John Berryman Conference

On the 100th anniversary of his birth, we celebrate influential poet and longtime U professor John Berryman with a free, public conference October 24-26 at Andersen Library. Publisher FSG has just released new versions of Berryman's Sonnets, 77 Dream Songs, and The Dream Songs, along with a New & Selected--and series editor Daniel Swift will give the conference keynote, along with poets April Bernard, Henri Cole, and Michael Hofmann, who introduced the three reprints. Here are 10 reasons to join us for a weekend delving into the words and worlds of the Pulitzer Prize winner.

5 X Friday: Assistant Professor Kim Todd

Her work has been called "spellbinding" (by The New Yorker) and "beautifully written" (by Outside magazine). A big welcome to Kim Todd, a new creative nonfiction addition to the Creative Writing Program faculty roster. Todd has written one book about that vagabond Sparrow, another about a female naturalist who, in 1699, voyaged from Amsterdam to South America to study insect metamorphosis (Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis), and her self-explanatory first, Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotics in America. It's no surprise she holds masters in both environmental studies and creative writing (from the University of Montana). What led her there? Read on.

5 X Friday: Professor Julie Schumacher

Intent on figuring out how to construct solid plots, Professor Julie Schumacher wrote her first book for younger readers in 2004, a decade before young adult fiction became so popular it spawned an abstinence movement. Schumacher's third such effort, The Book of One Hundred Truths (2006), won a Minnesota Book Award for Young Adult Fiction. This summer she shows off her plot chops with the adult comic novel Dear Committee Members, a book consisting only of fictional letters of recommendation--from a single imagined Creative Writing professor--that nevertheless contains classic (and compelling) exposition, conflict, climax, and denouement. Indeed, as an admiring Slate review points out, what finally happens in the tale "turn[s] the book's theme upside down," revealing the moral weight beneath the undeniably funny characterizations. For Schumacher's favorite novel-in-letters and other revelations, read on.

Summer e-Quarterly Out Now

Our professors don't just go home and read after class: As our profile details, one competes in high-level competitive ice dancing; another spins African music as a radio deejay. But, yes, they also read: Professor John Watkins describes his latest perusals, including Solzhenitsyn and other Russian novelists. Plus a boatload of great summer books from faculty and alums. Check out the new issue of our alumnae/i newsletter, e-Quarterly.

Creative Writing Program Spring Newsletter

New faculty member Kim Todd is interviewed in the 2014 spring Creative Writing Program newsletter, along with Q & A with award-winning alums Ethan Rutherford and Amanda Coplin. Plus news about publications and awards from faculty, students, and alumnae/i!

5 X Friday: MFA Candidate Lalinne Bell

"Writing and justice work go hand in hand," says MFA candidate Lalinne Bell. Bell would know: She was already at work on a memoir that confronted the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia when she won the Scribe for Human Rights Fellowship last summer. A collaboration of the Creative Writing and the Human Rights programs, the Scribe fellowship encourages writers to pursue human rights themes in their work: It allowed her to research the testimony of other Cambodian refugees to the United States and write a specific piece about the 1975-79 Khmer Rouge regime, as well as better understand and frame her own family's story as survivors of the genocide. "I want to tell the stories of genocide because they need and deserve to be told," Bell declares. "Writers are the voices of the world, and that is a great power to have." Read more.



1. After graduating from Gustavus Adolphus College, you worked 12 years in nonprofit and government agencies, supporting economically struggling families. What made you want to enter an MFA program in Creative Writing?
Growing up, reading was my escape. I grew up in a poor refugee family, single mom. I was always encouraged to pursue careers in law or medicine, not the arts, literature, and history, all of which I love. Though I enjoyed writing, I didn't pursue it as an undergraduate. After having worked for 12 years and achieving that financial stability I lacked in childhood, I realized that I had grown complacent and had lost passion for what I did. But I didn't just have myself to worry about; I am a wife and the mother of two small children. I debated hard before I quit my full-time job at Dakota County [Office of Employment and Economic Assistance] to pursue my dream of being a writer. I realized that ultimately, I want to pursue my love of writing and that I should do what I love.
2. What was the most important thing you learned as a Scribe?
The most important thing I learned from my interviews is that most survivors want the following:

1. for their stories to be heard and the injustices they experienced not to be repeated;
2. for the dead to find justice, have not died in vain, and be remembered;
3. to keep their pride as Cambodians and pass it on to their children.

