Farewell for Summer
It’s been a wonderful school year here at UW, cumulating with a memorable commencement ceremony where six MFA students walked (perhaps a record). Hats off to you, graduates! This blog will go on hiatus until the Fall when Joey Rubin takes over (word on the street is he plans to take the blog to new glittery heights). Great summer to all!
Adam Bouche, Erin Fortenberry, and Rebecca Estee graduate in style.
PhD Panel and Reading and Donuts
It’s April in Wyoming and that means snow flurries and ice castles and grapefruit-colored sunsets. It also means some very cool things are coming up for MFA students.
1.) Graduation! All your 1980s teen movie dreams are coming true, complete with confetti and a gloriously slimming cap and gown (in Pokes colors, of course). This also means, for the next three Fridays, MFA graduates will read from their beautiful theses. The first reading is this Friday, April 26th at 6pm in the Carriage House, featuring:
Erin Fortenberry – The Fourteenth Season
Adam Boucher – two stories
Congratulations, Brock!
Brock Jones, second-year poetry student, has accepted a spot in the University of Utah’s Ph.D. program in Literature with a Creative Writing emphasis. The program was recently written up by the Atlantic Monthly as “one of the top five PhD in Creative Writing programs in the country.” Congratulations, Brock! What great news.
Maggie Nelson’s Return Engagement
Please join the MFA in Creative Writing Program for the rescheduled Public Reading of Eminent Writer in Residence Maggie Nelson. There will be a small reception at the event. Second Story Books will host the book signing at the UW Art Museum. This event is free and open to the public. Friday, April 19, 2013, 7 – 8pm
Maggie Nelson (Ph.D. in English Literature, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York) is the author of four books of nonfiction and four books of poetry. Her most recent book, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning (W. W. Norton, 2011; out in paperback in 2012), was featured on the front cover of the SundayBook Review of the New York Times, as well as named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an Editors’ Choice. Her other nonfiction books include the cult hit Bluets (Wave Books, 2009); a critical study of poetry and painting titled Women, the New York School, and Other True Abstractions (University of Iowa Press, 2007; winner, the Susanne M. Glasscock Award for Interdisciplinary Scholarship), and an autobiographical book about sexual violence and media spectacle titled The Red Parts: A Memoir (Free Press, 2007; named a Notable Book of the Year by the State of Michigan). Her poetry books include Something Bright, Then Holes (Soft Skull Press, 2007); Jane: A Murder (Soft Skull Press, 2005; finalist, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of Memoir), The Latest Winter (Hanging Loose Press, 2003), and Shiner (Hanging Loose, 2001; finalist, the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award). Her poetry has been widely anthologized, including in the Best American Poetry series.
Reading this Saturday, 4/6
Join the MFA in Creative Writing students for the last reading of the semester. Readers will include Kelly Hatton, Rebecca Golden, and Sofi Thanhauser. This event is free and open to the public.
Saturday, April 6, 2013, 7 – 8pm
Lincoln Center
365 West Grand Avenue
Some News!
Sofi Thanhauser, Kelly Hatton, and Joey Rubin — all first-year MFA students — have received Cheney international travel grants. Sofi will go to Tamil Nandu to research textile production. Kelly will return to Paraguay, where she served in the Peace Corps, to continue work on her fiction and nonfiction projects centered on sustainable farming communities. Joey will attend the British Centre for the Translation of Literature Summer School at the University of East Anglia in the U.K. Congratulations, all! Well deserved and such fantastics achievements for the MFA program.
Also, this week fiction writer, John Brandon, will visit UW.
John Brandon is the author of three novels, Arkansas, Citrus County, and A Million Heavens, all with McSweeney’s. His shorter work has appeared in Oxford American, The Believer, ESPN the Magazine, GQ, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The New York Times Magazine, and numerous university journals. During the season, he writes about college football for Grantland.com.
There will be a Q&A with him on Thursday at 12:30 p.m. in the Carriage House and a public reading at 7:30 p.m. at Second Story Books. Hope to see everyone there!
Working in Wyoming
As a culmination of the community workshops facilitated by Mark Nowak and the University of Wyoming MFA program, a public reading and celebration was held last Thursday at the Gryphon Theather. It was a night filled with Kool Moe Dee, Monty Python, Laramie community members, and former MFA students. The evening closed with a documentary of what it means to work in Wyoming. Here are some images from the night:
