SOUL BONE℠ LITERARY FESTIVAL
List of Public MIU MFA Spring ’23 Residency Events
Feb. 13 - Feb. 26

 
 

• Kim Addonizio • Kelli Russell Agodon • Maureen Aitken • Francesca Bell • Ellen Birkett Morris • Mermer Blakeslee • Tahjia Brantley • Joseph Cardillo • Quintin Collins • Susan Daniels • Eileen Waggoner Espinoza • Joshua Jennifer Espinoza • Victoria Feshchuk • Molly Fisk • Diane Frank • Valerie Gangas • Lisha Adela Garcia • Shannon Gibney • Malinda Gosvig • Sara Henning • Simone Devi Jhingoor • Benji Jones • Iya Kiva • Rustin Larson • Dorianne Laux • Emilie Lygren • Nia McAllister • Mel McCuin • Noah Michelson • Taij Kumarie Moteelall • Olena O'Lear • Alice Paige • Suphil Lee Park • Sasha Kamini Parmasad • Nynke Passi • Mary Peelen • Mona Susan Power • Candice Rankin • Susan Rich • Jennie Rothenberg Gritz • Mary Kay Rummel • Barbara Saxton • Christine Schrum • Kim Shuck • Kalpna Singh-Chitnis • Erin Elizabeth Smith • Mark Spragg • Daniel Summerhill • Volodymyr Tymchuk • Loretta Diane Walker • Ella Yevtushenko •

 
“I have to tell you that that was the best festival lineup I’ve ever seen. I didn’t even attend the workshops, but I’m sure they were mind-blowing. The introductions and closings were so thoughtful and attentive, they were the perfect thread, leading me from reader to reader.”
— Jennifer L. Knox

Our online Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival pairs writing and craft with creative process, consciousness, social justice, and healing. It promotes the kind of writing and creative work that comes from duende, the unspeakable energies that arise from the soles of our feet and run through our spines, that make us feel physically as if the tops of our heads were taken off when we read or write, that connect heart and mind and senses, marrying body and spirit, that involve speaking out against in justice, that spark the mystical soul and give life to our writing, yet that also include death and shadow.

The festival is sponsored by the MIU MFA in Creative Writing’s residencies. Below we list our public events that are included in our Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival. You can register for our Spring 2023 Festival via our Eventbrite page, which is linked in below. Most events are free and open to the public. Contact English@miu.edu with questions or for more information. You can also email soulboneliterary@gmail.com directly.

FREE ZOOM REGISTRATION VIA EVENTBRITE

TIME ZONE CONVERTER if you need it. All events are Central Time.

 
 
 
 


MONDAY, Feb. 13, 2023

In our first festival reading, we'll hear MIU MFA faculty Jennifer, Espinoza and MIU MFA program director Nynke Passi, who will be reading prose tonight.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet whose work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a frequent faculty and mentor in our MFA.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of this MFA program and co-chair of MIU’s English dept. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her poetry has been anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces and River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press), and Oxygen: Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

 

TUESDAY, Feb. 14, 2023

  • READING and Q & A
    Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava
    with Kalpna Singh-Chitnis and Volodymyr Tymchuk
    Time: 11 AM - 12:30 PM CT (NOTE A DELAYED MORNING SESSION THAT GOES INTO LUNCH TIME)
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Today we are honored to hear the first reading of Love Letters to Ukraine from Uyava written by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, translated by Volodymyr Tymchuk into Ukrainian, a bi-lingual poetry collection published by River Paw Press (2023). Kalpna wrote the book as a spontaneous outpouring from the heart in support of Ukraine’s plight. The book has been translated by poet Volodymyr Tymchuk, who is also a lieutenant colonel of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The book will be distributed among citizens and armed forces serving Ukraine. In this session, Kalpna will read from the book, then discuss in dialogue with Volodymyr Tymchuk.

Please note that this morning’s session starts an hour later than usual and will go half an hour into our lunch break. We still have an hour left for lunch until this afternoon’s session.

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American, poet, writer, filmmaker and author of four poetry collections. Her works have appeared in "World Literature Today," "Columbia Journal," "Tupelo Quarterly," "Cold Mountain Review," "Indian Literature," "Silk Routes" (IWP) at The University of Iowa, Stanford University's "Life in Quarantine," etc. She has been nominated for a Pushcart-Prize and her poems from her award-winning book Bare Soul and her poetry film "River of Songs" have been selected to go on the moon with NASA's missions. A former lecturer of Political Science, she is also an Advocacy Member at the United Nations Association of the USA. Her fifth poetry collection, "Love Letters to Ukraine" (2023), is forthcoming from Rive Paw Press.

Volodymyr Tymchukis a Ukrainian poet, writer, translator, and lieutenant colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He is also a senior teacher at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Army Academy and a Technical Sciences candidate. The author of "To Burn and Fire, to Outlive and Overcome!" (2016), "Opus of Pace" (2018), "Azov … Crossed" (2020), "From Cossack Hetmanate's infinity" (2021), and other books, he managed the "World Poetry Day For Ukraine" in 2022 and 'In principio erat Verbum' poetry of war projects. He has received "Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Prize," the "Markiyan Shashkevych Regional Prize” and other literary awards. He is the translator of "Love letters to Ukraine" (2023) by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, forthcoming from River Paw Press.

