Nonfiction Writing Program News

Spring 2008 News

At the recent Graduate College Jacob Jakobsen Conference, members of The NWP cleaned up at the awards ceremony in the Division of Fine Arts: Maggie McKnight and Andre Perry were both awarded 3rd
place honors. Ryan Van Meter was awarded 2nd place honors. All of the awards were for essays that were read during the conference and judged against work from other students from The Workshop as well as painters, multimedia artists, and filmmakers.

Tom Fleischmann has a poem ("reasons for inking") in Hayden's Ferry Review, an essay ("fist") in Pleiades, and an essay ("instructions to self") in Pebble Lake Review.

Patricia Foster has essays forthcoming in The New Ohio Review ("Bullies") and Arts and Letters: Journal of Contemporary Culture ("The Narcotic Couch").  She'll be teaching in the Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City and in Prague this summer.

Jenna Hammerich has an essay forthcoming in Quarterly West.

Robin Hemley has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Katherine Jamieson was an honorable mention in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest.  She has pieces coming out in Tiferet and Yoga+ this spring.

Will Jennings’ essay, "After Action Report," has been awarded The 2008 Brenda Ueland Prose Prize by Water Stone Review and will be published in the fall.

Jeremy Jones has an article called "Fiddlin' in the Grove" coming out in the May issue of the magazine, Our State: Down Home in North Carolina.

Colleen Kinder received a Fulbright for Mexico and a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation for this summer in Iceland. She also has an essay forthcoming in The Gettysburg Review.

Amy Kolen has an essay forthcoming in Bayou Magazine and one in The Daily Palette later this month.

Nick Kowalczyk has accepted a position as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College, where he will teach a mixture of classes in literary journalism, personal essay, and freshman composition. This May, Nick will lead a nonfiction panel and give a reading from his MFA thesis, "The Story of Home," at the annual conference for The Society for the Study of Midwest Literature. He also will have an essay/profile, "As I Lay Dying," in the spring/summer issue of Ninth Letter.

Aviya Kushner has new review essays in The Jerusalem Post and The Wilson Quarterly. She just accepted a faculty position as a professor of nonfiction writing at Columbia College Chicago.

Margaret MacInnis has essays forthcoming in The Briar Cliff Review, Calyx, and Colorado Review, and she is in the current issue of River Teeth. In August 2008, she will be a fellow at VCCA France.

Maggie McKnight received a Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation grant for her book-in-progress (“Misconception: The Story of a Family”--from which her thesis is excerpted). She received third place in the Fine Arts division at the Jacobsen Conference and received an honorable mention grant from the Astraea Foundation Lesbian Writer's Fund for her book-in-progress.

June Melby won The Marcus Bach Fellowship for the academic year 2008-2009 for completion of her thesis and memoir, "little house on the astrotuf," about growing up on a miniature golf course.

Tom Montgomery-Fate had an essay published in River Teeth ("To Box the Wind") and three published in the Perspectives section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune ("Coyotes at the Mall," "February" and "Lake Glass"). "Lake Glass" also aired on National Public Radio.  He has new essays forthcoming in The Iowa Review and Orion.

Cheyenne Nimes has two pieces forthcoming in Ninth Letter, and Cannot Exist- coming out in June- will feature three pieces on global warming. Work is also in the current Hamilton Stone Review.

Mia Nussbaum's poem, "[The Chapter of the Rending in Sunder]" was nominated by the editors of The Beloit Poetry Journal for the Best New Poets anthology and a Pushcart Prize. This summer, she'll have work published in The Iowa Review, Greatcoat, and The National Poetry Review.

Andre Perry was recently awarded a provost's postgraduate fellowhship. He will be writing, teaching, and inspiring literary events at the Writers' House for the 2008/09 academic year. One of his essays was recently awarded 3rd place honors in the Fine Arts Division at the Graduate College's Jakobsen Conference. A new essay, "Language and Other Weapons" is forthcoming in the fall issue of Water~Stone. His 2007 essay, "American Gray Space" has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He continues to work as a staff writer for Cokemachineglow and as a columnist for Crawdaddy.

Dave Peters was selected as a finalist in Third Coast Magazine's Nonfiction Contest and the recipient of a Museum Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the UIMA.

Emma Rainey is an Obermann Institute Graduate Fellow, the recipient of a John Woods Scholarship for The Prague Summer Writing Program, had work featured on The Daily Palette, and is a finalist for the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Award for an essay titled, "Freaks."

Rebecca Sheir won First Place for Best Sports Story, Second Place for Best Single Story, and Second Place for Best Arts Reporting at the annual Alaska Press Club Awards.

Cutter Wood is the recipient of a Museum Writer-in-Residence Fellowship at the UIMA and the winner of the La Muse Fellowship.

Fall 2007 News

Hope Edelman is working on her fifth book, a memoir titled “The Possibility of Everything,” for Ballantine Books. Her monologue "Infinity" will be part of the stage production "Motherhood" and she has essays forthcoming in the anthologies Behind the Bedroom Door (Bantam, 2008), If I'd Known Then (DaCapo, 2008) and Now Write!: Nonfiction (2008). She is an occasional contributor to “Afterbirth,” a live, storytelling show in Los Angeles, as well as to Huffingtonpost.com.

Tom Montgomery-Fate had essays published in Fourth Genre ("In Plain Sight"), The Chicago Tribune ("Lake Glass") this fall, and has two forthcoming: "To Box the Wind: On Thoreau's Unspoken Religion" in River Teeth, and "Saunter," in The Iowa Review.

Ori Fienberg will have work out in the January issue of Subtropics and Opium Magazine Live.

Patricia Foster has a story forthcoming in spring issue of The Florida Review and an essay in Organica. Two essays are forthcoming in the anthology, Essays for Pleasure: Artists and Scholars Respond to Carol Gilligan's Map of Love. She was nominated for an Outstanding Mentor Award for the Humanities (because she rocks) and will be teaching a memoir workshop in Prague this summer.

Brian Goedde had an essay published in Brevity and a story in the "Lives" column of The New York Times Magazine.

Colleen Kinder has an article called "Liberia's Iron Sisterhood" in the winter issue of Ms. Magazine.

Amy Kolen’s interview with David Grubin Productions regarding her family’s connection to the Triangle Factory fire was included in the first segment of the PBS series “Jewish Americans.”

