Fall 2026 Soul Bone℠ Literary Festival -
Fall 2026 MIU MFA Residency Videos

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

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

“The impact of Soul Bone was not just the university, its students and staff, all of you reached worldwide! That’s a pretty mighty thing to happen. And that there is the power of Soul Bone, one I love.”
— Mari Maxwell

Residency Library

Below you can find the videos of our Fall ‘26 Literary Festival for use of students enrolled in MIU’s MFA in Creative Writing! Enjoy.

An important note on the ethics of the use of our program's Vimeo library

“I love coming back to your community because you remind me that I am a writer, but I am also human - a writer who is human. That is what soul bone is about: writing from empathy and the heart. And it’s ok to write and share the vulnerable things, too. Thank you for your offerings.”
— Festival Guest

You are all free to use our Vimeo library as our students. However, please DO NOT share these links with friends, online on social media, in classes you may teach or attend elsewhere, or in other places. This material is for your private educational use ONLY as students of our MFA program. It's not for distribution of any kind.

Many of our guest speakers and faculty expressly have not given permission to have their materials shared beyond their live sessions and beyond the MFA classroom supervised by our MFA faculty within the residency course. Quite a few of our writers have asked for contracts or have expressed clearly via email that they don't want their material shared beyond the classroom to guarantee this privacy. Writers visiting us may share or read new work, which they don't want to have end up in unforeseen places, which might count as "publication" without their knowledge. Our literary guests have been paid one-time speaker fees; not fees that allow us to publicly share their work long-term. Our students and event visitors, including all of you, may also not want to have your words and questions or shares be distributed beyond the classroom as you read out loud your vulnerable freewrites and prompts in the workshop sessions.

In short: All distribution of any material from this course has to go through me to guarantee the privacy and rights of our visiting authors and also of you, as our students, as you share in the classroom. If you have any question, please talk to me. I know the back stories on each guest and am managing this situation ethically toward our guests in a manner that benefits all of you as our students at all times.

Thank you so much for your conscientiousness! Feel free to contact me at 641-451-4854 or npassi@miu.edu or at soulboneliterary@gmail.com if you have any questions.

Nynke

Week One: Aug. 17 - 23, 2026

Monday, Aug. 17, 2026

 

  • MFA Faculty READING - LIVE EVENT
    with Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Location: The Library
    Genre: This is a creative nonfiction and poetry reading

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

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

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

 

Tuesday, August 18

  • Morning onboarding and introduction events in our Zoom room, The Library. Please check your schedules in the Canvas course shell. Below you can watch the review of the Residency course shell.

 

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

Melanie "Mel" McCuin received their BA in History from Arizona State University in 2005 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014.  Their writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, and Unstrung, among others. Their most recent work appears in the June 2022 issue of Salamander. They teach composition and creative writing at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA.

 

  • PANEL and Q&A - REPLAY LIVE (followed by discussion)
    Knowing the Unknowable: Intuition and Risk in Poetry and Prose
    with Kelli Russel Agodon, Susan Rich, Mona Power, Jennifer Espinoza, and Nynke Passi
    Time: 7:30 - 9:30 PM CT
    Genres: Poetry, Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, main focus: creative process

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Wednesday, August 19

  • READING and Q & A - ASYNCHRONOUS REPLAY (on this page only, not in the Zoom room)
    Speculative Writing
    with     Shannon Gibney and Alice Paige     
    Time: 10:00 AM - 12:00 Noon PM CT
    Genres: Fiction and creative nonfiction - speculative work

This morning, friends and authors Shannon Gibney and Alice Paige will read from their speculative work. We are so excited to hear them. Shannon Gibney will read from her recently published speculative memoir (part memoir, part speculative fiction), The Girl I Am, Was, and Never Will Be, about trans-racial adoption, and Alice Paige will read horror. There will be a Q & A at the end of the reading in case you want to ask the authors about their process.

Shannon Gibney is an award-winning author of books of all kinds — from novels to anthologies to essays to picture books. She writes for adults, children, and everyone in-between. The through-line in all her work is stories that may have previously gone untold. Sometimes these perspectives have remained hidden because the speakers have not had an outlet for their stories; other times, the stories carry darkness and fear that we prefer to look away from. What God Is Honored Here: Writings on Miscarriage and Infant Loss by and for Native Women and Women of Color (University of Minnesota Press, October, 2019), exemplifies this approach, as does Gibney’s most recent novel, Dream Country (Dutton, 2018), which Kirkus describes as “a necessary reckoning of tensions within the African diaspora — an introduction to its brokenness and a place to start healing.”