 

  • ANTHOLOGY READING and Q & A
    SUNFLOWERS: Ukrainian Poetry on War Resistance, Hope and Peace
    with Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, Volodymyr Tymchuk, Iya Kiva,     Ella Yevtushenko, Victoria Feshchuk, and Olaina O’Lear
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

“A moving and powerful testament to what poetry can do to both report from the times of crisis and uplift us in such times.”
— Ilya Kaimnsky

This afternoon we are honored and moved to host five Ukrainian poets, who have all been published in Sunflowers: Ukranian Poery on War Resistance, Hope and Peace published by River Paw Press. Some praise of the book: "Deep emotional truth about the horrors of war. Moving and essential reading." ~ Vitaly Chernetsky “Much needed action in a fracturing world." ~ Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach

Sunflowers: Ukranian Poery on War Resistance, Hope and Peace is a poetry collection, edited by Indian-American poet Kalpna Singh-Chitnis. It contains poems by seventy-eight poets from Ukraine and other parts of the world in their Cyrillic originals and translations, along with the poems of anglophone writers from around the world. The book “aims to amplify the voices of Ukrainian writers against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and support Ukrainian causes,” as Kalpna Singh-Chitnis says in her editor’s note. The bios of Kalpna Singh Chitnis and Volodymyr Tymchuk are listed in this morning’s event. Other poets reading are:

Iya Kiva is a poet, translator, journalist, and member of Pen Ukraine. She was born in 1984 in Donetsk. Because of the Russian-Ukrainian war, she moved to Kyiv in the summer of 2014. She is the author of two collections of poetry, "Farther from Heaven (2018) and "The First Page of Winter" (2019). Her poetry has been translated into more than 30 languages. How separate books were published translations into Bulgarian (a poetry book "Witness of Namelessness," 2022, translator Denis Olegov) and into Polish (a poetry book " The black roses of time," 2022, translator Aneta Kaminska). Kiva is the recipient of a Gaude Polonia fellowship (2021), the Dartmouth College writer support program (2022), Documenting Ukraine program (Austria, 2022), and others. She is based in Lviv, Ukraine.

Ella Yevtushenko is a poet, translator and musician from Kyiv. Her first poetry collection Lichtung was published in 2016. She is a winner of several poetry contests and a participant of Ukrainian and foreign literary and art festivals. Her poems have been translated into over ten languages and published in anthologies, as well as in magazines and online portals worldwide. Ella translated over 25 books of prose and poetry, including the anthology of Ukrainian poetry, "24 poètes pour un pays" (éd. Bruno Doucey, France, 2022). In 2020 she founded a solo electronic&poetic musical project, Thuyone.

Victoria Feshchuk is a poet, translator, and special projects' editor at Chytomo, Ukrainian media of literature and book publishing. She has been a laureate of national poetry competitions and has participated in several Ukrainian literary festivals. Her poems were translated into English, Polish, German, French, and Czech. Her poems were published in English translation in the Voices for Ukraine anthology (US, 2022), and Invasion anthology (Ireland, 2022). Her translations were published in Verseville magazine (India, 2022) and (UK, 2022). She lives in Kyiv.

Olena O'Lear is a Ukrainian poet, translator, literary critic, and Editor, Ph.D. born in Kyiv in 1976. She is the author of two poetry collections: "My Hand Is on the Headboard…" (1997) and "Pilgrims' Songs" (2006). She works as a translator at Astrolabe Publishing and translates mainly from English. She translated "The Hobbit" and other works by J. R. R. Tolkien, fairy tales by Beatrix Potter, and prose works of Joseph Conrad, William Butler Yeats, and "Beowulf." She has been awarded the Hryhorii Kochur (2012), Maksym Rylskyi (2022), and other literary prizes.

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American, poet, writer, filmmaker and author of four poetry collections. Her works have appeared in "World Literature Today," "Columbia Journal," "Tupelo Quarterly," "Cold Mountain Review," "Indian Literature," "Silk Routes" (IWP) at The University of Iowa, Stanford University's "Life in Quarantine," etc. She has been nominated for a Pushcart-Prize and her poems from her award-winning book Bare Soul and her poetry film "River of Songs" have been selected to go on the moon with NASA's missions. A former lecturer of Political Science, she is also an Advocacy Member at the United Nations Association of the USA. Her fifth poetry collection, "Love Letters to Ukraine" (2023), is forthcoming from Rive Paw Press.

Volodymyr Tymchukis a Ukrainian poet, writer, translator, and lieutenant colonel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. He is also a senior teacher at the Hetman Petro Sahaidachnyi National Army Academy and a Technical Sciences candidate. The author of "To Burn and Fire, to Outlive and Overcome!" (2016), "Opus of Pace" (2018), "Azov … Crossed" (2020), "From Cossack Hetmanate's infinity" (2021), and other books, he managed the "World Poetry Day For Ukraine" in 2022 and 'In principio erat Verbum' poetry of war projects. He has received "Bohdan Khmelnytskyi Prize," the "Markiyan Shashkevych Regional Prize” and other literary awards. He is the translator of "Love letters to Ukraine" (2023) by Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, forthcoming from River Paw Press.

 

  • PANEL, READING, and Q & A
    Discovering my Writerly Self: Poetry & Identity
    with Daniel Summerhill, Nia McAllister, and Quintin Collins
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

"James Baldwin says you don't become a writer, but rather you discover you are one and then you make a choice to live that life or none at all. Poetry, like all the arts, invites us to ask who we are. There are forces and people who try to decide for us who we should  be and who we can’t be. How we explore, discover, express, define and  challenge who we are through poetry will be the focus of this  conversation and reading." The original idea for this panel came from Dodge, where Daniel Summerhill was one of the participants. Here Daniel is joined by two of his friends, Nia McAllister and Quintin Collins.

Daniel B. Summerhill is a poet and scholar originally from Oakland, CA. His work has appeared in Columbia Journal, Obsidian, Academy of American Poets and elsewhere. He is the author of Divine, Divine, Divine (Nomadic Press 2021), a semi-finalist for the Wheeler and Saturnalia Poetry Prizes and Mausoleum of Flowers (CavanKerry Press 2022). A two-time Pushcart and Best of the Net Nominee, he was invited by the U.S. embassy to guest lecture in South Africa in 2018 and earned fellowships from Baldwin for the Arts and The Watering Hole. He is the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County and Assistant Professor of Poetry/Social Action & Composition Studies at California State University - Monterey Bay.

Nia McAllister is a Bay Area born poet, writer, environmental justice advocate working at the intersection of art, activism, and public engagement. As Senior Public Programs Manager at The Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco, Nia creates participatory spaces for creative expression and literary dialogue. Nia's writing and poetry have been featured on Poets of Color Podcast and published in Doek! Literary Magazine, Radicle magazine, Meridians journal, and Painting the Streets: Oakland Uprising in the Time of Rebellion (Nomadic Press, 2022). 

