poem" at the Hoover Public Library's Write Club on July 26. In her capacity as director of the Alabama Writers' Forum, Jeanie presented a Literary State of the State of Alabama at the Alabama Writers Conclave in Fairhope on July 12. In conjunction with the Alabama Center for the Book, Jeanie has spearheaded the establishment of the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. The inaugural class will be announced this fall, with an induction event planned for spring 2015.
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Katy Yocom read from her fiction at the June edition of Spalding at the Speed: A Gathering of MFA and Community Writers. She read from her poems at the August edition of the series. Her feature article on Marketplace at Theatre Square appeared in the Fall issue of Food & Dining magazine. In September, she plans to attend the Kentucky Women Writers Conference. She is currently teaching a freshman seminar on food at Bellarmine University.
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Sam Zalutsky's short film, How to Make It to the Promised Land, will premiere on the website Short of the Week (www.shortoftheweek.com), on September 15. It will screen at the El Dorado Film Festival in El Dorado, Arkansas, the following weekend.
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On October 6, Susan Arscott's (W4CYA, F '12) first full-length young adult book, The End of Normal, will be published by Burst Books. It will be available in e-format from all online booksellers. This is a completely revised version of her thesis.
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Deborah Begel's (CNF '06) documentary about water contamination on Navajo lands, Four Stories about Water, was shown at the Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro in May; it will be shown in Berlin in September and in Jordan later in the fall. She also edited a chapbook of student writings, Crossings, for the Summer Bridge program at Northern New Mexico College again this year. She was a founder and CNF editor of the college's new literary journal, Trickster, which launched last spring.
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This fall, Glenny Brock (CNF '07) begins her fifth semester teaching "Writing for the Media" at Birmingham-Southern College, where she also serves as faculty sponsor for the student newspaper. Back in the spring, Glenny made her first foray into speech writing as one of the featured presenters at the 2014 TEDxBirmingham conference. You may watch a video of her talk, titled "Movie Brats & Show People," online at http://bit.ly/TEDxGLB.
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Becky Browder's (F '12) short story "Unconditional" appears in the most recent issue of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. "Unconditional" was short-listed in the 2013 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Short Story Competition. Becky worked on the story with K. L. Cook and Phil Deaver during her final semester at Spalding. Also, Becky's short story "Too Much Room" received Honorable Mention in Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest in May.
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Roy Burkhead (F '04) recently published both the Hemingway issue of 2nd & Church and a special Spalding MFA Homecoming issue, featuring Sena Jeter Naslund with stories by and about an assortment of Spalding MFA alumni and mentors. Sena's issue may be viewed online at no cost at http://2ndandchurch.com. Roy and Linda Busby Parker (F '03) were guest speakers at the March meeting of the Pensters Writing Group in Point Clear, Alabama, and Roy judged the group's monthly poetry and fiction contests in March. He was also the short story judge for the Alabama Writers' Conclave. In July, he finished editing the memoir of former astronaut Rhea Seddon, and he continues to maintain her website and help her during her path to publication. In August, he volunteered at Nashville's Shakespeare in the Park. Roy attends a good many literary events across Nashville, and in the fall, he starts another semester as adjunct professor in Western Kentucky University's English Department.
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David Carren's (SW '05) play Hollyweird won First Prize in the Mountain Playhouse Comedy Playwriting Award. Prizes include cash, a staged reading of the play, and a potential film production. His screenplay Lullabies for Lieutenants won the Grand Prize at the StoryPro Awards, which includes $5,000 in cash and software. David co-wrote the script with Franklin Cox, based on his memoir of his experience in Vietnam in 1966 as Forward Observer for an artillery unit. His first novel, No Power on Earth, is being reprinted by Roswell Books.
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Shannon Cavanaugh's (F '13) children's story, "The Scratch of a Feedsack Dress," placed third in the Jesse Stuart Prize for Young Adult Fiction at the Mountain Literary Festival's annual writing contest at Lincoln Memorial University in June. The children's stories were judged by West Virginia Poet Laureate Marc Harshman, who has published 11 children's books that have been translated into Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Danish, and Swedish. Shannon wishes to thank Joyce McDonald and all those who participated in her children's workshop for their encouragement in writing this story.
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Jessica Caudill (CNF '13) will teach a seminar titled "Playing with Tense in Memoir" on Saturday, September 20, at the Carnegie Center for Literacy in Lexington, Kentucky. Visit http://www.carnegiecenterlex.org for details and registration.
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Amy M. Clark (P '04) has two poems online in Berklee College of Music's FUSION Magazine, http://www.fusionmagazine.org/. She and former faculty member Molly Peacock will participate in a series of events in New York, October 24-26, to launch their chapbook A Turn Around the Mansion Grounds: Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, published by Slapering Hol Press. The book is third in a series of limited-edition collaborative chapbooks featuring poetry and a conversation by established and emerging female poets. The events feature a reading at The Corner Bookstore in Manhattan on Friday evening, and a Saturday workshop and Sunday reading at the Hudson Valley Writers Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York.
