SOUL BONE LITERARY FESTIVAL
List of Public MIU MFA Fall 2022 Residency Events
Aug. 22 - Sept. 4

 
 
 
 

• Kelli Russell Agodon • Ellen Bass • Mermer Blakeslee • Laure-Anne Bosselaar • Nickole Brown • Joseph Cardillo • James Crews • Eileen Espinoza • Jennifer Espinoza • Linda Egenes • Anika Fajardo • Sherrie Fernandez-Williams • Molly Fisk • Valerie Gangas • Rafael Jesús González • Sara Henning • Lily Hoang • Carolyn Holbrook • Jessica Jacobs • Benji Jones • Ezekiel Joubert III • Jennifer L. Knox • Danusha Laméris • Rustin Larson • Emilie Lygren • Nathan McClain • Mel McCuin • Ahmad Qais Munhazim • Danielle Pafunda • Mona (Susan) Power • Monica Prince • Jennie Rothenberg Gritz • Sun Yung Shin • Katie Jean Shinkle • Mark Spragg • Lynne Thompson • Diane Wilson •

 
 

Our online Soul Bone Literary Festival pairs writing and craft with creative process, consciousness, social justice, 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, that connect heart and mind and senses, marrying body and spirit, that involve speaking out against in justice, that spark the mystical soul and give life to our writing, yet that also include death and shadow.

Below we list our public events that are included in our Soul Bone Literary Festival. You can register for our Fall 2022 Festival via our Eventbrite page, which will be linked in to this page by Wed. Aug. 17. All of our Fall ‘22 events are free and open to the public. Contact our MIU English dept. at English@miu.edu with questions or for more information.

FREE ZOOM REGISTRATION VIA EVENTBRITE

TIME ZONE CONVERTER if you need it. All events are Central Time.

 
 
 

MONDAY, Aug. 22

In our first festival reading, we'll hear poets Jennifer L. Knox and Nynke Passi.

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of Crushing It (Copper Canyon, 2020),  as well as the collections Days of Shame and Failure (2015), The Mystery of the Hidden Driveway (2010), Drunk by Noon (2007), and A Gringo Like Me (2007), all published by Bloof Books. Her poems have appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series. Her work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the New Yorker, American Poetry Review, and McSweeney's.

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of this MFA program and co-chair of the English dept. She was born and raised in the Netherlands. Her work has been published in 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 (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.

 

TUESDAY, Aug. 23

In today's master class, poet, writer, educator, and activist Carolyn Holbrook will talk about writing through trauma. We live in complex, conflicted times, and it is hard to know where to start processing what is going on in our world. This master class and workshop about writing through trauma is an essential gift for any writer to help navigate the waters of personal and collective trauma through writing, offering tools to help bring healing to self and world.

Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (Minn 2020), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is founder and director of the Twin Cities-based conversation series, More Than a Single Story, and is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World published by University of MN Press with More Than a Single Story (Minn2021). She is also co-author with Arleta Little of Dr. Josie Johnson’s memoir, Hope In the Struggle (Minn 2019). Her essays have appeared in many anthologies, including A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota (MNHS 2016) and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota (MNHS 2015). She is the recipient of numerous grants and fellowships. She won the Minnesota Book Awards Kay Sexton Award in 2010 and was a 50 over 50 honoree in 2016. She teaches at the Loft Literary Center and other community venues, and at Hamline University, where she won the exemplary teacher award in 2014. She is the mother of five, grandmother of eight and great grandmother of two.

 

On Tuesday evening, we host a reading with poet Jennifer Espinoza, a frequent mentor and faculty in our program, and her wife, Eileen Waggoner Espinoza, who is a creative nonfiction writer who will be a mentor in our program in Spring ‘23.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in Southern California. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a frequent faculty and mentor in our MFA.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a queer essayist and poet living in Southern California. Espinoza is the co-founder of Boshemia Magazine and the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been selected by both Dorothy Allison and bell hooks for collections such as The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Appalachian Review. She earned her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside, and her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky (2024). 