Margaret MacInnis has essays forthcoming in River Teeth ("No") and Briar Cliff Review ("Always Take the Baby"). Margaret was also one of five finalists in the Creative Nonfiction/ W.W. Norton Program-off ("What's In A Name?") and will be honored at a reception in NYC during AWP 2008. "A Day in January" (Louisville Review) is a Notable Essay in 2007 Best American Essays.

Cheyenne Nimes' second book- a novel titled The Dead Elvis Ball (finalist in the Chiasmus Press First Novel Competition, semi-finalist in Starcherone Press' Innovative Fiction Contest and supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts) is forthcoming from Blue Lion Books in 2008.

No Tell Motel will publish Mary Margaret (“Mia”) Nussbaum’s poems “Now It Begins,” “Saw This & Marked It,” “[The Chapter of the Ant],” “Northering,” and “This Picture Was Born When A. Wyeth Climbed out on the Weathered Roof of Henry Teel’s House” the week of February 28th. Redivider will publish her poem, “[The Chapter of the Preface or Introduction],” in their spring edition.

Jennifer Percy has an essay forthcoming in The American Literary Review.

Bonnie J. Rough has essays forthcoming in The Sun Magazine and Nightsun. She is also the recipient of a 2008 Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board.

Rebecca Sheir has had several stories air on public radio stations and programs across the country, including NPR's "Only a Game," WBUR's "Here and Now," Northeast Public Radio's nationally-syndicated "The Health Show" and NPR's Latino USA. She continues to produce and host the Alaska Public Radio Network's weekly magazine-style show, "AK"

Ryan Van Meter has essays in the current issues of Indiana Review and Colorado Review, and a forthcoming issue of The Southeast Review. One of his essays was also selected for Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to present, edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, available now.

Summer 2007 News

Erica Bleeg is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Cross Disciplinary Studies at James Madison University.

Ashley Butler has work forthcoming in Ninth Letter, Gulf Coast, and The Bellevue Literary Review.

Joshua Casteel has been invited to Princeton University to do a reading on December 8th of his play, RETURNS, produced by the McCarter Theatre.  Joshua’s first book, Letters From Abu Ghraib, is being released January 1st by The Essay Press.

Tim Denevi has work coming out this fall in The Hawaii Review and Bamboo Ridge.

Tom Fleischman has an essay in the current issue of Quarterly West.

Patricia Foster has stories forthcoming in Antioch Review and Southern Humanities Review, essays forthcoming in River Styx and an anthology dedicated to The Midwest.  She received an Art & Humanities grant from the University of Iowa to complete a film profiling nonfiction writers and taught classes in fiction and memoir in Florence and Barcelona this summer.

Brian Goedde is a new Academic Advisor.

Robin Hemley’s story, “The Warehouse of Saints,” which originally appeared in Ninth Letter, was recently reprinted in Best American Fantasy and another essay, "Control Issues," just appeared in the anthology, Living Blue in the Red States, from The University of Nebraska Press. Robin will also be reading at The New School in NYC on Sept. 24th.

Jeremy Jones has an essay, "On Honduran Airwaves: Saturday," in the Summer/Fall issue of The Crab Orchard Review (Vol.12 No. 2).

Colleen Kinder has an essay, "Protagonista," in the current issue of Quarterly West, an essay, "Horns for the Revolution," in A Woman's World Again: True Stories of World Travel (Travelers' Tales), and an article in The Washington Post's Grad Guide 2007 .

Megan Knight has an essay, "Inventory," in the upcoming issue of Fugue (no. 33, Fall/Winter 2007).

Amy Kolen has an essay, “Moenkopi Dance,” in the upcoming issue of The Minnetonka Review.

Margaret MacInnes was the 2007 William Raney Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, was awarded a 2007 tuition scholarship to attend Squaw Valley Community of Poets, and has an essay forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review.

Maggie McKnight has a graphic essay, "France 1993," coming out in the Fall 2007 issue of Backwards City Revie.

Cheyenne Nimes' poems about global warming are in the Fall '07 issue of Green Mountains Review (The Apocalypse Issue) and forthcoming in Runes Magazine.

Mia Nussbaum had four book reviews in the summer issue of Commonweal; she has poems in the current issues of The Beloit Poetry Journal and The New OrleansReview; and her essay, "What Falls Down" is in the fall issue of Greatcoat.

Elena Passarrello has work forthcoming in Ninth Letter and The Believer.

Dave Peters, Gabriel Houck, and Ori Fienberg all bowled 400 series for The NWP Bowling Kings in the Lone Tree Mens League at Colonial Lanes. The Kings are in third place.

Emma Rainey edited and contributed writing to the 11th edition of Introduction to Biological Anthropology, the 2nd top-selling textbook published by Wadsworth. Also, a chapter written collaboratively by Emma Rainey, Professor Carol Severino, and Matt Gilchrist entitled, "Second Language Writers Exploring and Developing Identities through Creative Work and Performance," has been accepted for the book, Inventing Identities in Second Language Writing, edited by Cox, Ortmeier-Hooper, and Schwartz.

Leslie Roberts is currently an adjunct professor in the MFA writing program at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she teaches the nonfiction writing workshop. Her book, The Entire Earth and Sky, will be published by The University of Nebraska Press in 2008.

Alex Sheshunoff writes a monthly humor column for the editorial page of The Anchorage Daily News.  Links to the first few can be found at his Web site: http://www.notthesharpesttool.com

Spring Ulmer's short story, "Monsters and Their Children," was published in Adbusters #72. She also reviewed the poetry anthology, Poems from Guantanamo, for The Iowa City Press-Citizen.

Spring 2007 News

Angela Autry Gorden (NWP '06) has an essay, "Transparencies", in Columbia: A Journal of Literature & Art, Issue 44, Spring/Summer '07. She also has another essay, "Manifest", in Fugue, Issue 32, Winter/Spring '07.

David Hamilton will be readig from Ossabaw at the Café Muse in Washington DC on May 7. 

Amy Kolen (NWP ‘00) has an essay, “Moose,” in the upcoming issue of Marginalia (Vol. #3, Issue #1).

Nick Kowalczyk has an essay “Constructing Spotted Dog” in the spring issue of American Literary Review. He presented his essay “The Fight” at the 7th Annual Craft Critique Culture Conference: Sex in Public/Sex in Private at the University of Iowa, and will present “Murder in Rustbelt City: A Return to Lorain, Ohio” at the Society for the Study of Midwest Literature’s annual symposium at Michigan State University in May.

