SOUL BONE℠ LITERARY FESTIVAL
and MIU MFA Residency Showcase
Aug. 17 - 30, Fall 2026

Our online Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival pairs writing and craft with creative process, consciousness, discussion of the more ineffable aspects of the creative life such as the role of intuition in writing, and the intersection of writing with personal transformation and healing. It promotes the kind of writing and creative work that comes from duende, the unspeakable energies that arise from the soles of our feet and run through our spines; that make us feel physically as if the tops of our heads were taken off when we read or write (Emily Dickinson); that connect heart and mind and senses or marry body and spirit; that culture empathy; that reconnect us to earth and nature and each other; that spark the mystical soul and give life to our writing; and that include death and shadow.

Monday, August 17, 2026

• MFA Faculty READING - LIVE EVENT
  with Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi
  Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
  Location / Registration: This festival does not have an official registration via Eventbrite. If you want to attend events, please email the festival director at npassi@miu.edu for the direct link to events listed on this page. If you have the link from previous festivals, it will be the same.

Tonight we’ll open our MIU MFA Showcase with a reading with some of our core MFA faculty: Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi, the MFA program director.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of this MFA program and co-chair of MIU’s English dept. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, CALYX, Gulf Coast, Poetry Breakfast, Life & Legends, and more. Her poetry has been anthologized in Pandemic Puzzle Pieces and River of Earth & Sky (Blue Light Press), Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace (Glass Lyre Press), and Oxygen: Parables of the Pandemic (River Paw Press). Together with Rustin Larson and Christine Schrum, she edited the poetry collection Leaves by Night, Flowers by Day.

Jennifer Espinoza is author of the poetry collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019)., plus I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024). She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Riverside. Her most recent publication is “Everybody at the Same Time is Beginning to Understand There is No Such Thing as a Self.” in Gulf Coast. She has years of experience teaching and mentoring in creative writing at the graduate level and was a full-time faculty at MIU for several years.

Tuesday, August 18

• GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
  A Fish Leaps, A Cricket Sings: Imagery & Sensory Detail in Haiku
  with Mel McCuin
  Time: 1:00 - 3:00 PM CT (NOTE: This session starts at 1 PM instead of 1:30 PM CT!)
  Location: This event will take place in a different Zoom link than usual, so please email us at npassi@miu.edu for the correct link if you want to attend.

In this generative workshop, MIU faculty and undergraduate program director Mel McCuin will deepen the coversation on the image by looking in-depth at the haiku. To create vibrant haiku, a writer must use language that appeals to the five senses: sight, taste, touch, sound, and smell. In this workshop, participants will explore the role of sensory detail in poetry and craft three to four haiku. 

Melanie McCuin received her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014. She currently teaches composition and creative writing at Maharishi International University where she is our new undergraduate program director. Her writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, The Blue Guitar, and Unstrung. Her most recent work can be viewed in the June 2022 issue of Salamander and at howweare.org, a website devoted to the reflections of musicians, artists, and writers during the Covid-19 pandemic. Mel also creates video poems.

• PANEL and Q&A - REPLAY LIVE (followed by discussion)
  Knowing the Unknowable: Intuition and Risk in Poetry and Prose
  with Kelli Russel Agodon, Susan Rich, Mona Power, Jennifer Espinoza, and Nynke Passi
  Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room. This festival does not have an official registration via Eventbrite. If you want to attend events, please email the festival director at npassi@miu.edu for the direct link to events listed on this page. If you have the link from previous festivals, it will be the same.

Event from Spring 2024. This event will be replayed live in the Zoom room, the Library and followed by a discussion as time allows.

We don’t talk enough about the power of accessing the intuitive mind to deepen our creative process and work. Drawing on an inclusive feminine perspective and Indigenous wisdom, panelists chart their personal journeys into the mysterious wilderness of the imagination where we know the unknowable, where poems and stories sing in the trees of our bones, where passions ignite and dreams call from subconscious depth, offering metaphors as gifts. How can meditation, mindfulness, yoga, and self-care open us to silence so we listen and hear? 

