Announcements
ANNOUNCEMENTS – PARTICIPANTS
Lisa Morin Carcia (2018) gave public readings with other Jack Straw Writers Program fellows at the Ballard Public Library in Seattle on September 10th, the University Book Store in Seattle on October 2nd, the Walla Walla Public Library on October 17th, and at the Seattle Central Library on November 7th. Richard Hugo House featured her in a blog post about her participation in the Hugo 30/30 Writing Challenge fundraiser in 2014.
Chelsey Clammer (2016) was selected to be a fall Editorial Intern for Graywolf Press. She was also hired by Pearson Education to be a writing tutor. She won the Eric Hoffer Award for Prose this year for her essay, “Twenty-Six Junctures of How I am a Part of You,” and also received a Best of the Net nomination from Dirty Chai for her essay, “What It’s Like to Love Someone.” Finally, she will be giving a reading from her collection of essays that came out this past March, BodyHome, in Chicago at Women & Children First on November 19th, at 7:30pm.
Bernard Grant (2016) is now the Associate Essays Editor for The Nervous Breakdown. His nonfiction manuscript Puzzle Pieces was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Press Debut Series Chapbook Contest. The editors of The Museum of Americana nominated his short essay “Paper Clips” for Best of the Net. His flash fiction story “Saturday Night” received honorable mention from 2015 Micro-Fiction Contest with Great Lakes Commonwealth of Letters and Cheat Pop with publication in Cheap Pop. His short story “No Such Thing as Down” was selected by the editors of Sequestrum as runner up for their 2015 New Writer Awards with publication. He read with other Jack Straw Writers Program fellows at the Walla Walla Public Library on October 17th and at the Seattle Central Library on November 7th. On December 3rd he will read in Seattle, Washington, at the Jewelbox Theater at The Rendezvous for Pay Dirt, an event supported, in part, by an award from 4Culture and the Jack Straw Writers Program. On March 18th, he will read at the 5 year anniversary of APRIL (Authors, Publishers, and Readers of Independent Literature).
Sarah Pape (2016) Her poetry chapbook, Ruination Atlas, was accepted for publication by Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry manuscript, Foul Hook, was a finalist for the 2015 Crab Orchard Series Poetry First Book Award competition and the inaugural Inlandia Literary Journal’s Hillary Gravendyk Prize.
Ann Quinn (2018) Her poem, “Ma,” was nominated by Beechwood Review for a Pushcart Prize.
Cindy Skaggs (2017) Her essay, “Matchbook Memory,” which was published in the 2015 issue of Progenitor, has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 2016 in the nonfiction category.
Tammy Robacker (2016) Her poetry chapbook manuscript, Cuttings, has been awarded the 2015 Keystone Chapbook Poetry Prize with Seven Kitchens Press. Cuttings is forthcoming in Winter 2016.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha (2017) Her poem, “Middle Village,” has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Ofi Press Mexico.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS – ALUMNI
Ensemble announcement “Season of Gratitude: Celebrating Judith Kitchen,” November 21st at Rochester’s Writers and Books. RWW alumni Bill Capossere (2010), Alicia Hoffman (2015), and M.J. Iuppa (2006), along with current participant Carol Manzi McMahon (2016) and other students and friends of Judith, will read from both the newest Norton anthology, Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction edited by Judith Kitchen and Dinah Lenney, as well as a selection of Judith Kitchen’s writing, to celebrate Judith Kitchen’s extraordinary life.
Kelli Russell Agodon (2007) Her full-length collection of poems, Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014), was a finalist in the Washington State Book Awards and short-listed for the Julie Suk Poetry Prize for the best book of poems published by an independent press.
Jessica Barksdale (2015) Her short story collection Caught was a semi-finalist for the 2015 Hudson Prize. Also, her short story “Jungles of America” received an honorable mention in Helen: A Literary Magazine’s third short story contest, and will be published in the Spring 2016 issue.
Bill Capossere (2010) His full-length play, “Drowned,” was given a stage reading on October 28th, and on October 30th he participated in the “Playwright’s Bake-Off,” both part of GEVA Theatre’s 2015 Festival of New Theatre.
Kate Carroll de Gutes (2010) Her social media writing exercise, “The Authenticity Experiment,” was featured in USA Today and several large metropolitan daily papers.
Anne Donaghy (2015) and several of her family members were joined by Susan Walker (2015) in Dharamsala, India, October 6-12 for the opening of the exhibition of Anne’s father’s photos from 1949 Tibet at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. Many of these photos were featured in Anne’s RWW Thesis, A Tibetan Gift. Anne gave a tour of the exhibit to the Tibetan Minister of Education and to a Tibetan Parliament member, and was interviewed by the young and enthusiastic Tibetan press after the opening ceremonies.
Sydney Elliott (2015) presented “Turning Darkness Inside Out: Transforming Trauma in the Classroom” at the Community College Humanities Association’s national conference. Her presentation was based on her research for her RWW critical paper.
Kari Fisher (2014) participated in “The Beat Goes On: Readings and discussion by faculty and students in the spirit of the Beat generation,” Normandale Community College, September 18th.
Jeb Harrison (2015) won third place in Cease, Cows’s 2015 Scary Story contest for his story, “Insolence.”
Jill McCabe Johnson (2008) is the recipient of an Artist Trust (GAP) Grant for Artists’ Projects to study, sketch, and write poems about one of the last remaining old-growth coastal Douglas fir stands that is infected with heart rot. Jill is also the recipient of a month-long, private writing retreat in Paris this fall.
Debbie Clarke Moderow (2013) has been accepted as a writer in “In Time of Change: Microbial Worlds,” an Alaska-based arts, humanities, and science consortium addressing the challenges of climate change. This is a collaboration of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Institute of Arctic Biology and the Bonanza Creek Long Term Ecological Research Program.
Julie Riddle (2009) Her essay, “Shadow Animals,” from the Fall 2013 issue of The Georgia Review, received a Special Mention in The Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses 2015.
Michael Schmeltzer (2007) His chapbook, Elegy/Elk River, was the winner of the Floating Bridge Chapbook Award for 2015 and is available now through the Floating Bridge Press website. The release reading took place on October 25th at Hugo House in Seattle. Also, he is offering to pay the contest entry fee for the next Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award competition for at least one traditionally underrepresented and emerging poet in Washington State. Details are available on Michael’s website.
Natalie Haney Tilghman (2008) was selected for a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.
Justin Wadland (2011) His book Trying Home: The Rise and Fall of an Anarchist Utopia won the 2015 Washington State Book Award in the history/general nonfiction category.
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ANNOUNCEMENTS – FACULTY
Adrianne Harun Her novel A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain was named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award.
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