Each year the Creative Writing Program brings in members of the publishing industry–such as editors, publishers, agents, and authors–often alumni or friends of the program. This year we are doing it by Zoom. Please sign up using the QR code in the brochure or this link:
A Career Day for English Majors including creative writing majors
Join the Department of English and the Center for Career Exploration and Success (CCES) for Spill the Tea: English Edition, an afternoon of career-development workshops followed by an alumni panel, on Tuesday, April 9 in Shriver’s Heritage Room. There will be prizes, swag, and delicious food!
Each month, Oxford Magazine hosts its Spring Street Reading Series featuring performances from Miami University’s Creative Writing MFA students.
They take place in the English Department’s Bachelor Hall Reading Room (BAC 337) and via Zoom. The zoom links for these and all other creative writing events are available on the English Department Events Calendar, as well as information about specific readers. We update the calendar with new events frequently, so check it out.
We heard a short preview of Dan Remoto’s powerful writing during our successful annual charity event, Writers Harvest. Too short.
So please join the Creative Writing Program for a fiction reading with Dan Remoto, who will read from his new book, The Heart of Summer ( Penguin Random House Southeast Asia) at Miami on Thursday, February 22nd, 7:30pm in BAC 337. (Zoom attendees, please register here.)
“A collection of short fiction on love, longing and loss written in the realist and fantastic modes. A young boy and his sisters gather beautiful shells on the beach as mementos of a country they will leave behind.”
Danton Remoto has published a novel called Riverrun and a book of stories called The Heart of Summer with Penguin Random House Southeast Asia. He studied at Rutgers University and the University of Stirling in the UK. He is an MFA Poetry student at Miami University.
Please join the Creative Writing Program in welcoming Hannah Emerson for a Zoom poetry reading on Wednesday, November 29 at 7:30pm. As Hannah is nonspeaking, her work will be read by current and former Miami students and by Aviv Rosenzweig. A Q&A with Hannah will follow, hosted by faculty poet Cathy Wagner.
Hannah Emerson is a nonspeaking autistic poet whose work has been featured in Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, BOMB, the Poetry Society of America, Literary Hub, and Brooklyn Rail. She is the author of the collection of poems The Kissing of Kissing (2022) from Milkweed’s Multiverse series. She lives in Lafayette, New York.
Hannah’s work will be performed by Aviv Rosenzweig and others. A Q&A with Hannah Emerson will follow, hosted by Professor Cathy Wagner.
UPDATE: Writer’s Harvest benefit reading and art auction raised over a thousand dollars and still coming in for TOPSS, Talawanda Oxford Pantry and Social Services (TOPSS). It featured wonderful readings from Miami University MFA graduate students and was organized by the creative writing program students and faculty along with Western College. Creative writing director Brian Ascalon Roley hosted, with artist Billy Simms handling the art auction. While this event is held annually around Thanksgiving, TOPSS’s efforts are year round and it’s still not too late to donate on their website. Thanks to everyone.
Note: One of our Writers Harvest readers, Danton Remoto, is having a book launch here at Miami University (and also on Zoom) on Feb 22, 2024, so keep an eye out here and on our events list. More spring events will be added to the calendar soon. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Poets Isaac Pickell, an alumnus, and David Schloss, Miami Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing, read from their new books of poetry. They were wonderful readings and it was great to see these familiar faces.
I was surprised to hear that David retired in 2011 (though he taught until 2014), because it didn’t seem long ago. Covid distorts time. He was one of the professors who hired me twenty years back, and those first years occupy a much larger space in my memory, time wise, than the years since.
I was also surprised to hear that Isaac got his MFA in 2017, because that didn’t seem long ago either. It was interesting to hear them back to back, because their approaches to poetry are very different, yet both deeply engrossing. I recommend you order their books. The Q & A was interesting too, so much so that if host Cathy Wagner hadn’t kept track of time the discussion could have gone on for hours. Though I regrettably don’t have a transcript, this photo comes from that exchange.
Their bios are below the photo. Thanks to those who came out.
–BR
Isaac Pickell
A recent alum of Miami’s MFA program, Isaac Pickell is a Black & Jewish poet and PhD candidate at Wayne State University in Detroit, where he teaches and studies the borderlands of blackness and black literature. Isaac’s new book of poems It’s Not Over Once You Figure It Out is available for pre-order from Black Ocean. Joe Hall praises the book’s “jaw-dropping turns of thought…The poems defend against the brutal foreclosures of this historical moment”; Taylor Byas says “Pickell’s speaker collapses time as we know it.”
David Schloss
David Schloss was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1944, and educated at Columbia University, The University of Southern California Cinema School, Brooklyn College (BA), and The Iowa Writers Workshop (MFA). After teaching at Miami for decades, he retired in 2014 from Miami as Emeritus Professor of English. His new book, Provocations—his sixth full-length poetry collection—is just out from Dos Madres Press. John Ashbery lauds him for “reinventing classical forms and meter to speak profound truths on vital issues of our day.” Lesley Hardy calls Provocations “a blistering “report” on disaster and war…a monumental and challenging work.”
The event is over and we’ve had a lot of great feedback from viewers. Professor TaraShea Nesbit hosted and we learned about what prose writers can discern from TV writing through personal anecdotes and stories by Dean Bakopoulos, as well as fascinating analysis of clips from shows like Atlanta and White Lotus. Thanks to all who joined us. Dean is also teaching more, private sessions with Miami students in the coming week. –BR
UPDATE: We had a great event. Special thanks to all our alumni guests who shared their experiences and advice, and those of you who joined us. We had great feedback and questions in the chat. Current MFA student Ty Young was asked at the last minute to help with the technical aspects of the event and did a great job, Thanks!
