Welcome to our Spring 2014 BFA in Creative Writing eNewsletter! The students and faculty of our wonderful program have been busy since the fall residency. Here’s a run-down of recent publications, readings, collaborations, and general literary accomplishments:
STUDENTS
Cerridwin Aker has received a full scholarship to study nonfiction at the 27th annual Fishtrap Writers Conference in Oregon this summer.
Quintin Anderson was accepted into the NYU intensive summer program to study poetry.
Mary Clement was accepted (after two previous denials) for a NYS Writers Institute Spring Workshop with James Lasdun, One of her essays was read on WAMC public radio and she has been asked to teach a writing workshop at a home for troubled women in Albany, New York. Mary, unfortunately, is leaving us. We’ll miss her!
Erric Emerson‘s poetry has just been published in Neon Magazine (England).
ALUMNI
Joey Dorin (BFAW ‘13) is now attending the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside/Palm Desert.
Fawn McManigal (BFAW ’14) has been accepted into Lesley University’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and into Northwest Institute of Literary Arts’ low-residency MFA program.
Derrick and Dylan Smith (BFAW ’13) have been accepted into the Stage and Screen track of Lesley University’s low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.
The Sharon Olds Fellowship for Poetry at Pine Manor’s MFA Program was awarded to Jason Stocks (BFAW ‘13). His work has appeared in numerous journals including Calliope, Folly, Exterminating Angel Press, Xenith, Black Heart Magazine and Blaze Vox.
Diane-Marie Van Poelgeest (BFAW ’14) will be attending the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Pacific University.
FACULTY
Wendy Call‘s work will be included in two art exhibitions in Miami in the coming months: artist books in the spring “Eco and Environmental Arts Exhibition” at the Deering Estate and a series of ekphrastic audio essays in ArtCenter South Florida’s summer show “Flight.” She has an essay on the Latin American drug wars in the latest issue of Yes! magazine and essays on Mexican poetry forthcoming in Diálogo and Orion. Wendy is teaching at several Northwest writers’ conferences, including the University of
Washington’s Environmental Writers Conference in April and Portland’s Willamette Writers Conference in August.
Jocelyn Cullity has two short stories forthcoming: ‘Easter” in TWJ Magazine (April, 2014) and “Visiting Chairman Mao” in Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet, Press 53 (Fall, 2014)
Laurie Foos will be on leave during spring semester and will return in the fall.
Michael Leong‘s article “Neo-Surrealism’s Forked Tongue: Reflections on the Dramatic Monologue, Politics, and Community in the Recent Poetry of Will Alexander and John Yau” is forthcoming in Contemporary Literature 55.4 (Winter 2014), and his article “‘Work itself is given a voice’: Labor, Deskilling, and Archival Capability in the Poetry of Kenneth Goldsmith and Mark Nowak” is forthcoming in Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture 14.4 (Winter 2014). He presented the paper “Surrealism, Linh Dinh, and Vietnamese Diasporic Poetry” at the 2014 annual meeting of the American Comparative Literature Association at NYU.
Janet Sylvester talked about Goddard’s BFAW Program and ethics in undergraduate education on a panel at AWP titled, “What’s Next?: Pressures and Opportunities in Undergraduate Creative Writing Programs.” She has been selected to serve on AWP’s Committee on Professional Standards, Pedagogy, and Advocacy, where she’ll be working on, among other things, an initiative to bring creative writing back into the K-12 curriculum.
Arisa White will be the poet-in-residence at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute at UMass, Amherst, which runs June 22-28. The sneak preview of Post Pardon: The Opera, featuring former Goddard student Amber McZeal, will take place on Sunday, July 13, in Oakland, CA. In August, Arisa will be in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts to begin work on adapting her second collection A Penny Saved into dance theater. She’ll be collaborating with choreographer Sonia Dawkins and director Charlotte Tiencken on this project.
Spring 2014 VISITING WRITER
JUSTIN TORRES, whose first novel, We The Animals, is a national bestseller called by Michael Cunningham, “a dark jewel of a book” and by Dorothy Allison, “a miracle in concentrated pages,” will read his work on Monday, April 14th at 7:30pm and teach a writing workshop on Tuesday morning, April 15th, at 9:30 am.
In closing, I’d like to send out a special thanks to Wendy Call and the terrific staff of Duende, our new literary journal, which opened for submissions on March 15th. Birthing a new journal is a massive job. Given the journal’s already-excellent design, and its plan to be a living web presence, I don’t doubt that its first fall issue will be a hit!
We also heartily congratulate our graduating students: Juanita Butler, Alexis Lounsbury, Fawn McManigal, Liz Uzzel, Diane-Marie Van Poelgeest, Kori Waring, and Nicholas Wilkinson. Big kudos!
I wish all of you a wonderful spring residency. Come by and talk with me!
