Creative Writing Program

Spring 2013 MFA Program Newsletter

We are happy to announce our incoming MFA cohort for fall 2013! Please welcome writers Allie Watson, Brooks Teevan, John Costello, Mike Alberti,Trevor Ketner, Su Hwang, Janna Knittel, Anna Rasmussen, Emily Strasser, Kendra Atleework, Dana d'Amico, and Scott Long. We look forward to working with them.

Student News

Carrie Lorig has three poems written w/ Russ Woods forthcoming in The Denver Quarterly. She will have a poem in TYPO, one in NOO Journal, one in Stoked, and two in the next Whiskey Island. Her chapbook, nods., was published by Magic Helicopter Press. Her collaborative e-chapbook with Nick Sturm, Nancy and the Dutch,can be downloaded via NAP magazine.

Kerry Voigt has been accepted into the Teach for America 2013 Corps. Her assignment is Fine Arts: K-12 in the great state of Mississippi.

Victoria Scher is the recipient of the Judd Fellowship from the Global Programs Strategic Alliance. This fellowship will support summer travel to Chihuahua City, Mexico for her continued research on the Tarahumaras.

Kate Petersen received a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University! Read about it in the Star Tribune. Her story "Sunday: A Song Cycle appears in Crazyhorse #83. Her review of James Salter's new novel All That is appears in the April issue of The Fiddleback. Another story,"Mezzo," is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review.

Adriane Quinlan won an Overseas Press Club Scholarship for an essay she wrote about how international relations are portrayed in Chinese theme parks. The scholarship covers travel to China and work as a fellow in the Beijing Bureau of the Associated Press.

Jonathan Escoffery has two poems coming out in Interrobang?! Magazine and one poem coming in Radioactive Moat.

Sally Franson’s essay, "The Tour Guide" is in the Spring 2013 issue of Witness.

Two reviews of Aaron Apps’ first book, Compos(t) Mentis, are online at PANK and HTMLgiant, and he has a new poem up at Verse Online. Aaron was a semi-finalist for the Black Lawrence Press fiction chapbook competition.

J. Fossenbell has five poems up in the current TAMMY issue of Whole Beast Rag and two in the Eng-to-Eng section of the current Short, Fast & Deadly.

Mary Feng Sun Chen's first book of poems, Butcher's Tree (Black Ocean) is reviewed by Seth Abramson at Huffington Post, who declares "a work this perfect comes along but rarely." Click here.

Nicky Tiso presented as part of a panel on "Precarity, Neoliberalism, Late Capitalism," at the Ecopoetics conference at UC Berkeley in Feb. 2013.

Alumni News

Éireann Lorsung (2006), the founder of MIEL, a small press in Belgium, is raising money for scholarships and travel grants to host a writing retreat in November. We invite you to not only feel free to support this project, but to apply for a scholarship or travel grant as well! http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/miel-retreat-scholarships

Rachel Moritz's (2006) first full-length poetry collection, Borrowed Wave, will be published by Kore Press in 2014. A chapbook of poems, Elementary Rituals, was published this spring by Albion Books. Her poems are forthcoming or recently appeared in Cannibal, Newfound, and 14 Hills. She received a 2013 Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship.

Roxanne Sadovsky (2004) hosts a blog (www.writingwithrox.blogspot.com) which includes a weekly writing prompt as well as updates on classes, healing, retreats, and more.

Tara DaPra’s (2008) essay, "Writing Memoir and Writing for Therapy: An Inquiry on the Functions of Reflection," will be published in the Spring issue (#48) of Creative Nonfiction. Tara served as the nonficiton contest judge for Sheepshead Review, the undergraduate literary journal at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

Ethan Rutherford's (2009) debut, The Peripatetic Coffin and Other Stories, has been named a Barnes & Noble Discover pick for Summer 2013.

Amy Shearn's (2005) second novel, The Mermaid of Brooklyn (Touchstone), is the pick of the week for Oprah.com, a Target summer selection, and has garnered fantastic reviews. There is even a book trailer on YouTube.

Liana Liu's (2011) first YA novel, The Memory Key, will be published by HarperCollins in winter 2015.

Francine Marie Tolf's (2006) essay, "Beautiful," is in the spring issue of Contrary Magazine. Her poetry chapbook, Twenty Poems to God and a Poem to Satan, was recently published by Red Bird Chapbooks. Her essay, "Sheeba at Twenty," will be in the next issue of Under the Sun.

Amanda Coplin (2006) received the Barnes and Noble Discover Award for fiction, a $10,000 prize. The Orchardist spent several weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list.

Meryl Depasquale's (2010) Dream of a Perfect Interface will be published this May by Dancing Girl Press. Her poems have appeared recently in Handsome Journal, Diagram, Interim Magazine, and Paper Darts Magazine.

Kevin Fenton's (2005) memoir, Leaving Rollingstone, was picked up by Minnesota Historical Society Press for publication in fall 2013. Fenton is the author of the award-winning novel, Merit Badges.

A.T. Grant's (2012) Collected Alex has been chosen by Michael Kimball as the winner of the 2012 Caketrain Chapbook Competition. It is scheduled for release this summer. Other pieces have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Tarpaulin Sky Magazine, Stoked, and The Destroyer.

Sarah Fox (2012) has taken a job as Program Consultant for Club Book with the Friends of the Hennepin County Library. Her book, The First Flag, is now out from Coffee House Press.

John Colburn (1996), author of Invisible Daughters, has a new book, Psychedelic Norway, forthcoming from Coffee House Press.

Faculty News

Julie Schumacher sold her novel-in-progress, an academic satire provisionally entitled Dear Committee Members, to Doubleday. Her essay, "Canyon," published in Brain, Child magazine, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Charlie Baxter's story "Bravery," first published in Tin House, will appear in Best American Short Stories 2013, edited by Elizabeth Strout. His essay, "What Happens in Hell," first published in an issue of Ploughshares edited by Patricia Hampl, will appear in Best American Essays 2013, edited by Cheryl Strayed. Baxter will be a judge for the next National Book Awards. His short story "Loyalty" appears in the May issue of Harper's, and his story "Charity" appears in the current issue of McSweeney's.

Patricia Hampl was guest-editor for the current (Fall 2012) issue of Ploughshares. At her request, it is an all-essay issue; it includes a graphic essay by LK Hanson and an essay by Charles Baxter. She also has an essay in the current international edition of Newsweek (and on-line at The Daily Beast): "Patricia Hampl on Prague," a back-of-the-magazine piece. Her essay on F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Crack Up" essays is included in the anthology, Understanding the Essay, just out from Broadview Press. This fall so far she has given readings and talks at Emerson College (Boston), Washington University (St. Louis), and Northwest College (Powell, Wyoming). And she has just joined the Board of Directors of the Jerome Foundation.

Ray Gonzalez has poems in the new issues of Bitter Oleander, Conduit, and The Malpais Review. His work is forthcoming in the summer issue of American Poetry Review and in the anthologies New Southwest Writing (Texas A&M University Press) and 99 Poems for the 99 Per Cent.

Peter Campion’s poems “Danielle” and “Villa Sciarra: Azaleas” appeared in Columbia, “Chicago: The Congress Hotel” in Free Verse, “After Baudelaire: I have not forgotten…” in The Ocean State Review, and “Los Angeles River” in Provincetown Arts, as part of a special feature honoring Robert Pinsky. He has poems forthcoming this month in At Length and Slate. Peter published an essay, “Poetry of the Possible,” in the Los Angeles Review of Books, and a short piece on Robert Lowell in AGNI. His third collection of poetry, El Dorado, will be published by the University of Chicago Press in fall 2013.