Low-
Residency MFA in Creative Writing

As always, WV Wesleyan’s MFA hosted a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Summer 2021 Residency. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this summer’s residency was held online, and so were the readings.  We had a stellar lineup of essayists, poets and fiction writers teaching and visiting this summer, and you can check out all the readings from this summer by clicking on the author’s banner below.

Be sure to watch this space for news of tour upcoming Winter 2022 Visiting Writers Series, Jan 2 – 7, 2022.

Randon Billings Noble  – Saturday, July 3rd

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her collection Be with Me Always was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019. Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She has taught at NYU and American University, is currently the founding editor of After the Art. Randon also teaches nonfiction in the West Virginia Wesleyan College Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing.

Richard Boada – Sunday, July 4th

Richard Boada is the author of two poetry collections: The Error of Nostalgia, nominated for the 2014 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Poetry Award, and Archipelago Sinking. He is a graduate of the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. His poetry appears in The Southern Poetry Anthology, Urban Voices: 51 Poets / 51 Poems, Rhino, Crab Orchard Review, Poetry East, North American Review, and Third Coast, among others.

Jessie van Eerden – Monday, July 5th

Jessie van Eerden is author of three novels: Glorybound, winner of the Foreword Editor’s Choice Fiction Prize; My Radio Radio; and Call It Horses, winner of the Dzanc Books Prize for Fiction. Her portrait essay collection The Long Weeping won the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, and her work has appeared in Best American Spiritual Writing, Oxford American, New England Review, and other venues. Jessie has been awarded the Gulf Coast Prize in Nonfiction, the Milton Fellowship, and a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Fellowship. She holds an MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa and teaches at Hollins University.

Jeremy Jones – Tuesday, July 6th

Jeremy B. Jones is the author of the memoir Bearwallow, which was named the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year in nonfiction and awarded gold in memoir in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His essays appear in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Oxford American, Appalachian Reckoning, and The Iowa Review. Born and raised in the mountains of North Carolina, Jeremy earned his MFA from the University of Iowa and now serves as an associate professor of English at Western Carolina University, where he teaches creative writing and directs the Spring Literary Festival. Alongside Elena Passarello, Jeremy is the series co-editor of In Place, a nonfiction book series from West Virginia University Press.

Rajia Hassib – Wednesday, July 7th

Rajia Hassib was born and raised in Egypt and moved to the United States when she was twenty-three. She holds an MA in creative writing from Marshall University and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker online, Upstreet, Steam Ticket, and Border Crossing magazines. She lives in West Virginia.

Richard Schmitt – Thursday, July 8th

Richard Schmitt is the author of a critically acclaimed novel, The Aerialist and a collection of short stories, Living Among Strangers. His sto­ries have appeared in Puerto Del Sol, Gulf Coast, Blackbird, and Cimarron Re­view, among other publications. His work has been included in New Stories from the South: The Year’s Best, 1999 and Best American Essays. He is a graduate of the Warren Wilson Low-Residency MFA Program, and his work has earned him a National Endowment for the Arts Grant.

For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Doug Van Gundy: mfa@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.  Or visit our Facebook page.

This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

WV Wesleyan’s MFA will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Winter 2020 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. Readings will be held in the Music Room of the Blackwater Lodge at Blackwater Falls State Park, in Davis, WV.  Click this link for directions.

Ann Pancake & Mark Harshman at 8 PM, December 27th, 2019

Ann Pancake is a native of West Virginia.  She is the author of two short story collections, Given Ground and Me and My Daddy Listen to Bob Marley, and a novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, which was one of Kirkus Review’s Top Ten Fiction Books of the year.  Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals like Orion, The Georgia Review and Poets and Writers. Pancake is currently Writer-in-Residence in the Humanities Center at WVU.

Marc Harshman is the author of four of poems and over a dozen children’s books.  His latest book of poetry, Woman in Red Anorak, won the 2017 Blue Lynx Prize and his previous, Believe What You Can won the Weatherford Award. Appointed in 2012, he is the seventh poet laureate of West Virginia.

Catherine Venable Moore & Kevin Chesser at 8 PM, December 28th, 2019

Catherine Venable Moore is a writer and producer based in Ansted, WV. She holds a degree in Literature from Harvard and an MFA in Poetry from the University of Montana. Her nonfiction has appeared in Best American Essays, Oxford American, VICE and others. She is the co-founder the West Virginia Mine Wars Museum. Her current projects include two works of narrative nonfiction set in Appalachia, to be published by Random House.

Kevin Chesser is a poet and musician living in Randolph County, West Virginia. An alumnus of the West Virginia Wesleyan MFA program, his work has appeared in Hobart, Still, Dinner Bell, and elsewhere. He’s toured all over the region with the Travelin’ Appalachians Revue arts collective, and plays banjo in the old-time stringband T-Mart Rounders, whose recent performances include Mountain Stage, The Nelsonville Music Festival, and many others.

Randon Billings Noble & Doug Van Gundy at 8 PM, December 29th, 2019

Randon Billings Noble is an essayist. Her collection Be with Me Always was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2019. Other work has appeared in the Modern Love column of The New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. She has taught at NYU and American University, is currently the founding editor of After the Art.

Doug Van Gundy directs the low-residency MFA creative writing program at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in Poetry, Poets & Writers, and The Guardian.  His first book of poems, A Life Above Water, is published by Red Hen Press.  He is also the co-editor, with

Diane Gilliam & Ashleigh Bryant Phillips at 8 PM, December 30th, 2019

Diane Gilliam is the author of four poetry collections—Dreadful Wind & Rain, Kettle Bottom, One of Everything, and Recipe for Blackberry Cake. She has won the Chaffin Award, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ohioana Library Association Poetry Book of the Year Award. She is a recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.

Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from Woodland, NC. She earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her fiction has appeared in Joyland, New York Tyrant, Hobart, and others. Her debut collection, Sleepovers, was selected by Lauren Groff for the C. Michael Curtis Short Story Book Prize and is forthcoming from Hub City Press in May 2020.

Karen Salyer McElmurray & Richard Schmitt at 8 PM, January 1st, 2020

Karen Salyer McElmurray’s Surrendered Child: A Birth Mother’s Journey was an AWP Award Winner.  Her novels are Strange Birds in the Tree of Heaven; The Motel of the Stars; and Wanting Radiance, to be released in April 2020 by University Press of Kentucky.  She has coedited Walk Till the Dogs Get Mean: Meditations on the Forbidden from Contemporary Appalachia.

