Announcements
During our biannual “Life After the MFA” meeting, graduating student Karima Grant suggested an excellent way to keep our alumni involved, and to offer them an opportunity to share their experiences and wisdom with current students: an alumni guest column in the newsletter. Our alumni point person Faye Snider enthusiastically seconded the idea, and so, a column was born. We are pleased to welcome our first guest columnist, Erika Sanders (July, 2009) who writes on the subject of writers as activists and her experience teaching at the Monroe County Correctional Complex in her home state of Washington. As ever, we are so pleased to have such a talented, committed, and diverse group of writers in our community!
We are pleased to announce the launch of the Solstice Seminars — two-day intensives that offer writers the opportunity to explore and deepen their craft — beginning with “Writing for Stage & Screen,” to be held on the Pine Manor College campus October 29–30, 2010. Participants will learn playwriting or screenwriting basics with faculty members Anne-Marie Oomen and Lesley Alicia Tye; rehearse newly-created scenes with guest director Bob Owczarek; attend a play in nearby Boston; and enjoy a screening of a film with commentary by a special guest.
For more information about the Solstice Seminars, go to: www.pmc.edu/solstice-seminars
The application deadline for the fall 2010 semester of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program is May 10, 2009 (not a postmark date; materials must be received by our offices before or on May 10). The fall 2010 semester begins with our summer residency, July 9 through July 18.
Readings and Events
Massachusetts
Poet Dzvinia Orlowsky will be reading on Sunday, March 7 at 2:00 p.m. at Forsyth Chapel, Forest Hills Cemetery, 95 Forest Hills Avenue, Jamaica Plain, MA.
For more information, call: 617-524-0128 or 617-306-9484
MFA Director and poet Meg Kearney will be on tour in support of her new book, Home By Now, at locations around the country. She will be reading in Boston on Monday, March 15 at 8 p.m. as part of the Blacksmith House Poetry Series at 56 Brattle Street in Cambridge. She will also be reading at Bucks County Community College in Newton, PA and Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, NE.
For more information, go to: www.megkearney.com
Vermont
MFA student Gloria Estela Gonzalez will be reading with Ricardo Chavez Castaneda on Wednesday, March 17 at 4:15 p.m. at Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT.
For more information, go to: www.middlebury.edu
Honors and Awards
MFA graduate Sara Cameron’s critical thesis, “Exploded Reality: The Immediacy of First Person Present Tense and Its Narrative Effectiveness in Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero and Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye” has been selected as a Best of the AWP Pedagogy Papers 2010.
Meg Kearney’s poetry collection Home By Now was recently awarded the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award. The award will be presented at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston on Sunday, March 28, 2010. *MFA writer-in-residence Helen Elaine Lee will be introducing keynote speaker Dorothy Allison at the gala!
For more information, go to: www.pen-ne.org/winship.html
MFA student Jim Kennedy has been selected as one of five finalists for the Creative Nonfiction MFA Program-Off contest. Finalists will be honored with a reading at the annual AWP Conference in Denver. (See Conferences, Workshops, & Seminars for further details about the AWP event.)
For more information, go to: www.creativenonfiction.org
MFA consulting writer and poet M.L. Liebler was recently awarded the 2010 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award.
For more information, go to: www.detnews.com
Young people’s writer Grace Lin’s most recent book, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, was recently awarded a 2010 Newbery Honor.
For more information, go to: www.ala.org
Publications
Multi-genre writer Anne-Marie Oomen’s essay collection, An American Map, is forthcoming from Wayne State University press in April, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.wsupress.wayne.edu
MFA student Jina Ortiz’ poems “Sketch of Miss Mexico 2002,” “Miss Panamá 1980,” “Esmeralda, Ecuador Watches the World Cup,” and “Miss Ecuador 1996” have been accepted for publication in the Spring 2010 issue of the Afro-HispanicReview.