In this panel, we’ll dialogue about our risky, glorious relationship with our intuition. Panelists share tools to facilitate creative and emotional risk taking and connection to intuition to help us hear our inner voices and peel back deeper layers of ourselves. Our panel represents an inclusive feminine perspective and honors Indigenous approaches to finding new ways of seeing and other ways of being as writers. Tonight we will hear from Kelli Russel Agodon, Susan Rich, Mona (Susan) Power, Jennifer Espinoza, and Nynke Passi.

Susan Rich is the author of eight books including Blue Atlas (forthcoming from Red Hen Press), Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, named a finalist for the Foreword Prize and the Washington State Book Award, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue, winner of the PEN USA Award. Along with Brian Turner and Ilya Kaminsky, she edited The Strangest of Theatres: Poets Writing Across Borders (Poetry Foundation). She has received awards and fellowships from Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, The Times Literary Supplement of London, Peace Corps Writers, Artist Trust, CityArtists, and 4Culture.

Mona Susan Power is the author of three books: The Grass Dancer (a novel), Roofwalker (a story collection), Sacred Wilderness (a novel), and A Council of Dolls (a novel). The Grass Dancer was awarded a PEN/Hemingway prize in 1995 and Roofwalker a Milkweed National Fiction Prize in 2002. Her new novel, A Council of Dolls, is a finalist in the 2024 Minnesota Book Awards. Her short stories and essays have been widely published in journals, magazines, and anthologies including: The Best American Short Stories of 1993, The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The Southern Review and Granta. Her fellowships include an Iowa Arts Fellowship, James Michener Fellowship, Radcliffe Bunting Institute Fellowship, Princeton Hodder Fellowship, USA Artists Fellowship, Loft McKnight Fellowship for 2015-16, and Native Arts and Cultures Fellowship for 2016-17. She is an enrolled member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of four collections of poems, including the award-winning Dialogues with Rising Tides (Links to an external site.), which was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional land of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people. She is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop.

For bios of Nynke and Jennifer, see first event on the page.

Wednesday, Aug. 19

• READING and Q & A - LIVE EVENT
  with Craig Deininger and Clint Martin
  Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room

Two beloved English department faculty will read for you tonight: Craig Deininger and Clint Martin, who frequently teaches in the MFA.

Clint Martin received his MFA from Spalding University in the spring of 2020. Since then, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals and magazines such as Sycamore Review, Sheepshead Review, Binary Review, Motherwell Magazine, and The Bluebird Word. Clint has been a reader for The Louisville Review and been the faculty advisor for The Midway Muse. Currently, Clint is a full-time faculty member of MIU's English department and will also be teaching two MFA courses for us this coming school year.

Craig Deininger received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also received an MA and PhD in Mythological Studies and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He currently teaches creative writing at Maharishi International University. His writing has appeared in The Iowa Review and he is a regularly featured for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Together with Patrick Slattery, he published a volume of poetry called Leaves from the World Tree: Selected Poems (Mandorla Books) in 2018.

Thursday, August 20

• GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
  Telling It Slant: Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Emotional Truth
  with Jennifer Espinoza
  Time: 10:00 AM - Noon PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room

In this workshop, Jennifer Espinoza is a guide in exploring poet Emily Dickinson’s concept of “telling it slant” and how you can explore emotional truth by coming at it sideways or from an unexpected, indirect angle, for more powerful effect.

Jennifer Espinoza is author of the poetry collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019)., plus I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024). She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Riverside. Her most recent publication is “Everybody at the Same Time is Beginning to Understand There is No Such Thing as a Self.” in Gulf Coast. She has years of experience teaching and mentoring in creative writing at the graduate level and was a full-time faculty at MIU for several years.

Poems:
• Tell All the Truth but Tell It Slant
• There’s a Certain Slant of Light
• I Felt a Funeral in My Brain
• Much Madness is Divinest Sense

Prompt 1 - 15 minutes: Freewrite about a chosen experience or aspect of your life, don’t erase or correct, just let it all come out.
Prompt 2 - 15 minutes: Write about an experience or aspect of your life using a single, extended metaphor/image system.
Prompt 3 - 15 minutes: Write a poem of ten lines or less in which you try to encapsulate the feeling of a specific life experience.
Prompt 4 - 10 minutes: Write something about your specific chosen experience in any style or genre you’d like; try to capture the emotional truth using what you learned through the first three prompts.