 
 
 

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 24

Anika Fajardo was born in Colombia and raised in Minnesota. She is the author of a book about that experience, Magical Realism for Non-Believers: A Memoir of Finding Family (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), which was awarded Best Book (Nonfiction) of 2020 from City Pages and was a finalist for the 2020 Minnesota Book Award. Her debut middle-grade novel What If a Fish (Simon & Schuster, 2020) was awarded the 2021 Minnesota Book Award. Her next book for young readers, Meet Me Halfway (Simon & Schuster) will be published in spring 2022. Her writing for adults and children has appeared in numerous publications including Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction (Norton), We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World (U of Minnesota Press), and Sky Blue Waters: Great Stories for Young Readers (U of Minnesota Press). She also wrote Encanto: A Tale of Three Sisters, the middle-grade tie-in novel for the Disney film Encanto. She has earned awards from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Loft Literary Center. A writer, editor, and teacher, she lives with her family in the very literary city of Minneapolis.

 

This afternoon, Laure-Anne Bosselaar will be offering a master class on choice of pronoun in creative writing.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, (Isabella Gardner Prize) and of A New Hunger, an ALA Notable Book. Her latest book, These Many Rooms, came out from Four Way Books. The winner of the 2021 James Dickey Poetry Prize, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she edited five anthologies, and is part of the Founding Faculty of the Solstice Low Residency Program. She served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara from 2019 to 2021.

 
 
 

  • ANTHOLOGY READING:
    The Path to Kindness: Poems of Connection & Joy
    with James Crews, Danusha Laméris, Molly Fisk, & Emilie Lygren
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Following the success and momentum of his anthology How to Love the World, James Crews's new collection, The Path to Kindness, offers more than 100 deeply felt and relatable poems from a diverse range of voices including well-known writers Julia Alvarez, Marie Howe, Ellen Bass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Alberto Ríos, Ross Gay, Ada Limón, January Gill O’Neil, Tracy K. Smith, Cornelius Eady, Kimberly Blaeser, Joy Harjo, and Linda Hogan. For this event, we'll be joined by James Crews, the editor, Danusha Laméris, who wrote the foreword, and Molly Fisk and Emilie Lygren, who are included in the anthology.

James Crews’ work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Sun Magazine, Ploughshares, and more. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a PhD in Writing & Literature from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and is the author of four collections of award-winning poetry, including The Book of What Stays (Prairie Schooner Prize and Foreword Book of the Year Citation, 2011), Telling My Father (Cowles Prize, 2017), Bluebird, and Every Waking Moment. He is also the editor of several anthologies of poetry: Healing the Divide: Poems of Kindness and Connection; and How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope.

Danusha Laméris is the author of Bonfire Opera (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020) and The Moons of August (Autumn House, 2014), which was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. Some of her poems have been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Prairie Schooner, The SUN Magazine, Tin House, and more. The 2020 recipient of the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, she teaches poetry independently, and is a Poet Laureate emeritus of Santa Cruz County, California.

Molly Fisk is the author of four collections of poems and three compilations of essays/commentary. Her most recent book is the anthology California Fire & Water. Her other recent books include: Naming Your Teeth (Essays); Using Your Turn Signal Promotes World Peace (Essays); Blow-Drying a Chicken: Observations from a Working Poet (Essays); The More Difficult Beauty (Poems). She is a frequent guest in our MFA program and is planning to be our poetry mentor in Fall ‘23.

Emilie Lygren is a poet, educator, and facilitator. She joined our MFA this Spring ‘22 as a poetry student. Her poetry collection, What We Were Born For, published by Blue Light Press, was recently chosen by poet Naomi Shihab Nye as one of the Young People's Poet Laureate book picks on behalf of the Poetry Foundation. She also wrote How to Teach Nature Journaling, together with John Muir Laws.

A poem has secrets
that the poet knows nothing of.
— Stanley Kunitz


THURSDAY, Aug. 25

Carolyn Holbrook joins us again this afternoon to talk about finding your story and telling your authentic truth. An essential workshop in times when truthtelling is healing and utterly necessary.

Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (Minn 2020), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is founder and director of the Twin Cities-based conversation series, More Than a Single Story, and is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World published by University of MN Press with More Than a Single Story (Minn2021). A more complete bio for her is included above.

 

Mermer Blakeslee leads many lives, as a writer, skier, teacher, and gardener. She has published three novels. In Dark Water (Ballantine), called by Connie May Fowler “a novel of uncommon grace and soaring beauty,” was selected by Barnes and Noble for its Discover Great New Writers series. An excerpt from her latest novel, When You Live by a River, won the Narrative Prize, and she was awarded three fiction fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her roots are in poetry and her poems have been published in the Paterson Literary Review, Heliotrope, and Narrative. Mermer has also worked intensively with fearful skiers over the last thirty-five years. Her non-fiction book, In the Yikes! Zone (Dutton) has been reissued in paperback, e-book, and on Audible as A Conversation with Fear. She lives in New York’s Catskill Mountains where she was born. Mermer graduated from MIU with a degree in Literature in the 70s, so she is an alumna of our English department. We are so delighted to have her back for this reading.

 

FRIDAY, Aug. 26

We are excited to have a presentation during our residency and festival by Two Sylvias Press, one of our favorite literary presses. Kelli Russell Agodon, co-founder of Two Sylvias, will be your host in this session.

About Two Sylvias: "Created with the belief that great writing is good for the world, Two Sylvias Press mixes modern technology, classic style, and literary intellect with an eco-friendly heart. We draw our inspiration from the poetic literary talent of Sylvia Plath and the editorial business sense of Sylvia Beach. Located in the Seattle area, Two Sylvias is an independent press which publishes the best-selling The Daily Poet and has created The Poet Tarot, featured in O, The Oprah Magazine. Two Sylvias Press also released the first eBook anthology of women's poetry in 2011: Fire On Her Tongue. Publishing poetry, memoir, essays, anthologies, and creativity tools for writers and artists, we offer a Chapbook Prize. in the spring. The Wilder Series Poetry Book Prize is open to women over 50 years of age and is held annually in the fall. Two Sylvias Press also offers online poetry retreats for writers who would like to generate new work with daily poetry prompts and creative inspiration."

 

  • MASTER CLASS
    First Things First: Rethinking Order & Structure in Poet Ellen Bryant Voigt’s Headwaters
    with Nathan McClain
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Today poet Nathan McClain will teach a master class diving in-depth into the craft of poems from Headwaters by poet Ellen Bryant Voigt.

Ellen Bryant Voigt grew up on her family's farm in rural Virginia. She earned a BA from Converse College and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her many poetry collections include Headwaters (2013), Messenger: New and Selected Poems 1976–2006, and Shadow of Heaven (2002).

Nathan McClain’s debut collection is Scale (Four Way Books, 2017). He is the recipient of the 2017 Gregory Pardlo Fellowship from The Frost Place, and a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Broadsided, The Southeast Review, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Drew University. 

 

In our very first MFA residency, poet Rafael Jesús González remarked: “Lorca said that the poet always yearns for silence,” distinguishing between a “holy silence” that includes silence “before mountains, waterfalls, the holy beloved” and “unholy silence,” when we keep mum in face of injustice. We have not forgotten Rafael Gonzalez’ words. Writers imagine the unimaginable, know the unknowable, say the unsayable. It is naming unnamable things that gives lifeblood to our writing and our world. Tonight, we'll be joined by Lynne Thompson and Nathan McClain, joined by Jennifer Espinoza, who will speak about the unspeakable in poetry: both the silence and transcendence that poetry springs from and the need for speaking up against injustice in this world. We apologize, but Rafael Jesús Gonzalez cannot make it tonight; Jennifer will take his place.

Lynne Thompson was appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles in February 2021. She's the author of "Beg No Pardon", winner of the Perugia Press Book Prize, "Start With A Small Guitar", and "Fretwork", winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Prize. She also won the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Colorado Review, Pleiades, diode poetry journal, New England Review, and Black Renaissance Noire. Thompson is Reviews & Essays Editor for the journal, Spillway. She serves on the Board of Cave Canem. 