For more information, go to: www.afrohispanicreview.com
MFA student Alison Stone’s poems "The Empress" and "Justice" will appear in the next 1st of the Year.
Young people’s writer David Yoo’s recent novel, Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One Before will be released in paperback by Hyperion this month.
Conferences, Workshops, and Seminars
Poet Kathleen Aguero chaired a panel on "How We Contemporize Literature and the Law and Should We?" at the Changing Lives Through Literature Conference held in Boston, MA in February.
Meg Kearney will be doing a school visit on Friday, March 12 at the Horace Mann School, 231 W. 246th Street, Riverdale, NY.
MFA student Melissa Ford Lucken’s craft article “The Uncanny—More than Just Plain Weird” will appear in the Mid-Michigan Mirror and The Jasmine newsletters.
Young people’s writer Laura Williams McCaffrey will be doing a school visit on Thursday, March 11 at Woodstock Union High School in Woodstock, VT.
MFA graduate Emily Van Duyne has been hired to teach composition at Stockton College in Pomona, NJ.
Meg Kearney and MFA Assistant Director Tanya Whiton will be at the 2010 Associated Writing Programs Conference in Denver, Colorado, from April 7–10 at the Colorado Convention Center. The Solstice MFA Program table will be located in the Bookfair, Exhibit Hall A, table F19. Stop by for a visit!
Also at AWP:
MFA graduate Sara Cameron will be presenting her award-winning paper (see honors and awards) as part of the AWP Pedagogy Forum on Thursday, April 8th, from 12:00 to 1:15 p.m., Room 107 Colorado Convention Center, Street Level.
Meg Kearney will be presenting as part of a panel on “Poets as Legislators: Bearing Visions in Private and Public," on Friday, April 9, from 12:00 to 1:15 p.m. in Room 403-404 .
MFA student Jim Kennedy will be reading from his essay “End of the Line” as part of Creative Nonfiction’s MFA Program-Off Contest celebration on Friday, April 9 from 7 to 10 p.m. at The Shag Lounge (3 blocks from the Convention Center) at 830 15th Street.
For more information, go to: www.awpwriter.org
Guest Column
Stepping away from the desk and into the world
by Erika Sanders (July, 2009)
James Baldwin wrote, “One cannot deny the humanity of another without denying one’s own.” There are few places where a man’s humanity is so routinely denied as it is in prison. I hold firm to the belief that writers have a responsibility to cast light, via story, into those corners of society where human suffering is at its greatest. Choosing to volunteer inside a prison was first an act of defiance—refusing to believe that any one person’s story is less valuable than another’s. It was also a personal test. Could I step away from the safety of my desk and learn something about character, theme, and the influence of setting on plot from men written off by society? I decided to take the “safe” out of the distance between myself and the humanity of these men.
I started my work at the Monroe Correctional Complex in the spring of 2008 as an internship project for the Solstice MFA program. Since then, I have worked in two separate units of the prison and probably met upward of fifty different inmates. In our program we teach two things. The first is the concept of the Hero’s Journey, put forth by Joseph Campbell, mythologist, as a way storytellers have told stories across time and cultures. Second, we teach writing—basic storytelling and craft skills. Some of the men write fiction, others poetry. Some are brave enough to write their own story.
I believe strongly in the concept of art as a force of social change, and I have come, through my experience at the prison, to appreciate how social activism influences a writer and her work. Writing is often a solitary endeavor. Writers write about life while sometimes being quite removed from it—a paradox of the art form. My work at the prison affords me an opportunity to observe human souls that are suffering, searching, and desperately hoping for redemption. I could try to create such characters alone at my desk, or I can go out and learn firsthand about the various ways others struggle to survive.
