Congrats to Kerry James Evans!

Third-year poetry MFA student Kerry James Evans has some good news to share:

"Poet Lore took "What Makes the Green Grass Grow" and Spoon River Poetry Review took "Scarab."

Kerry's succinct, isn't he?


For more about the publications Kerry's poems will be appearing in, visit their websites:

Poet Lore:

Poet Lore

Spoon River Poetry Review

Spoon River Poetry Review

Jon Tribble featured in "Ten Questions With..."

Find out Jon's answers at

Jon's answers

Happy news from Rachel Furey!

Third-year fiction writer Rachel Furey has happy news to share:

I'm a bit slow to pass this news along to you, but I wanted to
let you know that like Travis, I will be participating in a
pedagogy forum at AWP with my paper "Reimagining Nonfiction
into Fiction." In addition, my short fiction piece "Mountain
Climbing" took third in the 12th Annual Women Who Write Short
Prose Contest and I'm planning on attending the award
presentation and reading on Dec. 13 in Louisville, KY. I have
some family coming out for it, so I'm pretty stoked about that.


Thanks for the update, Rachel!

REMINDER: Rachel Furey and Josh Woods will be reading their award-winning pieces from the Press 53 Open Competition Awards anthology today at 4PM in the Harry T. Moore Auditorium, Faner Hall, SIUC campus. Free and open to the public!

Campus Writing Contest: Andy P. Smith Award

2009 Andy P. Smith Writing Contest

Calling SIUC Undergraduate and Graduate Students
Any Major

First Prize: $200
1 undergrad and 1 grad

Second Prize: $50
1 undergrad and 1 grad

Topic: How does the geography and environment of Southern Illinois affect your experience as a student?

Length: 1000-1500 words

Submission Format:
Do not write your name or anything that would identify you on the essay. Instead,
submit your essay with a coversheet containing the following information:

Name
Address, Phone #, E-mail (if you are graduating include permanent contact info)
Year in school and major
Essay title

Deliver essays to Emily McQuillian, Awards Coordinator at Faner 2265
Due: January 20, 2009

To get a more detailed explanation or for answers to any questions, contact Emily Mc
Quillan at emcquill@siu.edu. Please put “Smith Award” in the subject line.

Poemspotting: Guest, Meyerhofer, plus a Bond honorable mention

Poems by Paul Guest (MFA '99) and Michael Meyerhofer (MFA '06) appear in the latest issue of River Styx (number 78). Paul's poems are "Remember How Sad That Was When" and "Loyalty Oath"; Michael's poem is "Peccadillo." In addition, David Bond (MFA '98) is cited as an honorable mention in the 2008 River Styx International Poetry Contest.

For more about River Styx, visit
River Styx

Pinckney Benedict Fans Take Note!

"Straight from the Department of Shameless Self-Promotion: I’ve just received copies of THE ECCO ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN SHORT FICTION (ed. Joyce Carol Oates and Christopher Beha, Harper Perennial), which contains my story “Mercy.”

Joyce writes in her preface that, in the book, she “hopes to bring together in a reasonably permanent structure the very best and most representative work of [the] era,” in this case the beginning of the 21st c. There are lots of good folks in the volume (48 stories in all) – Sherman Alexie, George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, on and on – sufficiently prominent and skilled to make me both embarrassed and proud to find myself in their company."


Well done, PB! You can be embarrassed; the rest of us will just be proud.

Catching Up With Justin Hamm (MFA'05)

Here's a note from Justin Hamm (MFA '05, fiction):

I thought this might be a good time to resurface after maintaining a rather hermitesque profile for some time. I had a little bit of success publishing my short stories before I left Carbondale, but then I stopped writing for quite some time--taking in those lessons from the program, I suppose, and trying to understand them.

Lately, though, I've been at it again--this time writing, believe it or not, what I like to think of as poetry--and I've had some very modest success. I had a poem, "To the Venerable Bede" appear in Renaissance Magazine's Issue # 61 this summer, and two of my poems, "1434 bruges blues" and "dream: perhaps of futility?", will be appearing in the January/February issue of Oak Bend Review.

Right now I'm teaching high school English in Missouri and listening to too much Bob Dylan. My wife Melissa and I are expecting our first child this February.

Thanks, Allison, and I hope all is well in Carbondale.

Sincerely,

Justin


Congratulations, Justin, on all your good news! Keep in touch!

Upcoming Reading: Press 53 Award Winners Anthology Reading

from Josh Woods:

OPEN AWARDS ANTHOLOGY reading on Wednesday, November 19, at 4:00pm in the Harry T. Moore Auditorium, Faner Hall. Rachel Furey will be reading "Mississippi Mud," the winner in Non-Fiction, and Josh Woods will be reading "The Exorcise Machine," the winner in Genre. See you there!

for information about the Press 53 Open Awards Competition, visit
2009 Guidelines

AWP Conference News and Notes

The 2009 AWP Conference in Chicago is sure to be a good time. The MFA Program in Creative Writing at SIUC will be a conference sponsor, and the program will also hold a reception for alumni during the conference.