I hope to be one of the voices through my writing that speaks for those who are unable to speak, to give the survivors and myself the above three things. I learned that I may not be the front-line activist working directly with victims of injustice now (in a sense I was when working with Minnesota's poorest families in Welfare), but I can do my part in my role as a writer to help rid the world of injustice by bringing voice to that unheard. I know first-hand that through writing we can empower ourselves, understand ourselves better, and have a chance at being heard.
3. Can you talk a bit more about the need to pass along pride in being Cambodian?
In my interviews, I heard many, many stories of the atrocities of humans against each other, of Cambodians against Cambodians, until almost half the country's population were annihilated in a mere four years. That is the legacy of my former country, of my people, and of my family. It shaped every lesson taught to me at home. All the great tradition, art, music, and culture of the centuries-old civilization of Kampuchea paled to nothing next to genocide. The Khmer people became a people shaped and defined by genocide instead of perhaps one of the greatest civilizations in Southeast Asia, the proud people who built one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the Angkor Wat. Through writing, I can bring awareness to the Cambodians' horrific past. But I want to be proud of my heritage for its achievement, not its cruelty. I see the cycle of violence, how it perpetuates, and it must end. This is not the legacy I want to leave for my children.
4. Best book you've read recently and why?
The Disappeared by Kim Echlin is a star-crossed love story about a young Canadian girl and a Cambodian boy who comes to study in Montreal before the Cambodian genocide. After the genocide, he returns to Cambodia to look for his family. The girl waits for him; he does not come back to Canada. As a woman, she goes to Cambodia to find him. The love story is achingly sweet, set up against the backdrop of a war-torn Cambodia just recovering from genocide. The writer, though she is a Westerner, portrays the Cambodian mentality, misshapen by genocide, as if she were a native Khmer; and I understand both mentalities as a Westerner and as a Khmer.
5. Excerpt from the story you wrote as the Scribe for Human Rights?
I want to express my deepest appreciation to the Scribe program. I couldn't have written "Poan Bpro Peov" without it.

She works hard for two meals a day of a couple tablespoon of watery rice soup.
"You want a lot to eat but you do NOTHING!" a Khmer Rouge soldier bellows at her. To look at her is to see a thin ravaged soul with large hollowed eyes in a face of skin and bones. Gone is the bright and cheerful schoolgirl of a year ago. To keep you is no gain; to kill you is no loss! Within a year, her beloved Cambodia has turned into a hell that she cannot find the words to express. . . .
Sitha does not get to see her family, and being only seven years old, she misses her Mai and Pok fiercely. She cries herself to sleep every night and she must cry quietly or she is beaten for her tears. There can be no love or loyalty to anyone or anything other than Angka, the Khmer Rouge's government. Angka provides you everything!

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5 X Friday: MFA Alum Swati Avasthi

Ever hear of a "blog tour"? That's what young adult novelist Swati Avasthi (MFA 2010) is on, as she celebrates the publication of her second book, Chasing Shadows (Knopf). Young adult fiction has spawned a thriving world of bloggers, who for a blog tour review the author's book, ask her questions, and/or invite her to guest post. Avasthi's book has received a lot of interest, online and off, for its fresh combination of prose and comic-styled graphics: it was a November 2013 Junior Library Guild selection, and Publishers Weekly called it a "superb novel about grief, friendship, and mental illness." Check out some highlights from Avasthi's blog tour.