Yiyun Li (NWP '05) was chosen by Granta as one of the 21 Best Young American Novelists under 35.

Margaret MacInnis was nominated for a 2006 Pushcart Prize.

Elena Passarello has an essay, "Kareninas" in the Spring 07 issue of Ninth Letter. She will also be presenting a paper, "Urban Music in the Teenage Heartland", with Brian Goedde at the EMP Music Conference in Seattle.

Andre Perry's essay, "American Gray Space" was selected for the N-Word panel at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies Obscenity Conference. He presented alongside a multimedia Brian Goedde, and his essay, "Strictly For My Ninjas".

Bonnie Rough (NWP '05) has new nonfiction in the spring/summer issues of Brevity, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Isotope: A Journal of Literary Science and Nature Writing. Her essay, "Notes on the Space We Take", will appear this summer in The Best Creative Nonfiction (Norton) and has been selected for the 2007 edition of The Best American Science and Nature Writing (Houghton Mifflin).

Jessie Van Eerden has an essay, "What For", in the current issue of Geez Magazine www.geezmagazine.org).

Winter 2006-2007 News

Amelia Bird had a paper about Teen Adventure Quaker Camp accepted as part of an environmental education panel at the New River Symposium taking place at Radford University in Radford, Virginia in late May.

John Bresland, who received a master of fine arts degree last spring from the University of Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program, is the winner of the 2006 Tamarack Prize from Minnesota Monthly. The $10,000 prize honored his story "The Cooler," which is published in the magazine's November issue.

NWP Director Robin Hemley gave readins this fall at Columbia University, Holy Cross, Trinity College, Marist University, St John's University. This month, he's reading at University of Alaska, Anchorage, College of Dupage, and Penn State. Robin also has a short story, "All Good Things Are Surprises", on NarrativeMagazine.com and one, "Reply All", which appears in Norton's More Sudden Fiction. His essay "Painful Howls from Places That Undoubtedly Exist," appeared in the December issue of the Awp Writers Chronicle.

Andrea Jonahs has an essay, "Waking Us All" in the current issue of Marginalia.

Colleen Kinder's Confessions of a High School Word Nerd, co-edited with Arianne Cohen, was published early this month by Penguin. http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-High-School-Word-Nerd/dp/0143038362

Yiyun Li (NWP '05) won the Guardian First Book Prize for her book, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. It was also chosen as one of Slate.com's best books of 2006.

Margaret MacInnis' essay "Carrier" was a finalist in the 2006 Mid-American Review Creative Nonfiction Contest. "Carrier" will be published as "The Editor's Choice." An excerpt from her essay "Days Before Seatbelts," which appeared in the Potomac Review  (Fall/Winter 2005-2006) will be published in Hacks, the Grub Street 10-year anthology.

Andre Perry's essay "American Gray Space" has been selected for the N-Word panel at the upomcing Obscenity conference presented by the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies on Friday, March 2nd at 1030AM in the IMU.

The Bedell Visting Writer to the NWP, Lia Purpura's book from Sarabande, On Looking, is a finalist for this year's National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism. The winners of the NBCC Awards will be announced in early March.

Rebecca Sheir (NWP '06), had her University of Iowa MFA thesis -- a three-part radio documentary titled "The End as Beginning: An Audio Exploration of the Jewish View of Death" -- aired on January 23 as an hour-long special on Chicago Public Radio's show, Re:sound.  You can check it out online at: http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/re-sound.asp Rebecca also had a story on Weekend America, the live weekend magazine-style show from American Public Media.  To listen to the story, visit their website: http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/programs/2007/01/13/model_to_musher.html

Spring Ulmer's poetry manuscript Benjamin's Spectacles was chosen by Sonia Sanchez for Kore Press's First Book Award. It will be published this spring.

November 2006 News

Tim Bascom (NWP '04) has an essay, "What Kind of Children" in the Fall 06 issue of Fourth Genre.

Matt Davis' interview with Pico Iyer appeared on Worldhum.com.  Another essay of his, "Quarantine," was selected as a Notable Essay in 2006 Best American Travel Writing.

Patricia Foster has an essay forthcoming in the Missouri Review.

Brian Goedde's essay, "Power Centers 'R' Us: Suburban Terror and the Rise of the Strip Mall" was published in the Raven Chronicles.

Katherine Jamieson has a piece in the December edition of SAGE Magazine, the environmental magazine of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.  

Nick Kowalczyk's essay "Murder in Rustbelt City: A Return to Lorain, Ohio" has been accepted for presentation at the Society for the Study of Midwest Literature's annual symposium at Michigan State University, May 10-12.

Yiyun Li (NWP '05) won the 2006 Whiting Writers' Award. She has also adapted the title story from her collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, into a script which was recently produced and directed by Wayne Wang.

Steve McNutt has a poem, "Works on Paper," in Fall 2006 issue of The Columbia Review.

June Melby has a poem "Inside this Circle" in the book Blue Arc West: An Anthology of Californina Poets, published in November by Tebot Bach Press.

Andre Perry has a feature article, "Delayed Attraction," about Brooklyn indie-rockers, the French Kicks, in this month's PopMatters. www.popmatters.com/pm/features/article/7229/delayed-attraction-an-interview-with-french-kicks/

Bonnie J. Rough (NWP '05) has essays in the December issues of The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, and Identity Theory (www.identitytheory.com). "Notes on the Space We Take, from Ninth Letter, has been selected to appear in The Best Creative Nonfiction 2007 (a new anthology from Norton) and her 2005 essay, "Slaughter," was short-listed in The Pushcart Prize XXXI. Bonnie also recieved a grant from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation to complete the series, "The Birdmen: Essays on Flightlessness."

Janani Sreenivasan will have a five-minute playlet, "Book Smarts," in the lineup of the annual New Play Festival of the City Circle Acting Company of Coralville. The Festival, held in February, features short works by local playwrights in a variety of genres.

Ryan Van Meter's essay, "Cherry Bars" was accepted by Quarterly West.

October 2006 News

Andy Douglas (MFA ‘05) had a cover story about prairie restoration, “Where the Buffalo Roam”, published in a recent issue of The Source. He also had a nonfiction story entitled “Articles of Faith” accepted by Iowa Writes -- part of the Daily Palette on the UI website -- which will be published shortly.