Alice Paige is a trans woman, essayist, and storyteller living in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Her writing explores the transformative power of queer love even in the darkest of nights under the newest of moons. Through teaching, she looks to guide students in a reclamation of narrative power and an exploration of the strange thresholds of writing. Her work can be found at Crabfat Magazine, Coffin Bell, VASTARIEN, Luna Station Quarterly, Write About Now, Button Poetry, and Take A Stand, Art Against Hate: A Raven Chronicles Anthology. She is a Digital Pedagogical Lab Fellow and recently graduated with her MFA in creative writing from Hamline University.

 

  • Afternoon Zoom social and introduction events in our Zoom room, The Library. Please check your schedules in the Canvas course shell.

 

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

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

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

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

 

Thursday, August 20

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    Telling It Slant: Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Emotional Truth
    with Jennifer Espinoza
    Time: 10:00 AM - Noon PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room
    Genre: Poetry, but you can apply this to any genre and write in any genre during the workshop

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

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

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

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

 

  • Afternoon onboarding sessions (program information for new students and thesis information for second year students) are held in our Zoom room, The Library. Please check your schedules in the Canvas course shell.

 

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

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

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

 

Friday, August 21

  • Session A: WORKSHOP - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    Writing for Children
    with Anika Fajardo
    Time: 10 AM - 12 PM CT
    Location: Your Vimeo Streaming Page here (asynchronous viewing only)
    Genre: Fiction for Children

This morning, there are two simultaneous asynchronous options so choose the one that appeals to you most - or watch both! The first session is about children’s book writing. Anika Fajardo will talk and answer questions about writing for children, sharing her own writing journey. Replay from Fall 2022 Festival.

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.

 

  • Session B: POETRY READING - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    with January Gill O’Neill (Glitter Road) and Susan Rich (Blue Atlas)
    Time: 10 AM - 12 PM CT
    Location: Your Vimeo Streaming Page here (asynchronous viewing only)
    Genre: Poetry (based on life experience)

January Gill O'Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University and the author of Glitter Road (February 2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. From 2012-2018, she served as the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival. Her poems and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Sierra magazine, among others. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a co-winner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry award from the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O'Neil was the 2019-2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. She currently serves as the 2022-2024 board chair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP).

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

 

This workshop introduces students to haibun, a literary form that resides in the gray area between haiku and prose. Through an exploration of sensory detail and imagery, participants will learn how to use haibun to illuminate the beauty of everyday experiences.

Melanie "Mel" McCuin received their BA in History from Arizona State University in 2005 and her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University in 2014.  Their writing has appeared in The Salt River Review, The Gila River Review, and Unstrung, among others. Their most recent work appears in the June 2022 issue of Salamander. They teach composition and creative writing at Maharishi International University in Fairfield, IA.

•  Video will be uploaded here after the event. •

 

  • Afternoon onboarding session on how to write the craft analysis essay is asynchronously available in your Canvas course shell only in the module for this day. You can complete the discussion board to showcase you completed this assignment if you are a new student or if you are a continuing student who would like a refresher on this knowledge. If you have had any issues with craft analysis essays, please review! Due date for this assignment: Sept. 13. Please Note: The assignment page is the discussion board where you post your response!

 

  • Session A: READING and PRESENTATION - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    What Does Eco-Poetry Bring to the Table?
    From Fall 2024
    with Denise Low, Eileen Cassinetto, and Kim Shuck
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Location: Your Vimeo Streaming Page here (asynchronous viewing only)
    Genre: Poetry

Denise Low, Kansas Poet Laureate 2007-09, is a founding board member of Indigenous Nations Poets, former board president of AWP, and curator of “Indigenous Voices” for The 222 in northern California. She taught at Haskell Indian Nations University, where she founded the creative writing program. Her House of Grace, House of Blood (2024) is an archive/verse project (University of Arizona). Other publications are Deer/A-Wi (Mammoth), with Kim Shuck; Turtle’s Beating Heart: One Family’s Story of Lenape Survival (University of Nebraska).

Aileen Cassinetto is co-editor of Dear Human at the Edge of Time: Poems on Climate Change in the United States (2023), a companion to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, and The Nature of Our Times: Poems on America’s Lands, Waters, Wildlife, and Other Natural Wonders (2025), a companion to the First National Nature Assessment. She is a 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Anthropocene, Consequence Forum, Mount Hope, Poetry, and Rust & Moth.

Kim Shuck engages in many things poetic. She organizes at least three poetry readings a month, has been published in many places, got some degrees (less poetic),  says things in public, and edits stuff, and has been awarded various certificates, fellowships, things that stand on shelves and one thing that should really be a cheeseboard rather than a wall adornment. Her latest books are Pick a Garnet to Sleep In and Deer/A-wi  with Denise Low.

 

  • Session B: FICTION READING - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    From Spring 2022
    with Karen Osborn and Susan Smith Daniels, one of our MFA Mentors
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Location: Your Vimeo Streaming Page here (asynchronous viewing only)
    Genre: Fiction

Susan Smith Daniels earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing: Fiction from Fairfield University and a Ph.D. in Creative Writing: Fiction from Bath Spa University. Her novel, The Genuine Stories, published by New Rivers Press, was the winner of the Fairfield University Book Prize. Her memoir, The Horse Show Mom’s Survival Guide: For Every Discipline, was published by The Lyons Press. Susan is a repeat fiction mentor in our MFA in Creative Writing.

Karen Osborn is the author of the novels, Patchwork, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Between Earth and Sky, The River Road, Centerville, winner of the Independent Publishers Gold Award, and most recently The Music Book. In reviews, she's been compared to Ian McEwan, Jodi Picoult, and Russell Banks. The New York Times has called her work, "psychologically sophisticated" and The Washington Post has said her writing is "an extraordinary effort to engage the American condition as we find it now." She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts with her husband and teaches fiction writing in the M.F.A. program at Fairfield University.

 

Bonus Session for You Memoirists and Fiction Writers:

  • MASTER CLASS - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    Creating a Transformational Arc for a Main Character
    with Stuart Tanner
    Location: On this Vimeo Streaming Page Only
    Genre: Narrative (fiction, creative nonfiction)

In this bonus master class, MIU faculty and BBC documentary filmmaker Stuart Tanner explores how you can create a transformational arc for a main character in a story.

Stuart Tanner is an acclaimed producer and director of documentary films, including: Saving The Disposable Ones, a documentary that takes you to the heartbreaking streets of inner city Columbia; Time Team, for the Channel Four/Discovery series, uncovered the mysteries of one of the first man-made monuments built on the British landscape; Children of Vengeance, a documentary for the BBC on the Arab-Israeli conflict, won the Foreign Press Association's Story of the Year award; Profits of Doom), an investigation into the policies of the World Bank and IMF in developing nations, was chosen for viewing at the North South film festival; Death on the Silk Road, on the effects of nuclear testing in China, won the Rory Peck Award for Journalism in 1999; The Mahogany Trail, on the plight of Amazonian Indians whose reserves are invaded for mahogany wood for export to foreign markets, won the Bill Travers Insight Award at the London International Environmental Film Festival.

 

  • Weekend onboarding sessions on Social Issues and Ethical Dilemmas in the Literary Arts are asynchronously available in your Canvas course shell only in the weekend module for Week One. You can complete the discussion board to showcase you completed this assignment if you are a new student or if you are a continuing student who would like a refresher on this knowledge. Please note that all readings and videos relevant to this session are uploaded in your Weekend module labeled “SAT. and SUN., Aug. 22 and 23: Onboarding New Students (Asynchronous - complete before Sept. 13.” Due date for this assignment: Sept. 13. Please Note: The assignment page is the discussion board where you post your response!

 

Week Two: Aug. 24 - 30, 2026

Monday, August. 24

  • MASTER CLASS and WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    Writing and Myth: Why All Creative Writers are Myth Makers
    with Craig Deininger
    Time: 10 AM - Noon CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Any

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

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

 

  • READING and Q&A - LIVE EVENT
    The Inward Trip: the Untold Story of Meditation in the West
    with Jennie Rothenberg Gritz
    Time: 1:30 - 3:30 PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Creative Nonfiction, Journalism

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

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

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

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

 
 

A meme Jennie shared with her CNF students when she was a CNF mentor in the MFA.