• READING - REPLAY LIVE
  with David Kirby and Barbara Hamby
  Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library

Barbara Hamby is the author of seven books of poems, most recently Holoholo (2021), Bird Odyssey (2018) and On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014), published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in many magazines, including The New Yorker, Poetry, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Yale Review, and The New York Times. 

David Kirby is the author of more than two dozen volumes of criticism, essays, children’s literature, pedagogy, and poetry. His numerous collections of poetry include The Ha-Ha (2003), short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and The House on Boulevard Street: New and Selected Poems (2007), a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the Florida Book Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Florida Arts Council.

Monday, August. 24

• MASTER CLASS and WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
  Writing and Myth: Why All Creative Writers are Myth Makers
  with Craig Deininger
  Time: 10 AM - Noon CT
  Location: The Library

In this workshop and master class, MIU faculty and author Craig Deininger will explore facets of myth that apply to all genres. Myth deepens all stories. It informs all transformation. Getting to know your inner archetypes and your connection to existing myths will great enrich your work.

Craig Deininger received his MFA in Poetry from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also received an MA and PhD in Mythological Studies and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He currently teaches creative writing at Maharishi International University. His writing has appeared in The Iowa Review and he is a regularly featured for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Together with Patrick Slattery, he published a volume of poetry called Leaves from the World Tree: Selected Poems (Mandorla Books) in 2018.

• READING and Q&A - LIVE EVENT
  The Inward Trip: the Untold Story of Meditation in the West
  with Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
  Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library

This afternoon, MFA mentor Jennie Rothenberg Gritz will be reading from her forthcoming book, The Inward Trip: the Untold Story of Meditation in the West, which has been called “a groundbreaking journey through meditation in America—from the arrivals of the first yogis and Zen masters to today’s mindfulness era.”

About the book: Meditation has gone mainstream. Across the country, in doctor’s offices and classrooms, mindfulness and yoga are touted as science-backed tools for self-improvement. But a generic idea of meditation—an image, a vibe—is in danger of eclipsing the practice itself. Journalist Jennie Rothenberg Gritz, a lifelong practitioner of Transcendental Meditation, sets out to trace the many forms of meditation available today back to their spiritual roots. From the arrival of the first Indian swamis in the 1890s, through the rise of Western Buddhism, she reveals how ancient Eastern practices transformed American culture—and how America, in turn, transformed the meaning of meditation. Along the way, Gritz visits laboratories at the forefront of new research, delving deep into the science of how meditation changes our bodies and our minds—and makes an irresistible case for how “mind-wandering” can enrich our creativity. Concluding with a practical guide, this is an essential read for anyone embarking on their own journey inward.

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz (she/her) is a frequent creative nonfiction mentor and core MFA faculty. She earned her Masters in Journalism from U. C. Berkeley and was a senior editor at The Atlantic before becoming senior editor at Smithsonian Magazine, where she edits features about science, history, and culture. Her writing has been published in The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and more. Her essay “Arab Music” appeared in The Lonely Planet travel series. She is also the author of the forthcoming The Inward Trip: the Untold Story of Meditation in the West.

You can buy The Inward Trip here. You can sign up for Jennie’s Substack about the book’s journey here.

• MENTOR READING and Q&A - LIVE EVENT
  All MFA Mentors for Fall ‘26 Present
  with Ben McClendon (Poetry); Eric Boyd (Fiction); Jennifer Espinoza (CNF); Clint Martin (Multi-Genre)
  Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library

Tonight all of our Fall ‘26 mentors will be reading some of their work so you can get a feel for who they are ahead of the semester! We present: Ben McClendon (Poetry); Eric Boyd (Fiction); Jennifer Espinoza (CNF); Clint Martin (Multi-Genre).

Ben McClendon (he/him) developed our narrative evaluation model and teaches Literary Theory for the Creative Writer and Writing Pedagogy, two courses he designed for our program. He earned his PhD in English (Poetry and Rhetoric) from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He also studied Creative Writing and English Education at Northern Arizona University. Ben’s poetry can be found in literary journals such as Rattle, Indiana Review, The Chariton Review, Stirring, Zone 3, and Redivider.

Eric Boyd (he/him) is a regular fiction mentor in our MFA. He is a winner of the PEN Prison Writing Award and Slice Magazine's Bridging the Gap Award. His writing has appeared in Joyland, Hobart, Guernica, and The Offing, as well as the anthologies Prison Noir (Akashic Books) Links to an external site. edited by Joyce Carol Oates, and Words Without Walls (Trinity University Press). He is the editor of The Pittsburgh Anthology (Belt Publishing) and holds an MFA from The Writer's Foundry in New York City.

