MFA in Creative WritingRecent Achievements of the MFA in Creative Writing
MFA Graduate Kiara Brinkman’s thesis Up High In The Trees is forthcoming from Grove Press.
Current faculty advisor Rebecca Brown read at the Belladonna series in New York in April. Her chapbook Always/Like This was published in connection with this event. She taught a workshop at Evergreen State College and a Master Class in Prose at Richard Hugo House in Seattle. She edited a special issue of Tarpaulin Sky in which writers such as Chris Abani, Brian Evenson, John Yau and Lucy Corin responded to paintings by Nancy Kiefer. She continued to work on a collection of short monologues and a book of essays that bring together subjects as diverse as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Brian Wilson; H.G. Wells and Susan Sontag; Jerry Lee Lewis and the Puritan Divines.
MFA Graduate Edward J. Cavalho’s collection of poetry, Solitary, Poor, Nasty, Brutish and Short was released by Fine Tooth Press. His poem, "A bachelor takes his pound of pasta seriously" was accepted for print publication by the staff of Indiana University of Pennsylvania's creative journal, The New Growth Arts Review. 580 Split, a writing journal associated with Mills College in Oakland, CA, has accepted his poem, "Late night logic from a former postal worker" for their 2007 issue. Additionally, the piece is being considered for a forthcoming 580 Split anthology. His poems, "Daylight Savings Time" and "The Nurses Will Not Listen to You Speak About Work" were selected for the spring print edition of Quay: A Journal of the Arts. Walt Whitman Quarterly Review (University of Iowa) has agreed to reprint his interview with Martín Espada, "A Branch on the Tree of Whitman: Martín Espada on the 150th Anniversary of Leaves of Grass.”
MFA Graduate Robert Detman recently won a second place award in the Abroad Writers’ Conference for which he was invited to Thailand in July for the conference. This award was for a chapter from his novel (thesis work at Goddard), and will be published in Driftwood Magazine in their next issue. He placed his work in The King’s English, Word Riot and 63 Channels and has written a review of Romanian Surrealist Dumitru Tsepeneag’s novel Vain Art of the Fugue, to be in the next issue of Rain Taxi. He will be presenting one of his short critical papers at the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association in Calgary in October.
Current student Theresa Edwards’ poem "Clinic" will be published in the June 2007 online issue of Autumn Sky Poetry. Her poems "Joanie Bach" and "She Didn't Eat Her" were published in the January online issue of Cyril Wong's journal, softblow. Her poem "Back Seat, 1965 Forward, Back" will be published in an upcoming issue of Boxcar Poetry Review. "Walls," "River. Snow.," "Riot in the Local High School, and "Your Attempt" will be in the next online issue of Blackmail Press, a literary journal out of New Zealand. These poems are included in her Goddard thesis manuscript entitled Voices Through Skin. Flutter Poetry Journal will publish "Inventing Dead" in its May online issue.
MFA Graduate Anjuelle Floyd signed a contract with Three Muses Press in Portland. They will be publishing her graduation thesis, Keeper of Secrets...Translations of an Incident, a collection of short stories that form a linked novel. Three Muses is an imprint of Ink and Paper Publishing Group. The publication date is 2007.
Current faculty advisor Beatrix Gates', and co-translator Electa Arenal's, translation of contemporary Spanish poet Jesus Aguado's Like The Oar That Cuts The Current: Poems of Vikram Babu/Los Poemas de Vikram Babu, written in the voice of a 17th century Indian basket weaver, has been accepted for publication by HOST Publications of Austin, Texas & New York City in a bilingual edition for 2008. She has received an artist's residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts for early fall 2007.
Current faculty advisor Elena Georgiou completed her second poetry manuscript Rhapsody for the Naked Immigrant. She also had a prose poem, "Class" accepted by the literary journal The Denver Quarterly for their Fall 2007 issue.
Current student Lawrence Goodman is a contributor to the recently published book, The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything, which holds that the system of finding a winner in college basketball can be applied to all the great issues of our time. His piece is on determining the best Shakespearean insult. His play Keep Your Distance has been named a finalist in the Maieutic Theatre Works' reading series set for late January in New York City.
Current faculty advisor Bhanu Kapil gave readings of her work at Temple University, Denver University, Naropa University, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. A creative non-fiction essay, "Water-damage: a map of three black days," was published as a chapbook by Corollary Press. Bhanu presented a lecture on monsters and desire at the Feminaissance conference in L.A. organized by CalArts, and also led a consciousness-raising workshop as part of this event. She was chosen as the faculty commencement speaker by the Naropa University student body, and gave a speech on border-crossing. In June, as part of Naropa's Summer Writing Program, she taught a week-long writing class, co-teaching with the theorist and dancer Andrea Spain, on "non-reproductive productivity" -- or: how to work with the part of writing that have failed.
MFA Graduate Shawn Kerivan’s short story collection, Name the Boy, has just been published by Dan River Press. The book is available through www.shawnkerivan.com.
