Announcements
RWW COMMUNITY
Alumni Kate Carroll de Gutes (2010) and Tarn Wilson (2008), along with faculty member Brenda Miller, gave a reading at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, WA, on September 19, 2016. All three writers have been published by Ovenbird Books, based in Port Townsend, WA.
Holly Hughes (2006), Jill McCabe Johnson (2008), and Tina Schumann (2009) will present the 2017 AWP panel “Inclusive Anthologies: The Challenge of Building Books That Reflect Our World” with panel partners James Engelhardt and Marybeth Holleman. Five anthology editors will discuss the choices they’ve made in soliciting writers of varied backgrounds and experiences to reach a broader, more diverse audience.
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PARTICIPANTS
Ann Bodle-Nash (2018) read “Love on the River,” a nonfiction long-form essay, on November 4 and 5 as part of the Writers on The Fly tour in Bellingham, WA, and Vancouver, BC. The event was billed as an evening of fly-fishing literature and art, with proceeds benefiting various fish-related conservation programs.
Jasminne Mendez (2019) recently cofounded Tintero Projects: A Reading & Workshop Series with poet Lupe Mendez. This organization aims to promote writing and reading opportunities for emerging Latinx poets and writers in the Houston-Galveston/Gulf Coast region. Jasminne also recently was the keynote speaker and featured poet for the Communities in Schools Baytown Girls Summit: Be-You-tiful, held on October 1 at Lee College. On October 2, Jasminne was a featured poet at the Houston Public Library’s event LibroFEST. The rest of this fall, Jasminne will be on tour performing poetry at Houston Community College and at University of Houston campuses citywide.
Sarah Pape (2017): Split Lip Magazine featured three of her poems (“What Girls Do,” “In the Same Room,” “No Place for Little Girls”) in their “Blast from the Past” feature, September 12, 2016. Her essay, “Pleasure Like Grief,” was nominated for Best of the Net by Passages North.
Jen Soriano (2018) helped lead a storytelling workshop and read her work as part of the “Celebrating Filipino-American Elders: Reading and Karaoke!” event at the International Drop-In Center in Seattle, October 7, 2016. Her essay, “A Brief History of Her Pain,” was nominated by Waxwing for a Pushcart Prize.
Molly Spencer (2017) has been named Assistant Poetry Editor at The Rumpus.
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ALUMNI
Jessica Barksdale’s (2015) short story collection Jungles of America and Other Stories was a finalist in Black Lawrence Press’s Hudson Prize and a semifinalist in Stillhouse Press’s Mary Roberts Rinehart Fiction Contest.
Chelsey Clammer (2016) was invited to be the nonfiction workshop leader and guest panelist for the weeklong conference Writefest Houston (March 6–12, 2017). In January, she will be teaching Face Your Fears: Women Writers Anonymous, a six-week online nonfiction workshop she designed in which the students will be anonymous to one another. The literary journal JMWW interviewed Chelsey about this class and about what she looks for when reading essay submissions for The Nervous Breakdown. She was also interviewed for an article in the September 2016 issue of The Writer. Finally, Chelsey is now a staff writer and monthly columnist for the WOW! Women On Writing craft blog, and her lyric essay “Graftology” (published by The Tishman Review, Spring 2016) was nominated for a Best of the Net award.
Kathleen Flenniken (2007) read her work at the Words West Literary Series in West Seattle on September 21 and at Open Books in Seattle on September 22, 2016.
Bernard Grant (2016) has been selected to receive a Vermont Studio Center Fellowship for a four-week residency. His essay, “Community,” was longlisted for the Lunch Ticket Diana Woods Memorial Award in Creative Nonfiction and will appear in their next issue. His flash fiction story, “Spin,” originally published in the online edition of Spartan, has recently appeared in their annual print anthology.
Alicia Hoffman (2015): Her poem “Incantation,” first published in The Inflectionist Review, was recently nominated for the 2017 Orison Anthology by editor John Sibley Williams. She also recently read selected poems, accompanied by her husband on guitar, at Skylark Lounge and MuCCC for two events sponsored by Writers & Books, Rochester’s oldest and largest literary center.
Erin Coughlin Hollowell (2009): Her second poetry collection, Every Atom, will be published in 2018 by Red Hen Press under the Boreal Books imprint.
Emily Holt (2016), along with Braden Van Dragt, was a semifinalist for the 2016 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize for No Wounds Here: Image & Text, 2016. Her chapbook, If Not Savior, was shortlisted for the Munster Literature Centre’s The Fool for Poetry Chapbook Competition 2016.
M. J. Iuppa (2006) was interviewed about her latest collection of poems, Small Worlds Floating, on WAYO 104.3 FM’s poetry program “Flour City Yawp” with host Albert Abonado on August 18. Small Worlds Floating was reviewed by Christine Green in the Democrat and Chronicle, September 24, 2016.
Adrian Koesters (2007) will have her second full collection of poems, Three Days with the Long Moon, published by BrickHouse Books in late 2016 or early 2017.
Rebecca Mabanglo-Mayor (2012) was profiled by Eunice Barbara C. Novio in “Fil-Am Storyteller Narrates Pathways to Heritage,” Inquirer.net, August 24, 2016.
Carol McMahon (2016) gave a presentation on her critical thesis, “Exposing the Wound: The Traumatic Grief of Sibling Death and the Modern Elegiac Form,” at St. John Fisher College. She read selections from her chapbook, On Any Given Day, as well as from her more recent poetry. She was interviewed about her MFA experience on WAYO 104.3 FM’s poetry program “Flour City Yawp” with host Albert Abonado on July 28.
Carrie Mesrobian (2013) has sold, in a two-book deal to Dutton, The Hidden Needle, a young adult novel set in Minnesota. The Hidden Needle tells the story of an unusual family of women and the secrets they keep, written from the point of view of the youngest daughter, who is visited in her dreams by a 19th-century Irish immigrant girl who died in a nearby asylum.
John Milkereit (2016): His poem “Monologue of the Upside-Down Turtle” won second place in the 2016 Ekphrastic Poetry Contest of the Houston Poetry Fest in October 2016.
Debbie Clarke Moderow (2013) was interviewed by Wendy Willis (2013) about her recently published memoir, Fast Into the Night (“The Mental Game is Tricky: Wendy Willis interviews Debbie Clarke Moderow,” Los Angeles Review of Books, July 25, 2016).
Tammy Robacker (2016): Her poem “Mother, Morgue” won second place in Jabberwock Review’s Nancy D. Hargrove Editors’ Prize for Poetry. Her poem, “Witch Cake,” was nominated for Best of the Net by Contrary Magazine.
Tina Schumann (2009) has signed a book contract with Red Hen Press to publish her full collection Praising the Paradox in Spring 2019. This will be Tina’s second published collection of poetry. She is also one of three winners of The Diode Editions Chapbook Contest for 2016. Her chapbook Requiem: A Patrimony of Fugues will be published in January 2017 and will be for sale at the Diode Editions table at AWP in Washington, D.C. A reading will take place at the Arts Club of Washington on February 9, 2017, 6:00 p.m.–8:00 p.m.
Kris Whorton (2016) is reading for Indianola Review. She gave a reading from her new short fiction on October 27 as part of Meacham Writers’ Workshop, hosted by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
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FACULTY
Lola Haskins (former faculty member) was recently inducted as the first female honorary chancellor for the Florida State Poets Association.
Julie Marie Wade received the 2016 Thomas A. Wilhelmus Award for Creative Nonfiction for her essay “Meditation 36,” selected by Michael Martone. The essay will appear in the Fall 2016 issue of Southern Indiana Review.
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