Nathan McClain’s debut collection is Scale (Four Way Books, 2017). He is the recipient of the 2017 Gregory Pardlo Fellowship from The Frost Place, and a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Broadsided, The Southeast Review, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Drew University.

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in Southern California. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a frequent faculty and mentor in our MFA.

 

SATURDAY, Aug. 27

This morning, we offer you a workshop on writing through grief. The pandemic years amplified the experience of loss for many people -- loss of or worry for health, separation from family and friends, loss of income, loss of loved ones and bereavement, worry for climate and the world, loss of political rights, loss of mobility and safety, loss of normalcy, protection, and communion. The losses are accumulating to such an extent that it is easy to be immobilized by loss and grief in these times. Writing is a healing art. Writing can help us regain our voice and transform our experiences into empowerment. So how do we write through grief?

This workshop is offered and taught by Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza, a queer essayist and poet living in Southern California. Espinoza is the co-founder of Boshemia Magazine and the recipient of the 2021 McQuern Award in Nonfiction. Her essays have been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been selected by both Dorothy Allison and bell hooks for collections such as The Anthology of Appalachian Writers and Appalachian Review. She earned her MFA in Nonfiction from the University of California, Riverside, and her first book, Carrying the Bones: Rituals for a Dying World, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky (2024). 

You are not weak
because your heart feels so heavy
— Andrea Gibson

 

In this session, Mona Power is going to read to you from her novel-in-process. Her way of working is so free and intuitive; her characters work for her and she for them. It's been a pleasure to get to witness Mona's creativity at work, and we are delighted to have her with us today to share her work and creative process with all of you.

Mona Susan Power is the author of three books: The Grass Dancer (a novel), Roofwalker (a story collection), and her latest novel, Sacred Wilderness. The Grass Dancer was awarded a PEN/Hemingway prize in 1995 and Roofwalker a Milkweed National Fiction Prize in 2002. 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, born and raised in Chicago. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She was anthologized in We Are Meant to Rise and joined us for the reading from that anthology last semester.

 

  • CONESTOGA ZEN READING
    Lightbearers & Wayfinders: Conestoga Zen Volume II
    Edited by Minca Borg, emally june breffle, Rustin Larson, Angela Sickler, Almedia Stewart, Maggie Ventsias, Aliyah Warwick, and Elaina Whitesell
    Time: 3:30 - 4:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

All authors Included in Conestoga Zen: Volume II: Lightbeareres & Wayfinders are warmly invited to join us for a one-hour reading from your poems included in this anthology. Conestoga Zen: Volume II was created in a Publishing Practicum class taught by poet Rustin Larson. The cover was designed by Maggie Ventsias. The volume was edited by Minca Borg, emally june breffle, Rustin Larson, Angela Sickler, Almedia Stewart, Maggie Ventsias, Aliyah Warwick, and Elaina Whitesell. Poet Rustin Larson will be your host.

 
 
 

Tonight we host a much-anticipated reading with two fine poets who have been with us in earlier residencies, plus last night for our panel: Lynne Thompson and Nathan McClain.

Lynne Thompson was appointed Poet Laureate for the City of Los Angeles in February 2021. She's the author of "Beg No Pardon", winner of the Perugia Press Book Prize, "Start With A Small Guitar", and "Fretwork", winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Prize. She also won the Great Lakes Colleges Association’s New Writers Award. Recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Colorado Review, Pleiades, diode poetry journal, New England Review, and Black Renaissance Noire. Thompson is Reviews & Essays Editor for the journal, Spillway. She serves on the Board of Cave Canem.

Nathan McClain’s debut collection is Scale (Four Way Books, 2017). He is the recipient of the 2017 Gregory Pardlo Fellowship from The Frost Place, and a graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program for Writers. A Cave Canem fellow, his poems have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Callaloo, Ploughshares, Broadsided, The Southeast Review, Tinderbox, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and teaches creative writing at Drew University.

 

SUNDAY, Aug. 28

Mel McCuin presents a brief history of visual poetry and shares some recent work. 