​Quintin Collins (he/him) is a writer, editor, and Solstice MFA Program assistant director. He is the author of The Dandelion Speaks of Survival (Cherry Castle Publishing, 2021) and Claim Tickets for Stolen People (The Ohio State University Press/Mad Creek Books, 2022), selected by Marcus Jackson as winner of The Journal's 2020 Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Quintin's other awards and accolades include a Pushcart Prize and the 2019 Atlantis Award from the Poet's Billow, as well as Best of the Net nominations. He is also a poetry editor for Salamander.

 

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 15

This morning and afternoon, MIU MFA faculty Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi will take you on a journey from writing the wound to writing toward healing. They will share from their own work and offer suggestions and ideas about how you can explore difficult subject matter with various creative approaches to prevent getting locked in fight/flight/freeze mode or re-traumatizing yourself as you write. What are techniques to write about the unsayable that is so inchoate there are no words? What can you do when you feel your story is too impossible to write? How can you take care of yourself in the writing?

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in Southern California. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a frequent faculty and mentor in our MFA.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of this MFA program and co-chair of the English dept. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her poetry has been anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces and River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), Carrying the Branch (Glass Lyre Press), and Oxygen: Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

 
 

In this continuation of this morning’s workshop, MIU MFA faculty and poets and writers Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi help facilitate a transformation from trauma to healing. They will share from their own work and offer suggestions and ideas how you use writing as a healing modality and transform your story and narrative creatively in a manner that transforms. What helps you write toward self-care and a reframing of your own narrative? How do you deal with it when you are stuck in fight/flight/freeze/fawn when you try to tell your story? What is an empowered vision for yourself as a writer? For bios of Jennifer and Nynke, please see above.

 
 
 

Tonight we have with us two luminaries of the poetry and literary world: Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio. Neither requires an introduction. Their books have been on our students’ bibliographies from day one. We have used their textbooks in our classrooms. It is our great honor and pleasure to host these two absolutely wonderful poets and hear their work!

Dorianne Laux – Pulitzer Prize finalist Dorianne Laux's most recent collection is Only As The Day Is Long: New and Selected, W.W. Norton. She is also author of The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize, and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award.  Two new books are forthcoming: Finger Exercises for Poets, and a volume of poems, Life on Earth, both from W.W. Norton. Laux is founding faculty at Pacific University and a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.

Kim Addonizio is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. Her most recent poetry collection is Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton). Her memoir-in-essays, Bukowski in a Sundress, was published by Penguin. She has received NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her poetry has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. She lives in Oakland, CA.

 

THURSDAY, Feb. 16

This is the pitching class everyone was asking for last year. We are so excited to have back with us Benji Jones and Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, this time joined by Noah Michelson. Jennie is a frequent creative nonfiction mentor in our MFA program.. Both Jennie and Benji grew up in our Fairfield, IA, community. We are so glad to have them back!

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz earned her MA in Journalism at UC Berkeley. She was a senior editor at The Atlantic before becoming senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine, where she edits features about science, history, and culture. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Lonely Planet travel series. She is an alumna of our English department, earning her undergraduate degree in Literature at MIU as well as a repeat mentor in our MFA.

Benji Jones is an environmental reporter at Vox based in Brooklyn, NY. He previously covered the energy industry as a senior reporter at Business Insider. His writing also appears in National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Audubon Magazine. Benji has an MS in ecology and evolution from Stanford University. He grew up in our community in Fairfield.

Noah Michelson oversees HuffPost Personal, which he launched in 2018, and is the host of D Is For Desire, a podcast about love, sex, and relationships. He received his MFA in Poetry from New York University and has appeared on the BBC, MSNBC, NPR, Entertainment Tonight, and Sirius XM.

 

  • READING and Q & A
    In Deep Shift: Riding the Waves of Change to Find Peace, Fulfillment, and Freedom
    with Valerie Gangas (author of Enlightenment is Sexy)
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Valerie Gangas is back by popular demand, this time with her new book, In Deep Shift, from which she will offer a reading. She will also speak about self-trust, finding your authentic voice and purpose, the impact Transcendental Meditation had on her creative process, how to go with your gut, how to speak your truth, and how to successfully market and brand yourself as a writer.

In Deep Shift is “an empowering guide to help you navigate those times when your life turns upside down and inside out―and the radical shift in consciousness you can access in the process.”

Valerie Gangas is a speaker and author who specializes in helping people gain a deeper understanding of who they are, so they can genuinely thrive and unleash their magic more fully into the world. After her first Transcendental Meditation experience in the winter of 2011, Valerie's spiritual awakening gave rise to an inspired, non-stop outpouring of insight, creativity and empowerment—the focus of which is especially targeted for women—resulting in her Amazon bestselling book: Enlightenment Is Sexy: Every Woman’s Guide to a Magical Life.

 

  • READING, PRESENTATION and Q & A
    Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press)
    with Kelli Russell Agodon and Susan Rich
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems by Susan Rich and Kelli Russell Agodon. it is published by Two Sylvias Press.

Book creation is an art and Demystifying the Manuscript offers many perspectives on how to put together a book of poems through the essays and interviews of contemporary prizewinning poets and editors. While there isn’t a single “correct” method for creating a book of poems, Demystifying the Manuscript is filled with expert advice on all aspects of manuscript creation: ordering your poems, determining your goals, insider tips from the editors of journals and small presses, and everything in between. Demystifying the Manuscript will guide you through the process of creating your best book of poems whether you are an emerging writer or an established poet. 

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of four collections of poems, including the award-winning Dialogues with Rising Tides (Links to an external site.), which was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional land of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people. She is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop.

Susan Rich is the author of eight books including Blue Atlas (forthcoming from Red Hen Press), Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN USA Award. Along with Brian Turner and Ilya Kaminsky, she edited The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (Poetry Foundation). She has received awards and fellowships from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Peace Corps Writers, Artist Trust, CityArtists, and 4Culture.

 

FRIDAY, Feb. 17

In this session, author and memoirist Shannon Gibney will talk about hybrid forms in a master class that is also a generative writing workshop. Bring your notebooks and pens so you can write!

