Stay Loud: Mfa alumni respond to the WV Water Crisis, April 5
On January 9, 2014, approximately 7,500 gallons of 4-methylcycloherane-methanol leaked into the Elk River. This chemical, a frothing agent used in the process of cleaning coal, was being stored along the river in poorly maintained storage containers. Freedom Industries, the company responsible for the leak, is located a mere mile upstream from one of West Virginia American Water’s treatment facilities. The MCHM wasn’t filtered during the normal treatment process and ended up in the finished water. This resulted in a Do-Not-Use-Order for 300,000 West Virginia American Water customers. The number of people without access to safe drinking water caused West Virginia governor Earl Ray Tomblin to issue a State of Emergency for nine counties.
A group of concerned MFA alumni and members of the West Virginia Wesleyan community invite participation in “Stay Loud: An Artistic Response to the 2014 West Virginia Water Crisis” on Saturday, April 5th from 1:00PM-3:00PM at Jawbone Park in Buckhannon, WV. The outdoor event will showcase artists reading works of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry that respond to the environmental disaster. Local artists will provide music for the event.
This event is hosted by the MFA program and West Virginia Wesleyan College’s English Department. The hosts suggest donations of bottled water for the WV Water Hub. Come out to show support for our families, friends, and community members affected by the Water Crisis. Let’s show the world that West Virginians plan to use words to effect change. Stay loud.
For more information, contact MFA alum Ashley Higginbotham at higginbotham_ad@wvwc.edu.
Waggoner’s essay picked up by Huffington Post
Read a brave essay by Eric Waggoner, MFA core faculty member, on the chemical-spill disaster affecting the southern counties of our state. The essay’s original title is “Elemental.”
mfa faculty selected for Best American Series
Richard Schmitt’s essay “Sometimes a Romantic Notion,” originally published in The Gettysburg Review, has been selected for Best American Essays 2013!
Leader Photo © Doug Van Gundy
Award-Winning Guest Faculty
Visiting Professor in Fiction and Nonfiction, Karen McElmurray, has won the 2013 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction for her essay “Strange Tongues,” now forthcoming in The Bellingham Review in Spring 2014. And Visiting Professor in Fiction, Carter Sickels, has been awarded the 2013 Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award by The Lambda Literary Foundation, the nation’s leading national nonprofit organization promoting LGBT literature and writers.
Application deadlines
Contact Us
Email: mfa@wvwc.edu
Phone: (304) 473-8523
Address:
Doug Van Gundy
Director, Master of Fine Arts Program
59 College Avenue, Box 32
West Virginia Wesleyan College
Buckhannon, WV 26201
IRENE MCKINNEY, FOUNDING DIRECTOR
West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program was founded by Dr. Irene McKinney, author of seven books and Poet Laureate of West Virginia from 1994 until her death in 2012. Irene envisioned a program that would provide students with a high-quality, apprenticeship-model MFA education, and the faculty is committed to carrying on her vision.
Listen to Irene read at the 2010 West Virginia Book Festival:
In September 2013, WV Wesleyan Press released Irene’s final poetry collection Have You Had Enough Darkness Yet? with an afterword by poet Maggie Anderson. Read an in-depth review here by poet Ida Stewart.
“What this book is is consciousness on fire, the dream come true—‘plangent, like a bell.’”
– Gerald Stern
“These striking poems build their energy and gather resilience from silence, breath, and daily noticing. Whether describing the domestic, foreign, or supernatural, Have You Had Enough Darkness Yet? asks us to pause in Keatsian awe as McKinney names a bright world of her own fashioning.”
– Dorianne Laux
All proceeds from the sale of this book go to the Irene McKinney Memorial Scholarship for Writers which, when mature, will provide tuition scholarships for Wesleyan MFA students. Buy the book from Amazon.com or order directly from WV Wesleyan so that more of your dollars go to our scholarship fund: email Jessie van Eerden, Program Director at vaneerden@wvwc.edu to order, or mail your order to Jessie at 59 College Avenue, Box 46, Buckhannon, WV 26201. Cost: $16, free shipping & handling; check made out to WVWC. To order this book for your classroom, please go through your school’s distributor.
For a rich exploration of Irene’s full body of work, view West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s edited one-hour documentation video of the Celebrating Irene McKinney event hosted by Poet Laureate Marc Harshman on September 15, 2013 at the Culture Center in Charleston, WV.