SOUL BONE℠ LITERARY FESTIVAL
and MIU MFA Residency Events
Feb. 10 - 23, Spring 2025

“I’m in Soul Bone heaven!”
— Festival Guest


Our online Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival pairs writing and craft with creative process, consciousness, 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, yet that also include death and shadow.

“What an incredible week of workshops and people! I am just enriched by it all. I think the word ‘magical’ just sums it up! ”
— Catherine Ronan, Irish poet, author of Elemental Skin

The festival is co-sponsored by the MIU MFA in Creative Writing’s residencies and the Soul Bone℠ Literary Center. Below we list our public events that are included in our Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival. You can register for our Spring 2025 Festival via our Eventbrite page, which will be linked in here and below shortly. Events are free, online, and open to the public, but donations are encouraged via our Eventbrite page. We will use any donations to help sponsor future festivals so we can continue offering our events free of charge. You can contact us at soulboneliterary@gmail.com. You can also contact us at npassi@miu.edu.

 

Spring 2025 Festival Event List

Welcome to our Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival for Spring ‘25. Please join us for this co-collaboration between Soul Bone℠ and the MIU MFA in Creative Writing, both founded and directed by Nynke Passi. Our festivals are free, online, and open to the public. Donations are very much appreciated and warmly welcomed! The event registration pages in Eventbrite include a donation option. We will use all donations to sponsor and make possible more free events in the future. We hope to see you soon!

FREE ZOOM REGISTRATION VIA EVENTBRITE
Feb. 10 - 22, 2025

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

 

MONDAY, Feb. 10, 2025

In this opening event of our MIU MFA residency and our Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival, Kai Coggin will hold space with an invocation and reclamation to help us all claim back our own power, our own voices, and our community as citizens.

Kai Coggin (she/her) is the Inaugural Poet Laureate of Hot Springs, AR, and a recipient of a 2024 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship for her project Sharing Tree Space. She is the author of five collections, most recently Mother of Other Kingdoms (Harbor Editions, 2024). Coggin is a Certified Master Naturalist, a K-12 Teaching Artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council, an Interchange Grant Fellow from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, and host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. 

Coggin was awarded the 2023 Don Munro Leadership in the Arts Award for Visionary Service, and the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award for Arts in Education. She was twice named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, and nominated for Arkansas State Poet Laureate and Hot Springs Woman of the Year. Her fierce and tender poetry has been nominated nine times for The Pushcart Prize, and awarded Best of the Net in 2022. Ten of Kai’s poems are going to the moon with the Lunar Codex project, and on earth they have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Poets(.)org, Prairie Schooner, Best of the Net, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, About Place Journal, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Editor-at-Large at both SWWIM and Terrain(.)org, Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival. She lives with her wife in a peaceful valley, where they tend to wild ones and each other. www.kaicoggin.com 

 

TUESDAY, Feb. 11

A successful short story is much like a successful meal: it must get off to a riveting start; it must employ various, high-quality ingredients; and the chef (writer) must have both inspiration and stamina. In Story Elements, we will unpack all of these topics by discussing “big beginnings,” how the components of the famous English breakfast are a metaphor for complex storytelling, and what writers can do to find and keep momentum during the writing process. We will also do a short writing exercise, share our words, and do a wrap-up Q&A regarding the world of fiction and publishing.

This afternoon, author Whitney Collins will guide us with prompts and exercises to help generate stories with surprise and forward momentum. Whitney spoke to our MFA and undergraduate students last Fall and her session was highly praised for her hands-on approach and the way she hands you a map of how to get to the heart of surprise and narrative tension.

Whitney Collins is the author of RICKY & OTHER LOVE STORIES (Sarabande Books, 2024) and BIG BAD (Sarabande Books, 2021), which won the 2019 Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction, the 2021 Bronze Medal INDIES Award for Short Stories, and the 2022 Gold Medal IPPY Award for Short Story/Fiction. Whitney’s story “Lush” was named a Distinguished Story by The Best American Short Stories 2022. She also won a 2020 Pushcart Prize for “The Entertainer,” a 2020 Pushcart Special Mention for “The Pupil,” the 2020 American Short(er) Fiction Prize for “Ricky,” and the 2021 ProForma Contest for “Cray.” Her stories have appeared in American Short Fiction, AGNI, The Idaho Review, Gulf Coast, The Pinch, The Best Small Fictions 2022, Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror, Fractured Literary Anthology 3, and Book of the Month Club’s literary magazine Volume 0, among others. Previously, Whitney was a contributing editor for The Weeklings, a book reviewer for Barnes & Noble, a reader for The Big Jewel, The Louisville Review, and Carolina Quarterly, and an editorial assistant for The Sun Magazine. Her nonfiction has appeared on various sites, including: Salon, Huffington Post, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. She earned her MFA from The Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing.

 

WEDNESDAY, Feb. 12

Drawing on poems by poet William Stafford, Spring ‘25 poetry mentor Emilie Lygren, a graduate from our MFA program in Creative Writing at MIU, will explore issues and concerns relevant in today’s uncertain world, using Stafford’s eloquent poems as prompts to write with conscience and facilitate discovery through words.