Current faculty advisor Susan Kim sold a graphic novel, The Fielding Course, written with Laurence Klavan, to First Second Books in New York City. It is scheduled to be published in 2009. She was also notified that her stage adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club will be given a revival production this October by New York’s Pan Asian Theatre. While continuing to write children’s television for PBS and Nickelodeon, as well as advising on an upcoming documentary about filmmaker Sidney Lumet, she is currently working on a screenplay with Laurence Klavan.
Current faculty advisor Neil Landau began the year joining the breakdown writing team on The Young and the Restless for CBS... then left the daytime soap world for primetime, selling two television pilots: one to Lifetime Television and one to ABC Family Channel; both one-hour dramedies are under the aegis of Warner Bros.Television. His non-fiction essays were published in the Writers Guild Magazine (Written By), and in the literary journals Swink and Quay. He's also an Assistant Visiting Professor of Screenwriting at UCLA School of Film, Television, and Digital Media.
Current student Tom Leger published an essay in the Atlanta gay magazine David – an annotation of a year in the life of one of their columnists, playwright and actor Topher Payne. The short film that he co-wrote, F. Scott Fitzgerald Slept Here was screened at the New Fest in NYC in June. It will also be at the Frameline Film Festival in San Francisco, and earlier this year it also recieved a Frameline Completion Grant this year.
MFA Graduate Lynn Lobban's play Quarter To Three received rave reviews in NYC.
Current student Tanyss Martula wrote in the Northampton 24-Hour Theater Project in April. Within 24 hours, five short plays were written, rehearsed and staged. Playwrights wrote overnight. There were two shows at the A.P.E. Performance Space in Northampton, MA. She also wrote in a similar project (a spin-off of Northampton): Play-in-a-Day at the University of Massachusetts in May 12th, in the Rand Theater in The Fine Arts Center. Constance Congdon was one of the playwrights as well.
Current student Donnelle C. McGee’s poem "Purple Derby Tilt" will be published in the next issue of Permafrost. In addition, The Spoon River Poetry Review has accepted is poem "don't look at my arms" to be published in an upcoming issue of their literary journal.
MFA Graduate Chris Millis' screenplay Small Apartments, based on his novel of the same name, began shooting this spring, starring Toby Jones (Infamous) and directed by Jonas Akerlund (music videos for U2, Smashing Pumpkins, Moby, Madonna).
Current faculty advisor Nicola Morris finished writing her critical book, Golems in Jewish American Literature, which is now being prepared for publication.
MFA Graduate Mwalim published A Mixed Medicine Bag, with Talking Drum Press.
Current faculty advisor Victoria Nelson's story "One Million B.C." appears in the journal Raritan Summer 2007 issue; her essay "Faux Catholic" in boundary 2 Fall 2007 issue; her essay "A Postcool Everywoman" in Journal of Performance and Spirituality Fall 2007 inaugural issue, and her introduction to Geoffrey Household's novel Rogue Male in the New York Review of Books classics reprint series, Fall 2007.
Current faculty advisor Richard Panek’s article “Out There - On Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and the Frontiers of Cosmology” appeared in The New York Times Magazine. He is now expanding that article into a book, Let There Be Dark: At the Dawn of the Next Universe, to be published by Houghton Mifflin. His essay on Michael Frayn's book The Human Touch: Our Part in the Creation of a Universe appeared in the science and culture magazine Seed. He also received a 2007 Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature from the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Current faculty advisor Rachel Pollack's story, "Burning Beard: The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of Egypt" was published in the anthology Interfictions, and cited by several reviewers as one of the book's highlights. She also signed a contract with Llewellyn Books for her book Tarot Intensive. She was a featured speaker at ICon, the largest science fiction convention on the east coast, and gave a paper on "Plants in the Mysteries of Demeter and Persephone" at a conference on "Green Hermetica: Esoteric Gardening."
Current student Charles Rice-Gonzalez’s play I Just Love Andy Gibb had a workshop production at Pregones Theater in May. The play looks at how race and skin color may affect desire.
MFA Graduate Matthew M. Quick reports that the The Weinstein Co. has acquired screen rights to his novel The Silver Linings Playbook. Mirage Prods. partners Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella will produce with Michelle Raimo. He has sold the North American rights for The Silver Linings Playbook to Sarah Crichton Books at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. The Italian rights have been purchased by Mauri Spagnol (formerly Longanesi). For more information and updates, please visit www.matthewmquick.com. Matthew is also the fiction editor at Quay Journal, which is staffed and funded entirely by Goddard grads. Visit www.quayjournal.org.
Program Director Paul Selig is being commissioned by James Van Praagh’s One Light Productions to develop an original musical based on the life of Edgar Allen Poe.