 
 

Ben McClendon at Paradiso

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

Eric Boyd

Jennifer Espinoza

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

Ben McClendon (he/him) was the MFA’s assistant director from ‘21 - ‘22 and developed our narrative evaluation and assessment models; he also created two courses for our MFA: Literary Theory for the Creative Writer and Writing Pedagogy. He earned his PhD in English (Poetry and Rhetoric) from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. He also studied Creative Writing and English Education at Northern Arizona University. Ben’s poetry can be found in literary journals such as Rattle, Indiana Review, The Chariton Review, Stirring, Zone 3, and Redivider.

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

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

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

 

Tuesday, August 25

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

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

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

• Prompt: Write a piece addressing a specific moment in your life. Begin the piece in reality and then at some point shift into something surrealistic, bizarre, or otherwise unreal. 10 min.

 

Photo: Nynke Passi

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

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

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

Poems
• Autumn by Rainer Maria Rilke.
• Tom Snarsky handout is uploaded in your module for today.

• Prompt 1: Write a piece about being at nature’s mercy. In what ways do you feel your body and spirit moved and transformed beyond your own will by the natural world/God/higher power, etc? 15 min.
• Prompt 2: Write a piece in which you compare yourself to different, unrelated elements of nature/the world around you. You may use Tom Snarsky’s “Flaw” as a template if you wish. Optional: draw on “anaphora” (the deliberate repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of several successive verses, clauses, or paragraphs). 15 min.
• Prompt 3: Write a prayer/plea to nature/your higher power. Ask for what you want, don’t want, or both. 15 min.
• Prompt 4: Write a piece relating your idea of home to various elements of the natural world. How do you connect to home through the landscape it is contained within? 15 min.

 

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

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

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

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

Special treat this week for any of you interested:

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

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

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

Wednesday, August 26

  • Event Discussion and MFA Q&A: Morning Zoom Q&A is for asking questions about any aspect of the MFA. This session is held from 10 AM - Noon in our Zoom room, The Library. Please check your schedules in the Canvas course shell.

 

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    Sensory Gates
    with Dylene Cymraes
    Time: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Any, particularly as relevant to narrative

In this workshop, MIU faculty and MFA faculty Dylene Cymraes, who has a storytelling background, talks about the gateways to the senses in any genre, but particular as a part of storytelling and narrative.

Dylene Cymraes is an author, writing mentor, editor, and facilitator. She has edited and contributed to more than fifty screenplays, published five novels and two non-fiction books. Her work appears in the American Journal of Poetry, the Telepoem Booth Project, and Sink Hollow, among other places She holds a graduate in Communication and Storytelling Studies at East Tennessee State University.

 

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    Writing the Impossible: From the Traumatic to the Mysterious
    with Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Any (examples may be poetry, you can write in any genre)

In this generative workshop, MFA faculty Jennifer Espinoza and Nynke Passi explore writing about the impossible - from the traumatic to the mysterious, even the mystical. They will read their own poems and use those as leaping off points for creative exploration in generative prompts. You can read their bios elsewhere on this page.

Handout Writing the Impossible here.

 

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    Hybrid Memoir
    with Leah Waller
    Time: 10:00 AM - NOON PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Hybrid, multi-genre

In this generative workshop, poet and educator Leah Waller will guide us in an exploration of the hybrid memoir. How do you write about your own life on the edge of different genres, mixing genres, and in prose poetry, flash fiction, flash nonfiction, or between the lines of what has been already explored?

After receiving her MFA in Creative Writing from Northern Arizona University, Leah Waller served as the Assistant Managing Editor for Thin Air Magazine and taught writing in Flagstaff. Excited to reconnect with her roots, Leah returned to Iowa as an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and served for years as MIU’s undergraduate program director for the BA and BFA programs in Creative Writing. She was the co-chair of MIU’s department of English and undergraduate program, a position now taken over by Mel McCuin. Leah’s work has been published in literary journals, magazines, newspapers, and anthologies such as The Noise, The Barely South Review, Four Ties Lit Review, and The Daily Palette. Leah’s poetry collection Under the Cedar Tree had a soaring debut on Amazon’s top ten in poetry. Leah currently lives in Italy.