Shannon Gibney is an award-winning author of books of all kinds — from novels to anthologies to essays to picture books. She writes for adults, children, and everyone in-between. The through-line in all her work is stories that may have previously gone untold. Sometimes these perspectives have remained hidden because the speakers have not had an outlet for their stories; other times, the stories carry darkness and fear that we prefer to look away from. What God Is Honored Here: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color (University of Minnesota Press, October, 2019), exemplifies this approach, as does Gibney’s most recent novel, Dream Country (Dutton, 2018), which Kirkus describes as “a necessary reckoning of tensions within the African diaspora — an introduction to its brokenness and a place to start healing.”

 

We are lucky to get a preview taste of an AWP workshop, Writing Joy, a generative exploration of the healing and joyous power of generative writing. This workshop is led by Sara Henning and Erin Elizabeth Smith, who have both read and presented with us in previous festivals.

Sara Henning is the author of Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), co-winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. Her honors include the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, the George Bogin Memorial Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and awards from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been published in journals such as Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Crazyhorse, Meridian, and the Cincinnati Review.

Erin Elizabeth Smith is the author of three full-length collections, The Naming of Strays (Gold Wake 2011) and The Fear of Being Found, which was re-released by Zoetic Press in 2016. Her third collection, DOWN was released from Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2020. Smith's poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Guernica Ecotone, Ecotone, Mid-American, 32 Poems, Mid-American, Florida Review, and Tupelo Quarterly, Crab Orchard Review, and Willow Springs, among others. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi and is now a Distinguished Lecturer in the English Department at the University of Tennessee.

 
 
 

Tonight we are so happy to host two writer friends from up North who are going to share with us from their books. They will add some Q & A at the end to discuss their process.

Maureen Aitken’s collection of short stories, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls, is a Nilsen Prize Winner and received a Kirkus Star and a Foreword Review Star. Her writing also won the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, the Loft Mentor Award, an award in Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize, and a grant from the SASE/Jerome Foundation. She was a 2019 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in the Novel and Short Story Category. Her stories have been widely published and have received three Pushcart Prizes nominations. She teaches writing at the University of Minnesota, where she received her MFA degree.

Mona Susan Power is the author of three books: The Grass Dancer (a novel), Roofwalker (a story collection), and her latest novel, Sacred Wilderness. The Grass Dancer was awarded a PEN/Hemingway prize in 1995 and Roofwalker a Milkweed National Fiction Prize in 2002. Her short stories and essays have been widely published in journals, magazines, and anthologies including: The Best American Short Stories of 1993, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Southern Review and Granta. Her fellowships include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, USA Artists Fellowship, Loft McKnight Fellowship for 2015-16, and Native Arts and Cultures Fellowship for 2016-17. She is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

 

SATURDAY, Feb. 18

  • MASTER CLASS and GENERATIVE WORKSHOP
    You Bring the Axe, I'll Bring the Shovel, Let's Kill Lovecraft
    with     Alice Paige
    Time: 10 AM - 12:00 noon CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Cosmic Horror is a genre brimming with the horrifying potential to engage with the darkest corners of humanity, pull forth golden resilience from the ether, and bend the mind into inexplicable shapes. But how do we reclaim a style of storytelling with its origins steeped in racism, sexism, and violence again queer bodies? How do we kill Lovecraft and exhume stories worth telling from within ourselves? Why are so many diverse voices drawn to the genre? What does cosmic horror have to say about gender, racism, class oppression, and the future of climate change? And how do we protect our mental health while exploring cosmic horror? This workshop will cover these topics in addition to providing you with the opportunity to begin crafting your own short horror stories.

Alice Paige (she/her) is an author, performing artist, and creative writing teacher from Chicago, Illinois. She has her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University, her B.Sc. in Biology from Iowa State University, is a LOFT Mentor Series fellow, a Digital Pedagogical Lab fellow, and a McNair Scholar. Her work can be found in Coffin Bell, Take a Stand: Art Against Hate, A Raven Chronicles Anthology, Luna Station Quarterly, and plenty of other strange journals.

 

In this combination of reading, master class, and generative workshop, author Maureen Aitken will talk about microfiction and micrononfiction, plus the differences between. By reading her own work and the work of others, and by giving prompts, she will inspire you to write your own.

Maureen Aitken’s collection of short stories, The Patron Saint of Lost Girls, is a Nilsen Prize Winner and received a Kirkus Star and a Foreword Review Star. Her writing also won the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Artist Initiative Grant, the Loft Mentor Award, an award in Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize, and a grant from the SASE/Jerome Foundation. She was a 2019 Minnesota Book Award Finalist in the Novel and Short Story Category. Her stories have been widely published and have received three Pushcart Prizes nominations. She teaches writing at the University of Minnesota, where she received her MFA degree.

 
 
 

  • POETRY READING and Discussion
    Jahajee Sisters
    with Sasha Kamini Parmasad, Simone Devi Jhingoor, and Taij Kumarie Moteelall
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Tonight our MIU faculty Sasha Kamini Parmasad will be presenting together with founders of the Jahajee Sisters, a gender justice organization that activates Indo-Caribbeans in New York. They will offer a poetry reading and speak about womanhood, motherhood, and Into-Caribbean culture and ancestry.

​Jahajee Sisters is a gender justice organization that activates Indo-Caribbeans in New York to put an end to intimate partner, family, and sexual violence. Their community of support guides women, girls, and gender expansive people to heal and create lasting change. Through leadership development, community organizing, arts activism, direct services, and building economic sovereignty, Jahajee Sisters amplifies survivor voices and visions to transform culture. Jahajee Sisters was born out of the demand for sustained, culturally relevant programming for women in the Indo-Caribbean New York community and is committed to developing leaders who organize against gender-based oppression and create paths for self determination. Jahajee Sisters’ constituency is comprised of a diverse group of inter-generational Indo-Caribbean women, ages 15-60, with ancestral roots in South Asia and born in the Caribbean and South American countries: Guyana, Trinidad, Suriname and Jamaica but is also comprised of a younger generation of women, ages 15-35 born and raised in New York City, who also identify as Indo-Caribbean.