William Stafford was born in 1914 and grew up in small town Kansas. He was a pacifist and earned his degrees at the Universities of Kansas and Iowa. Over the thirty-some years that Stafford was publishing poetry, he became one of the most widely recognized and admired of contemporary American poets. His many collections of poems include the National Book Award winning Traveling Through the Dark (Harper, 1962), Stories That Could Be True (Harper, 1978) and An Oregon Message (Harper, 1987) and A Scripture of Leaves (Brethren Press, 1989). He also published three books of prose, two of them in the Poets on Poetry Series from the University of Michigan Press. He was appointed the twentieth Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress in 1970 and passed away in 1993 at 79 years of age. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/william-e-stafford

Emilie Lygren is a poet and outdoor educator who holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Maharishi International University’s Soul Bone MFA Program and a Bachelor’s degree in Geology-Biology from Brown University. She has published poems in several literary journals and anthologies, and her first collection of poems, What We Were Born For, was selected by Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick in February 2022. Emilie has also developed dozens of publications focused on nature journaling, outdoor science education, and social-emotional learning through her work at the award-winning BEETLES Project at the Lawrence Hall of Science. In her writing and teaching, Emilie calls on awareness and curiosity as tools to bring people into relationship with place, self, and community. She lives in San Rafael, California, where she wonders about oaks and teaches poetry in local classrooms. Her MFA thesis has just been accepted for publication. https://emilielygren.com/

 

Note that this workshop starts at 1:30 and may run till 4 PM CST. Susanne Paola Antonetta joins us to talk about research and craft in nonfiction and share the journey of her new book, The Devil’s Castle, coming out this year from Penguin Random House. The book is about Nazi Eugenics, Euthanasia, and how psychiatry's troubled history reverberates today. You can order it here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/790533/the-devils-castle-by-susanne-antonetta/

Susanne Paola Antonetta has published nonfiction including The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Make Me a Mother,  A Mind Apart: Travels in the Neurodiverse, and Body Toxic. Her new book, The Devil’s Castle, is forthcoming. Her grants and awards include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, Ken Johnson/Nami award, a Pushcart, a finalist for poetry’s Lenore Marshall Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other agencies. She also edits the Bellingham Review.

About The Devil’s Castle

The Devil’s Castle delves into the forgotten history of eugenics and links it to present-day psychiatry to explain how we as a culture continue to get mind care so wrong

In The Devil’s Castle, Susanne Paola Antonetta weaves a haunting narrative that confronts the darkest chapters of psychiatric history while offering a bold vision for the future of mental health care. In 1939, the eugenics movement growing throughout the West did its worst in Nazi Germany. Through the Aktion T4 euthanasia program, five asylums and an abandoned jail were transformed into gas chambers. Hundreds of thousands of lives—predominantly adults with neuropsychiatric conditions—were extinguished in those structures, ultimately paving the way for the horrors of the Holocaust.

Interlacing her experiences of psychosis with the complex history of psychiatry, Antonetta sheds light on the intersections of madness and societal perceptions of mental difference. She brings to life the stories of Paul Schreber and Dorothea Buck, two historical figures who act as models for mind care and acceptance.

This gripping exploration traverses the spectrum of neurodiversity, from the devastating consequences of dehumanization to the transformative potential of understanding and acceptance. With The Devil’s Castle, Antonetta not only unearths the failures of our past but envisions a more compassionate, enlightened approach to consciousness and mental health care. This is a story of tragedy, resilience, and hope—a rallying cry for change that dares to challenge the limits of how we define and support the human mind.

HANDOUT FOR THIS SESSION (READ IN ADVANCE IF YOU CAN).

 

  • READING
    with Susanne Paola Antonetta and Robin Hemley
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

    Tonight we have with us two amazing writers whose textbooks have transformed our MIU English dept: Susanne Paola Antonetta and Robin Hemley, who will read together from their newest work.

Susanne Paola Antonetta has published nonfiction including The Terrible Unlikelihood of Our Being Here, Make Me a Mother,  A Mind Apart: Travels in the Neurodiverse, and Body Toxic. Her new book, The Devil’s Castle, is forthcoming. Her grants and awards include a New York Times Notable Book, an American Book Award, Ken Johnson/Nami award, a Pushcart, a finalist for poetry’s Lenore Marshall Award, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and other agencies. She also edits the Bellingham Review. You can find out more about Susanne here: https://www.susantonetta.com/

Robin Hemley has published fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021), and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020, Penguin SE Asia, 2021). His text on writing, Turning Life into Fiction, has been a foundational text in MIU’s English department undergraduate classes.  His work has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. His short stories have been featured several times on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and his essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others.  He is the Founder of the international nonfiction conference, NonfictioNOW, and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years, inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Robin’s forthcoming book is a collection of linked essays: "How to Change History: A Salvage Project," In How to Change History Robin Hemley grapples with the individual’s navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories. In an attempt to restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost, Hemley meditates and speculates on photography, scrapbooks, historical markers, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, skeletons in the closet, and literature. He also examines his parents’ lives as writers, documenting their under-seen influence on the art movements of the day.