Faculty members Jon Tribble, Allison Joseph and Rodney Jones will be featured on panels during the conference. Current poetry MFA student Travis Mossotti will be participating in the Pedagogy Forum with his paper "Circumstances of Composition: A Collaborative Writing Exercise" an entry developed from the Surrealism exercise he designed for the last summer's Young Writers Workshop.

for more information about the upcoming AWP Conference, visit the website at
AWP

Career Talk Today Moved to New Room in Student Center

Please note change in initially announced location for this talk: no longer in Saline, moved to Illinois Room!

COURTING THE CASH, SAVING THE MUSE:
A CAREER PRESENTATION FOR CREATIVE WRITERS

HOSTED BY ALLISON JOSEPH, DIRECTOR,
MFA PROGRAM IN CREATIVE WRITING
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY CARBONDALE

FREE AND OPEN TO ALL

LEARN THE DO’S AND DON’TS OF:

---RESUME AND VITAE PREPARATION
---APPLICATION LETTERS FOR JOBS, BOTH ACADEMIC AND NON-ACADEMIC
---APPLYING FOR STATE AND FEDERAL GRANTS & PRIVATE FELLOWSHIPS FOR CREATIVE WRITERS
---CONFERENCES, RETREATS, AND COLONIES FOR CREATIVE WRITERS

DATE: THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 6
TIME: 4:00-5:30 PM
PLACE: SIUC STUDENT CENTER, ILLINOIS ROOM

Sponsored by the Graduate Writers Forum
Southern Illinois University Carbondale

Congratulations to Janelle Blasdel!

Janelle Blasdel, a first-year MFA in fiction, has happy Election Day news to share:

Hi Allison,

I was told to pass along my good news...my short story "Vampire Crop" was accepted for publication in MAIN STREET RAG'S upcoming spring anthology on small town stories! Fun stuff.

Happy election day,
Janelle

Congrats, Janelle! Those Main Street Rag folks like our fiction writers, don't they? Janelle is the third currently-enrolled fiction writer to have work accepted for a Main Street Rag anthology, after Rachel Furey and Josh Woods.


Here's a link to Main Street Rag's current call for fiction:

Main Street fiction anthology info

Irish Studies Presents a Lecture and Two Literary Readings!

Beth Lordan, SIUC creative writing faculty member and director of our Irish and Irish Diaspora Studies Program, sends news of upcoming literary readings:

--John McAuliffe, poet and Irish exchange alum,author of A BETTER LIFE and NEXT DOOR, co-director of Manchester (England)
University's Centre for New Writing, will read at 4 pm Monday November 10
in the Mississippi Room;

--on Wednesday November 12 at 4 in the Mississippi Room, Galway poets Kevin Higgins (author of THE BOY WITH NO FACE) and Susan Millar DuMars (author of BIG PINK UMBRELLA) will read.

--For those with a taste for talk about what's already written, Anne Fogarty, the first Fanning Medalist in Irish Studies, will give a public lecture at 7 pm in the Mississippi Room on figurations of abuse in contemporary Irish writing. Modest receptions follow all events.

Reading and Drinking: November '08 edition

from mistress of ceremonies, Amie Whittemore:

Hey independent clauses and prepositional phrases,

R&D is back in red, white, and blue this Wednesday, November 5th! So join us for
some post election merriment/downtroddenness/confusion/hullabooity or whatever
you'll be feeling on this Historical Wednesday.

The info:

Where: Melange, 607 S. Illinois Avenue, Carbondale, IL
When: November 5th 7pm
What: The Win, Lose, or Draw R&D featuring poetry, fiction, music, bedazzlement,
trivia, and absurdity in healthy doses.


Spread the word!


Adverbially yours,

~ Amie

And speaking of Kevin McKelvey (MFA '04, poetry)

an early-morning note from Kevin himself:


"I've had a few good months, to say the least. I started a new project last winter on water, water usage, watershed health and the Wabash River in Indiana, and three of those poems have been accepted for publication. "Siipiiwi" will appear in Alehouse. The Pinch picked up "After seining the Wabash River near a train trestle on the Indiana-Illinois border." And the Tipton Poetry Journal, which was started in and named after my mother's home county in Indiana, published "Prophetstown" in Issue 10.

CUTTHROAT, a journal of the arts, accepted "Wampus Cat Token" from my "Deam Wilderness" manuscript.

Also, I'll be reading poems from my "Deam Wilderness" manuscript at the 22nd Annual Conference of The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts in Charlotte, NC on Nov. 14.

And the new job at the University of Indianapolis is keeping me busy, especially with editing and publishing classes and other writing classes."

Thanks for the update, Kevin!