Sasha Kamini Parmasad (MFA Creative Writing, Columbia University)—educator, award-winning writer, author of the poetry collection, No Poem—has taught academic and creative writing, multi-arts, meditation and self-exploratory courses in programs at Columbia University, UN Women, in VIP/government circles and underserved communities. Teaching TM with the David Lynch Foundation, she was recognized as one of five “Change-Makers of 2017”. Her novel, Ink and Sugar, placed third in the US in the First Words Literary Contest for South Asian Writers. A founding member of Jahajee Sisters, Sasha co-edited the chapbook Bolo Bahen! Speak Sister! which highlights immigrant experiences of domestic violence.

Simone Devi Jhingoor is an Indo-Caribbean poet and activist based in NYC. She pens and performs poetry that speaks to her unique cultural experience as an Indo-Caribbean with ancestral roots in Guyana and growing up in the Bronx. Simone has been a featured poet internationally and nationally at universities, shows, art festivals and conferences. Her writing has been published in two community anthologies: “i got something to say!” and “Bolo Bahen, Speak Sister.” Simone has also produced/curated events to create a platform for BIPOC creatives, and led arts activism programs to support folks to heal and become bold leaders.

Born in Guyana and raised in the US, Taij Kumarie Moteelall is an artist, activist and entrepreneur. In 2007, she organized the first Indo-Caribbean Women’s Empowerment Summit, which led to the co-founding of Jahajee Sisters where she currently serves as the Arts + Activism resident. Taij’s writings, performances, research, theater and multi-arts productions draw inspiration from her ancestral lineage, lived experience, and radical imagination. She is also a Co-founder and Principal at  Media Sutra where she merges transformative storytelling and resource mobilization to foster well-being and community wealth-building. Her trauma-informed coaching/facilitation supports creative entrepreneurs to be Fearless, Abundant, and Bold (FAB).

 

SUNDAY, Feb. 19

This afternoon we host a love poetry workshop with Jennifer Espinoza and Eileen Espinoza. It’s hard to write an original love poem. How do we use craft to steer into our feeling yet hold our feeling taut like the string of a kite, rather than indulging it in a sentimental or melodramatic manner? Reading from the works of poets such as Ada Limón, Mary Oliver, Sappho, and others, you will examine how poetic forms serve different kinds of love. You will write our own love poems together and have time for sharing in this generative workshop.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in Southern California. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a full-time faculty and frequent mentor in our MFA.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a queer essayist and poet living in Southern California. Espinoza is the co-founder of Boshemia Magazine and the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been selected by both Dorothy Allison and bell hooks for collections such as The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Appalachian Review. She earned her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside, and her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky (2024). 

 
 
 

  • READING and Q & A
    MIU Alumni with MFAs or in MFA in Creative Writing Programs
    with Candice Rankin, Tahjia Brantley, and Eric Boyd
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

We are thrilled tonight to be joined by three MIU alumni, who all received BA and/or BFA degrees from MIU, and who are currently enrolled in or who already completed MFA in Creative Writing Programs elsewhere. Tahjia Brantley is a poet and lyric writer currently studying poetry at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Candice Rankin is studying creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington; she is also a TA and assistant in our MFA. Malinda Gosvig is not going to be able to join us, but instead we’ll have our former student, author Eric Boyd.

Eric Boyd is a winner of the PEN Prison Writing Award and a finalist for the Foundry Prize for Short Fiction. His writing has been published by Guernica, Joyland, and The Offing; in addition he appeared in the anthologies Prison Noir(Akashic Books) and Words Without Walls (Trinity University). Boyd is the editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing), and has guest-edited for publications including Fourth River. A longtime mentor for the PEN Prison Writing program, Boyd recently joined its Incarcerated Writers Bureau (IWB) as a writing coach for its inaugural year. Boyd attended Maharishi International University before going on to earn an MFA in Brooklyn. He lives in Pittsburgh and is currently working on a novel.

Candice Rankin received her BFA in Creative Writing at Maharishi International University. She was born in Southern Indiana, attended five different high schools, and lived in 18 states. Along the way she studied theatre and graduated from Circle in the Square, The American Academy of Dramatic Arts (NYC), and The Groundlings (Los Angeles). Candice writes about the pain of her dysfunctional childhood and sexuality while staring down inner demons and interjecting dry and inappropriate humor along the way. Her poetry and nonfiction have been published in Wingless Dreamer Chapbook, Typehouse Literary Magazine, East/West Literary Forum, and the Stoneboat Literary Journal. She is currently a second-year MFA candidate at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and working on her memoir, The Grasshopper Wars. 

After this reading, the audience is invited to ask our guests questions about their MFA experiences, how they got into top 10 programs, what they recommend to anyone wishing to study creative writing, what they are currently reading and learning about craft, plus of course: what books and writing projects they are working on at the moment?

 
 
 

MONDAY, Feb. 20

For this session, we are joined by two poets who are sisters-in-law. Mary Peelen is Zooming in from Paris where she lives, and Susan joins us from the Pacific coast. We are so excited for this reading by these two wonderful poets. Mary’s book has already been a book pick by Usha, our literary MFA cat.

Susan Rich is the author of eight books including Blue Atlas (forthcoming from Red Hen Press), Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN USA Award. Along with Brian Turner and Ilya Kaminsky, she edited The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (Poetry Foundation). She has received awards and fellowships from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Peace Corps Writers, Artist Trust, CityArtists, and 4Culture.

Mary Peelen, M.Div., MFA, is a poet and writer who lives in San Francisco and Paris. Her writing has appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, New Critique, Poetry Review (UK), and other journals. Her poetry collection, Quantum Heresies, won the 2019 Kithara Book Prize and was published by Glass Lyre Press.