Current faculty advisor Juliana Spahr’s book of prose, The Transformation, was published by Atelos Press. She also signed a contract with Salt Press in England for Well Then There Now, a book that will reprint previously uncollected works. In March, the University of California at Santa Cruz held the conference, “The Unanswerable Questions of Political Responsibility,” an evening-long conference of papers and creative responses to work by her and Ammiel Alcalay.
Current student Donna Stuccio was recently selected as one of 4 playwrights to participate in the Kitchen Theatre's 3rd Annual 48 Hour Playwriting Festival in Ithaca in February. They wrote all night after learning the mystery topic and then together with a director, actors and a production assistant, produced 4 fully staged ten-minute plays in a 48-hour period. There were two public performances.
MFA Graduate Nagueyalti Warren’s manuscript Margaret (circa 1834-1858) won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Prize, $500 plus publication by Lotus Press in Detroit.
Current student Maria Williams-Russell’s poem "(untitled)" has been accepted by Quay for their Spring Issue.
MFA Graduate Carolyn Nur Wisstrand was one of 8 women playwrights whose work was presented in midtown Manhattan at the Arthur Seelen Theatre (inside the Drama Bookstore) in March. Her selection was from her thesis play and was read by NYC Equity actors.
Current faculty advisor Jane Wohl received the award for "Excellence in Teaching " from NISOD at the NISOD conference in Austin, TEX. NISOD stands for National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development and is primarily concerned with Community College teaching. She was nominated by her division chair at Sheridan College for the "careerspecific" lit classes she has designed.
MFA Graduate Dana Yeaton’s play Redshirts will premiere at Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, MN this September and move to Round House Theatre in Bethesda, MD in October. The play follows four highly-recruited football players - three black and one white - who are accused of academic fraud by their African American English professor. Lou Bellamy, the Artistic Director of Penumbra (one the country's oldest African American theatres) will direct.
MFA Graduate Crystal Zevon, published I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon, released by Ecco in May.
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Program Director Paul Selig has been commissioned to write additional material for 
Current faculty advisor Kyle Bass’s play The Heart of Fear was published in the journal Stone Canoe. Kyle's full-length play Wind in the Field was selected by Edward Albee to be featured at the Great Plains Theatre Conference (Omaha, NE). During the conference (May 26 - June 4), Kyle's play was presented in a staged reading before a panel of theatre luminaries including Albee, Will Eno, Arthur Kopit, Romulus Linney, Emily Mann and Marshall Mason.
Current faculty advisor Deborah Brevoort received a 2007 playwriting fellowship from the New Jersey Council on the Arts. Her play Signs of Life was published by Samuel French. Her play The Women of Lockerbie was produced in Los Angeles at the Actor’s Gang theatre, where it was extended after receiving rave reviews, including a “Critic’s Pick” from the Los Angeles Times. The Actor’s Gang will take the production on international and national tour in 2008. Next season, her new play The Poetry of Pizza will premiere at Jeff Daniel’s Purple Rose Theatre in September, before going on to further productions at Virginia Stage, Mixed Blood (Minneapolis) and Theatre in the Square (Georgia). Her current writing projects include a new musical set in Amish country with composer Stephanie Saltzman called Crossing Over and The Velvet Weapon, a political farce about the Velvet Revolution.
Current faculty advisor Kenny Fries' Fulbright in Japan "story" was highlighted in a poster session at a conference on international scholarly exchange, as well as the Fulbright's annual catalogue. His new book, The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory, was published by Carroll and Graf. "Kenny Fries explores both 'able-bodiedness' and the legacies of Darwin's theory while literally traveling the world. There is no book quite like this and no one who reads these pages will ever forget them. This is a history of our bodies and a travelouge through landscapes and cultural signs that everyone should read in our post-colonial millennium." — Stephen Kuusisto, author of Planet of the Blind and Eavesdropping: A Memoir of Blindness and Listening. 
Current faculty advisor Aimee Liu's latest book, Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders, was published by Warner Books (now Grand Central Publishing) this February. A work of memoir and research nonfiction, Gaining was featured in Elle and People magazines and on NBC's Today show, and made The New York Times extended bestseller list.
Current faculty advisor Douglas A. Martin's novel Branwell (Soft Skull 2006) was published in Britain and Ireland this spring by Brandon Books and reviewed prominently. His poem "Milking," from the forthcoming book Last Early Poems, was published in Small Spiral Notebook. His doctoral dissertation, When She Does What She Does: Intertextual Desire and Influence in Kathy Acker's Narratives, was successfully defended and awarded The Irving Howe Prize for Best Dissertation Involving Politics and Literature.
Current faculty advisor Paisley Rekdal's newest book of poems, The Invention Of The Kaleidoscope, has been published by Pittsburgh. Poems of hers have appeared in or are forthcoming from Tin House, Mid-American Review, The New England Review,Artful Dodge and The Indiana Review. Her newest chapbook, The Parable of Proteus, is forthcoming later this summer. She has also just won a 2007 Utah Arts Council Writing Fellowship and a Tanner Humanities Center Fellowship.