5 X Friday: MFA Alum Kevin Fenton

In his new memoir, Leaving Rollingstone, Kevin Fenton (MFA 2005) offers a summary of his story of growing up in a village outside Winona: "I liked those humans. I am sad they are gone." But of course the book covers so much more: the impact of pop culture in the 1960s and '70s (he's the little brother of dancing fiends); the unique nurturance of a Catholic education for rural kids not drawn to farming; the richness of families (nuclear and affective); the tricky weight of inheritance; and the discovery of vocation. In Fenton's case, it's clear the latter is writing--which he's committed to as both a creative writer and an advertising creative. He'll be launching the memoir with the help of local literati Sept 12 at Common Good Books; for now he's got answers to our five questions. . . .

5 X Friday: MFA Alum Ethan Rutherford

When Seattle native and fiction writer Ethan Rutherford moved to Minneapolis to attend the Creative Writing Program, he brought along a small career as singer-songwriter, with an album known, he thought, by few people outside his mother and sister. One night, at a Minneapolis coffee shop, he heard a stranger singing a familiar song, his song, a track from his CD. How could they not start a band together? Six years later, Pennyroyal (including MFA alum Jake Mohan, as drummer) is mastering its second album for September release. But back to the fiction: Rutherford graduated from the writing program and this spring published his acclaimed debut story collection, The Peripatetic Coffin (Ecco). For more about the book (and its mysterious title), read on. . . .

Graduate Student Research & Writing Awards

Congratulations to PhD and MFA student recipients of department spring and summer research and writing support! Selected for the Graduate Research Partnership Program for summer 2013 are: Patricia Baehler for "Epistolary Infrastructure and the Gendered Letter in Eighteenth-Century Novels" with project adviser Brian Goldberg; Wesley Burdine for "'What Was It?': Phenomenal Bodies and Temporality" with project adviser Jani Scandura; Jennifer Kang for "A Displaced Utopia: The Politics of Modernism in 1930s Colonial Korea" with project adviser Timothy Brennan; Stephen McCulloch for "Sublime Sacrifice: Excessive Force and Form in Fin de Siècle Literature" with project adviser Tony Brown; essayist Bridget Mendel for "The Honeybee Project" with project adviser Dan Philippon; and poet Nicky Tiso for "Bakken Business" with project adviser Ray Gonzalez. Graduate Studies also announced PhD Short Term Research Grants for spring 2013: Stacy Decker (Jani Scandura, adviser) Leslie Nightingale (Andrew Elfenbein, adviser), and Trenton Olson (Elfenbein, adviser). The Creative Writing Program awarded CLA Fellowships to poet Elena Carter, fiction writer Katherine Lee, and poet Jennifer Fossenbell. Poet Elizabeth O'Brien received the Michael Dennis Browne Fellowship in Creative Writing, summer 2013, and nonfiction writer Lalinne Suon Bell was awarded the summer 2013 Scribe For Human Rights Fellowship. Nonfiction writers Sally Franson and Hunter Sharpless received two-week writer residencies at the Anderson Center in Red Wing. Finally, the Marcella DeBourg Fellowship, which supports work that gives "creative expression to women's lives" went to PhD candidate Amanda Taylor for her project "'Be Your Letter'": Rhetoric, Bodies and Passions in Trobairitz Tensos."

5 X Friday: MFA Candidate Elisabeth Workman

For the second year in a row, writers in our graduate programs are publishing books while still students here, which is fairly amazing. Next week, in a 3 pm reading April 15, we celebrate three MFA candidates with books out or forthcoming: third-year Aaron Apps, who published Compos(t) Mentis (BlazeVOX) last fall; second-year Carrie Lorig, who will publish the chapbook nods. with Magic Helicopter Press in May and the chapbook prizePosession with Housefire Books this summer; and second-year Elisabeth Workman. Workman will publish her debut collection ULTRAMEGAPRAIRIELAND, in 2014 with Bloof Books. What is she feeling about that? "Ecstatic relief. (I've been holding it for so long and now can finally let it go.) And the ecstasy is that it's been embraced/accepted by my first choice for a home for the manuscript--the superlative Bloof Books." Workman, a native of suburban Philadelphia, has already authored several chapbooks. MFA candidate Nicky Tiso asks Workman the requisite five questions.