Patricia Foster (NWP faculty) has essays out in the Massachusetts Review (The Messy Self, a special issue) and the Antioch Review (Fall), a story in Southern Humanities Review, an essay forthcoming in Southern Review, and two stories forthcoming in Glimmer Train.

Brian Goedde (‘07) will present his essay, "Lorraine's Story", at the Midwest Writing Center Conference in St Louis on October 28th.

Jessie Harriman’s (‘07) essay “This Soul Has Six Wings" appears in the 2006 edition of Best American Spiritual Writing.

Steve McNutt’s (‘07) accident essay ("SUV vs. Bike") was one of two finalists in the Florida Review's 2006 Lit Contest.

June Melby’s (‘08) lyric essay “In the Future” was published in the literary journal [sic]; her prose poem, ”the prudence of living a flexible life” will appear in the anthology Kaffee.Satz.Lesen v.2, out of Hamburg, Germany, this fall; and the poem “Cupcakes” recently appeared in Loudmouth, a lit journal out of Cal State Los Angeles.

Lynne Nugent (MFA '04) had a piece in the New York Times' Modern Love Column on October 8th.

Andre Perry (’08) has a new music feature -- "Indie-Rock Stripes" -- up on the PopMatters website.  The feature discusses the band Film School and can be accessed with this link: http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/060920-film-school.shtml?

Three NWP alums appear in the fall issue of The Wilson Quarterly. Eric Jones reviews the book Route 66: Iconography of the American Highway; Aviya Kushner (MFA ‘05) reviews Isaac B. Singer: A Life; and an excerpt of Amy Leach's (MFA ‘05) work from the summer issue of A Public Space appears in the "In Essence" section.

Rebecca Sheir (MFA ‘06) has won an award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival for the second part of her three-part MFA thesis, a radio documentary titled "The End as Beginning: An Audio Exploration of the Jewish View of Death."  She will accept the award for "Honoring the Body: Taharah" in Chicago, at a ceremony hosted by Peter Segal, host of Wait, Wait - Don't Tell Me!

Alex Sheshunoff (‘08) had a cover story about building a house in Palau in the October issue of National Geographic Adventure.

September 2006 News

Eula Biss (MFA '06) and Colleen Kinder (‘08) have essays in the anthology Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers.

Robin Hemley (NWP Director) has a story, "Devotion," in the new anthology, 20 Over 40, which also features Gish Jen, Antonya Nelson, David Leavitt, and Ron Carlson.

Colleen Kinder also has a piece on Salon.com, "One man's prison: Cuba's leading dissident plans for life after Castro, and a Salon reporter gets hands-on experience with smuggling and the secret police” and an essay, “The Sympathy Test,” in this fall’s Ninth Letter.

Nick Kowalczyk’s (‘08) NonfictioNOW interview with Ander Monson is in the fall issue of Gulf Coast, "Form Forcing Content: A Conversation on Experimental Nonfiction with Ander Monson."

Margaret MacInnis' (‘09) essay, "Red" appears in the current issue of the Gettysburg Review.

Andre Perry (‘08) has two pieces in the cultural criticism site, PopMatters: “Plush Safe He Think: Shaping the Black Modern Rocker “ at http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/060717-blackmodernrocker.shtml, and “Running a Different Race” at http://www.popmatters.com/music/features/060508-walkmen.shtml

Bonnie J. Rough (MFA ‘05) attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference this summer as the B. Frank Vogel Scholar in Nonfiction. She also was named the winner of the Iowa Review Award for Nonfiction. The winning essay, “The Birdmen,” will appear in the next issue.

Alex Sheshunoff (‘08) has a piece in the anthology Tales from Nowhere.
http://www.amazon.com/Nowhere-Lonely-Planet-Travel-Literature/dp/1741045193/sr=1-1/qid=1157511662/ref=sr_1_1/104-6051738-0489500?ie=UTF8&s=books

Bonnie Sunstein’s (NWP faculty) FieldWorking: Reading and Writing Research, informed by her 14 years of teaching “The Ethnographic Essay” in the NWP, will see its third edition published on September 14. Look for cameos by NWPers Maggie McKnight, Nick Kowalczyk, Courtenay Bouvier, Rick Zollo, Karen Downing, Sam Samuels, Pappi Tomas, Mimi Harvey, Sarah Townsend, Elyse Fields, and Leah Williams.
http://www.amazon.com/FieldWorking-Research-Bonnie-Stone-Sunstein/dp/0312438419/sr=1-1/qid=1157552272/ref=sr_1_1/104-1055645-5871168?ie=UTF8&s=books

The FieldWorking website, at http://www.fieldworking.com, also got a facelift this summer, courtesy of Nick Kowalczyk and Andre Perry.

May & Summer News 2006

Tim Bascom’s (MFA 2004) memoir Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia, will be released June 15 from Houghton-Mifflin. Kirkus describes the book as “A stirring tribute to a turbulent, beautifully evoked era.” Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a starred review and says “Nostalgic but not overwrought, Bascom's memoir is accented with casual family snapshots like ribbons on the gift of a gently captured place in time." Tim just returned from making two presentations ("Trimming the Sails: The Art of the Essay" and "Spirited Traveler: Writing about Journeys, the Soul, and Sacred Places") at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing.

Puja Birla (’07) received a T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship for summer travel.

Eula Biss has accepted a position as a Visiting Professor at Northwestern University starting this fall. Her essay “All Apologies” is in the spring issue of Ninth Letter.

Mike Clark (MFA 2005) has a short fiction piece, “The Band Plays On,” in the new issue of Quercus, and he is the winner of The Wild Iowa Essay Project for his essay “Deep Time.”

Ori Feinberg (’08) has a piece, “Vintage Books,” in the new issue of THE BELIEVER.

Brian Goedde’s (’07) essay "Lorraine's Story," will appear in the spring/summer issue of Writing on the Edge.

Jynelle Gracia (MFA 2006) was named a Zora Neale Hurston Visiting Scholar for Naropa University's Summer Writing Program.

David Hamilton’s (NWP faculty) new book of poetry, Ossabaw, will be released this summer by Salt Publishing.

Jessie Harriman (’07) received the Edwin Ford Piper Memorial Scholarship for the 2006-07 school year.

Robin Hemley (NWP director) has an essay, “The Storeroom of Playboy Males,” in the current issue of Columbia; an essay “Jim’s Corner” in the current Fourth Genre; an essay “A Simple Metaphysics” in the current Conjunctions; and a story “The Warehouse of Saints” in the current Ninth Letter. His book, Turning Life Into Fiction was recently reissued by Graywolf Press.