Praise for their Work
”The new and selected poems of Gallery of Postcards and Maps [by Susan Rich] introduce themselves with a warmth that deepens into wisdom. Susan Rich finds music in everything inside and outside her windows: Leonora Carrington, Vegetarian Vampires, lovers and ex-lovers, Lorca and Courbet. This book displays the hallmarks of her oeuvre: her mastery of form; her acuity of heart and eye. These terrific poems are full of compassion, lyricism and attention. The selected reflects an ever-present restlessness of spirit, flesh, and intellect.” —Terrance Hayes

”Mary Peelen’s spare poems pulse with what they contain and describe—in both the imagistic and the mathematical sense of the word—harnessing the power of the sciences to navigate the chthonic worlds of illness, loss, and desire on both personal and planetary scales. Peelen denies the divisions of mind and body, art and science, precision and ardor. Her poems resonate with allusion (Lady Lazarus’s hair as a supernova) and sound (copernicium, ununoctium). Peelen unveils new ways to make sense of our complicated, contradictory world.” — Elizabeth Bradfeld, naturalist and author of Once Removed

 
 
 

Poet, essayist and fiction writer Ellen Birkett Morris will talk about transitioning from fiction to writing about her life experience. Plumbing your personal experience can be painful and scary. Morris will talk about how to navigate those challenges and how to apply the tools of creative nonfiction so you can develop an essay that is both specific and universal. In this workshop, she will read a recently published essay about living with disability and engage in prompts and assignments to explore what it is like to write vulnerability.

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls: Short Stories, stories about female strength and resilience, winner of the Pencraft Award. Her novel Beware the Tall Grass is a finalist for the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader Magazine, and on National Public Radio.

 
 
 

Tonight our Spring '23 mentors will offer you a reading of their work. We feel so lucky to have them with us: Eileen Espinoza (Poetry as well as Creative Nonfiction), Susan Daniels (Fiction), and Rustin Larson (Multi-Genre).

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a queer essayist and poet living in Southern California. Espinoza is the co-founder of Boshemia Magazine and the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been selected by both Dorothy Allison and bell hooks for collections such as The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Appalachian Review. She earned her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside, and her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky (2024). 

Susan Daniels earned an MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction from Fairfield University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing: Fiction from Bath Spa University. Her novel, The Genuine Stories, published by New Rivers Press, was the winner of the Fairfield University Book Prize. Her memoir, The Horse Show Mom’s Survival Guide: For Every Discipline, was published by The Lyons Press.

Rustin Larson is a seven-time Pushcart nominee whose fiction has appeared in Delmarva Review, Wapsipinicon Almanac, and The MacGuffin. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Poetry East. He is author of Bum Cantos (Blue Light Press), The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press), Crazy Star (Loess Hills Press), and numerous other books. He is also a core faculty member and frequent mentor in our MIU MFA in Creative Writing. 

 
 
 

TUESDAY, Feb. 21

  • MASTER CLASS AND GENERATIVE WORKSHOP
    Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson
    with     Eileen Espinoza and Jennifer Espinoza
    Time: 10:00 AM - 12 noon CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

This Spring ‘23 semester, Jennifer Espinoza is going to teach a new elective MFA course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” In this residency, we’ll host three different sessions that give a taste of this course. Jennifer and Eileen Espinoza will teach all three and combine master class and generative workshop while looking at various aspects of Emily Dickinson’s work through a queer lens. In this first session, titled “Writing Consciousness,” they will give an overview and opening into Emily Dickinson’s work drawing on material from Figuring by Maria Popova and Dickinson’s own letters and poems. Each session will also give opportunity for writing.

 

In this generative workshop, poet and writer Diane Frank will guide you to write haiku and haibun in the Japanese minimalist tradition. Diane Frank has decades of experience eliciting deep, image-rich work out of her students. She will help you see the world with new eyes and create work you are really proud of.

Diane Frank is author of eight books of poems, three novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Himalayas. Her books While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems and Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines were published by Glass Lyre Press. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she dances, plays cello, and creates her life as an art form.

 
 
 
“[Lost Girls is a] dazzling collection of stories that showcases Morris’ impressive ability to hide devastating truths within seemingly small moments.”
— Jenny Offill

Tonight we are hosting a creative nonfiction / fiction reading with Ellen Birkett Morris and Christine Schrum. Ellen will read from her book of stories Lost Girls, which explores the experiences of women and girls as they grieve, find love, face uncertainty, take a stand, find their future, and say goodbye to the past. Christine will read her essay “Wild, Salty Body of Water,” which was published in The Rumpus.

“The Salish Sea is a wet lung breathing outside our balcony. It inhales and exhales all night long, sucking seaweed into its salty windpipe, spitting crustaceans upon the shores of Galiano Island.”
— Christine Schrum

Ellen Birkett Morris is the author of Lost Girls: Short Stories, stories about female strength and resilience, winner of the Pencraft Award. Her novel Beware the Tall Grass is a finalist for the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.

Christine Schrum is a Vancouver Island writer who is inspired by landscapes—both interior and exterior. Her travel writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, and her creative nonfiction essays have appeared in Grain, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and The Rumpus. Her poetry appears in EVENT (forthcoming, December 2017), A Verse Map of Vancouver, Quills Canadian Poetry, Sulphur III, and other publications. She holds an MA in Professional Writing from MIU.

 

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 22

In this hour we host the thesis reading of Maggie Ventsias, our first MFA graduate (Dec. ‘22). Before her MFA , Maggie earned a BA in Art, a BFA in Creative Writing, and an MA in Studio Art, all from MIU. Maggie was in the creative nonfiction and fiction dual genre track, working on a fictionalized memoir about raising seven teenagers in the nineties with a best friend she met online gaming (before that was even a thing). The two women forged a bond and helped each other escape abusive relationships. They flipped a coin to see who would be moving out of their home, then joined their two households together. Maggie’s book will come with a handbook on how to live an alternate lifestyle and pointers on how to escape abusive relationships. Of course it will also come with a game! Today we celebrate Maggie’s accomplishment.

 

  • MASTER CLASS and GENERATIVE WORKSHOP
    Writing Past Death: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson
    with     Eileen Espinoza and Jennifer Espinoza
    Time: 2:30 - 4:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

This Spring ‘23 semester, Jennifer Espinoza is going to teach a new elective MFA course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” In this residency, we’ll host three different sessions that give a taste of this course. Jennifer and Eileen Espinoza will teach all three and combine master class and generative workshop while looking at various aspects of Emily Dickinson’s work through a queer lens. In this second session, titled “Writing Past Death,” they will explore the theme of Death in Dickinson’s poetry, drawing on material from Figuring by Maria Popova and Dickinson’s own letters and works. Emily Dickinson wrote about death as if she’d already been dead. Death was her friend - at a time when most women poets wrote about sweet subject matter like love, domestic affairs, roses, and pansies. How can we use Dickinson’s work to examine death, not only honestly and truthfully without flinching, but with kindness and intimacy, making death and the journey to the underworld a part of our lives and a transformational dive into ourselves?