Richard Schmitt’s most recent book is a collection of short stories, Living Among Strangers.  He is also the author of a novel, The Aerialist. His work has appeared in Blackbird, Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, and other places. Schmitt’s essay, Sometimes a Romantic Notion was included in Best American Essays.

For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Doug Van Gundy: mfa@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.

This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND FORTHCOMING: Lots of lovely reads live online: read Semein Washington’s (Poetry 2019) poem in Sonder Midwest and work from Vince Trimboli (Poetry 2013) as the featured poet of the month with Moon Tide Press with whom his Book of Rabbits releases in May (get a glimpse of the cover above). And enjoy prose faculty Laura Long’s two poems in the newest issue of Cheat River Review: “When I Consider How My Breath Is Spent” and “Child in Forgotten Orchard.” Look for two poems by poetry faculty Mark DeFoe forthcoming in Evening Street Review, Chris Chapman’s (Fiction 2015) story collection Suicidal Gods (rockin’ the wild cover above designed by Brigid Hokana (Nonfiction 2020)) out with Unsolicited Press on October 22, and prose faculty Matt Randal O’Wain’s essay collection Meander Belt: family, loss, and coming of age in the working class south with a pub date of October 1 (though Matt promises free goodies for folks who pre-order at summer residency!).

The new prose piece “Lost & Found” by prose faculty Richard Schmitt is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review; Kevin Chesser (Poetry 2015) will have poems in Kestrel and Empty House Press this summer; Chad MacDonald’s (Nonfiction 2020) first essay that he wrote for the MFA program will appear in Scarlet Leaf Publishing; and WVU Press’s new collection Mountains Piled upon Mountains: Appalachian Nature Writing in the Anthropocene, forthcoming this summer, will include work from Lisa Hayes Minney (Nonfiction 2017), Laura Long, nonfiction faculty Katie Fallon, and Larry Thacker (Poetry 2018). Larry also has work coming out in Fiction Southeast, Inscape Magazine, K’in, Odd Magazine, and Really System, and his poetry collection Feasts of Evasion releases from Future Cycle Press this summer. Phill Provance’s (Poetry 2019) poem “Gen Y Love Poem” was selected as a Finalist by Arisa White for the Writing Salon’s 2018 Jane Underwood Prize and will appear in the next issue of Third Wednesday; “Gen Y Love Poem” was also selected as a finalist for the Gwendolyn Brooks prize and will appear as a reprint (subsequent to its publication in Third Wednesday) in both a chapbook winners anthology titled Cut Poems from Air and a broadside published by Chicago-area poetry collective The Atrocious Poets as part of their One City One Poet celebration of Ms. Brooks’s life and work. And big news from prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray—she just signed a contract with University of Kentucky Press for her novel Wanting Radiance, to release in April 2020!

GIGS & ACCOLADES: On April 12, Sam Bowyer-McWhorter (Poetry 2014) and Vince Trimboli read at the Randolph County Arts Center in celebration of National Poetry Month. In May, Joyce Allan (Fiction 2015) will host the fourth annual Windy Ridge Writers Retreat for writers of children’s, middle grade, and YA books. Laura Long has been awarded a Summer 2019 Residency Fellowship in Fiction at Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA). Lisa Hayes Minney has earned Basic Library Certification, which is the result of 52 continuing education hours completed in nine months. Outgoing Program Director Jessie van Eerden’s essay “What I Want Your Voice to Do” has been named a Best of the Net Finalist by Sundress Publications. And Lara Lillibridge’s (Nonfiction 2016) memoir Girlish was just named a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist. 

UPCOMING EVENTS: 

April 19, Semein Washington & Beasa Dukes (Fiction 2019), along with two other writers, will read at Chop Suey Bookstore in Richmond at 7 pm.

April 26, poetry faculty and incoming Program Director Doug Van Gundy will read with Bill King to close the Randolph County Arts Center reading series for National Poetry Month.

April 27, Phill Provance will read with fellow finalists and the winner of the 2019 Gwendolyn Brooks Prize at the One City One Poet 2019 Anthology release party, sponsored by the Atrocious Poets and the City of Woodstock, Illinois, at Woodstock, Illinois’s Old Courthouse, 7-9 pm Central Time.

May 10, Katie Fallon will give a Keynote about her book Vulture at The Biggest Week in American Birding in Ohio (it’s like Disney World for bird watchers).

June 19-June 26, Kevin Chesser will go on the road for the third year in a row with Travelin’ Appalachians Revue on their summer tour.

Oct 3, Katie Fallon will give talks for the San Antonio (TX) Audubon Society and, on Oct 5, for the Fort Worth Audubon Society; she will also give a talk at Audubon Arizona’s Birds & Beer event in Phoenix on Nov 21. More info about these will be on on Katie’s website.

You can keep up with regular MFA news blasts on the HeartWood Blog, edited with great enthusiasm & love by Vicki Phillips (Fiction 2018).

 

NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND ONLINE: Hot off the presses—two new books by MFA guest faculty: nonfiction faculty Matthew Ferrence’s memoir Appalachia North out with WVU Press; read a review in the WV Gazette Mail; and fiction faculty Mesha Maren’s novel Sugar Run now out with Algonquin with a review in the New York Times. Also the Second Edition of the novel Waters Run Wild by Andrea Fekete (Fiction 2014) was recently released from Guest Room Press.

Read poems by Daina Savage (Poetry 2020) in the Ritual Issue of Thalia Magazine, poems by Brigid Hokana (Nonfiction 2020) in the Free Library of the Internet Void, and poems by Semein Washington (Poetry 2019) in Sijo: An International Journal for Poetry and Song. Other work live online: poems by Phill Provance (Poetry 2019) in the winter issue of Rat’s Ass Review, Vince Trimboli’s (Poetry 2013) poems in LA’s Cultural Weekly (one of which, “Where To Find Queer Love in Appalachia,” has been nominated for a Pushcart) and his review of Junkie Wife, by Alexis Rhone Fancher, in Southern Florida Poetry Review (the same review will appear in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review in Feb 2019). Also live is nonfiction faculty Eric Waggoner’s profile on Lowell Mason, once billed around the world as “Little Lowell, the World’s Smallest Gospel Singer,” publication by NWR.com, a multimedia quarterly created by film director Nicolas Winding Refn. (You’ll need to create a password to access the site (which contains full-length films as well as writing, music, and photography), but it’s all free.)