Katherine Jamieson’s (’08) essay “Rob Me Again” is featured in the current issue of Brevity.

Collen Kinder’s (’08) essay “The Idiot’s Guide to Your Palm” will appear in Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006, due to be released in August by Random House. Colleen also received a Stanley Fellowship for Graduate Research Abroad for summer travel.

Steve McNutt (‘07) received a T. Anne Cleary International Dissertation Research Fellowship for summer travel.

Michele Morano’s (MFA 2001) essay “Grammar Lessons: The Subjunctive Mood” was selected by Lauren Slater for inclusion in Best American Essays 2006, due out this fall.

Ben Otto (’06) received the Marcus Bach Fellowship for Graduate Students in the Humanities for the fall 2006 semester.

Bonnie Rough (MFA 2005) was awarded a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, Nebraska. (The next deadline for applications is May 15; see http://www.khncenterforthearts.org/)

Margaret Schwartz (MFA 2003) is a contributor to the anthology Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes, (Soft Skull 2006, ed. Laurel Snyder), released last month.

Rebecca Sheir (MFA 2006) has accepted a position as the host and associate producer of AK, a weekend public radio program on the Alaska Public Radio Network, based out of Anchorage. Her first time hosting will be Saturday, May 27, after which the entire show will be available for listening on akradio.org.

Jay Vithalani's (’08) essay, "Coming To America," is in the spring issue of Spectator, the University of Iowa's alumni magazine.

April 2006 News

Tim Bascom’s (MFA 2004) “Baboons on A Cliff,” a chapter from his forthcoming memoir Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia, will appear in Boulevard in April.

Erica Bleeg’s (MFA 2004) nonfiction story “Obedience,” winner of the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize, will be in the spring issue of The Missouri Review, due out this month.

Debra Anne Davis’s (MFA 1995) essay "Fighting the Devil by Killing the Angel,” Harvard Review 26, Spring 2004, was reprinted as “Betrayed by the Angel” in Utne, November-December 2004, and honored as a notable essay in The Best American Essays 2005 (Houghton Mifflin).

Yiyun Li (MFA 2005) won the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Award for her book A Thousand Years of Good Prayers (Random House, 2005).

March 2006 News

Patricia Foster (NWP faculty) has an essay in the current issue of The Antioch Review and a story in Southern Humanities Review. In February, Patricia was the visiting writer, giving a reading a leading a workshop, at Georgia College & State University in Midgeville, Georgia (home of Flannery O’Connor).

Brian Goedde’s (’07) guest editorial "Iowa Spirit and Hot, Hot Controversy" ran in the Feb. 10th edition of The Daily Iowan.

Jessie Harriman’s (’07) essay “This Soul Has Six Wings” (originally published in Portland Magazine) was selected for inclusion in Best American Spiritual Writing 2006, to be released in the fall.

Robin Hemley (NWP director) has a review of The Partisan Review, 1949 appearing in THE BELIEVER in March. Also out this month are his “Sage Advice From An Acknowledged Master of the Form” in Rules of Thumb, edited by Michael Martone (Writers Digest Books) and  “Reading History to My Mother,”  in The Truth of the Matter: Art and Craft in Creative Nonfiction, edited by Dinty Moore (Longman).

Aviya Kushner (MFA 2005) has story in the spring issue of Zoetrope: All-Story (release date March 11).

Yiyun Li (MFA 2005) has a story in the spring issue of Tin House. Her story “After a Life” was just selected for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2006, and her story “Persimmons” was chosen for Best New American Voices 2006. Both anthologies will be released in the fall.

Alex Sheshunoff (’08) had an essay accepted for a travel anthology called Tales from Nowhere, to be published in September by Lonely Planet.

January/February 2006 News

Erica Bleeg’s (MFA 2004) nonfiction story “Obedience” just won the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize from The Missouri Review. The story will be published next winter.

Matt Davis (’07) recently won first prize in The Atlantic Monthly’s Student Writing Competition in the nonfiction category for his essay, "The World Conquerer, Once Repressed, Now Abundant, Who Sells Beer for a Living: And Other Thoughts on Chinggis Khan."

Sarah Dickerson (MFA 2002) has a piece, “Homeland,” in the Spring 2006 issue of Brevity (www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity), coming out this month.

Sue Futrell (MFA 2004) has an essay, “Reactor Woods,” in the current issue of Isotope: A Journal of Literary Science and Nature Writing.

Robin Hemley’s (NWP director) story “All Good Things Are Surprises,” which aired nationally on NPR’s Chanukah Lights program in December, is now archived at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5071946.

Aviya Kushner (MFA 2005) has a feature story in the current issue of PAGES, and an essay on writer Dovid Bergelson in World Jewish Digest. The new magazine A Public Space, for which Aviya and Yiyun Li (MFA 2005) are contributing editors, will make its debut on newsstands on February 15.

Natalie Pearson (MFA 2003) has an essay, “Slacker Mom: Looking Out for Number Two,” coming out this month on Salon.com.

In November, 2005, Leslie Roberts (MFA 2003) received her MA magna cum laude from The University of Canterbury in Christchurch, NZ, in English and Antarctic Studies, after completing a work of creative nonfiction for her thesis.

Bonnie Rough (MFA 2005) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her essay, “Slaughter: A Meditation Wherein the Narrator Explores Death and the Afterlife as her Spiritual Beliefs Evolve” (published in the Bellingham Review, Spring 2005, as winner of the 2004 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction).

Rebecca Sheir’s (’06) podcast interview with nonfiction author Ann Marlowe (How to Stop Time: Heroin From A to Z) is up on Nextbook.org, a website established to be a gateway to Jewish literature, culture, and ideas for Jews and non-Jews alike. (Marlowe's latest book, "The Book of Trouble," is due out this month.)

News for December 2005

Sarah Dickerson’s (MFA 2002) “Visitation Rights” is in the December issue of The Journal.

Selections from David Hamilton’s (NWP faculty) Deep River have been reprinted in Black Earth and Ivory Tower: New American Essays from Farm and Classroom, ed. Zachary Michael Jack (University of South Carolina Press 2005).

Aviya Kushner (MFA 2005) was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize in poetry.