Specifically, I’ve learned from my time at the prison that there is no end to the level of complexity and contradiction that can exist within one person. Murderers are fathers. Thieves were once young boys who loved swimming in the summer. Drug dealers are song writers. Characters, it now seems to me, can never be too complicated. Not that a character must be confusing on the page in order to have “depth”, but an author must know her characters on a level that includes attributes as well as flaws. Particularly in the writing that happens off the story’s page—in note taking, free writing, and brainstorming—it benefits a writer to imagine the worst about a character she loves, and the best about a character she loathes. If you discover that your protagonist is, under the right circumstances, capable of murder, how might that change how he/she appears, acts, and thinks in the story?
My commitment to my internship was only for a semester, but over a year later I have yet to stop going to the prison. In the United States there are over 2 million people incarcerated. I am often overwhelmed by how many voices and stories are going unheard because they are locked away and forgotten behind razor wire. I believe we are, as Baldwin writes, denying the humanity of these men and women on many levels. I acknowledge that many of their crimes wrought unimaginable violence on others and for that they deserve to serve time. I would never want to diminish the suffering of the victims. To exclude 2 million people, however, from the collective story of a country is, in my opinion, a crime in itself. That is why I chose to do the work at the prison, and why I will continue to do the work for the foreseeable future. It is a subject I will continue to mine in my own writing.
I am grateful to the Solstice program for having the foresight to create space for their students to work as writers engaged in their communities, thus encouraging students to seek out the humanity in others.
Erika posts regularly about her experience teaching inside prison at: www.teachingontheinside.wordpress.com
Blog-of-the-Month
Approximately 2,500 prospective MFA and MA creative writing students now visit www.gradinsider.com each month to research and read reviews of MFA writing programs. Help us boost PMC’s visibility by writing a short review!
To write a review, go to: www.gradinsider.com
Connections
The Norman Mailer Writers Colony invites writers to apply for residencies and workshop scholarships, with a deadline of March 13, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.nmwcolony.org
Prairie Schooner announces its Book Prize contest, with a deadline of March 15, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.prairieschooner.unl.edu
SCWBI (the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators) is accepting applications for several grants: a work-in-progress grant, a YA novel grant, and a nonfiction research grant. The deadline is March 15, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.scbwi.org
So to Speak announces its fall 2010 Short Fiction Contest with a deadline of March 15, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.gmu.edu
Tusculum Review announces its annual Poetry Prize, with a deadline of March 15, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.tusculum.edu/tusculumreview
WC&C (Writers’ Conferences & Centers, a division of AWP) announces scholarships for writers who wish to attend a conference, center, residency, or retreat. The deadline is March 30, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.writersconf.org
Four Way Books announces the 2010 Intro Prize in Poetry with a deadline of March 31, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.fourwaybooks.com
Lettre Sauvage announces its second annual poetry contest, with a deadline of April 1, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.lettresauvage.com
MARY Magazine is currently accepting submissions of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, and art for its summer issue, with a deadline of April 1, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.maryjournal.org
The Saturday Evening Post announces its annual Lorian Hemingway Short Story Competition, with a deadline of April 1, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.shortstorycompetition.com
WriterAdvice seeks flash fiction, memoir, and creative non-fiction for its Fifth Annual Flash Prose Contest, with a deadline of April 15, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.writeradvice.com
The ING Unsung Heroes Project announces grants for educators, with a deadline of April 30, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.ing-usa.com
The Literary Database (a submissions resource for writers) announces its Flash Fiction Contest, with a deadline of May 1, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.literarydatabase.com
CALYX, A Journal of Art and Literature by Women announces the ninth annual
2010 Lois Cranston Memorial Poetry Prize, with submission dates beginning March 1 and ending May 31, 2010.
For more information, go to: www.calyxpress.org
Academic Careers Online is a resource for MFA graduates in search of employment; there is no charge for their services.
For more information, go to: www.academiccareers-job.com
ForeWord Magazine is seeking qualified book reviewers for its fee-for-review service.
Book critics, librarians, booksellers, teachers, and professors, send credentials to whitney@forewordreviews.com