FORTHCOMING WORK: Alumni books now available for preorder: Larry Thacker’s (Poetry 2018) poetry collection Grave Robber Confessional with Main Street Rag, Phill Provance’s A Brief History of Woodbridge, New Jersey with The History Press (out in April), and Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, a collection co-edited by Andrea Fekete and Lara Lillibridge (Nonfiction 2016), with work from Rachel Hicks (Poetry 2016), Mary Imo-Stike (Poetry 2015), Lisa Hayes Minney (Nonfiction 2017), and Jessica Spruill (Poetry 2015) (along with other contributors), on schedule for release April 30 with Cynren Press.

Look for poetry faculty Mark DeFoe’s new work forthcoming in Hollin’s Critic, Broadkill Review, Chaffin Review, Pine Mt. Sand and Gravel and the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Vol. X; poems by Kevin Chesser (Poetry 2015) in Vol 2. of Fearsome Critters Journal this winter, in Still: The Journal in February, and in Hobart in spring; and poems by Marilyn Stearns (Poetry 2015) in We Are Residents Here, an anthology of poems from the 2018 Bridgewater (VA) International Poetry Festival.

Other books on the horizon: a new chapbook by Vince Trimboli, Book of Rabbits, will be out in May through Moon Tide Press of Whittier, CA; Lara Lillibridge’s second memoir, Mama, Mama, Only Mama: An Irreverent Guide for the Newly Single Parent—From Divorce and Dating to Cooking and Crafting, All While Raising the Kids and Maintaining Your Own Sanity (Sort Of) will be released May 7, 2019 with Skyhorse Publishing; and prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray’s essay collection Voice Lessons is slated for publication with Iris Press in December 2019.

GIGS & ACCOLADES: The community has been active on the literary scene this fall and winter: Marilyn Stearns held a book signing of her recently published Sundry Voices at the Winchester Book Gallery on Sept 29; Andrea Fekete read at historic Craik-Patton House during the West Virginia Book Festival on October 24; Jessie van Eerden read for the Thornton Series at University of Lynchburg Sept 27, served on the panel “The Faithful and the Faithless: Nonfictionists on Religion and Spirituality”at Nonfiction Now November 2, and presented at the “Body & Soul in Appalachian Literature” Literary Festival at Emory & Henry Nov 8. Mary Imo-Stike read at the final Wordstock Wednesday held in Philippi, WV (a series curated by Jessica Spruill) on Nov 14.

And in the new year, Lara Lillibridge has been selected to judge CNF submissions for the AWP Intro Journals Award; and on Jan 8 More Than Words, the reading series hosted by Mary Imo-Stike and memoirist Cat Pleska, kicked off its third season with poetry faculty Doug Van Gundy at Hidden Creek Mercantile in Hurricane, WV.

Doug Van Gundy also won Honorable Mention in Exposition Review’s flash fiction contest, “Mystery”, judged by Glen David Gold—read his flash piece “Hide and Seek.” Three alums were finalists in the Still 2018 Contests: Andrea Fekete in fiction for “Native Trees,” Mary Imo-Stike in poetry for “Bury Me Face Down in Spring,” and David Evans (Nonfiction 2018) in nonfiction for “Farewell, My Lovely.” A couple more Pushcart Prize nominations as well: David Evans for “Divine Wind” by Still and Karen Salyer McElmurray for “Attics” by Appalachian Heritage. Nonfiction faculty Katie Fallon’s essay “Feeding” in Still was nominated by for a Best of the Net award; Phill Provance’s poem “Triangle” was named a finalist for the Broad River Review’s 2018 Rash Award by judge Maurice Manning, and Phill’s poem “Given the Day” has been nominated for a 2018 Best of the Net award by Sheila-na-Gig.

On the career front: Delaney McLemore (Nonfiction 2018) is starting the new year pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Lisa Hayes Minney has been promoted to Library Director of Gilmer Public Library, and Jeremy Bryant (Nonfiction 2017) has been promoted to Assistant Professor of English at University of Lynchburg. Ginny Rachel (Fiction 2015), teaching this year at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro, was accepted as part of the first cohort of Digital Humanities Research Institute participants at A-State.

Elizabeth Gaucher (Nonfiction 2015), founding editor of Longridge Review, is establishing a writing prize in creative nonfiction to honor Anne Clinard Barnhill who passed away in January; Anne was a WV writer who had tremendous positive influence on Elizabeth; read more at this link and consider donating to the prize in her honor. And, finally, at winter residency, led by Sharon Waters (Nonfiction 2020) and Abby Chandler (Fiction 2020), the MFA community celebrated the life and work of Okey Napier, a beloved student who passed away in July of 2018. We are still growing our diversity and inclusion scholarship fund in Okey’s honor with a goal of endowing the fund in the coming year.

UPCOMING EVENTS: 

January-March, Follow Mesha Maren’s book tour!

February 9, Doug Van Gundy and prose faculty Richard Schmitt and others will read at Joe N’ Throw in Fairmont, WV, 2-4 pm

February 11, Beasa Dukes (Fiction 2019) and Semein Washington will be reading at Chop Suey Books in Richmond, VA.

February 11, Jessie van Eerden will present the workshop “Writing in the Gaps” at Berea College, 6 pm

February 14, 7:30 pm Beer & Bards at Three Quarter Café in Buckhannon, WV, reading series curated by Shauna Jones (Nonfiction 2013), featured reader: Poet Elizabeth Savage

March 14, 7:30 pm Beer & Bards at Three Quarter Café in Buckhannon, featured reader: Jeff Webb (Fiction 2015)

March 15, Appalachian Studies Association (ASA) Conference Panel: “From Within the Community: Intergenerational Friendships Between Appalachian Writers”: Amber Milstead (Fiction 2019), Karen Salyer McElmurray, Velicia Darquenne (Fiction 2018), Larry Thacker, 8:30-9:45 am

March 16, ASA Conference Panel: “Against Tellability: Practitioners and Teachers of Creative Writing Wrestle with Appalachian Identity”: Jessie van Eerden, nonfiction faculty Jeremy B. Jones, Doug Van Gundy, Amanda Jo Slone (Fiction 2017), 10-11:15 am

March 17, ASA Conference Panel: “The Road Home: Sustaining Our Spirit of Appalachia”: Ginny Rachel, David Evans, Jessica Spruill, Eric Waggoner, 8:30-9:45 am.