Yiyun Li (MFA 2005) has a story in the fall issue of Zoetrope:All-Story and essays in the New York Times Magazine’s Life column (in September) and Food, Memory column (in December). Yiyun and Aviya Kushner are working with Brigid Hughes, former editor of The Paris Review, to start a new magazine, A Public Space, which will debut in January 2006 (www. apublicspace.org).

Nate McKeen’s (’07) essay “The Flathead Catfish Redemption” and Lynne Nugent’s (MFA 2004) essay “On Not Liking Kim Chee” are in the November-December issue of the North American Review.

June Melby’s (’08) poem "morning prayer" appears in the new anthology Lounge Lit (LitRhap Press 2005).

Rebecca Sheir’s (’06) Introduction to Nonfiction students will be airing their radio essays on Weekend America: Iowa Edition in December and January. The show airs on Saturdays, from 2-4pm (CST), on AM910 WSUI, or online at wsui.uiowa.edu. The radio essays will be archived at wsui.uiowa.edu/we.htm.

News for November 2005

Tim Bascom’s (MFA 2004) essay (see October news) was mentioned in a Library Journal review of Best American Travel Writing: "In this sixth installment of the series, guest editor Kincaid has selected 25 gems . . . It's possible that readers may experience mal de mer while reading about Bucky McMahon's rafting venture in the Gulf Stream... But they're sure to become immersed in Timothy Bascom's lyrical memoir of his childhood in Ethiopia, ruminate on Peter Hessler's realization that the American way isn't necessarily the best way in China, and chuckle while reading Seth Stevenson's satire on traveling in India...this anthology continues the series' practice of keen observations that transform ordinary journeys into extraordinary ones."

Eula Biss  (’06) has various publications out currently: an essay "Watch Out for Land Mines" in the current issue of Columbia: A journal of Literature and Art; an essay "On Lyric and Narrative" and a poem "The Donut Project" both in the current issue of American Poet; a poem "Dear Smoker" in the current issue of Hanging Loose; and an essay "Three Songs of Salvage" in the current issue of P-Queue.

Laura Crossett (MFA 2003) won Best Overall blog in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's 15th Anniversary blogathon contest with her essay “The Medium is Not the Message.” Go to www.newrambler.net/ramblings/back/62  to read the essay.

Andy Douglas’ (’06) essay “Slouching Toward Oblivion” was published in the last issue of the St. Mary’s College online journal, Mary. His essay “Letter from Chiapas” is in the Wapsipinicon Almanac, due out this month. Andy and Puja Birla (’07) spoke and gave a reading to Tim Bascom’s (MFA 2004) literature class last week at Des Moines Area Community College in Newton for their Year of India celebration.

Patricia Foster’s (NWP faculty) essay "What Needs to be Needed" (Shenandoah, 2004) was named a Notable Essay of 2004 in Best American Essays 2005. Patricia also gave the Keynote Address and a reading at the MUSE conference at Illinois Wesleyan University this fall, and this week, a reading at Penn State, Erie.

Brian Goedde’s (’07) essay “Classical Puts Me to Sleep” was published in the journal Popular
Music, Cambridge University Press, UK, October 2005.

Robin Hemley (NWP director) has an essay forthcoming in the Modern Love Column of the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times next Sunday, November 6. He also has an essay on Borges in the current issue of Tampa Review, and NPR is including an essay of his in their annual Chanukah show.

Aviya Kushner (MFA 2005) has poems in the current issues of Crab Orchard Review and Salamander. She has a story in the November issue of PAGES, and a review of a new nonfiction book in The Jerusalem Post. She also has a piece up on Bankrate.com and Yahoo! Finance that quotes NWP profs David Hamilton and Robin Hemley (see www.bankrate.com/ibd/news/pf/20051021a1.asp).

Mia Nussbaum’s (’06) "Portrait of Dorothy Day" was named a notable essay in the Best American Spiritual Writing 2005. She also has a piece in the fall issue of Third Coast, titled "Of Possible Worlds I Slip Into and Breathe, O Drink, While Remaining in My One Life and Chair."

Rebecca Sheir (’06) just attended the Third Coast International Audio Festival, a conference sponsored by Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ). Rebecca’s radio documentary, “No Free Lunch,”  has been licensed by WBEZ and will air soon on a show called "Re:sound." She also recently had a radio essay licensed by KCUR in Kansas City, Missouri.

News for October 2005

Tim Bascom’s (MFA 2004) essay, “Chasing Charles Wesley,” is in the fall 2005 issue of Western Humanities Review. Tim’s piece “A Vocabulary for My Senses,” a chapter from his forthcoming memoir Chameleon Days: An American Boyhood in Ethiopia, appears in Best American Travel Writing 2005.

Ann Bauer’s (MFA 2003) novel A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards was released this month (Scribner). Garrison Keillor writes, "This is a phenomenal first novel, a story of mother love and ferocity and doggedness, told with delicacy and humor. A writer waits years for a book so true as this, so knowing, so sure-footed."

Matt Davis (’07) has an essay in the Fall 2005 issue of the Bellevue Literary Review.

Elyse Fields (MFA 2004) has an essay in the current issue of The Southern Review.

Brian Goedde (’07) has an essay in the Modern Love Column of the Sunday Styles section of the New York Times this Sunday, October 2. His essay "The Presentation of the Self in the New New Journalism" was published in the magazine Philippine Graphic in August 2005.

Jessie Harriman (’07) has essays out in the Autumn 2005 issue of Portland Magazine (“This Soul Has Six Wings”) and the Clackamas Literary Review 2005 (“I Come Braided”).

Robin Hemley is featured in the current issue of Boulevard magazine, as well as the current issue of The Southern Review.

Amy Kolen’s (MFA 2000) essay “Canyon Interface” is in the current issue (Issue 30.1) of The Florida Review.

Yiyun Li (MFA 2005) received the largest short story prize in the world, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, for her collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers, which was released this month (Random House). She teaches in the MFA program at Mills College in Oakland, CA.

Rebecca Sheir’s (’06) piece “Friends Don’t Let Friends Eat Meat” appears in the current issue (Issue 9) of Herbivore magazine. Rebecca is the host of WSUI’s Weekend America: Iowa Edition (AM910, Saturdays 2-4, wsui.uiowa.edu).

