Faculty:
The independent film Day of Days, co-written by MFAW-VT faculty member Kyle Bass, received its world premiere at the 11th Annual Women’s International Film & Arts Festival (WIFF). The two-character drama stars veteran Hollywood actor Tom Skerritt (MASH, Alien, Top Gun, Steel Magnolias, A River Runs Through It, Up in Smoke, the television series Picket Fences) and newcomer Claudia Zavellos. Skerritt and Zavellos received the festival’s Best Actor and Best Actress award respectively.
MFAW-VT faculty member Richard Panek‘s tribute to revolutionary astronomer Vera Rubin, “Vera Rubin Didn’t Discover Dark Matter,” has gone live at ScientificAmerican.com.
MFAW-WA faculty member Bhanu Kapil‘s critical and creative writing has been published in a variety of journals, online curations, and anthologies, most recently The Poetry Review (UK), Smarginature (Norway), and U.S. collections: boundary 2: an international journal of literature and culture (Duke University Press), Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications), and Among Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions).
MFAW-VT faculty member Deborah Brevoort‘s opera Steal a Pencil For Me, written with composer Gerald Cohen, will premiere at Opera Colorado in January 2018.
MFAW-VT faculty member Michael Klein will be a featured speaker for PEN America, organizer of the flagship New York City centerpiece of a national effort under the banner of #WRITERSRESIST centering on a protest on the steps of the New York Public Library on Sunday, January 15, 2017 at 2PM. This literary protest will bring together hundreds of writers and thousands of New Yorkers in a collective stand to defend free expression, reject hate crimes and uphold truth in the face of lies and disinformation.
Students and Alumni:
The Octavia Project, co-founded by MFAW-VT alumna Chana Porter, has received full sponsorship for their 2017 program from Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, of VanderMeer Creative. The sponsorship will enable sixteen Brooklyn girls to have a summer of interdisciplinary creative writing and art workshops, focusing on sparking a love of science and tech while valuing their imagination.
MFAW-WA student Erik Rogers been awarded a 2017 Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers from the American Antiquarian Society, for research and work on his novel, The Broken World. The fellowship is a four-week residency with access to their library and sizable collection of material relating to early American history.
MFAW-VT alumna Ellen Orleans‘s short story “Erev Christmas” was included in this year’s NPR Hanukkah Lights special, hosted by Susan Stamberg and Murray Horwitz.
Girl Cooties, an online project that promotes female writers and artists in the speculative fiction field (both established and new), highlighted MFAW-WA student Jalyn Powell as an emerging writer by asking her to read her short story “Verity’s Faery Teas.”
MFAW-WA student Charles Fairchild‘s first chapter of his unpublished novel, Barcelona Sky, won honorable mention in the 2016 Bosque Press Fiction Contest and has been published in the Bosque Literary Journal (print only).
MFAW-WA alumna Anne Bean released four short run comics (Wild Beasts / drawn by Laura D. Graves / debuted at Emerald City Comic Con 2016; Shorbat Rumman / drawn by Ted Closson / debuted at New York Comic Con 2016; The Old Lady’s Skin / drawn by Ben Horak / debuted at Short Run 2016 (Seattle); Coyote and Butterfly Woman / drawn by Noel Franklin / debuted at Short Run 2016), two of which were scripts from her Goddard thesis, and three of which were funded with a WA Artist’s Trust GAP grant. Coyote and Butterfly Woman is available for online purchase. Anne is also working on an indie comics distribution business.