 

  • SESSION A: POETRY READING - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    with Linda Noel and Kim Shuck
    Time: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM CT
    Location: Via this Vimeo Streaming page only
    Genre: Poetry

This afternoon you can choose to listen to a poetry reading or attend a master class in fiction with Mark Spragg, both of which are being offered asynchronously via your Vimeo streaming page here. This poetry reading with Linda Noel and Kim Shuck, two best friends and indigenous poets, is a gem of an event from Spring ‘22.

Linda Noel is a Native Californian of the Koyungkowi people from the Northern Sierra. She has been included in many anthologies and is Poet Laureate Emerita of Ukiah, California. She published the following volumes: Where You First Saw the Eyes of Coyote, Where You First Saw the Eyes of Coyote, and Mountain Stitch. Her work has been published in a variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies including The Dirt is Red Here, by Heyday Books.

Kim Shuck is Poet Laureate Emerita of San Francisco, her home. She is widely published in journals, anthologies and has also published a couple of books including Rabbit Stories and Deer Trails. She also teaches and does beading and basketweaving, including in the Oakland schools. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.

 

  • SESSION B: FICTION MASTER CLASS - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    with Mark Spragg
    Time: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM CT
    Location: Via this Vimeo Streaming page only
    Genre: Fiction and Narrative

Your second option this afternoon is an asynchronous fiction master class with Mark Spragg. Mark Spragg. The class is mixed with a reading of his own new work and a Q & A where students from Spring ‘23 asked him questions 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.

 

  • PRESENTATION - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    Publishing - Unlocking the Mysteries: Editing and Publishing as a Career
    with Susanne Paola Antonetta
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:30 PM CT
    Location: Via this Vimeo Streaming page only
    Genre: Any

What do literary agents do? What is the right way to submit to a literary journal? What's a "hybrid" press? How to create a publishing plan? Susanne Paola Antonetta gives a helpful overview of publishing in literary magazines and more, covering all you need to know to get started. While the literary market is in the foreground for creative writers in any genre (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, hybrids), other types of publication are also covered. The session is a presentation followed by a Q & A.

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.

 

Friday, August 28

  • READING and MASTER CLASS - ASYNCHRONOUS EVENT
    with Poet, Fiction Writer, Memoirist, Essayist, and Literary Critic David Mura
    Time: 10:00 AM - NOON PM CT
    Location: Via this Vimeo Streaming page only
    Genre: Memoir, Nonfiction

In this session from Spring ‘22, David Mura reads from his new memoir A Stranger’s Journey and talks about the connections between race, sexuality and history in terms of the craft of writing and his own work.

David Mura is a writer, memoirist, poet and performance artist who brings a unique perspective to our multi-racial and multi-cultural society. A third-generation Japanese-American, he has written intimately about his life as a man of color and the connections between race, sexuality and history. In public appearances interweaving poetry, performance and personal testament, he provides powerful insights into the racial issues facing America today. Mura's memoirs, poems essays, plays and performances have won wide critical praise and numerous awards. Their topics range from contemporary Japan to the legacy of the internment camps and the history of Japanese Americans to critical explorations of an increasingly diverse America.

 

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP - LIVE EVENT
    The Power of Timelines in Narrative
    with Dylene Cymraes
    Time: 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom room (our main zoom room)
    Genre: Fiction, Creative Nonfiction

In this workshop, MIU faculty and MFA faculty Dylene Cymraes, who has a storytelling background, talks about the the power of timelines in narrative and teaches you how you can delineate timelines in your own stories and memoir pieces.

Dylene Cymraes is an author, writing mentor, editor, and facilitator. She has edited and contributed to more than fifty screenplays, published five novels and two non-fiction books. Her work appears in the American Journal of Poetry, the Telepoem Booth Project, and Sink Hollow, among other places She holds a graduate in Communication and Storytelling Studies at East Tennessee State University.

Dylene Cymraes’ Book Triology Moving Home on Amazon.