You will be spending two hours reading and writing, with space for optional sharing. This is not a peer-feedback workshop; this time is strictly provided for you to be inspired and to write as much as possible.

 
“When children speak, listen. There are treasures in the syntax of their innocence.”
— Loretta Diane Walker
 
 
 

  • MEMORIAL READING
    for LORETTA DIANE WALKER
    with Diane Frank, Barbara Saxton, Lisha Adela Garcia, Mary Kay Rummel, Katie Hoerth, Emilie Lygren, Almedia Stewart, Kai Black, and Nynke Passi     
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

“There is great joy in what I do. I believe kindness is a language in and of itself, and I hope to speak it fluently.”
— Loretta Diane Walker

Tonight we are moved and honored to host a memorial reading of the work of one of our esteemed and beloved frequent guests, Loretta Diane Walker, who read her work and spoke with our students in multiple residencies and who was planning to be a mentor in our program. We will never forget the time she showed us a gorgeous box and asked what we thought she kept inside. The answer was: rejection slips. She taught our students that rejections are an integral part of creative process.

Loretta Diane Walker, a multiple Pushcart nominee and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry for her collection In This House (Blue Light Press). Loretta was selected as a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. Her work has appeared in various literary journals, magazines, and anthologies throughout the United States, Canada, India, Ireland, and the UK. She published five collections of poetry. Her most recent book is Day Begins When Darkness is in Full Bloom. She also wrote Ode to My Mother's Voice and Other Poems (Lamar University Press), Desert Light, and the chapbook, From the Cow's Eye. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Blue Light Press Book Award and was published by Blue Light Press. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned an MA from the University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She taught elementary music at Reagan Magnet School in Odessa, Texas.

For her memorial reading, we will be joined by some of her best friends, loved ones, and mentors: Diane Frank, Barbara Saxton, Lisha Adela Garcia, Mary Kay Rummel, Katie Hoerth, Emilie Lygren, Almedia Stewart, Kai Black, and Nynke Passi.

 

THURSDAY, Feb. 23

In this event, author Joseph Cardillo will offer pointers on how to write a book proposal that sells. Joseph was with us last time and the idea for this workshop was hatched then.

Joseph Cardillo, PhD, is an American writer, philosopher, and bestselling author of several books in the fields of health, mind-body-spirit, and psychology. His books include The 12 Rules of Attention: How to Avoid Screw-ups, Free Up Headspace, Do More and Be More at Work; Body Intelligence: Harness Your Body’s Energies for Your Best Life; Your Playlist Can Change Your Life; Can I Have Your Attention: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus and Sharpen Your Concentration; and the body energy classic, Be Like Water. In addition, he has co-written books for Harvard Health Publications.

 

In this presentation, poet, writer, educator, editor, and publisher Diane Frank, who helped found Blue Light Press in San Francisco, will give you a crash course in “shameless book promotion.” We have a first crop of graduating students this school year, so this class could not be more timely. We are so thankful to Diane for offering it!

Diane Frank is author of eight books of poems, three novels, and a photo memoir of her 400 mile trek in the Himalayas. Her books While Listening to the Enigma Variations: New and Selected Poems and Canon for Bears and Ponderosa Pines were published by Glass Lyre Press. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she dances, plays cello, and creates her life as an art form.

 
 
 

Tonight, friends and authors Shannon Gibney and Alice Paige will read from their speculative work. We are so excited to hear them. Shannon Gibney will read from her recently published speculative memoir (part memoir, part speculative fiction), The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, about trans-racial adoption, and Alice Paige will read horror. There will be a Q & A at the end of the reading in case you want to ask the authors about their process.

Shannon Gibney is an award-winning author of books of all kinds — from novels to anthologies to essays to picture books. She writes for adults, children, and everyone in-between. The through-line in all her work is stories that may have previously gone untold. Sometimes these perspectives have remained hidden because the speakers have not had an outlet for their stories; other times, the stories carry darkness and fear that we prefer to look away from. What God Is Honored Here: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color (University of Minnesota Press, October, 2019), exemplifies this approach, as does Gibney’s most recent novel, Dream Country (Dutton, 2018), which Kirkus describes as “a necessary reckoning of tensions within the African diaspora — an introduction to its brokenness and a place to start healing.”

Alice Paige is a trans woman, essayist, and storyteller living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her writing explores the transformative power of queer love even in the darkest of nights under the newest of moons. Through teaching, she looks to guide students in a reclamation of narrative power and an exploration of the strange thresholds of writing. Her work can be found at Crabfat Magazine, Coffin Bell, VASTARIEN, Luna Station Quarterly, Write About Now, Button Poetry, and Take A Stand, Art Against Hate: A Raven Chronicles Anthology. She is a Digital Pedagogical Lab Fellow and recently graduated with her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University.

 

FRIDAY, Feb. 24

Back by popular demand, and this time in a longer version: Our MIU faculty and colleague Mel McCuin presents on cinepoetry.. Cinepoems, or video poems, are hybrid works featuring performance, text, and cinematic techniques. In this presentation, Mel McCuin will discuss several visual examples of cinepoetry and share some of her recent work. 

Mel McCuin received her BA in History from Arizona State University in 2005 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014.  Her writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, and Unstrung, among others. Her most recent work can be viewed in the June 2022 issue of Salamander and at howweare.org, a website devoted to the reflections of musicians, artists, and writers during the Covid-19 pandemic. She currently teaches composition and creative writing at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA.

 

In this 1-hour workshop, participants will learn visual poetry techniques and create 1-2 visual poems. Participants should come to the workshop with 2-3 colorful drawing utensils, i.e., crayons, markers, colored pens, etc. For more information on Mel, please see this morning’s event above. Mel teaches in our English Dept. and developed a course called “The Writer Online” for our MFA program, an introductory course to help students develop social media marketing strategies and skills and build an online platform before exiting our MFA.