Jennifer Espinoza (she/her) was our full time MFA faculty until Spring ‘24. She has mentored in our program in poetry and multi-genre and teaches many of our online courses, including a new course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” She is a trans woman poet and author of THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019), plus the new I Don’t Want to be Understood from Alice James Books. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Riverside. One of her most recent publications is “Everybody at the Same Time is Beginning to Understand There is No Such Thing as a Self” in Gulf Coast.

Clint Martin received his MFA from Spalding University in the spring of 2020. Since then, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in several literary journals and magazines such as Sycamore Review, Sheepshead Review, Binary Review, Motherwell Magazine, and The Bluebird Word. Clint has been a reader for The Louisville Review and been the faculty advisor for The Midway Muse. Currently, Clint is a full-time faculty member of MIU's English department and frequently teaches in the MFA.

Tuesday, August 25

• READING and MASTER CLASS - LIVE EVENT
  Memoir in Verse: Poetry and Personal Storytelling
  with Jennifer Espinoza
  Time: 10:00 AM - NOON PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
  Genre: Narrative Poetry (cross between memoir and verse)

In this session, Jennifer Espinoza will read from her book I Don’t Want to be Understood (Alice James Books) and talks about how you can tell a personal story in verse. This session explores the intersection between poetry and memoir.

Jennifer Espinoza (she/her) was our full time MFA faculty until Spring ‘24. She has mentored in our program in poetry and multi-genre and teaches many of our online courses, including a new course called “Writing Consciousness: A Queer Study of Emily Dickinson.” She is a trans woman poet and author of THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2016) and I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019), plus the new I Don’t Want to be Understood from Alice James Books. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of California at Riverside.

• GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
  Seeking the Sacred: Nature and the Body
  with Jennifer Espinoza
  Time: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
  Genre: Any

In this workshop you can write in any genre in response to Jennifer’s prompts on seeking the sacred: nature and the body. The workshop is run by MFA faculty, Jennifer Espinoza, whose bio appears elsewhere on this page.

• READING - REPLAY LIVE
  with Ellen Bass (poetry) and Mark Spragg (fiction, creative nonfiction)
  Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
  Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
  Genre: Poetry, Fiction, Creative Nonfiction

Tonight our long-time frequent guest Mark Spragg is returning together with a close friend of his, Ellen Bass, a poet we deeply admire. We are so happy to have the two of them read together from their poetry and lyrical prose. This is a replay from Fall ‘22.

Ellen Bass’s most recent collection, Indigo, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2020. Her other poetry books include Like a Beggar, The Human Line, and Mules of Love. Her poems appear  frequently in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and many other journals. Among her awards are Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, The NEA, and The California Arts Council, The Lambda Literary Award, and three Pushcart Prizes. She co-edited the first major anthology of women’s poetry, No More Masks!, and her nonfiction books include the groundbreaking The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse and Free Your Mind: The Book for Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Youth. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, She teaches in the MFA writing program at Pacific University.

Mark Spragg is the author of Where Rivers Change Direction, a memoir that won the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers award, and the novels The Fruit of Stone; An Unfinished Life, which was chosen by the Rocky Mountain News as the Best Book of 2004; and Bone Fire, which was published in 2010. The first three were top-ten Book Sense selections and have been translated into fifteen languages. He lives with his wife, Virginia, in Wyoming. Mark also has an extensive history as a screenwriter, writing the scripts for movies such as An Unfinished Life and Everything that Rises.. Mark taught one creative writing course at MIU in the 1980s and has been back several times as a guest in our undergraduate creative writing classes. He was our special guest during our first residency and has continued to join us for readings and master classes ever since.

Special treat this week for any of you interested:

• PBS Documentary on Mary Oliver
  Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World
  Premiere: August 25, 2026 8 PM CT
  Link: https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mary-oliver-documentary/37967/

Celebrate the life and career of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Mary Oliver. Shaped by a solitary childhood and rising literary fame, Oliver published more than 30 collections of poetry and essays on nature, beauty, and love. Here you can read more about her and read some of her work.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.