Mark Brewin (MFA '11) strikes again

The hits just keep on coming for Mark Jay Brewin Jr (MFA '11, poetry0:


Just letting you know that Southern Humanities Review picked up my
poem "Donation Doctor's Visit" and that Burnside Review accepted "A
Bridge is like a Tongue" for publication in its upcoming issue.

Congrats, MJB!

Outstanding News for Ruth Awad (MFA '12)

via Facebook:
I just found out I won the Outstanding Thesis Award. Out of the entire university!!!! I am now utterly dizzy with excitement and disbelief! A world of thanks to Judy Jordan, Allison Joseph, Jon Tribble, and Rodney Jones for your wonderful letters and for being incredible mentors. J'adore!

Fantastic news, Ruth Awad!  The honor is well-deserved!!!!!

Congrats to Andrew McSorley!!!

Congrats to third-year poet Andrew McSorley, whose poem "Winter's
Ritual" appears in Issue 2 of the Lindenwood Review, the literary
journal published by Lindenwood University!

BTW, the Lindenwood Review is reading submissions for Issue 3 until
December 15, 2012 (guidelines here):
http://www.lindenwood.edu/lindenwoodReview/submissions.cfm

Congrats to Austin Kodra!

Great news for second-year poet Austin Kodra:

I was honored and excited to find out that my poem "Against Nostalgia"
wasaccepted for publication in Barnstorm.

Congrats to Mark Brewin (MFA '11)

Good news in abundance for poetry alum Mark Jay Brewin, Jr:

I am pleased to announce that New Madrid has accepted my poem "Puerta la
Reina, First Movement" for its upcoming issue, and that Booth Online Journal
has accepted my poem "A Borrowed Childhood Memory, Alloway, 4 July 1967" for
their Spring 2013 line-up. Pretty stoked.

Congrats, Mark!!!

2012 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival!!!

It's that time of year again--the Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary
Festival is this week!!!

Here is the schedule for the 2012 Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival:

2012 Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
Wednesday, Thursday, & Friday, October 24 – 26
(All Events in SIUC's Morris Library)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24

8:00 – 9:15 p.m.
Readings by Wally Swist and Scott Blackwood
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
Poetry Panel featuring Katie Chaple, Wally Swist, Daniel Nathan Terry,
and Marcus Wicker
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

2:00 – 3:15 p.m.
Poetry Readings by Daniel Nathan Terry and Marcus Wicker
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

3:15 – 4:30 p.m.
Reception and Book Signing featuring all festival readers
1st Floor Rotunda (Morris Library)
(sponsored by the SIUC Dept. of English and the Southern Illinois
University Bookstore)

4:30 – 6:00 p.m.
Readings by the 2011 Devil's Kitchen Reading Award Winners in Poetry and Prose
Katie Chaple and Patricia Ann McNair
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)


FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26

11:00 – 12:00 a.m.
Fiction Panel featuring Scott Blackwood, Patricia Ann McNair, and Peter Orner
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)

2:00 – 2:50 p.m.
Fiction Reading by Peter Orner
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)


3:00 – 3:50 p.m.
Publishing Talk by Kevin Morgan Watson, founder, publisher, and Editor
in Chief of Press 53
John C. Guyon Auditorium (1st Floor Morris Library)
(sponsored by the SIUC Dept. of English Graduate Writers Forum)

The festival is sponsored by GRASSROOTS, the Southern Illinois
University Carbondale Department of English's undergraduate literary
magazine. The Devil's Kitchen Fall Literary Festival is made possible
through funding from the SIUC Fine Arts Activity Fee, the SIUC Dept.
of English Graduate Writers Forum, the SIUC Creative Writing Program's
Visiting Writers Series, the SIUC Department of English, the SIUC
College of Liberal Arts, and CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW.

Here are biographies of the writers who will be reading at this year's
Devil's Kitchen Literary Festival:

Scott Blackwood is the newest member of the graduate faculty in the
MFA program in creative writing at Southern Illinois University
Carbondale. His novel, We Agreed to Meet Just Here (New Issues Press,
2009), won the AWP Prize for the Novel, the Texas Institute of Letters
Award for best fiction, and was a finalist for the PEN USA Literary
Award for fiction. His award-winning collection of stories, In the
Shadow of Our House, was published by SMU Press in 2001. His fiction
has appeared most recently in American Short Fiction, the Gettysburg
Review, Boston Review, and Southwest Review, and the title story from
his collection is featured on the New York Times Book Review's "First
Chapters" website. His feature essays and reviews have appeared in the
Austin Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, Bookslut, and Revenant
Record's NPR-featured American Primitive Volume II. He's a recipient
of a Whiting Writers' Award, a Dobie-Paisano Fellowship, two Texas
Commission on the Arts Fellowships, and was a distinguished
writer-in-residence at Wichita State University. Blackwood holds an
MFA in Creative Writing from Texas State University.