“Reading How to Change History is akin to sitting with an intimate friend, going through old photos and scrapbooks, conversing deep into the night about what connects us to the past and what might endure into the future. ‘Everything is about letting go,’ Robin Hemley writes, ‘but still we let go reluctantly.’ With his characteristic wit and keen acumen, Hemley inspects places near and far, even the most mundane sites—such as waiting rooms and flooded basements—for the wisdom they might offer us as we move through this temporary world.”—Brenda Miller, author of A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form

You can read more here: https://robinhemley.com/

 

THURSDAY, Feb. 13

In this workshop, MIU MFA faculty and author Eileen Espinoza is exploring Found Poetry as a way to transform the ordinary into art. About the Found Poem: “Found poems take existing texts and refashion them, reorder them, and present them as poems. The literary equivalent of a collage, found poetry is often made from newspaper articles, street signs, graffiti, speeches, letters, or even other poems. A pure found poem consists exclusively of outside texts: the words of the poem remain as they were found, with few additions or omissions. Decisions of form, such as where to break a line, are left to the poet.” You can read more about found poetry here on the website of the Academy of American Poets.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in MIU’s MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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 this year from University Press of Kentucky. 

Found poem pictured above: Conner Carey (conpoet).

 

This afternoon we’ll have a song lyrics workshop led by our MFA graduate Elaina Whitesell, lead singer and song writer for MAGENTA MOON.

From the Magenta Moon website: “Magenta Moon (@MagentaMoonParty) is a surf music spaceship co-piloted by couple Elaina Whitesell (lead vocals, bass) and Joey Petrarca (guitar, ocals). Their dynamic and groovy sound transports passengers to a realm of magical delights full of romantic ballads as well as rock anthems. MM’s carefully written songs boast poetic lyrics and accessible sonic complexity. Live, Magenta Moon offers common ground to audiences of all ages, races, and creeds. Rely on The Moon to get your body moving Magenta Moon is currently parked in Los Angeles, California, USA, Earth.” The video of “Perceive Yourself” was filmed during Magenta Moon's Whisky a Go Go show on August 30, 2023 and during Moon Rock Cantina at Gaia Sangha on October 15, 2023.

Below some Q&A between Aliyah Warwick and Elaina, both graduates of our MFA. Aliyah was the interviewer asking questions, Elaina answered.

Q: What inspires you?  
A: Everything. I fall in love with everything. I love how the physical world is so beautifully arranged; I love the way things come together. Each day I wake up excited to see how the light hits and washes everything.  

I am also deeply inspired by surprise. What makes people laugh or when two words get jammed together that I wouldn’t usually think would.I like to start my days opening myself up to unexpected miracles. Then I notice them! 

And I am deeply inspired by my partner, Joey. Our relationship is a place of safety and inspiration. He is my primary audience and co-creator, and our love frees me up to experiment.

Q: What is your creative philosophy?A: I create for my Self. My higher self. I believe we are all manifestations of God pushing through the veil to inhabit matter in order to tell each other stories of love. All day we create. We tell stories, we narrate our experiences. Both to ourselves and others. That is the beauty of reintegrating the ego. The ego enables us to tell our stories from a unique identity and to love, to dive back into unity consciousness.  

On the other end, my goal is to see and love as many faces of God as I can during this lifetime. Whether it’s on stage or through the page or in the restaurant where I work.  

Elaina Whitesell was in our first MFA cohort in Spring ‘21 and graduated last year with her MFA in Poetry. She is a poet and musician. Together with her partner, Joey Petrarca, she forms the LA-based band Magenta Moon.

 

This generative workshop explores daydreaming and dream logic and is inspired by the films and work of filmmaker, artist, and writer David Lynch. The MIU David Lynch MFA in Screenwriting is the sister program of MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing. We have been deeply saddened that David Lynch is no longer here. David inspired the growth of all creative arts programs at MIU with his inspiration, unboundness, open-mindness, spirituality, and sparkly creative energy. We are so thankful for all he has contributed and want to celebrate his unbounded creativity in our writing community to honor his unbounded creativity and amazing legacy.

Once David Lynch was visiting our campus in Fairfield, Iowa, at a conference and someone asked him why “his films were so dark.” David smiled and said, “Dark? I don’t think of it as dark! For me light and dark is the same - it is play, it is all bliss!” The profundity of that statement has strongly informed our MFA in Creative Writing where we welcome all stories, not just the light and easy ones, but always steer toward the joy of creativity, which transforms and heals us.

“I love daydreaming and dream logic and the way dreams go.”
— David Lynch

This workshop is facilitated and conceptualized by Jennifer Espinoza, our former faculty and fan of David Lynch, and Eileen Espinoza, our current full-time faculty.

Jennifer Espinoza has been a long-time faculty in our MFA and currently is an adjunct mentor in poetry. 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) and I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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). 

 

FRIDAY, Feb. 14

In this generative workshop and master class, MIU MFA faculty Eileen Espinoza presents an overview of the lineage of the lyric poem and will use ancient and contemporary lyric poems as prompts for generative exploring.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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). 

 

In this special featured event, novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, a frequent guest at our festival, will join us to read from her work, talk about craft, and engage in dialogue about women’s voices, saying the unsayable, and the spiritual and intuitive aspects of writing. She will also be sharing her own origin story as a writer and touch on the important role that spirituality has played in her creative process and journey.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is an award-winning writer and teacher and the author of 23 books such as Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Palace of Illusions, The Forest of Enchantments, The Last Queen, and Independence. Her newest book is a biography, An Uncommon Love: The Early Life of Sudha and Narayan Murthy. Her work has been translated into 30 languages, including Dutch, Hebrew, Bengali, Hungarian, Turkish, Hindi and Japanese. They have been made into films, plays and dance dramas and performed as operas. Her awards include two American Book Awards (the newest one awarded in 2024 for her novel Independence), a PEN Josephine Miles award, a Premio Scanno award from Italy, a Light of India award, and a Times of India Best Author award. The Economic Times has included her in their list of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. She has been an activist in the fields of education and domestic violence for many years. She is on the Advisory Boards of Daya (Houston) and Maitri (San Francisco Area), both organizations that help survivors of domestic violence, and Akshaya Patra ( pan USA), which provides meals for Indian schoolchildren. She is the McDavid professor of Creative Writing in the internationally acclaimed Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston.

 
 
 

MIU MFA faculty Eileen Espinoza and Nynke Passi will read together tonight on the theme of Our Gorgeous Bones, a variation of a reading given earlier in the Fall as part of MIU’s MFA open house class series.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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 (2025). 

Nynke Salverda Passi is the director of this MFA program and chair of MIU’s 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.

 

SATURDAY, Feb. 15

  • ANTHOLOGY READING
    Poems from County Clare & Far Beyond, edited by Dane Ince
    with Dane Ince, Kim Shuck, Catherine Ronan, Madge O’Callaghan, Michael Durack, and Karen Mellander Magoon
    Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 Noon PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

In this special, featured event curated by Kim Shuck, we are joined by an international group of poets sharing from the anthology Poems from County Clare and Far Beyond, edited by Dane Ince, a modern poetry collection featuring established and emerging poets from Ireland, USA, Asia, with contributing authors Catherine Ronan, Cathal Mac Thréinfhir, Anne Harding Woodworth, Brenardo, Brett Benson, Bryan Franco, Christopher T. George, Dan Brady, Dan Cuddy, Dane Ince, David Eberhardt, Dee Allen, Deirdre Devally, Diane Wilbon Parks, dj Houston, Doreena Jennings, Eileen Trauth, Fin Hall, Ger Duffy, Henry L. Jones, Hil Hoover, Hiram Larew, J R Turek, Jackie Chou, John Angell Grant, Josephine LoRe, J. Joy "Sistah Joy" Matthews Alford, Julian Matthews, Karen Melander-Magoon, Kim Shuck, Laura Grevel, Laurie Bower, Lennart Lundh, Lesley Constable, Linda Trott Dickman, Lucia Daramus, Madge O’Callaghan, Martin Del Toro Guiterrez, Mary C. M. Phillips, Michael Fallon, Mike Douse, Michael Durack, Patricia Douse, R. Bremner, Rena Fleming, Richard Harries, Sinéad Nic Síoda, Steve Cambron, Sylvia Beverly, Dr. Thérèse Craine Bertsch, Vince Stevenson, and Wayne Lee. The six poets presenting with us in this session will read from the anthology and share its origin story.

This event is in special appreciation of our Irish Soul Bone℠ family, who have been joining us from the start, even at three in the morning their time, to participate, cheer us on, and hear our MIU MFA students graduate. We appreciate you!

 
 
 

  • PRESENTATION
    OMNIDAWN PUBLISHING: Why You Should Submit Your Poetry to Contests at Small Presses
    with Laura Joakimson, Executive Director and Co-Publisher
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Today, executive director and co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishing Laura Joakimson will give a presentation of Omnidawn Publishing. We like to invite various small presses to speak at our festivals so our students and guests can get to know about their wonderful offerings! This morning, Laura Joakimson will discuss some of the ups and downs of independent publishing, and why it's important to send your work to poetry contests at independent presses. She is the co-publisher of Omnidawn Publishing, the publisher of the 2023 National Book Award winner, Craig Santos Perez, and 2019 National Book Award finalist, Diana Khoi Nguyen.

Omnidawn Publishing, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, seeks to support and expand our community of writers and readers through the work we choose to publish, which questions, in both form and content, the prevailing limits of convention. Our intent is to explore internal and external boundaries and push, with compassionate insight, the limits of risk. Just as our name suggests—“omni” (in all ways and places) and “dawn” (the first appearance of light)—we publish creative works that open readers anew to the myriad ways that language may bring new light, insight, awareness, as well as a heightened respect for, and appreciation of, differences. At Omnidawn, it is a significant part of our mission to celebrate and include authors of different races, ages, genders, LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, and to include any/all those whose voices are underrepresented in publishing and in our culture at large. We want this celebration and inclusion to be reflected at every level of our organization: authors, volunteers, staff, poetry and fiction editors, poetry and fiction contest judges, reviewers, board members, and advisory board members. 

It is also a significant part of our mission to give opportunities to be published to authors who do not have the financial means to apply to our poetry contests. We offer fee waivers to those who write to us to let us know about financial hardship. In all of our publications, (books, our free online journal Omniverse.us, and more) we are committed to conversations which address equity, reparations, class, gender, and other issues of social justice. As of October 2022, Omnidawn is a women-run press. Its co-publishers are Rusty Morrison & Laura Joakimson. All of us at Omnidawn have seen the numbers (thanks in part to the work of VIDA) which tell us that women-run organizations are underrepresented in the US. Rusty and Laura bring to our work a culture of collaboration, an open invitation to positive life-affirming change, and a belief in the value of compassion. All of us at Omnidawn believe that the best, and most resilient organizations and individuals are constantly re-attuning to the changing state of the present, while still honoring what remains important, which comes from our past.

