DO NOT REGISTER!

FOLKS,

As I said in my email to you yesterday, DO NOT ATTEMPT TO REGISTER until I announce open registration for the MFA program. Even though you are ABLE to register at this moment, we are not ready for you to register and doing so could cause problems for other students. Please wait for my announcement here that registration is open, which should come later this week.

bc

Juniper Summer Writing Institute

I have been invited to nominate two students for scholarships to the Juniper Summer Writing Institute (http://www.umass.edu/juniperinstitute/institute.html) at UMass in June. The applicatin deadline is April 2.

If you think you might be interested, check out the web site and let me know by the end of the Janaury residency. I think Ron Samul may have attended a few years ago, so you can ask him about his experience.

If any of you need to replace a residency, this might be a good opportunity. I do not know the value of the scholarships.

Jennifer Haigh and Nahid Rachlin Featured at January Residency

Jennifer Haigh is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Condition; Baker Towers, winner of the 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author; and Mrs. Kimble, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her short stories have appeared in the Atlantic, Granta, the Saturday Evening Post, and many other publications.

Nahid Rachlin was a Stegner Fellow and has published four novels, including FOREIGNER (W.W.Norton), a memoir, PERSIAN GIRLS (Penguin), and a short story collection, VEILS (City Lights).  She has published stories in about fifty magazines. One story aired on NPR’s “Selected Shorts”. She has received an NEA grant, Pen Syndicated Fiction project  and Bennet Cerf awards and has written reviews for NYTimes Book Review and published essays in NYTimes and Los Angeles Times.

Haigh will offer a Short Story Master Class and will read from her work. Rachlin will offer a workshop in the memoir and will read from her work. The full schedule for the residency and workshop offerings will be posted later this week.

A Note of Caution

If you are a part-time student (that is, if you haven't been taking a full load of courses each semester), I encourage you to log into Banner and check your transcript to make sure that you are on track with all of the courses you need to complete the program and that all of the courses you have taken are reflected in the transcript. Full-time students have no doubt about what courses they're taking, but part-time students have a bit more sheduling complexity. Confirming these details now can short circuit big surprises later...

Books for OMGW in Spring

Those of you who will be in my OMGW in the spring (which is third and fourth semester students--first and second semester students will have Holly Azevedo) will have the option of reading one of these four books for your first assignment in the semester:

On Moral Fiction, John Gardner
The Art of Recklessness, Dean Young (on poetry)
The Memoir Project, Marion Roach Smith
How to Write a Sentence, Stanley Fish

You do NOT have to choose the book that most closely corresponds to your own genre--you may do any of the four, regardless of your primary or secondary genre. If you were in my OMGW this semester, you may not do the Fish book again.

As usual, there will be meetings scheduled at the residency for you to meet with your OMGW instructor. The schedule should be posted next week, as well as the workshop selections.

What We Sign Up For now available

Hey folks! My new book, What We Sign Up For, has just come out from Pecan Grove Press. And it's available of Amazon too! Lisa

New post to Six Loose Cannons

I just finished a project for writing in the second genre (second genre being multimedia writing). I've written about it on my new blog post. The project has inspired me to pursue creating a full length documentary film about the subject matter. Check it out, if you like. Oh, and how do I add my blog to the links list over there on the left of the page?

Thanks

Anne Marie

The Galley Is In!

Just received the galley for Women Writing on Family: Tips on Writing, Publishing and Teaching. I have two essays in the collection. One is titled, "The Parent Trap: Five Mistakes to Avoid When Writing about Family" and the other, "CyberMoms: Opportunities for Women Writers on the Web." The editors of the book are Carol Smallwood and Suzann Holland and the publisher is The Key Publishing House, Inc. Release date is in January 2012.

WTNH-TV Connecticut Style Interview

I was recently interviewed about Press Pause Moments on Connecticut Style WTNH-TV New Haven. What a nice experience! I ran into Gils Simmons, the Channel 8 metereologist, while I waited and he "warned" me about the probable damage from the October nor'easter that hit the next day. Thanks to him, I bought ice on my way home and managed to salvage egg nog, milk and yogurt during our five days powerless!

To watch click here.

Guest Bloggers Invited

The Press Pause Moments blog will feature several guest bloggers on the topic of "Pressing Pause to Give Thanks." Women writers may submit a 500 word post for consideration. The blog posts will be featured the remainder of this week and next week in honor of Thanksgiving.

If you are interested please e-mail your submission for consideration to AnneWitkavitch@comcast.net.

All submissions should be edited, proofread and ready to be published.

Click here to view the blog.

Two years and countless revisions later--"Last Supper" sold!