Katie Chaple, this year's winner of the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award
in Poetry, is the author of Pretty Little Rooms (Press 53, August
2011). She teaches poetry and writing at the University of West
Georgia and edits Terminus Magazine. Her work has appeared in the
Antioch Review, Crab Orchard Review, Passages North, The Rumpus,
Southern Humanities Review, StorySouth, and Washington Square, among
others.

Patricia Ann McNair, this year's winner of the Devil's Kitchen Reading
Award in Prose, is the author of The Temple of Air (Elephant Rock
Books, 2011), which was also named a finalist in the Chicago Writers
Association's 2nd Annual Book of the Year Awards. has lived 98 percent
of her life in the Midwest. She has managed a gas station, sold pots
and pans door to door, tended bar and breaded mushrooms, worked on the
trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, and taught aerobics.
Today she is an Associate Professor in the Fiction Writing Department
of Columbia College Chicago, where she received the Excellence in
Teaching Award as well as a nomination for the Carnegie Foundation's
US Professor of the Year. McNair's fiction and creative nonfiction
have appeared in various anthologies, magazines, and journals
including American Fiction: Best Unpublished Short Stories by Emerging
Writers, Other Voices, F Magazine, Superstition Review, Dunes Review,
River Teeth, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and others.
She is also published in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in
Creative Nonfiction edited by Dinty W. Moore. She's received numerous
Illinois Arts Council Awards and Pushcart Prize nominations in fiction
and nonfiction. McNair divides her time between city and small town
with her husband, the visual artist Philip Hartigan.
Peter Orner is the author of two novels, including Love and Shame and
Love, a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and The Second Coming of
Mavala Shikongo, Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His
first book, Esther Stories, received the Rome Prize from the American
Academy of Arts and Letters, and is being re-issued next year with an
introduction by Marilynne Robinson. Orner is also the editor of two
non-fiction books, Underground America and Hope Deferred: Narratives
of Zimbabwean Lives, both published by McSweeney's. His work has
appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, Granta, and Best
American Stories. Born in Chicago, Orner currently lives in San
Francisco.

Fantastic News for Brooks Rexroat (MFA '10)

Brooks Rexroat, MFA "10 (fiction), has won the very prestigious short
storycompetition hosted in London by the Telegraph newspaper!

The story is titled "Angel of Death" and can be accessed here:

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/theshortstoryclub/louiseatmyt/481/angel-of-death-by-brooks-rexroat/

As winner, Brooks will travel to London next year to meet with editors
and publishers from across Great Britain!

Congratulations, Brooks!!!!

Congrats to Nick Ostdick (MFA '11, fiction)

Congrats to Nick Ostdick!

Hope all is well. Some good news this morning: Corium Magazine has
accepted my very short story 'Columbus Day' for publication in the
upcoming fall issue. Should be out in a few weeks, I think. It's a
great pub and I'm stoked to be involved with it.

Graduate Students to Read from their Work!!

The first In-House Reading of the Fall Semester will feature creative writing graduate students Andreas Willhoff and Dan Paul reading from their fiction, and Laura Ruffino and Robert Parrott reading from their poetry

Thursday, October 18th at 4pm at the Old Baptist Recital Hall (red brick building north of Faner Hall).

Free and open to the public!

Forthcoming for Ryan Crawford

A poem and a story are forthcoming for first-year fiction MFA Ryan Crawford:

Just got word from Prime Mincer that my story, "There's No One Down
There," will be published in the anthology The Man Date: Fifteen Bromance
Stories, alongside our own Pinckney Benedict, alum Shawn Mitchell, and
several other very talented folks including Rick Bass and Alan Heathcock.

In addition, Ryan's poem "In the Park" is forthcoming in New York Quarterly.

Congrats, Ryan!

Poem Publication for Mark Jay Brewin, Jr!

from Mark Brewin (MFA '11):

Ahoy there, Allison.

I am pleased to say that Roanoke Review has accepted my poem "Aubade"
for publication in their Spring 2013 issue. Nice nice.

-mb.

Congrats, Mark!!!

Congrats to Elena Pearson

Poetry alum (MFA '07)  Elena Person's poem "A Nigerian Refugee" is forthcoming in Off the Coast Magazine.

Congrats, Elena!