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Albert DeGenova (P '05) has been staying poetically busy despite being woefully out of touch with his Spalding community. In the past few months, DeGenova's poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, and he placed in the 2014 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Competition sponsored by the Paterson Literary Review and the Poetry Center of Pasaic County, New Jersey. This will also be his second year judging the Illinois Emerging Writers Competition. His fourth book, a hand-made limited edition letterpress chapbook, titled A Good Hammer, has just become available from Timberline Press. He continues to publish the journal After Hours and to perform his poetry widely in the Chicago area. He teaches the annual Norbert Blei Writing Workshop at The Clearing Folk School in Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, which he reports as one of the most perfect places to enjoy a writing retreat. http://albertdegenova.outlawpoetry.com    http://www.afterhourspress.com
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Sonja de Vries (P '09) is going into her second year of "facilitating poetry's empowerment and healing" with veterans, people recovering from substance abuse, and youth. De Vries is in the process of organizing a "Poets for Palestine" event.
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Jenny Evans (SW '13) will teach two courses this fall. She will teach Public Relations Event Planning and Management at Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond, Kentucky, for the second consecutive semester and College Writing I at Midway College in Midway, Kentucky, for the first time.
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Carolyn Flynn (F, CNF '12) was a finalist for the 2014 Steinberg Essay Prize, awarded by Fourth Genre, judged by Robert Root, for her CNF piece "Resurrection," an excerpt from Straight to Heaven, the memoir she wrote during her first semester in the MFA program, working with faculty member Bob Finch. A version of "Resurrection" also won second place in the 2013 Pinch Journal CNF contest, judged by Abigail Thomas (Three Dog Life), and it advanced Carolyn as a finalist for the Sustainable Arts Foundation writers with families fellowship.
Carolyn also recently got six yeses from six agents at the Writer's Digest Pitch Slam conference, building on her one-for-three success with agents from the New York Writers Workshop earlier this year. She was pitching her novel, Searching for Persephone, written during her time at Spalding, working with Robin Lippincott, K.L. Cook, and Jody Lisberger. Flying on the high of that success, she and Terry Price (F '06) are offering "You, Your Book and a Mouthful of Stars," a live online workshop they will offer through The Writing Space (http://thewritingspace.net). The eight-week webinar is offered at two different times starting September 17 and is filling up fast. Sessions will be recorded, and participants will pitch their agent queries to Carolyn, Terry and peers, as well as an agent to be announced. Carolyn and Terry are planning a Magic Time writer's retreat for summer 2015 in Taos. An interest list is forming at http://thewritingspace.net.
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"Lemon Lane," a short story by Foust (F '08), was published in the summer 2014 edition of the online magazine FLAPPERHOUSE, http://flapperhouse.com/zine/2-summer-2014/. Check out her website at http://www.foustart.com.
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Thea Gavin (P '05) completed a 10-day/80-hour Wilderness First Responder course at the Grand Canyon in June, which qualifies her to lead back-country adventures such as her forthcoming four-day creative writing workshop at Grand Canyon's North Rim in June 2015 (through the Grand Canyon Field Institute). She led a creative writing hike at Crystal Cove State Park in May and has been selected for an artist residency in one of the historic cabins at Crystal Cove in December.
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Karen George's (F '09) poetry chapbook Inner Passage is available from Red Bird Chapbooks at http://www.redbirdchapbooks.com/chapbooks.html. Her poetry collection, Swim Your Way Back, will be available in September from Dos Madres Press at http://www.dosmadres.com/, and a poetry chapbook entitled The Seed of Me was accepted by Finishing Line Press. She received Honorable Mention in the Accents Publishing 2014 Poetry Chapbook Contest for her chapbook Wellspring and was runner-up in 94 Creations Poetry Contest. She had a poem, "Contrapuntal," published in a special edition of The Found Poetry Review, which featured found poems sourced from each episode of Joyce's novel Ulysses. Her poem "How to Live" appeared in Volume 7 of Found Poetry Review. Five of her poems were published in the online arts journal ÆQAI, in the "Art for a Better World" column, paired with images by visual artist Nathan Weikert. While she was in Berlin with the program's MFA study abroad program, her interview with Barbara Gray for WVXU's "Around Cincinnati" radio program aired. You can listen to the archived interview at http://wvxu.org/post/local-poet-karen-george-and-story-behind-inner-passage.
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Alice Gorman (CNF '05) was a guest reader at the 18th Annual Tenants Harbor Poetry event in Maine on August 15. She has also launched her new website, http://www.alicebinghamgorman.com. The blog on her website features an article about Joyce Maynard at the St. George Literary Series. Alice started the Literary Series at the Jackson Memorial Library in Tenants Harbor in 2008. The other authors included in the 2014 series were Jackie Gorman, Eleanor Morse, and Lee Smith.
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Brian Hampton's (PW '06) one-act play, "Gossip," has been published by Pioneer Drama Service and is available for purchase and production. "Gossip" is a cautionary tale about the effects of gossip, centering on a group of high school theatre students who graciously befriend a mysterious and infectious new student named Gossip. But as stories are manipulated and relationships crumble, all roads tragically lead to one place...Gossip. It's available at http://www.pioneerdrama.com.