Thank you to Dan Pope and all my colleagues in the MFA program who provided guidance as I struggled to write a mystery short story from a 12 year-old girl's point of view. I had enourmous trouble finding her voice. I'm thrilled to report that FINALLY, after two years and countless revisions, "Last Supper" has sold to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. It will appear in the June issue, which is perfect, since it is distributed free to attendees at the annual Malice Domestic Mystery Conference. Attendees at this conference are readers of the kind of non-blood and guts mysteries I write.

One additional comment, this sale is even sweeter than simply selling a project that's dear to me and that I've worked on for years; it also marks the first non-Josie fiction sale I've ever had.

Noir and Lynch

A while back, I can't remember if it was in an OMGW or here on the blog, there was a brief discussion led by Jane about the nature of noir.

In a review of the re-release DVD of Blue Velvet, Bill Wyman characterizes noir this way:

Lynch, with his perverse Oedipal fantasia established, takes on the conventions of the noir—in which our hero goes off in search of answers, compromises himself, and winds up finding out more than he bargained for.

Interesting way of looking at it, which, actually, isn't far from the definition of the tragic hero....

Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

I am writing to let the students in your department know about the approaching deadline for the writing Fellowships here at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. We hope that you will forward this email to those you think may be interested in applying. If your department or university has a blog or general online posting for these opportunities, please feel free to distribute the information that way as well.



No degree is required for a Fellowship, but we have found that students who are about to finish or have recently finished graduate or undergraduate writing programs are often in search of opportunities like the Work Center Fellowship.


We'd be grateful for your help in passing on word to your students of this unique opportunity. To download a poster, please click HERE.


If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.


Sincerely,
Salvatore Scibona
Writing Coordinator


Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts


For the last forty years, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown has run the largest and longest residency Fellowship in the United States for emerging visual artists and writers. Artists who have not had significant recognition for their work and writers who have not yet published a full-length book of creative work are welcome to apply. Fellows receive a seven-month stay (October 1¬¬-May 1) at the Work Center and a $750 monthly stipend. Fellows do not pay or work in exchange for their fellowships in any way. Fellows are chosen based on the excellence of their work. Former visual arts Fellows include Ellen Gallagher, Jack Pierson, Lisa Yuskavage, Angela Dufresne, Geoffrey Chadsey, and Lamar Peterson. Former writing Fellows have won every major national award in writing including the National Book Award and seven Pulitzer Prizes. Former writing Fellows include Denis Johnson, Louise Glück, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Yusef Komunyakaa.


The postmark deadline for the 2012-13 Writing Fellowships is December 1, 2011.



For details, please visit:

www.fawc.org/fellowships

Heads Up on AWP Awards

November 21 is a hard deadline, NOT a postmark deadline... All entries must be received by Laurel in the office on or before Nov. 21.

Self publishing and International Publishing

Once again I am appealing to the vast experiences of my fellow MFAers.

I am interested in gathering more information on self publishing. Does anyone have any experiences (good, bad or ugly) they are willing to share? Websites to visit? Contacts to make? I'm seriously considering right now and would like to make an informed decision.

Also does anyone have any experience with international publishing houses (espeically Italian)?

Feel free to post here or email me at claudine@getgravity.com

Thanks to all!

Books for MFA Display Case

Hi All,

We have two display cases outside the MFA office for mentors/faculty in the program and for students/graduates. If you would like your book included in the display, please mail me a copy:

Western Connecticut State University
MFA in Professional & Creative Writing
181 White Street
Danbury, CT 06810

***If you want to check with me to see if your book is already in the case, send me a quick email***

We also updated the MFA website with pictures of faculty publications. Faculty/mentors please take a look to see if your book is pictured here: http://www.wcsu.edu/writing/mfa. If it is not, you can email me a picture and I will add it.

Thanks,
Kristin Santa Maria
santamaria005@connect.wcsu.edu

Enrichment Presentations at Residency

If you intend to present your Enrichment Project at the January residency, please inform me by email ASAP. I'm putting the finishing touches on the residency schedule.

Mark Sundeen on Huffington Post...

...links his new book to the Occupy movement.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mark-sundeen/the-other-one-percent_b_1067408.html

AWP Deadline is November 21

New Writing Site

Hi friends,

In the interest of doing everything I can think of to promote (you know that word "marketing" that we all hate?), I am happy for the opportunity to share my new Wordpress site with you here. I hope it will be an interactive place where you can find news about my latest work/accomplishments, be fed some inspiration through writing prompts and questions, and most importantly, share and follow along on the beautiful, messy journey of a writer's life. You can check it out at www.katemeadows.wordpress.com. If you "follow" me, I will be sure to follow you. You can also "Like" my Facebook page, Kate Meadows Writing and Editing, if you want. Thanks so much to all who have already supported this endeavor. One of the best things about an MFA program is those unbreakable connections you make, connections that can last for years if you want them to. Cheers.