 

  • OPEN MIC READING - LIVE EVENT private to our program only
    For and with all of you!
    Time: 7:30 PM - 9:45 PM CT
    Location: The Library Zoom Room
    Genre: Any

Tonight welcome you students to take the stage and share with us some of your own work in any genre (1 - 2 pages each). We look forward to hearing your voices, and we hold a safe space for YOU. Welcome to the stage! This is the beginning of your life as a writer. We are so excited that you are embarking on this journey with us and can't wait to watch you grow and transform in our program.

 

Bonus Sessions for You Memoirists, Creative Nonfiction Writers, and Fiction Writers:

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP: SPECULATIVE WRITING
    You Bring the Axe, I'll Bring the Shovel, Let's Kill Lovecraft
    with Alice Paige
    From the Archives: Spring 2023

 

  • GENERATIVE WORKSHOP: MEMOIR AND PERSONAL ESSAY
    Writing Your Truth
    with Ellen Birkett Morris
    From the Archives: Spring 2023

 

  • PRESENTATION: LITERARY PRESS
    Two Sylvias Press
    with Kelli Russell Agodon
    From the Archives: Fall 2022

 

  • On Publishing via the Author’s Guild - Defamation in Fiction vs Nonfiction
    a share by MFA mentor Linda Egenes
    Register here (free)
    Date: Wed. Sept. 16, 2026
    Time: 11 AM Eastern Time or 10 AM CT

This is a webinar offered for free by the Author’s Guild. The session is free for anyone to join and you can submit questions too—you don’t have to belong to the Author’s Guild. And if you register ahead of time, they will send you the link to see the replay too.

When writing about real people—or inventing characters based on real people—an author should consider whether someone’s portrayal could attract a lawsuit. Fiction and nonfiction writers alike can potentially face lawsuits from people who feel their reputation is damaged by a book. Media lawyer Carolyn Schurr Levin, a veteran of risk management for book manuscripts, joins us to discuss libel in fiction and autofiction (autobiographical fiction), as well as nonfiction or any writing that may be perceived as portraying real people. Levin will give an overview of the pertinent laws and important court decisions on this issue and what attorneys consider when vetting a manuscript to reduce the risk of a lawsuit. Attendees will gain knowledge to more confidently proceed with writing about living people and real companies.

Carolyn Schurr Levin’s practice focuses on media, publishing, First Amendment, and intellectual property law. She has wide ranging experience in prepublication legal review of content and editorial risk management. She is a partner at the firm Miller Korzenik Sommers Rayman LLP. She has wide- ranging experience in prepublication legal review of content and editorial risk management. From 2008 to 2019, Ms. Levin was a Lecturer of Media Law at the Stony Brook University School of Journalism, where she also served in the role of Media Law Adviser from 2013 to 2019. She has taught a graduate course in Legal Aspects of Publishing Law at Pace University and from 2018 to 2023 taught Media Ethics and Law in the Department of Journalism and the Writing Professions at Baruch College. Before teaching full time, Ms. Levin served as the Vice President and General Counsel of Ziff Davis Media and the Vice President and General Counsel of Newsday. She earned her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University and her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School. She is admitted to the bars of New York, Connecticut, and the District of Columbia.

If you are interested in viewing the Author’s Guild’s entire free Resource Library of past webinars and articles, see https://authorsguild.org/resources/?sort=date-DESC

 

In Memoriam: Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry (August 5, 1934 – August 31, 2026) was an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. Closely identified with rural Kentucky, Berry developed many of his agrarian themes in the early essays of The Gift of Good Land (1981) and The Unsettling of America (1977). His attention to the culture and economy of rural communities is also found in the novels and stories o Port William,f, such as A Place on Earth (1967), Jayber Crow (2000), and That Distant Land (2004). He was a very fine poet as well. You can read more about him here.

Poems:
• “How to Be a Poet”
• “The Book of Camp Branch”
• “Why” and “Dust”

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

(The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry, Counterpoint, March 1, 2009)

No Going Back
(Wendell Berry)

No, no, there is no going back.
Less and less you are
that possibility you were.
More and more you have become
those lives and deaths
that have belonged to you.
You have become a sort of grave
containing much that was
and is no more in time, beloved
then, now, and always.
And so you have become a sort of tree
standing over a grave.
Now more than ever you can be
generous toward each day
that comes, young, to disappear
forever, and yet remain
unaging in the mind.
Every day you have less reason
not to give yourself away.

(The Sabbath Poems, 1993, I)