Faculty:
MFAW-WA faculty member Bhanu Kapil‘s July Commencement Speech, which was posted on the MFAW blog, was featured on Literary Hub: The Best of the Literary Internet. Read her speech here.
MFAW-WA faculty member Beatrix Gates read “from Orlando: Make Beautiful in Maine” at The Cannery in South Penobscott, Maine.  Bea also participated in the event sponsored by Reversing Falls Sanctuary, in collaboration with the Acadia National Park Centennial, in Brooksville, Maine where she and other local poets, Emily Peake and Tom Moore responded to Acadia, Nature as Teacher in a Poetry Reading at The Gallery Within, which has been showcasing an art exhibit showing the works of local visual artists honoring the Acadia Centennial.  Read Bea’s essay on the Farm/Arts Exchange and what she says about poetry and masks in Down East Maine’s Hancock County here.
Chapters from MFAW-VT faculty member Kenny Fries‘s The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin’s Theory have been translated into German for Parahuman: Neue Perspektiven auf das Leben mit Tehnik (Parahuman: New Perspectives of Living with Technology), published by Böhlau Verlag. Kenny read and talked with Ute Kalender as part of the U4 Interdisciplinary Summer School in Gender Studies for Ph.D. and Advanced MA students at the University of Göttingen.  Read his latest on the program blog.
MFAW-VT faculty member Deborah Brevoort‘s Noh drama about Elvis Presley, Blue Moon over Memphis, was  performed in Highland Lake NY by Theatre Nohgaku. The performance was the culmination of a collaboration spanning over ten years with Noh artists in Japan. The play was performed in the traditional Noh style, in full Noh regalia, with orchestrations by Richard Emmert.   Don’t miss Deborah’s “Elvis, Noh, and Patience” on the program blog to know more about the time it took for this performance collaboration to come together.
Alumni and Students:
MFAW-VT Alumna Lucy Snyder‘s story, “While the Black Stars Burn” is in the new issue of Turn To Ash, and her poems “Scary”, “Dangerous” and “turnt” are in the new anthology Scary Out There (Simon & Schuster).  Take a peak at Lucy’s interview with Ursula K. Leguin on the program blog.
MFAW Alumna Chana Porter‘s play PHANTASMAGORIA or Let Us Seek Death!, which swirls Mary Shelley’s life with the Frankenstein story, will be at the Ellen Stewart theater at La MaMa October 20th-November 6th.  Chana has written about science fiction as social activism and science fiction.   Read it here.
MFAW-VT Alum Em Bowen accepted the position of Executive Director of the Tucson Poetry Festival. They will be coordinating the event, which happens in April each year in Tucson, Arizona. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on gay marriage, Em wrote an opinion piece for National Journal on marriage equality.  Don’t miss it.  Read about it on the program blog.
MFAW-VT student Priya Hajela‘s short story, The Matrimonial, was published in the New Delhi based literary magazine The Earthern Lamp Journal.
MFAW-VT student Anaïs Mitchell‘s musical Hadestown had a write-up in The New Yorker:  “A LIVE CAST ALBUM FOR ‘HADESTOWN’ : Recording a performance of the folk-opera reinvention of Orpheus and Eurydice” by Sarah Larson (August 1, 2016 Issue).
MFAW-VT student Anne Boaden‘s mini-graphic novel, The Adventures of Captain Leatherneck in “Unexpected,” has been shortlisted for the 2016 Yeovil Literary Prize in the Writing Without Restrictions category.