Omnidawn was founded in 2001 by Ken Keegan & Rusty Morrison. Ken and Rusty began the press because of their belief that lively, culturally pertinent, emotionally and intellectually engaging literature can be of great value, and it is a privilege to participate in that work. Ken Keegan passed away of cancer in October, 2022. Rusty & Laura have continued what is best from that legacy, while renewing Omnidawn’s focus on becoming a more modernized, resilient and sustainable press. We at Omnidawn whole-heartedly believe that our society needs small presses so that widely diverse ideas and points-of-view are easily accessible to everyone. Italo Calvino: “… the function of literature is communication between things that are different… because they are different, not blunting but even sharpening the differences between them, following the true bent of written language.”

Omnidawn books are frequently reviewed in Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Boston Review, Colorado Review, Rain Taxi, Lana Turner, The Journal, Jacket, and Pleiades, and have been reviewed in Chicago Review, American Book Review, The Village Voice, The Midwest Book Review, The Poetry Project Newsletter, HOW2, The New Review of Literature, Small Press Traffic Newsletter, Electronic Poetry Review, Interim, and ARC (Canada’s National Poetry Magazine), as well as many other publications and podcasts such as the On Being Project’s Poetry Unbound, Words on a Wire, Poets at Work, VS, Close Talking, For the Wild, and Art Heals All Wounds. You can read more about Omnidawn here: https://www.omnidawn.com/

Laura Joakimson is a Bay Area and Seattle writer and poet who spent several years on the planning committee for Litquake, San Francisco’s homegrown literary festival. Her work has appeared in Quiet Lightning, Magnitude, and Scissors & Spackle. She was an English teacher in South Korea for two years, and more recently worked for seven years in a San Francisco print shop. She has a master’s degree from Western Washington University in poetry. She also brings experience in social media and marketing to her work at Omnidawn.

 

MONDAY, Feb. 17

Note that this workshop starts at 2:30 PM CT. We are joined today by one of our MFA’s own graduates, Kai Black, who taught a rousing master class last year. This time, Kai is back to talk about themes that are close to our students’ hearts: writing about sexuality and identity as a form of rebellion. Kai’s charismatic personality invites honest sharing and pushing past inner boundaries into great depths of vulnerability and realness. This event is curated by special request, because no one is as eloquent and searingly, lyrically honest on the themes of sexuality and identity as Kai. Bring your writing notebooks, pens, or computers, for this is a session in which you get to participate!

Kai Black (they/them) is a Black Queer Nonbinary graduate from MIU’s MFA Creative Writing. Their emphasis was in Poetry and Speculative Fiction. They are also a blogger for their personal blog “The Lazy Hoe” and a social commentator on all things sex, entertainment, social issues, and anything that affects their identity and navigation in this world. You can follow them on social media @TheLazyHoeKai or IG @TheLazyHoe. Kai published regularly while in our MFA, plus did outreach in our community in terms of workshops and creativity projects of various kinds.

 

  • MENTOR READING
    Presenting Our MIU MFA Spring ‘25 MFA Mentors
    with Eileen Espinoza (Creative Nonfiction), Emilie Lygren (Poetry), and Linda Egenes (Fiction)
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Tonight’s reading is our mentor showcase: Our Spring ‘25 mentors will be reading you from work in the genres they are teaching this spring semester. Emilie Lygren is joining us as our poetry mentor, Linda Egenes is returning as our fiction mentor, and Eileen Espinoza is our creative nonfiction mentor this spring. We are so honored to have them with us this semester.

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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). 

Emilie Lygren is a poet and outdoor educator who holds a Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Maharishi International University’s Soul Bone MFA Program and a Bachelor’s degree in Geology-Biology from Brown University. She has published poems in several literary journals and anthologies, and her first collection of poems, What We Were Born For, was selected by Young People’s Poet Laureate Naomi Shihab Nye as the Poetry Foundation’s monthly book pick in February 2022. In her writing and teaching, Emilie calls on awareness and curiosity as tools to bring people into relationship with place, self, and community. She lives in San Rafael, California, where she wonders about oaks and teaches poetry in local classrooms. Her MFA thesis has just been accepted for publication. You can view Emilie’s website here: https://emilielygren.com/

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. You can view her website here: https://lindaegenes.com/

 

TUESDAY February 18

In our literary community of Fairfield, Iowa, where the MIU campus is situation, poet Rustin Larson is one of the most prolific and creative members. Publishing a book every year or every other year, Rustin is an indomitable creative power house, and he’s helped our MFA students with their process by teaching regular mentorships in our MFA as well as a Publishing Practicum when we offer it. Today, Rustin will read from his work and showcase his own approach to craft and revision with illustrations from his manuscripts. This session includes a Q&A and is a master class as well as a reading.

Rustin Larson has been a regular mentor in MIU’s MFA program. He also taught our publishing practicum and has mentored in various genres, mainly poetry. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and 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, Thrush, and Poetry East. He is author of Bum Cantos (Blue Light Press), The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press), and Crazy Star (Loess Hills Press), and more.

 

Note that this workshop starts at 2:30 PM CT. In this workshop and master class, two poets, Kelli Russell Agodon and Melissa Studdard, will be exploring how they use fabulism as part of their own poetic practice - and how you can do the same. This workshop goes back on a Fabulism panel at AWP several years ago.

Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Pacific Northwest. Her book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Her work has appeared in the publications such as New York Times, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, APR, Harvard Review, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She also teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the co-host of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

Melissa Studdard’s most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee (Jackleg Press). Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, The Guardian, the Best American Poetry blog, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day and has garnered awards such as The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award, the Tom Howard Award, and more. As a librettist/lyricist, she has had works commissioned by Aspen Music Festival, Wolf Trap, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the University of Michigan School of Music. With Kelli Russell Agodon, she co-hosts the Youtube poetry series Poems You Need. You can find her at:
www.melissastuddard.com and www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

 

Tonight we host a reading with two star poets: Melissa Studdard and Kelli Russell Agodon.

Kelli Russell Agodon is a bi/queer poet from the Pacific Northwest. Her book Accidental Devotions will be published by Copper Canyon Press in 2026. Her previous collection, Dialogues with Rising Tides, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Awards. Her work has appeared in the publications such as New York Times, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, APR, Harvard Review, and O, the Oprah Magazine. Kelli is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press where she works as an editor and book cover designer. She also teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. She is also the co-host of the poetry series Poems You Need with Melissa Studdard. www.agodon.com / www.twosylviaspress.com / www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

Melissa Studdard’s most recent book is the poetry collection Dear Selection Committee (Jackleg Press). Her work has been featured by PBS, NPR, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, The Guardian, the Best American Poetry blog, and the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day and has garnered awards such as The Penn Review Poetry Prize, the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Award, the Tom Howard Award, and more. As a librettist/lyricist, she has had works commissioned by Aspen Music Festival, Wolf Trap, Yale Institute of Sacred Music, and the University of Michigan School of Music. With Kelli Russell Agodon, she co-hosts the Youtube poetry series Poems You Need. You can find her at: www.melissastuddard.com and www.youtube.com/@PoemsYouNeed

 

WEDNESDAY February 19

For all the cross-genre, multi-genre, and hybrid or flash lovers among our students and guests, here a workshop that explores experimentation between genres and writing beyond form. Prose poetry, flash fiction (smoke-length fiction, palm-sized fiction, short shorts) and flash nonfiction all connect and are sometimes hard to distinguish from each other. Does it matter how we classify our writing? What are ways we can play, experiment, and have fun between the different genres without worrying about ‘getting it right’ or adhering to rules and regulations? How do we write beyond form, leaving the distinctions of genres behind?

Eileen Elizabeth Espinoza is a full-time faculty in our MFA program and a frequent mentor in various genres. She’s a queer essayist and poet, 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).

 
“What a stunning, inspirational workshop with Carolyn [Holbrook]. It brings such hope and joy to the world. There is such humanity in the Soul Bone Literary Festival and it’s spreading far and wide. THANK YOU!”
— Festival Guest

Note that the starting time of this workshop is 2 PM CST.

In today's workshop, 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 workshop about writing through trauma is an essential gift 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.

 

Tonight our former MFA faculty, beloved by students and guests, Jennifer Espinoza will return with a reading and manuscript Q&A, an exploration of craft in her latest book of poetry, I Don’t Want to Be Understood, published in 2024 by Alice James Books.

Jennifer Espinoza’s 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) and I Don’t Want to Be Understood (Alice James Books, 2024). She holds an MFA in creative writing from University of California, Riverside. For several years she was a full-time faculty in MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing and now she is a frequent guest at our festivals and residencies, plus an adjunct mentor in MIIU’s MFA in Creative Writing.

 

THURSDAY February 20

  • EXPLORING REVISION
    Modeling the Alternative Creative Writing Workshop: the Cut & Shuffle and More
    with Rustin Larson
    Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Sometimes it can be useful to open a poem up in a way that is unexpected. Today, Rustin Larson will share various revision and workshopping techniques that are out of the box, including his version of the Cut and Shuffle Exercise that he was taught by Jack Meyers. You take two poems you have already written, perhaps two poems that you are a bit stuck with, that feel stale or lackluster. Then you piece the two together into a third, new poem, juxtaposing divergent images in unexpected ways, which will force you to make intuitive, leaping connections that deeply access your subconscious. Even if you won’t end up with a better poem, you will definitely see both of your poems differently. Today is a session of exploration, writing, playing, and experimentation. You can read up on the Cut and Shuffle here in advance.

Rustin Larson has been a regular mentor in MIU’s MFA program. He also taught our publishing practicum and has mentored in various genres, mainly poetry. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College and 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, Thrush, and Poetry East. He is author of Bum Cantos (Blue Light Press), The Philosopher Savant (Glass Lyre Press), and Crazy Star (Loess Hills Press), and more.

 

READING and Q&A
Trespassing My Ancestral Lands
with Kalpna Singh-Chitnis
Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CST
Free Eventbrite registration here

This afternoon, we have with us again Indian-American poet, writer and filmmaker Kalpna Singh-Chitnis, who will be reading from her new book, Trespassing My Ancestral Lands. The reading will be followed by a Q&A.

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian-American, poet, writer, filmmaker and author of four poetry collections. Her works have appeared in "World Literature Today," "Columbia Journal," "Tupelo Quarterly," "Cold Mountain Review," "Indian Literature," "Silk Routes" (IWP) at The University of Iowa, Stanford University's "Life in Quarantine," etc. She has been nominated for a Pushcart-Prize and her poems from her award-winning book Bare Soul and her poetry film "River of Songs" have been selected to go on the moon with NASA's missions. A former lecturer of Political Science, she is also an Advocacy Member at the United Nations Association of the USA. Her fifth poetry collection was Love Letters to Ukraine, published in 2023 by River Paw Press. Its first reading was at our festival in ‘23. Her newest collection is Trespassing My Ancestral Lands (Finishing Line Press), from which she will read today.