Michael Wayne Hampton (F '05) was recently awarded an Individual Excellence Award by the Ohio Arts Council. His novella, Roller Girls Love Bobby Knight, which won the 2013 Deerbird Novella Prize, was released May 27 by Artistically Declined Press. http://michaelwaynehampton.com.
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Patty Houston's (F '08) story "So, Is There Anything You Want to Talk About?" is forthcoming in the summer issue of Grain Magazine; her story "You Bacon Me Crazy" is forthcoming in the fall issue of Chicago Quarterly Review, and her story "George Bridgewell 1969" is forthcoming in the fall issue of the Santa Monica Review.
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Troy Jewell (F '07) recently returned from a month-long writer's retreat at The Hermitage Artist Retreat (http://hermitageartistretreat.org/) in Englewood, Florida. While there, he worked on a novella and read his work along with three others.
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Christi Kelly's (P '14) poem "St. Christopher's River" will be published in the October 2014 issue of Outside In Literary & Travel Magazine.
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Katrina Kittle (F '08) was on faculty for the Antioch Writers' Workshop in July and is teaching online creative writing classes through http://www.OnLiten.com. She has also started a manuscript consulting business with two other writers called http://www.WriteSistersConsulting.com.
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Caroline LeBlanc (P '11) is Writer in Residence at the Museum of the American Military Family (MAMF). In partnership with the national Telling Project staff, she is co-producing/writing Telling, Albuquerque, a 9/11/2014 testimonial theatrical event in which Albuquerque military veterans and family members perform their own stories. In 2014, she directed 4 Voices on the 4th, a collaborative spoken-word performance with three other women poet/writer military family members. She composed the script for the MAMF summer 2014 exhibit, Sacrifice & Service: The American Military Family, mounted at the Smithsonian-associated Museum of Nuclear Science and History. Since relocating to Albuquerque in 2011, she has hosted a writing salon for women military veterans and family members. She is a member of the Apronistas Art Group, which has, for the past three years, produced community installations of art and word aprons as part of Albuquerque's annual Women in Creativity month. Her art has been in a number of group shows in the Albuquerque area.
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Elaine Drennon Little (F '10) was named as finalist in the Georgia Author of the Year/First Novel award for A Southern Place. There were 28 nominees, three semi-finalists, one finalist and one winner.
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Nancy Long (P '12) attended the Ireland for Writers Workshop (http://irelandforwriters.com), which was held during the last week of June. It was a magical experience! In honor of National Poetry Month, Nancy participated, along with two other Spalding alums, in the Oulipost Project (http://www.foundpoetryreview.com/oulipost), sponsored by The Found Poetry Review. The Oulipost Project consisted of almost 80 poets who applied constrained writing techniques called "Oulipo" techniques (http://www.poets.org/poetsorg/text/poetic-techniques-oulipo) to text sourced from local newspapers to create and post a poem a day for each day in April. In March, Nancy was a featured reader at Lemonstone Reading, hosted by the Writers Guild at Bloomington, along with faculty member Debra Kang Dean. Lastly, Nancy is honored to have a poem published in a recent edition of Boxcar Poetry Review.
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Aimee Mackovic (P '05) recently attended Breadloaf Conference, which made her miss residency even more. She had two poems appear in Issue 2 of Up the River and has two poems forthcoming in UCity Review. She also attended the Prague/Berlin summer residency and consumed many, many beers and had many, many laughs with fellow Spaldingtons.

Patricia McFadden (W4CYA '07) is having a book signing for her picture book, Curious Carmelita, illustrated by her daughter, Robin McFadden, published June 2014 by Green Turtle Arts. The signing will take place at Poor Richard's Book Store in Colorado Springs from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. on September 7. Curious Carmelita has been approved by the Western National Parks Association for sale in their stores and is a featured book at the Chiricahua National Monument and the Chiricahua Desert Museum. For more information, visit http://www.greenturtlearts.com.
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Amina S. McIntyre (PW '09) has been busy this year. She received a City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs Grant to write and develop her play City Walker, which looks at Atlanta's resource trail for homeless persons. McIntyre was a three-time invited playwright to the Atlanta One Minute Play Festival, where plays ATLiens  and All the Wrong Places  were produced at Actors Express Theatre. Her play Drinking Kool-Aid was written and produced during The Academy Theatre's Round the Clock Theatre Festival. She is the Managing Director of Karibu Performing Arts, a new Atlanta-based theatre company, and the newly appointed Atlanta Regional Dramatist Guild Young Ambassador (2014-2015).
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Amy M. Miller (CNF '14) was honored to lead a writing workshop for the Norton Cancer Institute's Young Survivors Group. The workshop was sponsored by two nonprofit agencies, Hope Scarves and The Kentucky Center Arts and Healing Program. The two-hour workshop was attended by 11 women and was a great success!
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Michael Morris (F, PW '09) received the Alabama Library Association's Author Award for his novel Man in the Blue Moon. The state association is made up of public, school, and university librarians. The award was presented at the group's annual convention in Huntsville.
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Marilyn Moss (CNF '09) was a finalist in nonfiction for this year's Maine Literary Awards. Quite an honor for Marilyn and her book, Bill Moss: Fabric Artist & Designer.
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Jae Newman's (P '06) first collection of poems, titled Postage, is forthcoming in Fall 2014 as part of the Poiemia Series by Cascade Books.
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Richard Newman (P '04) launched his new book of poems, All the Wasted Beauty of the World, on August 22 at The Tavern of Fine Arts in St. Louis. A poem from the book, "Digging Up the Elephant Ears," which originally appeared in Boulevard, was selected for the 2014 edition of New Poetry from the Midwest. His play Bang! was selected to be produced in the North Park Playwright Festival in San Diego this October. His one-act plays No Other Gods Before Me and Bang! were selected to be produced in First Run Theatre's Spectrum 2014 One Act Play Festival in St. Louis this November.
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Joe Peacock (F '08) will have two poems in the upcoming issue of Chris Helvey's Trajectory. Joe has been busy working on a memoir, tentatively titled Flying Without Wings: Searching for My Brother, My Mother, Myself. In addition, he has finally retired from teaching after 48 years in junior and senior high, including over 15 years as an adjunct at Cayahoga Community College in Cleveland and at Indiana University Southeast in New Albany. Joe and his writing group, The Grasmere Writers (all Spalding MFA graduates), have presented dramatic readings of their stories at the Bard's Town in Louisville every year for the past four years.
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A poem by Dania Rajendra (CNF '11), "BK AM," has won the 2014 Rachel Wetzsteon prize and is forthcoming in Podium, the journal of the 92nd St. Y. In April, her poem "New Year's Instructions" was included in Alimentum's Menu Poems. And in May, her essay "Cloudy Coffee," which she read as a student at Spalding, appeared in the online magazine Killing the Buddha.
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Catherine Randall (CNF '13) is happy to report she will be adjunct teaching composition for four sessions at Volunteer State Community College and one session at Middle Tennessee State University. She has also picked up some journalism gigs for the Nashville Arts magazine and The Scene newspaper.
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Flora K. Schildknecht (F '14) is teaching Composition and Integrated Reading and Writing this Fall at Ivy Tech Community College in Sellersburg, Indiana.
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Ron Schildknecht (SW '12) will be teaching a screenwriting course for the BFA program at Spalding University this fall.
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Graham Shelby (CNF '10) started an online journal exploring the mental aspects of physical health. In January, Graham declared his intention to go from 253 to 213 lbs. by year's end and document the ups and downs along the way in real time. (He's down 25 lbs. so far—who knew writing was so aerobic?) http://www.blog213.com.
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Last year, Amy Oden Simpson (PW, F '13) adapted for the stage the bestselling children's book Zippy's Club by Candida Sullivan. In her capacity as director of the Middlesborough Little Theatre in Middlesboro, Kentucky, Simpson produced and directed seven performances in early April. The cast included 30 children, ages 5 to 15. In addition to adapting the material, Simpson wrote the music and lyrics for five optional songs, which the children performed. Zippy's Club: The Play was published by ShadeTree in April.
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Katerina Stoykova-Klemer (P '09) co-wrote, with director Thom Southerland, the independent feature film Proud Citizen and acted in the lead role. The film has been accepted in several festivals, including The New Orleans Film Festival, where it is one of seven films chosen to play in the narrative feature competition. Film description, trailer, cast and crew information, as well as a list of upcoming screenings can be found at http://www.proudcitizenthemovie.com/.
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Kathleen Thompson (F '03) is privileged to have in her possession two boxes (53 lbs.!) of the papers of Helen Norris, whose fiction was the subject of Thompson's ECE, "An Ageless Bewilderment: The Matrix of Helen Norris's Fiction." Norris studied under the famed teacher Hudson Strode at the University of Alabama and had her first novel from his class, Something More than Earth, published in 1940. Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind,  attended the signing of the first edition in Atlanta. Strode's classes were structured much like the workshop model of current brief-residency writing programs.
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Lafayette Wattles, alter-ego for Dave DeGolyer (W4CYA, P '06), has organized Wine & Words, a delicious new series of free literary readings and wine tastings in upstate New York. The series will feature several Spalding MFA faculty, former faculty, and alumni, including Louella Bryant, Nancy McCabe, Philip Deaver, CoCo Harris, Terry Price, Gerald Stulc, Maryann Lesert, Edie Hemingway, and Judith Shearer. The final event will be held October 3 at Ravines Wine Cellars in Geneva, New York.
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Julia Watts's (F '05) novel Secret City was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and a winner of a Golden Crown Literary Award. Her new novel, Gifted and Talented, was just published by Bottom Dog Press as part of their Appalachian Writing series.
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Faculty Advisory Committee (FAC) for Spring 2014

