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!