Trespassing My Ancestral Lands captures the poet’s eye roving the landscapes to see and discover the many layers of self in a multi-layered world of family, nature, and cycles of life. Kalpna Singh-Chitnis’ voice is a hypnotic opera of cautionary tales. These heart-wrenching poems burn and sing to understand the primordial codes and rituals we depend on to give our lives meaning: “Mothers fold sorrows like laundry. An astute observer of the smallest details, she grips us with the travails of having feet firmly planted on both sides of the worlds and cultures: “School desks were chipped/into kindling.” This brave poet walks the precipice and captures the testimonials of human grief, and the dangers of love, loss, and war. Singh-Chitnis creates a voluminous experience of color and imagery rendering the mystical traditions and the hope in chaos. Kalpna-Singh Chitnis blows the shofar and shows how the power of language and story can lift us from despair, to reclaim our passions and our ghosts, the only way poetry can. This collection is indelible, you will come back again and again to a Motherland of wisdom—a talisman and guide to living with the fullest of fire and breath. –Cynthia Atkins, author of “Still-Life with God.”

Kalpna Singh-Chitnis writes poems with quiet urgency, poems highlighting and condemning violence and social persecution perpetrated against women, against immigrants, and against anyone who has lost a homeland. But don’t expect rhetoric and abstraction here; rather, find intimate poems addressed to all of us, like letters hand-written with the language of loss: “What have I lost to deserve the beauty around me,” Singh-Chitnis asks, and there is no answer outright, but glimpses of one whose broken wings will stretch for a lifetime. –Octavio Quintanilla, author of the poetry collection, “If I Go Missing” (Slough Press) and “The Book of Wounded Sparrows” (Texas Review Press).

 
“I enjoyed this master class. Nynke’s extensive knowledge and research regarding Hadewijch was inspiring—such a fascinating period in history, especially for women and poets, though riddled with challenges. I especially loved and appreciated all the visuals.”
— Anne Noble, MIU MFA graduate

In this master class, Dutch poet Nynke Passi tells about Hadewijch, the Mystic, the cultus of "Minne" of her time, and her visions. Nynke will read some of Hadewijch's work in the original Diets, plus in translation. Hadewijch's lyrical poems serve as perfect writing prompts for mystical exploration.

Hadewijch was a 13th century poet and mystic, probably living in the Duchy of Brabant. Most of her extant writings, none of which survived the Middle Ages as autographs (original copies of text by the author), are written in a Brabantian form of Middle Dutch called Diets. She is associated with Antwerp and often is referred to as Hadewijch of Antwerp, though most of the other manuscripts containing her work were found near Brussels. Her writings include visions, prose letters, and poetry. There are two types of poems: Her lyrical poetry followed the forms and conventions used by the trouvères and minnesingers of her time, but with the theme of worldly courtship replaced by sublimated love to God. The other series of poems are simpler didactical poems in letter format, on Christian topics, not all of them considered authentic. No details of her life are known outside the sparse indications in her own writings. These indications lead many to conclude that she was involved in the then emerging beguine movement and took vows of poverty, chastity, and service, though she never took the orders of a nun. She traveled and lived in several places and wrote letters to a community of young women whom she gave common sense and warm-hearted advice. She must have come from a wealthy family: she had a wide knowledge of literature and theological treatises in several languages, including Latin and French, in a time when studying was a luxury only exceptionally granted to women. She is considered to be a precursor to the mystic and theologian Jan van Ruusbroec, who developed many of her ideas, but in a more theologic-systematic way, about a century later. She is also, to this day, considered one of the foremost word-artists in the Dutch language.

Nynke Salverda Passi was born and raised in the Netherlands. She is the director of this MFA program and chair of MIU’s 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.

 

FRIDAY February 21

In this workshop, author Robin Hemley will explore speculative nonfiction in interactive ways.

Robin Hemley has published fifteen books of fiction and nonfiction. His most recent books are the autofiction, Oblivion, An After-Autobiography (Gold Wake, 2022), The Art and Craft of Asian Stories: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, co-authored with Xu Xi (Bloomsbury, 2021), and Borderline Citizen: Dispatches from the Outskirts of Nationhood (Nebraska, 2020, Penguin SE Asia, 2021). His text on writing, Turning Life into Fiction, has been a foundational text in MIU’s English department undergraduate classes.  His work has received such awards as a Guggenheim Fellowship, a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation, three Pushcart Prizes in both nonfiction and fiction, The Nelson Algren Award for Fiction, The Independent Press Book Award for Memoir, among others. His short stories have been featured several times on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and his essays and short stories have appeared in such journals as Creative Nonfiction, Conjunctions, Guernica, The Iowa Review, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, and many others.  He is the Founder of the international nonfiction conference, NonfictioNOW, and was the director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at The University of Iowa for nine years, inaugural director of The Writers’ Centre at Yale-NUS, Singapore, and is a graduate of The Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Robin’s forthcoming book is a collection of linked essays: "How to Change History: A Salvage Project," In How to Change History Robin Hemley grapples with the individual’s navigation of history and the conflict between personal and public histories. In an attempt to restore, resurrect, and reclaim what might otherwise be lost, Hemley meditates and speculates on photography, scrapbooks, historical markers, travelogues, TV shows, real estate come-ons, washed up rock stars, incontinent dachshunds, stalkers, skeletons in the closet, and literature. He also examines his parents’ lives as writers, documenting their under-seen influence on the art movements of the day.