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.

• Pete Duval, fiction
• Greg Pape, poetry
• Dianne Aprile, creative nonfiction
• Susan Campbell Bartoletti, writing for children and young adults
• Kira Obolensky, playwriting/screenwriting

Reminders and Notes

Financial Aid: The MFA Program offers scholarships to students entering their first semester in the program. Returning students who desire financial assistance other than student loans should apply for graduate assistantships. Applications for scholarships and assistantships should be directed to the MFA Office (mfa@spalding.edu). Information for assistantships is on 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 Michelle Standridge at 800-896-8941, ext. 4333 or 502-873-4333 or email mstandridge@spalding.edu. Students may enter or update their FAFSA information online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

Student Loans for Summer 2014 and Fall 2014 semester: Fill out the FAFSA for the 2014-2015 school year, using 2013 tax information. Refer to MFA Financial Aid FAQs on the MFA portal page.
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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.
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Find MFA gear and wear
http://www.cafepress.com/SpaldingMFA

Newsletter Archive: Newsletters are archived online at http://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&YA) 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, Associate Administrative Director
Ellyn Lichvar, Administrative Assistant
Taj Whitesell, Newsletter 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
502-873-4398	Ellyn Lichvar	4398
502-873-4399	Karen Mann	4399
502-873-4330	Michelle Standridge	4333

Email Life of a Writer information, Because You Asked questions, or classifieds to mfanewsletter@spalding.edu
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