Mel McCuin received her BA in History from Arizona State University in 2005 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014.  Her writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, and Unstrung, among others. 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. She currently teaches composition and creative writing at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA.

 

  • WORKSHOP
    Writing the Disturbed Essay: Memory & Identity
    with Katie Jean Shinkle, Monica Prince, Danielle Pafunda, and Lily Hoang
    AWP EVENT
    Time: 2:30 - 4:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Today and this evening, we will be joined for a workshop and reading on the topic of "Writing the Disturbed Essay: Memory & Identity." Participants are Katie Jean Shinkle, Monica Prince, Danielle Pafunda, and Lily Hoang whose bios are included under the evening event below.

While personal essay often serves as vessel for the exploration of memory and the construction of identity, the disturbed essay stirs up the sediment, allows for memory’s paradoxes, and helps us reevaluate what we reach towards when we write. It allows us to refute dominant narratives about LGBTQIA+, PoC, and disabled lives. Those elements of the past that wake us, interfere with the coherent story of a self, and invade our privacy become the radical heart of a truer story.

This phenomenal panel was first offered at AWP 2022. We now host Katie Jean Shinkle, Monica Prince, Danielle Pafunda, and Lilly Hoang for an afternoon workshop and an evening reading.

 
 
 

  • READING
    Writing the Disturbed Essay: Memory & Identity
    with Katie Jean Shinkle, Monica Prince, Danielle Pafunda, and Lily Hoang
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Tonight, our afternoon workshop leaders will be back to read from their own work on the topic of "Writing the Disturbed Essay: Memory & Identity," an event expanded from their AWP ‘22 offering.

Katie Jean Shinkle is the author of four books and seven chapbooks, most recently None of This is an Invitation (coauthored with Jessica Alexander, Astrophil Press at University of South Dakota, forthcoming) and Thick City (Bull City Press, forthcoming). Our Prayers After the Fire, originally published on Blue Square Press, was recently reissued by Spuyten Duyvil in 2022. Other work can be found in or is forthcoming from Flaunt Magazine, Gulf Coast, Denver Quarterly, Fugue, Crazyhorse, Witness, South Dakota Review, and elsewhere.

Monica Prince teaches activist and performance writing at Susquehanna University in Pennsylvania. She is the author of How to Exterminate the Black Woman: A Choreopoem ([PANK], 2020), Instructions for Temporary Survival (Red Mountain Press, 2019), and Letters from the Other Woman (Grey Book Press, 2018). She is the managing editor of the SFWP Quarterly. Her work appears in Wildness, The Missouri Review, The Texas Review, The Rumpus, MadCap Review, American Poetry Journal, and elsewhere.

Danielle Pafunda is the author of nine books of prose and poetry: Spite (The Operating System), The Book of Scab (Ricochet Editions), Beshrew (Dusie Press), The Dead Girls Speak in Unison (Bloof Books), Natural History Rape Museum (Bloof Books), Manhater (Dusie Press), Iatrogenic (Noemi Press), My Zorba (Bloof Books), and Pretty Young Thing (Soft Skull Press). She's published two chapbooks: Cram (Essay Press) and When You Left Me in the Rutted Terrain of Our Love at the Border, Which I Could Not Cross, Remaining a Citizen of This Corrupt Land (Birds of Lace).

Lily Hoang is the author of six books, including Underneath (winner of the Red Hen Press Fiction Award), A Bestiary (PEN/USA Non-Fiction Award finalist), and Changing (recipient of a PEN/Open Books Award). Her micro-tale collection The Mute Kids is forthcoming in 2022. She teaches in the MFA in Literary Arts at UC San Diego. 

 
 
 

MONDAY, Aug. 29

Tonight our Fall '22 mentors will offer you a reading of their work. We feel so luck to have them with us: Jennifer Espinoza (Multi-Genre), Linda Egenes (Fiction), Jennie Rothenberg Gritz (Creative Nonfiction), and Rustin Larson (Poetry).

Joshua Jennifer Espinoza is a trans woman poet living in California. Her work has been featured in Poetry, Denver Quarterly, American Poetry Review, Poem-a-Day, Lambda Literary, PEN America, The Offing, and elsewhere. Her full-length collection THERE SHOULD BE FLOWERS was published by Civil Coping Mechanisms in 2016. She also is the author of  I’m Alive / It Hurts / I Love It (Big Lucks 2019). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside, and is a core faculty and frequent mentor in our MIU MFA in Creative Writing.

Rustin Larson is a seven-time Pushcart nominee whose fiction has appeared in Delmarva Review, Wapsipinicon Almanac, and The MacGuffin. His poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, Iowa Review, North American Review, and Poetry East. He is author of Bum Cantos (Blue Light Press), The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press), Crazy Star (Loess Hills Press), and numerous other books. He is also a core faculty member and frequent mentor in our MIU MFA in Creative Writing. 

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz earned her MA in Journalism at UC Berkeley. She 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 The Lonely Planet travel series. She is an alumna of our English department, earning her undergraduate degree in Literature at MIU as well as a repeat mentor in our MFA.

Linda Egenes has written over 500 articles and six books on green and healthy living. Her latest book, The Ramayana: A New Retelling of Valmiki's Ancient Epic--Complete and Comprehensive, co-authored with Kumuda Reddy, M.D., was published in 2016 with Tarcher Perigee (Penguin Random House). She is the author of Visits with the Amish: Impressions of the Plain Life (University of Iowa Press, 2010) and four other books. She is a repeat mentor in our MFA.

 

TUESDAY, Aug. 30

In this event, author Joseph Cardillo will talk about his journey as an author, how he crafted a living in and outside of academia with his work, offering pointers and advice.

Joseph Cardillo, PhD, is an American writer, philosopher, and bestselling author of several books in the fields of health, mind-body-spirit, and psychology. His books include The 12 Rules of Attention: How to Avoid Screw-ups, Free Up Headspace, Do More and Be More at Work; Body Intelligence: Harness Your Body’s Energies for Your Best Life; Your Playlist Can Change Your Life; Can I Have Your Attention: How to Think Fast, Find Your Focus and Sharpen Your Concentration; and the body energy classic, Be Like Water. In addition, he has co-written books for Harvard Health Publications.

 
 
 

  • ANTHOLOGY READING:
    We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World
    (edited by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura)
    Introduced by Carolyn Holbrook, with Diane Wilson, Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Ahmad Qais Munhazim, and Sun Yung Shin
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

We are honored to host a reading of the anthology We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, edited by Carolyn Holbrook and David Mura. Our readers tonight are Sherrie Fernandez-Williams, Ahmad Qais Munhazim, Diane Wilson, and Sun Yung Shin. Carolyn Holbrook will introduce and curated this evening for us.

The anthology We Are Meant to Rise is a brilliant and rich gathering of diverse Minnesota voices on the American experience of this past year and beyond. In this book, Indigenous writers and writers of color bear witness to one of the most unsettling years in U.S. history. Essays and poems vividly reflect the traumas we endured in 2020, beginning with the COVID-19 pandemic, deepened by the blatant murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers and the uprisings that immersed our city into the epicenter of worldwide demands for justice.

"A powerful and passionate take on a fraught moment." —Publishers Weekly

Sherrie Fernandez-Williams is a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow and the author of Soft: A Memoir. Fernandez-Williams has published poems in journals including New Limestone Review, Aquifer: The Florida Review, and the Minnesota Review, among others. Her essays can be found in the anthologies, We are Meant to Rise, How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse, and The Poverty and Education Reader: A Call for Equity in Many Voices. She co-curates the Queer Voices Reading Series and Writing Circles.

Ahmad Qais Munhazim, a genderqueer Afghan, Muslim and perpetually displaced, is an assistant professor of global studies at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. As an interdisciplinary scholar, de/colonial ethnographer, and community activist, Munhazim’s work troubles borders of academia, activism and art while exploring everyday experiences of migration and war in the lives of queer and trans Afghans. Munhazim is preparing their book manuscript based on a de/colonial ethnography of queer and trans Afghans in Afghanistan and Afghan refugees, immigrants, and asylum seekers in the United States. Munhazim holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and has been published in many journals and anthologies.

신 선 영 Sun Yung Shin (she/they) is a Korean-born writer and is author of four books of poems: The Wet Hex (Coffee House Press 2022); Unbearable Splendor (Minnesota Book Award winner); Rough, and Savage; and Skirt Full of Black (Asian American Literary Award). They are the editor of three prose anthologies: What We Hunger For: Refugee & Immigrant Stories about Food & Family; A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota; (co-editor of) Outsiders Within: Writing on Transracial Adoption. They are also the author of two illustrated books for children. They are a 2022 MacDowell Fellow and a current Benedict Distinguished Lecturer at Carleton College.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, speaker, and educator, who has published two award-winning books, a middle-grade biography, as well as essays in numerous publications. Her new novel The Seed Keeper (Milkweed Editions) won the MN Book Award in novel and short story. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies, Wilson is a Mdewakanton descendent enrolled on the Rosebud Reservation.

 
 
 

WEDNESDAY, Aug. 31

In this session, our MFA creative nonfiction mentor, Jennie Rothenberg Grtiz, Senior Editor at Smithsonian, is pairing up with journalist Benji Jones to talk about science writing. Both Jennie and Benji grew up in our Fairfield, IA, community. We are so glad to have them back!

Jennie Rothenberg Gritz earned her MA in Journalism at UC Berkeley. She 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 The Lonely Planet travel series. She is an alumna of our English department, earning her undergraduate degree in Literature at MIU as well as a repeat mentor in our MFA.

Benji Jones is an environmental reporter at Vox based in Brooklyn, NY. He previously covered the energy industry as a senior reporter at Business Insider. His writing also appears in National Geographic, Smithsonian, and Audubon Magazine. Benji has an MS in ecology and evolution from Stanford University. He grew up in our community in Fairfield.


 
 

Tonight our long-time mentor and 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.

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.

 

THURSDAY, Sept. 1

Valerie Gangas is a speaker and author who specializes in helping
people gain a deeper understanding of who they are, so they can genuinely thrive and unleash their magic more fully into the world. After her first Transcendental Meditation experience in the winter of 2011, Valerie's spiritual awakening gave rise to an inspired, non-stop outpouring of insight, creativity and empowerment—the focus of which is especially targeted for women—resulting in her Amazon bestselling book: Enlightenment Is Sexy: Every Woman’s Guide to a Magical Life.

She will speak at our residency about self-trust, finding your authentic voice and purpose, the impact Transcendental Meditation had on her creative process, how to go with your gut, how to speak your truth, and how to market and brand yourself as a writer.

 
 
 

Sara Henning and Kelli Russell Agodon will both be reading from their new books for us tonight!

Sara Henning is the author of Terra Incognita (Ohio University Press, 2022), View from True North (Southern Illinois University Press, 2018), co-winner of the 2017 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition Award and the 2019 High Plains Book Award. Her honors include the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, the George Bogin Memorial Award, the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, and awards from the Sewanee Writers' Conference and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been published in journals such as Quarterly West, Crab Orchard Review, Witness, Crazyhorse, Meridian, and the Cincinnati Review.

Kelli Russell Agodon is the author of four collection 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.

 

FRIDAY, Sept. 2

  • READING plus Q & A
    ”My Abortion at 11 Wasn’t a Choice. It Was My Life” with Nicole Walker
    Time: 1:30 - 2:30 PM CT

In this hour, Nicole Walker is going to read “My Abortion at 11 Wasn’t a Choice. It Was My Life,” her guest essay published in The New York Times Opinion section on Aug. 18, 2022. Nicole appeared on Lawrence O'Donnell / MSNBC on the same day to talk about the essay and her experience. We are so lucky to have her join us today for a reading and discussion on this most poignant topic.

Nicole Walker is the author of Processed Meat: Essays on Food, Flesh, and Navigating Disaster, The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet and Sustainability: A Love Story and A Survival Guide for Life in the Ruins. Her previous books include Where the Tiny Things Are, Egg, Micrograms, Quench Your Thirst with Salt, and This Noisy Egg. Her work has been published in Orion, Boston Review, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Normal School and other places. She curated, with Rebecca Campbell, 7 Artists, 7 Rings—an Artist’s Game of Telephone for The Huffington Post. She is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and is noted in multiple editions of Best American Essays. She also is the nonfiction editor at Diagram and Professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona.

 
 
 

Tonight we will have a trio of poets who are very connected: Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Nickole Brown, and Jessica Jacobs.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, (Isabella Gardner Prize) and of A New Hunger, an ALA Notable Book. Her latest book, These Many Rooms, came out from Four Way Books. The winner of the 2021 James Dickey Poetry Prize, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, she edited five anthologies, and is part of the Founding Faculty of the Solstice Low Residency Program. She served as Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara from 2019 to 2021.

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister and Fanny Says. She lives in Asheville, NC, where she volunteers at several animal sanctuaries. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of poems about these animals, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. In 2021, Spruce Books of Penguin Random House published Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, a book she co-authored with her wife Jessica Jacobs.

Jessica Jacobs is the author of Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going (Four Way Books), winner of the Devil’s Kitchen and Goldie Awards and one of Library Journal’s Best Poetry Books of the Year, and Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press), winner of the New Mexico Book Award and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. She serves as Chapbook Editor for Beloit Poetry Journal and lives in Asheville, NC, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown, with whom she co-authored Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire (Spruce Books/ PenguinRandomHouse). Her collection of poems in conversation with the Book of Genesis will be out from Four Way Books in 2024.

 

SATURDAY, Sept. 3

As writers, we are asked to engage, conjure, and reckon with the afterlives of our social histories using personal and speculative methods. Often in the form of ghosts, and sometimes monsters or cyborgs, our identities, positionalities, and localities offer us ways to express the perpetual destruction of our ecologies, erasure of our memories, and resistance to social forces. With a desire to heal from and imagine otherwise, we write with the weight of our afterlives.

Ezekiel Joubert III is an educator, community-engaged scholar, and creative writer. He is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations in the Division of Advanced and Applied Studies at California State University-Los Angeles. His research and writing focus on the intersections of racial capitalism and Black education, the political economy of student movement, the history of educational inequality in Black rural communities near Metro Detroit and in the Midwest, and Black organic educational intellectual thought and activism. Additionally, his work centers narratives of Black social life, the speculative and spiritual, and the poetics of teachings and learning with marginalized communities.

 
 
 

  • READING
    from Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (Memoir) and The Seed Keeper (Novel)
    with Carolyn Holbrook & Diane Wilson
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Tonight Carolyn Holbrook and Diane Wilson will return with a reading from Carolyn's memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify, and Diane's novel, The Seed Keeper.

Carolyn Holbrook is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts. Her memoir, Tell Me Your Names and I Will Testify (Minn 2020), won the 2021 Minnesota Book Award for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction. She is founder and director of the Twin Cities-based conversation series, More Than a Single Story, and is co-editor with David Mura of the anthology, We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World published by University of MN Press with More Than a Single Story (Minn2021). You can read her longer bio at her first event on this page.

Diane Wilson (Dakota) is a writer, speaker, and educator, who has published two award-winning books, a middle-grade biography, as well as essays in numerous publications. Her new novel, The Seed Keeper (Milkweed Editions) won the MN Book Award in novel and short story. Her memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past (Borealis Books) won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her 2011 nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life (Borealis Books) was awarded the 2012 Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado.

 

SUNDAY, Sept. 4

Mark Spragg will join us for a master class on the craft of fiction mixed with a reading of his own new work and a Q & A where you can ask him anything you want about his process and how to go about structuring a novel, bringing characters and setting to life, writing good dialogue, and more.

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.

 

  • OPEN MIC READING - IN HOUSE
    with All of Our MFA Students
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    This event is not open to the public

Tonight’s reading is not open to the public. However, in Spring ‘23 our graduating students will be offering public readings as part of our Spring ‘23 Soul Bone Literary Festival. We are already so excited that we’ll get to present them and their work to you!