“Reading How to Change History is akin to sitting with an intimate friend, going through old photos and scrapbooks, conversing deep into the night about what connects us to the past and what might endure into the future. ‘Everything is about letting go,’ Robin Hemley writes, ‘but still we let go reluctantly.’ With his characteristic wit and keen acumen, Hemley inspects places near and far, even the most mundane sites—such as waiting rooms and flooded basements—for the wisdom they might offer us as we move through this temporary world.”—Brenda Miller, author of A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form

You can read more here: https://robinhemley.com/

 

Mark Spragg will join us for another 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.

 

SATURDAY, Feb. 22

  • WORKSHOP
    Crossing Over to the Stage: Playwriting for Poets, Fiction Writers, and Memoirists
    with Wendi Olson
    Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM CST
    Free Eventbrite registration here

Whether you are a poet, fiction writer, or a memoirist, this workshop will inspire you to bring your words before a live audience. Playwriting is a unique genre where spoken language is paramount, and the interactive alchemy between actors and audience is magically transformational. Playwriting combines all artistic elements – sound, visual, movement – and yet is led by language. The playwright is a conductor, creating an ephemeral world where all present have an emotional experience while intimately connecting with the desires of living, breathing characters. In this workshop, we will explore inspiration for a theatrical performance and points of entry into a dramatic story. We’ll discuss your “special sauce” as the style you uniquely bring to the process. We’ll examine classic and contemporary plays as reference, and focus on the language used to give each character a distinctive voice that reveals their true nature. We’ll discuss how to build a play using a classic three-act structure. And, finally, we’ll look beyond the typical Broadway format to envision “all the world” as a stage, from the black box to the city street.

Wendi Olson is a Playwright whose original works have been performed in San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Lake Tahoe, and New York. She taught for years at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She has a Master’s of Arts degree in Creative Writing (Playwriting) from San Francisco State University and studied under Michelle Carter and Larry Eilenberg. Her work has been seen at the SFMOMA and HERE Arts Center in New York City. 

She has written, directed, and acted in her original plays. In Berkeley, she served as Artistic Director of Bonita Playhouse, a living room performance series. She has a love of community theater, spoken word, and street performance art. Performances of her original plays include: ANNA KARENINA ON THE COUCH (Litquake); JO’S PANTS (Velvet Revolution - VelRo); REDEMPTION: THE ACID GOSPEL TAROT OPERA (The Hillside Club; Oakland Art Murmur); NATURE VS. MERGER (Bonita Playhouse); and ANNA, EMMA, EDNA, ETCETERA (Bonita Playhouse).

 
 
 
 

Anne Gudger is with us today to tell us about her podcast, Coffee and Grief, and to read from her new book, The Fifth Chamber, which is also about loss and how we get from here to there in processing our griefs. In this special session, Anne will talk about her new book and hold space for our collective griefs, sharing about her podcasting success with the essential mixture of coffee, grief, and gratitude. In the podcast Coffee & Grief, Anne and Maria, a daughter/mom team, explore grief in its many forms. You can find Coffee, Grief, and Gratitude on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts. From the Coffee & Grief website:

”Grief is so much more than the death of a beloved. They started the podcast to learn more about grief, to be part of the conversation in normalizing grief. They’re not looking for answers, but they’re curious about the questions, the exploration, the conversation. Anne and Maria have interviewed a range of writers who write and talk about grief including Melissa Gould, Armen Bacon, Lisa Keefauver, Meghan Riordan Jarvis, Carol Smith, Mary Mandeville, Leigh Hopkins, Carmel Breathnach, Jen Violi, Kate Carroll de Gutes, Tesha McCord Poe, Miriam Gershow, Jennifer Lang, Ann Batchelder, Ella deCastro Baron, Gayle Brandeis, Laraine Herring, Mary Klinger, Nikki Darling, Joëlle Croteau-Willard, Tanya Friedman, Marialicia Gonzalez, Meg Weber, Asha Rajan, Monica Welty, Anne Richardson, Peter Quinn, Kelly Thompson, and more. The range of grief is deep and wide. This mom/daughter duo cover topics from the more conventional griefs like death of a beloved, to griefs that don’t get talked about, like gender identity, land grief, health, pregnancy and infant loss. Disenfranchised grief has room here. All griefs have room here.”

Anne Gudger is a Portland writer who loves language and space on the page. She writes about love and loss and how we get from there to here. She’s fascinated with the heart and its metaphorical fifth chamber that holds more love, that holds shadows. She’s been published in Newsweek, Real Simple Magazine, The Rumpus, Slippery Elm, NAILED Magazine, Entropy, Tupelo Press, Atticus Review, The Timberline Review, Columbia Journal, Sweet Lit, Cutbank, Cutthroat, The Normal School, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. It’s been said that Anne eats books and has since she first decoded words. Her debut memoir, THE FIFTH CHAMBER, was published September 2023 with Jaded Ibis Press. Kirkus Review called THE FIFTH CHAMBER, “An emotionally riveting memoir, raw and inspiring.”