March 30, AWP Conference, Karen Salyer McElmurray will present on the panel “The World Splitting Open: From Memoir to #MeToo” with Reyna Grande, Janice Gary, Sue William Silverman, and Aimee Liu, 10:30-11:45 am

April 11, Ginny Rachel will read creative nonfiction as part of a panel including fiction, poetry and photography: “Discovering a Sense of Place: Redefining Dislocation in the Delta” at the 2019 Delta Symposium at Arkansas State University, 2:45-4:00 PM

Apr 11, 7:30 pm Beer & Bards at Three Quarter Café in Buckhannon: Vandalia Reading

You can keep up with regular MFA news blasts on the HeartWood Blog, edited with great enthusiasm & love by Vicki Phillips (Fiction 2018).

WV Wesleyan’s MFA will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Winter 2019 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. Readings will be held on Wesleyan’s campus in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Library (see #7 on the campus map (PDF) and click here for directions to campus).

Steve Scafidi at 7 pm, December 29

Steve Scafidi is the author of Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), For Love of Common Words (LSU, 2006), The Cabinetmaker’s Window (LSU, 2014), To the Bramble and the Briar (University of Arkansas Press, 2014) and a chapbook Songs for the Carry-On (Q Avenue Press, 2013). He has won the Larry Levis Reading Prize, the James Boatwright Prize and the Miller Williams Prize. His poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has taught at several universities. He works as a cabinetmaker and lives with his family in Summit Point, West Virginia.

Diane Gilliam, Catherine Venable Moore, & Jacinda Townsend  at 7 pm, December 30

Diane Gilliam is the author of four poetry collections—Dreadful Wind & Rain (Red Hen, 2017), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything, and Recipe for Blackberry Cake. She has won the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ohioana Library Association Poetry Book of the Year Award for Kettle Bottom. She is a recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.

Catherine Venable Moore is a nonfiction writer and radio producer based in Fayette County, West Virginia. Before returning home to the Mountain State, she studied writing at Harvard University and the University of Montana. Her work has been published in Best American Essays, Oxford American, VICE, and other places. Her current projects include two works of narrative nonfiction set in Appalachia, to be published by Random House.

Jacinda Townsend is the author of Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), which is set in 1950’s Eastern Kentucky and won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best fiction written by a woman in 2014 and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction. Saint Monkey was also the 2015 Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Jacinda grew up in Southcentral Kentucky and took her first creative writing class at Harvard, where she earned her B.A. While at Duke Law School she cross-registered in the English department, where she took her next few formative writing workshops, and in 1999, after four years of being first a broadcast journalist and then a lawyer in New York City, went to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she received her M.F.A. and went on to spend a year as a Fulbright fellow in Côte d’Ivoire. She recently finished a novel called Kif. Jacinda is Appalachian Writer-in-Residence at Berea College.

Matthew Ferrence & Kayla Rae Whitaker at 7 pm, January 2

Matthew Ferrence is the author of Appalachia North: a memoir, and All-American Redneck: variations on an icon, from James Fenimore Cooper to the Dixie Chicks. He teaches creative writing at Allegheny College, in northwestern Pennsylvania.

Kayla Rae Whitaker’s work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, Buzzfeed, Literary Hub, Lenny Letter, and others. Her debut novel, THE ANIMATORS, was named one of the best debut novels of 2017 by Entertainment Weekly and one of the best books of 2017 by NPR, Kirkus Reviews, and BookPage. A Kentucky native, she has an MFA from New York University and lives in Brooklyn.

Mindy McGinnis at 7 pm, January 3

Mindy McGinnis is an Edgar Award-winning novelist whose books include the YA novel The Female of the Species. Mindy writes across multiple genres, including post-apocalyptic, historical, thriller, contemporary, mystery, and fantasy. While her settings may change, you can always count on Mindy’s books to deliver grit, truth, and an unflinching look at humanity and the world around us.

For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Jessie van Eerden: vaneerden@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.

This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND ONLINE: Read Issue 5 of our alumni-edited magazine HeartWood, hot off the e-presses! Seek out Sundry Voices, Marilyn Stearns’s (Poetry 2015) collection of poems, now out with Red Dashboard; prose faculty Richard Schmitt’s story “The Trestle” in TriQuarterly (Richard will head to Chicago in September to read for TriQuarterly’s festival); the new Netflix documentary “Recovery Boys” (about addiction in West Virginia) which features poetry faculty Doug Van Gundy’s band Born Old; and the essay “Divine Wind” by David Evans (Nonfiction 2018) and a craft reflection by Larry Thacker (Poetry 2018) both in the summer issue of Still. Chris Chapman’s (Fiction 2015) story “Gertrude’s War” appears in the inaugural issue of K’in, a journal edited by, among others, poetry faculty Mary Carroll-Hackett and WVWC MFA students Beasa Dukes (Fiction 2019), Chad MacDonald (Nonfiction 2020), and Semein Washington (Poetry 2019), and you can read poetry by Jeremy Bryant (Nonfiction 2017) in New Verse News and in the summer print issue of Anima Magazine.

More work live online: an essay by MFA Director Jessie van Eerden in Blackbird, a short story by fiction faculty Mesha Maren in Crazyhorse, and articles by Lara Lillibridge (Nonfiction 2016) in The Washington Post and The Guardian.

FORTHCOMING WORK: Lara Lillibridge will release Mama, Mama, Only Mama! Stories, Blogs, and Hacked Recipes for the Newly Single Mother with Skyhorse Publishing on March 5, 2019, and the publication for Larry Thacker’s full collection Grave Robber Confessional has been set for December 2018 with Main Street Rag; Larry also has work forthcoming from (or already out with) Valparaiso Poetry Review, Punch Drunk, Eternal Haunted Summer, Windhover Journal, Wagonbridge Lost & Found Anthology, and Looking at Appalachia: Call & Response Project. 

Prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray’s essay “Trip Around the World” will appear in Appalachian Literature: An Anthology, 1784-2018 (University Press of Kentucky, 2020), and Doug Van Gundy will have two poems and a book review and prose faculty Eric Waggoner will have an essay, “Butcher’s Dog,” all in Kestrel 39 (Summer 2018), a special issue on “Love, Labor, & Loss” (Doug will read for Kestrel’s festival for the issue in Sept 2018). And look for Lisa Hayes Minney’s (Nonfiction 2017) essay “Mental Pause” in the forthcoming Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, an anthology edited by alums Andrea Fekete (Fiction 2014) and Lara Lillibridge, due out from Cynren Press in 2019, and Lisa’s essay “Shaken Foundations” in Mountains Upon Mountains: New Appalachian Nature Writing due out from Bartram Publishing also in 2019.