1. Did you submit any other places besides Bloof? What advice have you for people looking to get published?
Thanks to grant funding, I was able to submit to more than several book contests, which made me feel slightly dubious. The manuscript was short-listed with several presses, which was reassuring, I suppose, but I would encourage people to pursue the presses that are feeding their hunger. What are the books that land their tentacles all over and through you and won't let go? Which books make you a crazy writing zombie? Who publishes them? For me, that was Bloof.
2. Did those previous grants/fellowships help enable you to write this book?
YES. Funding from the Jerome Foundation allowed me to pursue a mentorship with Sharon Mesmer and travel to NYC to meet her and do a reading at Zinc Bar with the women of Flarf; support from the Minnesota State Arts Board afforded me the means to isolate and hide out in a cabin for two weeks when I was 30 weeks pregnant and finish poems for the manuscript; and the McKnight Fellowship meant I could finalize the manuscript, send it out, work on new projects, and not have to return to work full-time after I had my baby.
3. You've published a chapbook, MEGAPRAIRIELAND. Is ULTRAMEGAPRAIRIELAND conceived of as a sequel?
It's an expansion of it, an ultra-izing of the mega-ness, with more spectacle and parades and rabid revisionist histories.
4. Were your chapbooks self-published or did you have a publisher for them?
Grey Book Press published MEGAPRAIRIELAND; it was selected through their first open reading period/chapbook "contest," judged by Sandra Simonds and GBP editor Scott Sweeney. My other three chapbooks were published through the Dusie Kollektiv at the invitation of Susana Gardner, which proved to be, not only an exciting alternative to rote publishing patriarchies, but more--an exciting and generative international poetry community.
5. Books that have really influenced your writing?
E: There are so many. For this project, in particular:
*Disobedience, by Alice Notley
*The Golden Age of Paraphernalia, Kevin Davies
*Warsaw Bikini, Sandra Simonds
*Deed, Rod Smith
*The Romance of Happy Workers, Anne Boyer
*I Don't Have Any Paper So Shut Up (Or, Social Romanticism), Bruce Andrews
*the work, in general, of Sharon Mesmer and Nada Gordon and Elizabeth Bachinsky and K. Silem Mohammad and Christian Bök
*and lodged willy-nilly in my psyche, Titus Andronicus; Helen Adam; Keats; the Wife of Bath (she was gap-toothed, too); Tristan Tzara; and not least Lewis Carroll
More questions and a sample poem.
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5 X Friday: MFA Alum Elizabeth Foy Larsen

Our annual First Books Reading takes place March 14, and we're delighted to host three first-time authors: Discover Award fiction-winner (and past 5 X Friday subject) Amanda Coplin, poet Shana Youngdahl, and the Twin Cities' own freelance writer and editor Elizabeth Foy Larsen. Larsen has been inspiring reviewers from New York to WIRED with last fall's Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun (Bloomsbury), written with Joshua Glenn. Chock full of quirky activities, intriguing book lists, and savvy advice for kids, the book was vetted by Larsen's own children. What did they like that didn't make it in? Read on. . . .

Two Alums Win American Book Awards

The winners of the 33rd Annual American Book Awards, sponsored by the Before Columbus Foundation, include MFA alumna Arlene Kim and BA alumnus Ed Bok Lee. Kim's debut poetry collection, What have you done to our ears to make us hear echoes?, was published by Milkweed Editions in 2011. Lee's second collection, Whorled , was published in 2011 with Coffee House Press; it also won a 2012 Minnesota Book Award for poetry. There are 11 American Book Awards this year, across memoir, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. According to the Before Columbus website, the awards "were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community." The American Book Awards will be formally presented October 7 at the University of California, Berkeley. Congratulations to Kim and Lee!

Professor Hampl Edits Nonfiction Ploughshares

The fall 2012 issue of the literary magazine Ploughshares was guest edited by Regents Professor and memoirist Patricia Hampl. The all-nonfiction issue features a rare nonfiction piece by novelist and Edelstein-Keller Professor Charles Baxter entitled "What Happens in Hell." Other writers represented include Phillip Lopate and Mary Gordon. The issue is available now.

MFA Alum Writes NYT "Modern Love"

MFA alumna Elizabeth Foy Larsen published an essay in the New York Times' Modern Love column on Sunday, August 5. "Untying a Birth Mother's Hands" explores the experience of meeting the birth mother of Larsen's adopted daughter in Guatemala. The decision to search for the birth mother was a fraught one, Larsen writes: "Most important, what if our daughter one day resented that we made such a colossal decision when she was too young to decide if an open adoption was right for her?" Larsen is working on a book about international adoption. In October, she publishes Unbored: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun (Bloomsbury) with Joshua Glenn, with whom she writes a column at Slate.

Baxter Noted in Kaler Article

Seeking to reacquaint Minnesotans with the U's impact on "every one of Minnesota's 87 counties," University President Eric Kaler published a July 2 opinion in the Star Tribune listing recent accomplishments. Second on his list is the granting this spring of the Rea Award for the Short Story to Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing Charles Baxter. Kaler goes on to mention an English alumnus: "In Minnesota, 'above average' is important, but with apologies to Garrison Keillor (class of '66), this university is excellent--and far better than many realize." Kudos to Kaler for celebrating the importance of English and the humanities along with the University's technological and scientific achievements.

New Creative Writing Program Newsletter

Check out the Spring 2012 Alumni Newsletter from the Creative Writing Program for news and features about alumni, current students, and faculty. The issue features interviews with Director Julie Schumacher, about her new book for young adults, The Unbearable Book Club for Unsinkable Girls, and with Professor Charles Baxter, recent winner of the Rea Award for the Short Story. Finally, congratulations to this spring's graduates of the MFA program, who defended their creative theses earlier this month (photo left): Elizabeth Abbot, Lucas de Lima, Sarah Fox, Alex Grant, Amir Hussain, Chris Keimig, David Malley, Wahida Omar, Claire Stanford, Molly Sutton Kiefer, and Andrea Uptmor.

Minnesota State Arts Board Grant Winners

Congratulations to our 2012 Minnesota State Arts Board grant winners! MFA candidates Elizabeth Abbott, David Malley, and Andrea Uptmor received grants to support their creative work. Alumnae/i winners include Matt Burgess, Kathleen Glasgow, Brian Laidlaw, Heather McPherson, Margie Newman, Michael Opperman, and Holly Vanderhaar.

Minnesota at AWP Conference

Creative Writing Program faculty, students, and alumni are heading southeast next week for the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Chicago. Many are reading, participating on panels, and/or representing at the book fair, including Program Director Julie Schumacher and Professor Maria Damon. A sample listing here.

Charles Baxter Hosts Hunger Relief Benefit

For the fourth year, novelist and Edelstein-Keller Professor of Creative Writing Charles Baxter hosts the Creative Writing Program's Hunger Relief Benefit reading. The event features Creative Writing faculty, including Baxter, poets Peter Campion and Maria Damon, poet/flash fiction writer Ray Gonzalez, and novelist Julie Schumacher. Baxter is the author of Gryphon: New and Selected Stories (Pantheon, 2011) and The Soul Thief (2008), among other fictional works. His nonfiction includes The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot (2007), which won a Minnesota Book Award. The event is free with a suggested donation of $5.00. Proceeds will benefit Second Harvest Heartland, the Midwest's largest food bank. Sponsored by the Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writers Series.