 
 
 

  • MASTER CLASS and GENERATIVE WORKSHOP
    Writing Spirituality: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson
    with     Eileen Espinoza and Jennifer Espinoza
    Time: 2:30 - 4:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

This Spring ‘23 semester, Jennifer Espinoza is going to teach a new elective MFA course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” In this residency, we’ll host three different sessions that give a taste of this course. Jennifer and Eileen Espinoza will teach all three and combine master class and generative workshop while looking at different aspects of Emily Dickinson’s work through a queer lens. In this third session, titled “Writing Spirituality,” they will explore spirituality and transcendence in Emily Dickinson’s poetry, drawing on material from Figuring by Maria Popova and Dickinson’s own letters and works. Dickinson wrote about the experience of being “finite infinity” and often found eternity and infinity inside of herself and in the smallest things around her. You will be spending two hours reading and writing, with space for optional sharing. This is not a peer-feedback workshop; this time is strictly provided for you to be inspired and to write as much as possible.

 

We are so happy to host a reading we’ve been wanting to have for a while: Mark Spragg together with Mermer Blakeslee. Mermer is an alumna of MIU, and Mark used to teach creative writing at MIU a long time ago. Both have joined us before at our festival, but this time, they are reading together.

Mermer Blakeslee leads many lives, as a writer, skier, teacher, and gardener. She has published three novels. In Dark Water (Ballantine), called by Connie May Fowler “a novel of uncommon grace and soaring beauty,” was selected by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series. An excerpt from her latest novel, When You Live by a River, won the Narrative Prize, and she was awarded three fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her roots are in poetry and her poems have been published in the Paterson Literary Review, Heliotrope, and Narrative. Mermer has also worked intensively with fearful skiers over the last thirty-five years. Her non-fiction book, In the Yikes! Zone (Dutton) has been reissued in paperback, e-book, and on Audible as A Conversation with Fear. She lives in New York’s Catskill Mountains where she was born.

Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers award, and the novels The Fruit of Stone; An Unfinished Life, which was chosen by the Rocky Mountain News as the Best Book of 2004; and Bone Fire, which was published in 2010. The first three were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife, Virginia, in Wyoming. Mark also has an extensive history as a screenwriter, writing the scripts for movies such as An Unfinished Life and Everything that Rises. Mark taught one creative writing course at MIU in the 1980s and has been back several times as a guest in our undergraduate creative writing classes. He was our special guest during our first residency and has continued to join us for readings and master classes ever since.

 

SATURDAY, Feb. 25

  • PRESENTATION
    First Steps Across the Language Border: Finding the Courage to Become a Literary Translator
    with     Francesca Bell and Suphil Lee Park
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Poet Francesca Bell will join us again to speak about translation and how to take first steps across the language borders. How can you find courage to become a literary translator? Do you need to be a native speaker to the languages you translate into and from? How do translators work?

Francesca Bell is the author of Bright Stain (Red Hen Press, 2019), finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Julie Suk Award, and What Small Sound (Red Hen Press, 2023). She has co-translated from Arabic and translates from German. Her translation Whoever Drowned Here, a selection of poems by Max Sessner, will be published August 22, 2023. Her poems and translations appear widely, in magazines such as NELLE, New England Review, North American Review, Mid-American Review, and Rattle. She is translation editor of Los Angeles Review and lives with her family in Novato, California.

Suphil Lee Park (수필 리 박 / 秀筆 李 朴) is a bilingual writer, poet, and translator who was born and grew up in South Korea before finding home in the States. She's the author of the poetry collection, Present Tense Complex, winner of the 2020 Marystina Santiestevan Prize (Conduit Books & Ephemera, 2021), and a poetry chapbook, Still Life, selected by Ilya Kaminsky as the winner of the 2022 Tomaž Šalamun Prize (forthcoming from Factory Hollow Press).  She also won the 2021 Indiana Review Fiction Prize for her short fiction and received a fiction prize from Writer's Digest for her flash fiction. She graduated from New York University with a BA in English and from the University of Texas at Austin with an MFA in Poetry. Her poems and short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Iowa Review, the Kenyon Review, and Poetry, among many others.

 

We are delighted to have back with us two poets who have read and presented at our festival multiple times: Kim Shuck and Molly Fisk! You are in for a treat to hear these two friends share the stage with their honest, funny, poignant, moving words.

Kim Shuck is Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco, her home. She is widely published in journals, anthologies and has also published a couple of books including Rabbit Stories and Deer Trails. She also teaches and does beading and basketweaving, including in the Oakland schools. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.

Molly Fisk edited California Fire & Water, A Climate Crisis Anthology, with a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets when she was Poet Laureate of Nevada County, CA. She's also won grants from the NEA, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She has widely published as a poet and memoirist. Her most recent poetry collection is The More Difficult Beauty; her latest book of radio commentary is Naming Your Teeth. 

 

SUNDAY, Feb. 26

Mark Spragg will join us for another master class on the craft of fiction mixed with a reading of his own new work and a Q & A where you can ask him anything you want about his process and how to go about structuring a novel, bringing characters and setting to life, writing good dialogue, and more.

Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers award, and the novels The Fruit of Stone; An Unfinished Life, which was chosen by the Rocky Mountain News as the Best Book of 2004; and Bone Fire, which was published in 2010. The first three were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife, Virginia, in Wyoming. Mark also has an extensive history as a screenwriter, writing the scripts for movies such as An Unfinished Life and Everything that Rises. Mark taught one creative writing course at MIU in the 1980s and has been back several times as a guest in our undergraduate creative writing classes. He was our special guest during our first residency and has continued to join us for readings and master classes ever since.

 

  • OPEN MIC READING - IN HOUSE
    with All of Our MFA Students
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    This event is not open to the public

Tonight’s reading is not open to the public. However, our first graduating student is on the schedule to offer a public reading during this festival, and at our Fall ‘23 festival, five more students will be reading after graduating from our program. We are already excited that we’ll get to present them and their work to you!

For more information on MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing, directed by Nynke Passi, please visit our website here.

 
 

Spring ’23 Festival Social Media Announcements