GIGS & ACCOLADES: Lots of reasons to toss marigolds & confetti into the sky this summer! Larry Thacker took second place in the George Scarbrough Poetry Contest, and Rebecca Elswick (Fiction 2018) placed first in the Jesse Stuart Short Story Contest and second in the Emma Bell Miles Essay Contest, all at the 2018 Mountain Heritage Literary Festival. Larry also served as guest editor for Issue #11 of Longridge Review, a journal founded and edited by Elizabeth Gaucher (Nonfiction 2015). Joyce Allan (Fiction 2015) won third in the children’s division of the Carteret Writers annual writing contest (and will be published in their annual issue) and first place in West Virginia Writers for the middle grade/YA division. “Jack Speaks” by the dear late Okey Napier, Jr., the MFA student who passed away this summer, received honorable mention in the Social Change: The Pearl S. Buck Award category in WV Writers. Amanda Jo Slone’s (Fiction 2017) story, “Marrowbone” was nominated by Still for the Best of the Net 2018 anthology by Sundress Publications, and Sheryl Browne’s (Fiction 2015) fifteen minute historical play was put on four times at FestivALL in Charleston this summer. Poetry faculty Remica Bingham-Risher’s Starlight & Error has been named a finalist for the Library of Virginia Awards, and Jessie van Eerden’s essay collection The Long Weeping has been named winner of the 20th annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the essay category.

Poetry faculty Mark DeFoe gave a reading at Alderson-Broaddus for Wordstock Wednesday, the series curated by Jessica Spruill (Poetry 2015), and Doug Van Gundy taught a workshop and was a featured poet at the Bridgewater International Poetry Festival at Bridgewater College in May and also taught two workshops and gave a performance with WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman at the West Virginia Writer’s Conference in June. During the third week of September 2018, Karen Salyer McElmurray will read for the University of North Georgia Visiting Authors Program; Oct 26-28, Karen will be visiting writer at University of South Dakota for the Milton Conference; and she will serve as Visiting Writer-in-Residence at the University of South Dakota during Spring 2019.

And a report on MFA folks in the workforce: Ginny Rachel (Fiction 2015) will teach composition at Arkansas State University at Jonesboro in 2018-19; Cynthia McCloud (Nonfiction 2019) is teaching English Language Arts to academically at-risk teens enrolled at the Mountaineer Challenge Academy, a 22-week quasi-military residential and 1-year post-res secondary education completion program in Kingwood, WV; Amber Milstead (Fiction 2019) will teach two sections of composition at WV Wesleyan in Fall 2018; Ashley Higginbotham (Fiction 2013) has joined the WVWC English Department with a full-time position as the Coordinator of ESL and the Writing Center; and in October 2018, prose faculty Eric Waggoner will begin his new post as executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council. Congrats to all! Marigolds & confetti!

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Sept 1 The Process and a Sense of Place will feature Mesha Maren and others at MESH Design & Development, 609 Tennessee Ave, Charleston, WV, 6:30 pm.

Sept 11 More Than Words, the monthly literary event hosted by alum Mary Imo-Stike (Poetry 2015) and Cat Pleska, will host a reading by Jessie van Eerden and Richard Schmitt, 6:30 pm at Hidden Creek Mercantile in Hurricane, WV.

Sept 13 Mary Imo-Stike will be featured at Marshall University’s Visiting Writers Series Writers’ Harvest Reading, 7pm, Memorial Student Center.

Sept 14 Ryland Swain (Fiction 2020) will present her paper, “The Archetypal Imagination of Pearl Buck and Lu Xun: Contrasts in Approach through the Lens of Jungian Psychology,” at the Pearl S. Buck Living Gateway Conference, taking place at West Virginia Wesleyan College, 3:15 pm in the Library.

Sept 27-29 Amanda Jo Slone will be part of two presentations at the Appalachian College Association Summit.

And lots of WVWC Faculty teaching online for The Makery at Hindman Settlement School this fall:

Aug 20-Sept 14, Fiction faculty Jacinda Townsend: “Storyforce as Gyroscope: Powering Narrative Spin”

Aug 20-Sept 14, Nonfiction faculty Jeremy Jones: “Writing About Family in Creative Nonfiction”

Sept 17-Oct 12, Doug Van Gundy: “The Line in the Landscape: Poetry and Place”

Sept 17-Oct 12, upcoming fiction faculty Kayla Rae Whitaker: “Space for Mystery: Developing Complex Characters in Fiction”

Oct 15-Nov 9, Karen Salyer McElmurray: “Paths to the Heart: Forms of Nonfiction”

 

WV Wesleyan’s MFA will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Summer 2018 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. Readings will be held on Wesleyan’s campus in the Annie Merner Pfeiffer Library (see #7 on the campus map (PDF) and click here for directions to campus).

Mary Imo-Stike & Lara Lillibridge, July 7 at 7 pm

MARY IMO-STIKE worked nontraditional jobs as a rail worker, construction plumber, boiler operator and gas company Compliance Officer. When retired from work-life, she obtained an MFA in Poetry from West Virginia Wesleyan College in 2015 and was the poetry co-editor of HeartWood Literary Magazine for two years. Her debut chapbook, In and Out of the Horse Latitudes, is available from Finishing Line Press. Mary lives in Scott Depot, West Virginia.

LARA LILLIBRIDGE sings off-beat and dances off-key. Her childhood memoir, Girlish: Growing Up in a Lesbian Home, is out with Skyhorse Publishing. Lara Lillibridge is a graduate of West Virginia Wesleyan College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction. In 2016 she won Slippery Elm Literary Journal’s Prose Contest, and The American Literary Review’s Contest in Nonfiction. She and Andrea Fekete are co-editors of the anthology Feminine Rising slated for release in 2019 with Cynren Press.

Mesha Maren & Matt Randal O’Wain, July 8 at 7 pm

MESHA MAREN’s debut novel Sugar Run is forthcoming from Algonquin Books in January 2019. She is the 2018-2019 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and her short stories and essays appear in Tin House, Oxford American, Crazyhorse, Hobart, Southern Cultures, and Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation and she currently serves as a National Endowment of the Arts Writing Fellow at the Beckley Federal Correctional Institution.

MATT RANDAL O’WAIN holds an MFA from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Currently, he teaches creative writing at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. O’Wain is the author of Superman Dam[n] Fool: family, loss, and coming of age in the working class south (American Lives Series, Bison Books, 2019) and Hallelujah Station and other stories (Autumn House Press, 2020). His essays and short stories have appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, Booth, Hotel Amerika, Zone 3, among others.

Jonathan Corcoran, July 9 at 7 pm

JONATHAN CORCORAN is the author of the story collection, The Rope Swing, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and long-listed for The Story Prize. He received a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Rutgers University-Newark, where he teaches writing. He was born and raised in a small town in West Virginia and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY.

Remica Bingham-Risher, July 11 at 7 pm

REMICA BINGHAM-RISHER, author of Starlight & Error, winner of the Diode Editions Book Award, What We Ask of Flesh, shortlisted for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, and Conversion, winner of the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award, is a Cave Canem fellow and Affrilachian Poet. She is the Director of Quality Enhancement Plan Initiatives at Old Dominion University. She resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children.

Nathan Poole, July 12 at 7 pm

NATHAN POOLE is the author of two books of fiction, Father Brother Keeper, a collection of stories selected by Edith Pearlman for the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize and long listed for the Frank O’Connor Award, and Pathkiller as the Holy Ghost selected by Benjamin Percy as the winner of the 2014 Quarterly West Novella Contest. He is a recipient of the Narrative Prize, a Milton Fellowship at Seattle Pacific University, and Joan Beebe Fellowship at Warren Wilson College. His work has appeared in various journals, including The Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Narrative Magazine, Image, Quarterly West, and The Chattahoochee Review.

For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Jessie van Eerden: vaneerden@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.

This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.

 

NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND ONLINE: Lots of work live on the web: Read fiction faculty Mesha Maren’s story “Among” in New York Tyrant, five flash fiction pieces by Elizabeth Gaucher (Nonfiction 2015) in Issue 2 (April 2018) of Drabblez Magazine, Delaney McLemore’s (Nonfiction 2018) review “Lie Like Them: Writing the Unbelievable Parent” on the VIDA site, the poem “Breathmaker” by Jeremy Bryant (Nonfiction 2017) in The New Verse News, and “Mine Your Memory,” a craft piece by Rebecca Elswick (Fiction 2018) in Still: The Journal’s “Still Life” feature on creativity.

And on the shelves: seek out the collaborative poems, “I am Sore Troubled” and “I Hurt All Over,” by Kevin Chesser (Poetry 2015) and poetry faculty Doug Van Gundy in the UK print magazine A Void, and Program Director Jessie van Eerden’s essay “Blessed Is the Impossible Heart” in the current Arts & Letters (Spring 2018).

FORTHCOMING WORK: We have crazy-awesome number of book projects slated for publication! New nonfiction faculty Matt Randal O’Wain’s essay collection was selected by Tobias Wolff for the American Lives Series (University of Nebraska Press); Superman Dam[n] Fool: essays on family, loss, and coming of age in the working class south is forthcoming in 2019. Matt has also just contracted his short story collection Hallelujah and other stories with Autumn House for 2020. Chris Chapman’s (Fiction 2015) story collection Suicidal Gods is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press, an independent press out of Portland and Chicago. Co-editors Lara Lillibridge (Nonfiction 2016) and Andrea Fekete (Fiction 2014) will release Feminine Rising, a collection of true stories of women’s lives in essays and poetry, in 2019 with Cynren Press. The collection features women from over twelve countries and every corner of the US, new voices and award-winners, including Ann Pancake, Marianne Worthington, Llewellyn McKernan, Ellen Bass, Pauletta Hansel, and many others. And Larry Thacker (Poetry 2018) has two poetry collections forthcoming: Feasts of Evasion with Future Cycle Press and Grave Robber Confessional with Main Street Rag.

Lots of work to look for soon in magazines as well: Larry Thacker’s work is slated for The Curlew (Wales), Albatross, Writers Resist, Electric Athenaeum (UK), Deep South Magazine, and Snowy Egret. Kevin Chesser’s “10 Brief Tragedies” is forthcoming on Instant Prose (@instantprose on Instagram), poetry faculty Mark DeFoe has work forthcoming in Laurel Review and Café Review, and Lisa Hayes Minney’s (Nonfiction 2017) essay “New Wounds, Old Scars” will appear in the 2018 issue of Writing for Peace’s journal Dove Tales. Okey Napier (Nonfiction 2019) will have a short story, “Come to Jesus Meeting,” in an Anthology of LGBTQ Literature from Appalachia, edited by Jeff Mann and Julia Watts, forthcoming from Vandalia Press of West Virginia University Press. Phill Provance’s (Poetry 2019) poem “Valediction on Zero: A Postscript” will appear in an upcoming issue of the Heartland Review as a general acceptance after making the semi-finalist round for the Joy Bale Boone Poetry Prize; Phill’s nonfiction popular history A Brief History of Woodbridge, New Jersey, will appear in fall 2018 from The History Press; and his scholarly essay “Warring with Whitmania” will appear this summer in “The Poetic Legacy of Whitman, Williams and Ginsberg,” edited by Maria Gillan.

GIGS & ACCOLADES: Congratulations to Vince Trimboli (Poetry 2013) on his new position as JWVG Job Specialist for the College Success Program at Pierpont Community and Technical College; Jobs for West Virginia’s Graduates (JWVG) is an affiliate of Jobs for America’s Graduates (JAG), the largest and most successful high school dropout prevention program in the nation. Congrats, too, to Andi Fekete whose art installation “Letters to Lara: Letters to My Best Friend on Endometriosis” has been on view through March and April 2018 at Taylor Books in Charleston, WV. Andi was interviewed by WTSQ at the debut of her exhibit, and the show will go up next in Barboursville (more details below). Congrats to Mesha Maren who qualified as an Alternate for the Fulbright Research Grant, and to Jessie van Eerden whose essay “Yoke” won the Denny C. Plattner Award for Nonfiction in Appalachian Heritage and whose essay collection The Long Weeping is currently shortlisted for Foreword Reviews’ Book of the Year Award in Essays. Congrats to to Kevin Chesser whose chapbook manuscript “Love Story in Sixty Seconds” was a semi-finalist for this year’s Black River Chapbook Contest, and to Jessica Spruill (Poetry 2015) whose poem “Summer Break 1993” (published in the Fall 2017 issue of Burnt Pine) was nominated for a Pushcart. And congrats as well to Jeremy Bryant who has just been awarded the 2018 Voice of Inclusion Award by the Office of Equity & Inclusion at Lynchburg College where he teaches and directs the writing center.

On March 23, Doug Van Gundy with WV Poet Laureate Marc Harshman led the generative workshop “Writers’ Café: Landscapes in Peril: Writing About Place in 2018” at the Writing Center of University of Pittsburgh, and April 12-13 Doug traveled as visiting writer to Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro. And Joyce Allan (Fiction 2015) led the Third Annual Windy Ridge Writers Retreat on April 27; this event is designed for writers of children’s books, middle grade books, and YA.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

May 8: The book launch for Mary Imo-Stike’s (Poetry 2015) chapbook “In and Out of the Horse Latitudes” will be held 6-8 pm at More Than Words, Hidden Creek Mercantile, Hurricane. There will be a reading, book signing, & celebration.

May 31: Andi Fekete’s art installation “Letters to Lara: Letters to My Best Friend on Endometriosis” will go up at Make, the Barboursville Community Art Gallery in Barboursville, WV. Andi will speak on the exhibit and read poetry that evening at 7:30 for the community-wide Art Walk.

July 18-23: Prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray will give a reading and lecture for Eastern Kentucky’s MFA Program, Bluegrass Writers Studio.

Jul 23-28: Jessie van Eerden will teach nonfiction and Amanda Jo Slone (Fiction 2017) will curate participant readings at the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop at Hindman Settlement School.

You can keep up with regular MFA news blasts on the HeartWood Blog, co-edited with great enthusiasm & love by Megan Mallory (Nonfiction 2017) & Dee Sydnor (Fiction 2015).

 

NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND ONLINE: The pre-order link is up for In and Out of the Horse Latitudes by Mary Imo Stike (Poetry 2015), so reserve your copy today for the March 2018 release! You can also get a sample of Mary’s work in the new anthology “Voices on Unity: Coming Together, Falling Apart” (Mountain State Press), featuring her poem “Water Memory.” Lots of great work to seek out this winter: read fiction faculty Mesha Maren’s interview for The Millions with former residency guest Yuri Herrera; work by Delaney McLemore (Nonfiction 2018) in The Activist History Review; the essay “The Art of Deception” by Lara Lillibridge (Nonfiction 2016) in The Sunlight Press; and poems by poetry faculty Mark DeFoe in The American Journal of Poetry, in Vol 20 of Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, and on the 2018 Calendar of Poetry of Historic Places (WV Historic Preservation Office). Elizabeth Gaucher (Nonfiction 2015) has a new “Ask the Editor” craft feature in her literary journal Longridge Review—check out the first post—and Issue #10 will be out soon! You’ll find the essay “Old Scars, New Wounds” by Lisa Hayes Minney (Nonfiction 2017) in Entropy Literary Magazine, the essay “Destroyer” by nonfiction faculty Eric Waggoner in the Spring 2017 issue of The Pikeville Review (edited by Amanda Jo Slone, Fiction 2017), an op-ed in the The Chicago Tribune by Lin Kaatz Chary (Nonfiction 2019), and the short story “Man Enough” by Jeff Webb (Fiction 2015) in The Fiction Pool.

FORTHCOMING WORK: Mesha Maren’s debut novel Sugar Run now has a publication date with Algonquin—January 2, 2019—and Mesha’s short stories will be included in an Appalachian LGBTQ-themed anthology due out next year from WVU press and an Appalachian fiction anthology edited by Joseph Bathanti for UNC Press. Keep an eye out for Julia Kastner’s (Nonfiction 2019) essay “Self Portrait, Houston” in February’s or March’s issue of Slag Glass City, and two essay/review hybrids by Delaney McLemore forthcoming in Entropy Literary Magazine and VIDA Reviews. Eric Waggoner’s critical essay “We Interrupt this Program: Narratives in Conflict in American Postmodern Literature of the 1970s” is forthcoming March 2018 in the book collection American Literature in Transition: 1970-1980 (Cambridge University Press), and Eric has been invited to contribute work to a new film website curated by director Nicolas Winding Refn, launching this spring. The essay “Chasing Threads” by David Evans (Nonfiction 2018) and poetry by Mark DeFoe have been selected for publication in the 2018 Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Wiley Cash, Volume X. And alotta Larry Thacker’s poems (Poetry 2018) coming soon from Regal House’s Opioid Abuse Anthology; Iceview Magazine; Sheila-Na-Gig; Ink & Nebula; War, Literature & the Arts; and Still: The Journal. Phill Provance (Poetry 2019) has an academic review of the critical-essay anthology Jeff Daniel Marion: Poet on the Halston forthcoming in the next issue of the Journal of Appalachian Studies (JAS), and Phill’s poem “Of Beauty & Things” was named one of three Honorable Mention Finalist entries (ahead of 17 finalists) for the 2017 Ron Rash Award by judge Bill Brown and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Broad River Review.

GIGS & ACCOLADES: Mary Imo Stike, in collaboration with Cat Pleska, has launched a second season of More Than Words with an evening of poetry, stories, and traditional music by Marc Harshman and Doug Van Gundy. Dee Sydnor (Fiction 2015) is serving as editor for Connections magazine, the fifteen-year-old magazine of the College of Southern Maryland where Dee teaches. A couple Pushcart nominations noted for our community by Still: The Journal—Chris Chapman (Fiction 2015) for his story “The Moth in the Stair” and fiction faculty Laura Long for her poem “From the Book of Rain.” Amanda Jo Slone received a $5000 ACA grant for class design, play-writing and production based on CrimeSong: True Crime Stories from Southern Murder Ballads by Richard H. Underwood; she and the class interviewed Underwood, and she has a Reader’s Guide forthcoming in the book’s paperback edition. And on January 25, Okey Napier (Nonfiction 2019) read with Jeff Mann and Julia Watts from the new anthology Unbroken Circle: Stories of Cultural Diversity in the South as part of the A.E. Stringer Visiting Writers Series at Marshall University.

UPCOMING EVENTS:

Feb 3 at 2 pm, Faculty Devon McNamara, Doug Van Gundy, and Laura Long, along with Andi Fekete (Fiction 2014) and other contributors, will read from Eyes Glowing at the Edge of the Woods: Contemporary West Virginia Fiction and Poetry (co-edited by Van Gundy and Long) at Joe-N-Throw in Fairmont, WV.

Feb 7 at 7 pm, Rachel Hicks (Poetry 2016) will be the featured reader for Wordstock Wednesday, a monthly reading series curated by Jessica Spruill (Poetry 2015). Venue TBA!

Feb 8 at 6 pm, Program Director Jessie van Eerden and prose faculty Richard Schmitt will read from their new collections at Taylor Books in Charleston, WV.

Feb 13, Crystal Good (Poetry 2016) and Delaney McLemore will read for Speaking of Appalachia, which is part of Appalachian Narratives: Notes on Identity, organized for the 2018 Birke Fine Arts Symposium at Marshall University’s College of Arts and Media.

Feb 15-16, Jessie van Eerden will give a reading at Berea College and visit Amando Jo Slone’s class at University of Pikeville.

March 2-3, Amanda Jo Slone will present her essay “The Great Unknown” at the Kentucky Philological Association Conference.

Mar 7-10, Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) 2018 Conference in Tampa, FL—WVWC MFA program will have a table in the Bookfair.

AWP, Mar 7 at 7 pm, Jessie van Eerden will read St. Leo University (AWP18 offsite event).

AWP, Mar 8, 12-1:15 pm, Prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray will be on the panel “Fierce Muses” with Gina Frangelo, Paul Lisicky, Carter Sickels and Eiren Caffall.

AWP, Mar 9, 2-4 pm, Jessie van Eerden will hold an author signing at the Orison Books Bookfair Table.

AWP, Mar 9, 5:30 pm, Jessie van Eerden will read for the Willow Springs & Florida Review Patio Reading at Four Green Fields (AWP18 offsite event).

AWP, Mar 10, 1:30-2:45 pm, Karen Salyer McElmurray will be on the panel “Blood of My Blood” with Janice Gary, Camille Dungy, Connie May Fowler, Reyna Grande.

March 12-14, Karen Salyer McElmurray will be the Heinze Lecturer in CNF at Young Harris College, Young Harris, GA.

ASA, Apr 6, 1:00-2:15 pm, “Profits and/or Prophets from the Mountains,” Karen Salyer McElmurray and Danielle Kelly (Fiction 2015) with Karen Spears Zacharias and Bill King.

ASA, Apr 6, 2:30 – 3:45 pm, “Inside, Outside: West Virginia Writers on Place,” Doug Van Gundy and fiction faculty Jonathan Corcoran with Natalie Sypolt, Gretchen Moran Laskas, Randi Ward, and Melissa Minske.

Apr 6, 4-5:15 pm, “Running with Whiskey: A Multimedia Performance Exploring Place, Identity, and Extractive Industry,” Marc Harshman and Doug Van Gundy.

ASA, Apr 7, 11:15 am – 12:30 pm: “Outliers: Voices of Place and Displacement,” Karen Salyer McElmurray and Jessie van Eerden with Crystal Wilkinson and Cathryn Hankla.

ASA, Apr 8, 9:45-11 am, “The Danger of a Single Story”: Ripping the Seams of Stereotypes and Piecing the People Back Together,” Danielle Kelly, Jonathan Corcoran, Mary Imo Stike, and Carter Sickels.

ASA, Apr 8, 11:15 am – 12:30 pm, Amanda Jo Slone will be presenting with Kim Willard and Richard Underwood about her Special Topics Appalachian Murder Ballads class: “CrimeSong in the Classroom.”

Aug 24-26, HippoCamp 2018, Lara Lillibridge will present with Amy Fish: “The Humour Makeover: How to Take Your Existing Work and Make it Funny.”

You can keep up with regular MFA news blasts on the HeartWood Blog, co-edited with great enthusiasm & love by Megan Mallory (Nonfiction 2017) & Dee Sydnor (Fiction 2015).

 

 

WV Wesleyan’s MFA will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s Winter 2018 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. Readings will be held on Wesleyan’s campus in Loar Auditorium of Loar Hall of Music (see #15 on the campus map (PDF) and click here for directions to campus).

Diane Gilliam & Jacinda Townsend, Dec 30 at 7 pm

DIANE GILLIAM is the author of four poetry collections—Dreadful Wind & Rain (Red Hen, 2017), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything, and Recipe for Blackberry Cake. She has won the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, a Pushcart Prize, and the Ohioana Library Association Poetry Book of the Year Award for Kettle Bottom. She is the most recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.

JACINDA TOWNSEND is the author of Saint Monkey (Norton, 2014), which is set in 1950’s Eastern Kentucky and won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best fiction written by a woman in 2014 and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction. Saint Monkey was also the 2015 Honor Book of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Jacinda received her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, then spent a year as a Fulbright fellow in Côte d’Ivoire. Jacinda teaches in the Creative Writing program at University of California, Davis, and is a Truth Fellow at the Yerba Buena Arts Center in San Francisco.

Laurie Jean Cannady & Jeremy Jones, Jan 2 at 7 pm

LAURIE JEAN CANNADY is a professor of English at Lock Haven University and creative writing faculty in the Wilkes University MA/​MFA low-residency Creative Writing Program. Her debut memoir Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul was listed as a finalist for Foreword’s 2015 Book of the Year Award and the Library of Virginia awards in the People’s Choice category.

JEREMY JONES is the author of Bearwallow: A Mountain History of a Mountain Homeland, which was named the 2014 Appalachian Book of the Year in nonfiction and awarded gold in memoir in the 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards. His essays appear in Oxford American, The Iowa Review, Brevity, and elsewhere. He is an associate professor of English at Western Carolina University, and he co-edits In Place, a nonfiction book series from West Virginia University Press.

Rebecca Gayle Howell, Jan 4 at 7 pm

REBECCA GAYLE HOWELL is the author of American Purgatory, winner of the 2016 Sexton Prize, and her debut collection, Render/An Apocalypse, was a finalist for Foreword’s 2014 Book of the Year. Howell is also the translator of Amal al-Jubouri’s verse memoir of the Iraq War, Hagar Before the Occupation/Hagar After the Occupation. Among Howell’s honors are fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Kentucky Arts Council, and the Carson McCullers Center, as well as a Pushcart Prize. Howell edits poetry for the Oxford American and serves as James Still Writer-in-Residence at the Hindman Settlement School.

For more information about the readings, contact MFA Director Jessie van Eerden: vaneerden@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8329.

This project is being presented with financial assistance from the West Virginia Humanities Council, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations do not necessarily represent those of the West Virginia Humanities Council or the National Endowment for the Humanities.