fall 2016 news
LOTS OF NEW WORK BY STUDENTS, ALUMNI & FACULTY ON THE SHELVES AND ONLINE: Congrats to the alumni editors on the second issue of HeartWood which just went live—this issue also features the magazine’s first broadside series contest winner! Congrats also to nonfiction faculty Eric Waggoner who wrote the official press release and album bio for Wilco’s new album Schmilco, released on September 9. Read poetry by Mary Imo Stike (Poetry 2015), along with an interview, in Connotation Press, and look up the inaugural issue of Mountain Ink, a literary journal for WV writers launched by Lisa Hayes-Minney (Nonfiction 2017, Stumptown Publishing LLC), featuring more work by Mary Imo Stike: the two poems “I Found Honeysuckle” and “Cabbage Roses.” Look for poetry by Crystal Good (Poetry 2016) in the special flood edition of Goldenseal; order the second Ghost City Press chapbook by Vince Trimboli (Poetry 2013), other milkweed diners, now hot off the presses; and look up “Sentry” by fiction faculty Marie Manilla in H.O.W. Journal (Issue 12). Round out your reading with poetry from Larry Thacker (Poetry 2018) live in Five 2 One Journal, Madness Muse Mag, Life in 10 Minutes, and Yellow Chair Review.
FORTHCOMING WORK: Look forward to fiction faculty Marie Manilla’s essay “Sixth Avenue Hōs” forthcoming in Word Riot, prose faculty Richard Schmitt’s piece “Until the Morning Comes” in 34th Parallel, and Program Director Jessie van Eerden’s essay “Without” in Cimarron Review. “Report on the Strange Case of Lt. Henry Harper” by Chris Chapman (Fiction 2015) will appear in Floyd County Moonshine, and a full poetry collection by Larry Thacker, Drifting in Awe, is due out from Finishing Line Press, along with poems in Blue Mountain Review, Dead King Mag, Paper Plane Pilots, and Kaaterskill Basin Literary Journal. Elizabeth Gaucher (Nonfiction 2015) will have a short story in the anthology Between the Lines published by Seventh Star Press in Lexington, KY and edited by Bram Stoker Award winning writer and editor Michael Knost; SSP will release the anthology at Imaginarium Convention in Louisville, KY October 7-9. Fiction faculty Laura Long’s poem “November Song” will appear in the upcoming fall issue of Still: The Journal, and nonfiction faculty Kim Dana Kupperman’s essay, “Memorial Daze (It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry),” in Aster(ix) Journal’s fall 2016 What We Love print anthology.
Along with poetry faculty Devon McNamara’s much-anticipated poetry collection Driving (due out this year with Salmon Press), other faculty books on the horizon include Kim Dana Kupperman’s The Last of Her: A Forensic Memoir, scheduled for release in November from Jaded Ibis Press, and Jessie van Eerden’s collection of portrait essays, The Long Weeping, forthcoming in 2017 from Orison Books.
GIGS & ACCOLADES: Big congratulations to Rebecca Elswick (Fiction 2018) who won second place for “Missed Spring” in the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival’s Emma Bell Miles contest, to Kevin Chesser (Poetry 2015) whose poem “Queen of the Cornfields” was a finalist for the Hungry Poets contest in Morgantown, WV; and to Lara Lillibridge (Nonfiction 2016) whose essay “39 Lashes: Just Write Something About Your Mother” was a finalist for the Black Warrior Review essay contest and was selected as the winner of the Slippery Elm 2016 Prose Contest (the prize includes $1000 and publication in the 2017 issue). Congratulations also to Crystal Good who will be featured on the album “Flukum” by Heroes Are Gang Leaders, known as HAGL—HAGL is an experimental musical ensemble that mines the history of progressive Black art, music, and literary movements, fusing it all with contemporary swagger! And kudos to prose faculty Karen Salyer McElmurray whose essay “Elixir,” originally published in The South Dakota Review, has been included as a Notable Essay in the 2016 Best American Essays; Karen also just returned from teaching and giving a reading at the First Annual James Agee Conference at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville.
In August, Devon McNamara read in Dublin on Ireland’s major public radio station for RTE 1 Arts, along with other Salmon poets, and was part of an interview with poet and editor Jessie Lendennie whose anthology, Even the Daybreak: 35 Years of Salmon Poetry enjoys a review here, with a nod to Devon’s poem in the collection. This past summer also saw our third and perhaps richest Ireland MFA Residency, which included workshops with Irish writers Dermot Bolger and Nicholas McLachlan—keep 2018 on your radar for credit or audit! Also in August, Mary Imo Stike and her husband hosted a “Poetry House Concert” in their home, featuring a reading by poetry faculty Mary Carroll-Hackett and music by string band trio, The Wild Hares. In early October, Lisa Hayes-Minney hosted a Back in Time Writer’s Workshop at a reconstructed historical village in Calhoun County; Lisa is also currently teaching a Developmental English course for Glenville State College and will take on two speech classes in Spring 2017; she was also recently hired as assistant librarian at Gilmer Public Library, where she is in charge of the nonfiction section and where she has launched a writing group. And, looking ahead this month, on October 28 of the WV Book Festival, 9-11 am, MFA faculty Laura Long, Marie Manilla, Jessie van Eerden, and Doug Van Gundy, along with fellow Vandalia Press author Jonathan Corcoran, will co-lead a workshop on “Creating Vibrant Characters”—the MFA program will also have a table in the Festival Marketplace, so come see us!
Congratulations to all for these contributions to the wider literary community!
You can keep up with regular MFA news blasts at: www.heartwoodlitmag.com/wvwcmfa/