News for April 2005

The NWP sent a large contingent to this year's AWP Conference in Vancouver, Canada, (March 31-April 2). Eula Biss read her essay "The Only Professional Player of the Toy Piano" at a reading celebrating the Bellingham Review. John Bresland organized the panel "The Video Essay: Writing With Images and Sound", described as follows: "Thanks to the freedom granted by digital cameras, the video essay is fast emerging as a new form of creative nonfiction. Agnes Varda, the poetic French filmmaker who coined the term'cinecriture' (film-writing), best described the promise of the video essay when noting that, for her, writing meant more than simply wording a script. Shooting, making cuts, designing sound - these too were part of that process. We'll show how sound and image alter the writer's relationship to language." John adds: "The panel was also my excuse to play Van Halen in front of 150 literary people, maximum volume, with textovers about how image and sound and text interact . . . and they liked it."

Other panel0ists included Maggie McKnight and Heal (see news from February 14) and NWP director Robin Hemley, who served on two panels: "Jazzing the Muse" and "Fixed Forms of Narrative." Bonnie Rough also attended.

Kirsten Giebutowski's "Iowa's Robert Frost," Brian Goedde's "Bridget's House,"and Rossina Liu's "Shrunken Twisters" will appear in an upcoming issue of Voices From the Prairie, the publication of Iowa's affiliate to the National Endowment for the Humanities. Voices has a circulation of about 10,000 around the state and country. The short essays were also broadcast on KUNI earlier this spring.

Angela Autry, Eula Biss, John Bresland, and Jynelle Gracia presented the panel "Art of the Ordinary: The Mundane in Nonfiction Writing" at the University of Iowa's annual "Craft, Critique, Culture" conference. The panel description: "The mundane, in nonfiction writing, can become the material with which we examine ourselves, our world, and our culture.  Nonfiction writers have a long tradition of remarking upon things that others would find unremarkable.  Montaigne wrote about books, Orwell wrote about grade school, Thoreau wrote about walking, Woolf wrote about a mark on the wall, Didion wrote about having a headache, Baldwin wrote about his father, David Foster Wallace wrote about not having fun.  The value of this work, for readers, is that it helps us see meaning in our own lives.  The challenge of this work, for writers, is that we must make something out of nothing.  This panel will include a brief discussion of the demands of this pursuit as well as readings by writers who ask us to examine how we live, how we think, and how we decide what is ordinary and what is exotic."

The Missouri Review Prize-winning essay "A Vocabulary For My Senses" by Tim Bascom (MFA '04) was selected by Jamaica Kincaid to appear in the Best American Travel Writing. (Richard Sowienski (MFA '04), managing editor at the Missouri Review, also had three MR essays selected for the volume, tying the New Yorker; only National Geographic topped them.)

Jo Ann Beard (NWP alum) has just been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.
 http://www.gf.org/newfellow.html

Eula Biss's essays "The Pain Scale" and "Arms and Armlessness" (an interview with Ander Monson) are in this spring's Seneca Review. A shorter version of "The Pain Scale" will appear in the "Readings" section of the June Harper's. Her essay "Goodbye to All That" will be in the fall issue of the North American Review, and her essay "Three Songs of Salvage" will be in the next issue of the yearly journal P-Queue.

Matt Davis has been awarded a Stanley Grant to travel to Mongolia this summer and continue work on his thesis, a memoir of his experience in the Peace Corps.

Andy Douglas has won the 2005-06 Marcus Bach Fellowship for Graduate Students in the Humanities for his MFA thesis project, "The Curve of the World." The thesis is a memoir about Andy's years as a monk and his studies with P.R. Karkar, a Bengali spiritual teacher and activist.  "Profoundly touched by this man's work to blend art, spiritual ideals and social justice," Andy writes, "I began to pursue a radical refashioning of self, slowly cutting loose from the moorings of the culture and religion of my youth.  I eventually became a yogic monk, and spent seven years working in this capacity in India, Japan, Korea and the Philippines." Andy will use the fellowship to complete his thesis this fall. He was the only recipient of the Fellowship in the English department, and only three in total were awarded in the College. To be eligible for the fellowship, "the applicant's project must focus on intercultural communication and/or the  understanding of diverse philosophies and religious perspectives.  Especially appropriate are  proposals which show an awareness of the ideas and research of Dr. Marcus Bach."   

Bern Esposito won the nonfiction prize in the University of New Orleans's first annual writing contest for study abroad in Europe. Bern will spend July 2005 at the Writing Workshops in Montpellier, France. Her essay, "Yemen Coffee Comes From Yemen," was selected from 144 nonfiction entries. Dinty Moore describes it as "the funny, yet unsettling, story of what it is like to make coffee for a living; but the customers are what add the flavor here, not the rich beans and piping water. The author offers sharp description, quick and quirky dialogue, and an accumulating structure to pull us out of our worlds and drop us plunk into the odd world of the west coast barista. The voice makes this brief memoir such a pleasure, as well as the restraint, the humor, and the revelation that our coffee choices reveal more about us than we might like to think."

Sue Futrell's essay "Prairie Skin," winner of the Wild Iowa Essay Project (See News, February 21), is now available online at <http://www.inhf.org/agrestal_futrell.html>. An essay based on Sue's thesis, Reactor Woods, will appear in Isotope later in 2005.

Brian Goedde presented an essay, "Fake Fan," at the Experience Music Project Annual Pop Conference in Seattle (Apr 14-17). Excerpts from Brian's abstract: "The first thing to know is that no one has to know. In my career as a fake fan, no one ever has. As a kid, I was taken to dreadfully endless classical music concerts but still stood to applaud at the end. As an adolescent I had no idea what I liked, but decided to adore certain groups to form an identity. This has led to life of liking music for the sake of my girlfriends, for the
sake of my friends who were in the band, for the sake of being a music critic (in that role I was also a fake hater)…I've done a lot of faking it, but it was such a convincing and genuine effort each time, even I tended to believe myself. So where did the forgery lie? When other reasons for liking music supersede an appreciation for the music itself, can this be a legitimate form of fandom? Considering that our cultural appreciation of popular music includes (requires?) so much more than a grasp of the sounds coming from the speakers, what does a pure fandom look like in the first place? This essay will attempt to untangle a love (of music) and its motives, in search of the realness." 

Yiyun Li has an essay about parenting in the Guardian and a story forthcoming from Zoetrope: All Stories in June.

