At the Miami University Creative Writing Program’s first annual Publishing Symposium on Friday, April 20th, literary agent Ayesha Pande and magazine publishers Rebecca Wolff and Michael Griffith gave a roomful of students advice on making their mark in the ever-shifting publishing landscape. Continue reading
Miami University Press Marketing Intern Leah Gaus interviews 2017 Novella Prize winner Patricia Grace King on her latest work, her writing process, and the importance of gratitude.
Having traversed many countries and lived in vastly different cities, Patricia Grace King fell in love with travel at an early age. Her prize-winning novella, Day of All Saints (Miami University Press, 2017), takes place in Guatemala, where Patricia lived for three years. While there, she worked as an accompanier of refugees with grassroots organization Witness for Peace during the civil war. She holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in English from Emory University. Hard at work on her forthcoming novel, King currently resides in Durham, England. For more, visit her website at www.patriciagraceking.com. Continue reading
Room 40 in Irvin—a small, compact space—was filled completely on the night of Wednesday, March 28th. Students piled in, resorting to standing around the room. The students and faculty talked loudly, everyone waiting with a nervous energy for the poets to begin. Using this energy, María Auxiliadora Álvarez and Keith Tuma read their respective poems, causing the audience to drift away into feelings of contemplation, sympathy, and grief, and to be startled into laughter. Both poets left the audience with more questions than answers, like any good poet does, and they both transformed room 40 into something much more than a classroom. Continue reading
On Monday, March 5th, at the weekly meeting of Sigma Tau Delta, I signed up to write a blog post about the Happy Captive Magazine/Howe Writing Center Undergraduate Creative Writing Reading on the 15th of February. Little did I know that I would be presenting my own work at that reading. I had never read any of my work in public before—my words had always been confined to the classroom or to the ears of those closest to me—but when the opportunity presented itself, I knew I had to take it. Continue reading
The beauty of readings is that, while you go in expecting to be entertained by a writer’s work, you can leave with a new perspective, or perhaps a better understanding, of how to improve your own writing. I had such an experience back on October 17, 2017, while listening to Kelcey Parker Ervick read samples from, and explain the process behind, her biography/memoir hybrid The Bitter Life of Božena Němcová (Rose Metal Press, 2016). Continue reading
Last semester, on Tuesday, November 6, acclaimed poet (and labor organizer by trade) Rodrigo Toscano, along with five Miami Creative Writing MFA students, performed for a full house in the Bachelor Hall reading room. (Pictures here.) Toscano has lived a double life, splitting his time between working in the labor movement and weaving his poetry. A writer who has authored multiple books of poetry, recordings, and essays, he most recently released a collection based off a single sentence, one that also gave him the title for the book: Explosion Rocks Springfield. With Miami graduate students, he performed a string of poem-skits that combined to create an astute reflection on the modern human experience. Continue reading
On October 30th, the seats of Irvin 40 filled quickly with poetry enthusiasts, there to see the reading of cris cheek and Peter Manson, two writers hailing from across the pond. Manson is from Glasgow and is the author of a variety of works including a book-length translation titled Stéphane Mallarmé: The Poems in Verse (Miami University Press). cheek, originally from England, now teaches here at Miami. He has done it all—music, publishing, dancing, and e-poetry. It made for an interesting scene, Scottish and English poets who cut their teeth performing and writing abroad and in online spaces now reading together for a US crowd. The reading was a melting pot of European Anglophone styles, countries, cultures, and languages as each author brought his own flavor to the mix. Continue reading
On Wednesday, November 15, around 7pm, I trudged down the cold sidewalks of Miami University and ducked into the Shriver Center. On the second floor, I had to ask for directions even though I was standing right next to the room I was looking for.
Miami University’s English Department was celebrating Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week with the 27th Annual Writers’ Harvest. Every year, former and current graduate students and faculty members read original works in support of select food banks.
The featured readers were Jody Bates, Johnny Fuentes, Heba Hayek, Madeline Lewis, Cathy Wagner, and Paul Vogel. Continue reading
Miami University was proud to welcome Kelcey Parker Ervick to campus to teach her sprint workshop on Hybrid Genres and Literary Collage.
After visiting us, Ervick writes, “Last week I got to teach a 3-day Sprint Workshop…to students in Miami University’s (OHIO!) MFA program. On the first day I said, ‘Here’s some paper, a bone folder, an awl, and some string. Make a mini-book!’”
On Tuesday, October 3rd, Miami University had the honor of hosting authors Jessie Chaffee, Brendan Kiely, and Dave Essinger for a reading in Kreger Hall. Kiely and Essinger are Miami alums. Each writer read captivating excerpts from their latest books—The Last True Love Story, Running Out, and Florence in Ecstasy, respectively—and answered questions on the research process, authenticity, and publishing. Continue reading