News for February 2005

Ann Bauer (MFA 2003) transformed her thesis (a memoir) into a novel, A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards, to be published by Scribner in September 2005. The blurb: "Rachel is a young mother with a handsome husband and a life she adores when suddenly her older son, Edward, withdraws from the world. By the age of four, he is mute and sleepless, stony and distant from everyone who loves him. But Rachel is determined to reach him by any means and bring him back home.  A Wild Ride Up the Cupboards is a story about the extraordinary things a mother will do to help her child. It poses questions about what interventions and sacrifices are right -- and which ones go too far." Garrison Keillor writes, "This is a phenomenal first novel, a story of mother love and ferocity and doggedness, told with delicacy and humor. A writer waits years for a book so true as this, so knowing, so sure-footed."

Patricia Foster will give readings from her new book at the University of Tampa (March 3), the Florida Arts Conference in Tallahassee (March 4-5), the University of Montevallo (April 8-9), and Northern Michigan University (June 1). She will also deliver the keynote address at the Spirit of Women Conference on June 23.

Robin Hemley will also be on the road this month. He will read at the University of Utah (March 3), the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga (March 18), and Western Illinois University (March 23). He will also appear at the upcoming AWP Conference in Vancouver, participating in panels on "Jazzing the Muse" and "Narrative Fixed Forms."

Robin's essay "Jim's Corner" will appear in Fourth Genre in 2006. Graywolf Press will also reissue his textbook, Turning Life Into Fiction, in 2006.

News for February 21, 2005

Tim Bascom (MFA 2004) just won the Bakeless Literary Prize for creative nonfiction for his MFA thesis manuscript, Chameleon Days. The contest is sponsored by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference of Middlebury College and was established to give emerging writers a shot at publication. Chameleon Days will be published by Houghton Mifflin in 2006 in its Mariner Original Paperback line. This year's creative nonfiction judge was Edward Hoagland, who will write an introduction for Tim's book. Tim will also be awarded a fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Conference in August 2006. If the book is printed by then (as HM hopes), Tim will have the opportunity to do a reading at the conference.

Judy Copeland (MFA 2002) just landed a tenure-track position teaching creative nonfiction and composition to undergraduates in the writing program at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. She will be replacing Mimi Schwartz, who has retired. Judy's work has been widely published in literary journals in the United States and she speaks regularly on elements of travel writing both in literary roundtables and at writing conferences.

The essay "Prairie Skin" by Sue Futrell (MFA 2004) won third place in the "Wild Iowa" essay contest sponsored by the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation. Sue will give a reading along with other awardees on Tuesday, February 22 at a symposium on "Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination" (Iowa State University, Ames, February 20-22). The symposium - a discussion of the wilderness and our myriad connections with it - will feature several panels of possible interest to NWP students, including readings by Linda Hogan, Gary Snyder, Mary Swander, and others. <http://www.engl.iastate.edu/graduatestudies/CWsite/events/events.html>

News for February 14, 2005

Tim Bascom (MFA 2004) will chair a panel at the 2005 AWP Conference (Vancouver, B.C., March 30-April 2) under the title "Strangers at Home: A Reading by Former Missionary Children." He will read from Chameleon Days, a memoir of his childhood in Ethiopia. Judy Copeland (MFA 2002) will also be on the panel, reading from her award-winning essays about her childhood in Japan and her adult travels in Asia.

Tim also had a poem, "Irish Slip Jig," in the most recent Wapsipinicon Almanac (Issue 11), and his article on the sculptor Rita McBride just appeared in the magazine DSM (February-April 2005), published in Des Moines.

Patricia Foster's essay, "What Needs to be Needed," appeared in the winter 2004 Shenandoah. It's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She also has a story, "I'll be Watching You," in The Antioch Review, summer 2004, and an essay review, "Stripping the Memoir," in The Iowa Review, spring 2005.

Robin Hemley has essays and short fiction forthcoming in The Tampa Review, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine), The Southern Review, and the anthology 20 OVER 40 (University of Mississippi Press). He also has an essay online in Brevity.  http://www.creativenonfiction.org/brevity/

Last September Rebecca Sheir was a guest author at the 2004 Midwest Literary Festival in Aurora, IL, where she gave a talk titled "Foxtrotting with Fact, Tangoing With Truth: The Elusive Dance of Nonfiction." She also participated in a panel on UI's writing programs with students from the Writers' Workshop. Rebecca headed back to Illinois in October for the Third Coast International Audio Festival Conference, an annual gathering of audio producers and documentarians convening in Chicago.

News for February 7, 2005

David Hamilton had an essay in the most recent issue of Southern Humanities Review and will have two poems coming out in the next one under the title: "Notes for Essays I'm Not Likely To Write."

Amy Kolen (MFA 2000), who had an essay ("Fires") in The Best American Essays 2002, has had a number of publications since then, most recently an essay due out in the spring issue of The Florida Review.

Aviya Kushner has an essay out in The Florida Review and one forthcoming in Drexel Online Journal. <http://www.drexel.edu/doj. She also has a profile of poet Ilya Kaminsky in The Jerusalem Post, and a piece in The Forward on the first memorial to Cambodian genocide in the U.S. Poems have appeared recently in Prairie Schooner and Harvard Review, and are forthcoming in Passages North and The Saint Ann's Review.

Aviya has also written several Bankrate.com stories in the past month, and they have been reprinted on MSN.com and AOL Finance. One was the lead story on Netscape.

Yiyun Li has news of various kinds to report. Her baby boy, James Xunan Li, was born on January 10th. As for publications, she has a story in last fall's issue of The Paris Review, a story in the current issue of Ploughshares, and stories forthcoming in the February Glimmer Train and the March Prospect. A Prospect essay from last fall came out in Swedish translation in the November Axess, and the Spanish translation will come out in February's Letras Libres. Yiyun was also recently hired by Mills College to teach there.

Nate McKeen has a narrative piece forthcoming in the North American Review.

Mia Nussbaum's essay, "Of Possible Worlds I Slip Into and Breathe, O Drink, While Meanwhile Remaining in My One Life and Chair," is forthcoming in Third Coast's Fall 2005 issue. Mia also won first place in Alligator Juniper's national poetry contest for the poem "On the Other Hand Jesus is Adroit."

Bonnie Rough had an essay in the "Modern Love" section of the New York Times on January 30, 2005. http://nytimes.com/2005/01/30/fashion/30love.html?position=&pagewanted=print&position= Bonnie also has two essays coming out in March: one in The Alaska Quarterly Review, and the other in The Bellingham Review. The latter essay won The Bellingham Review's 2004 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction.