Public Lectures: Saturday, January 6
In Canon Lounge, Gladfelter

Saturday, January 6                         NINA McCONIGLEY:  New Territories: Migration
9:30 AM                                                         and Exile                                 

The poet Amit Majmudar says this, “You’ve come of age in the age of migrations./ The board tilts, and the bodies roll west./ Fanaticism’s come back into fashion,/ come back with a vengeance./ In this new country, there’s no gravitas,/ no grace…” This lecture will be about the literature (focusing on fiction with some other genres thrown in) of migration and exile. From the Book of Exodus to Ovid’s Poetry of Exile, writers have long examined what it means to leave one’s country, to migrate to the unknown. We’ll look at how these migrations shape characters into new territories and internal spaces. What does migration and exile mean to us as writers? Any journey that has a geographical and social repositioning asks our characters to reconsider themselves, to examine not only the self, but the other.

We’ll likely look at Moshid Hamin (Exit West), Tayeb Salih (Season of Migration to the North), Agha Shahid Ali (The Country Without a Post Office), W. G. Sebald (Austerlitz), Leslie Marmon Silko (Ceremony), Solmaz Sharif (Look), Vladimir Nabokov (Speak, Memory), and Kiran Desai (The Inheritance of Loss).

Saturday, January 6                         MARIANNE BORUCH: Orienteering and Trial
10:45 AM                                                      Balloons                   

This lecture is a pinball machine, a set of shelves, a seed bed, a hoarded basement’s languid mess. Which is to say, it is a five-part invention (Audio, Embarrassment, Spellcheck, Wild Blue Yonder, Shirt) taking on a number of subjects: the beloved particulars of image, rhyme and other kinship sounds, metaphor, lineation, on to various sorts of transformation yet to be named exactly. And anecdotes about hairstyles, airplanes, 8^th grade, dark-eyed Juncos, public swimming pools, etc. Plus why we write at all. Eventual reference will be made to the work and continuing presence of Joseph Conrad, Emily Dickinson, Larry Levis, John Clare, Laura Jensen, Jorge Luis Borges, and others. The aim also is to introduce a rather addictive form of literary architecture —I call it the “wee essay”—which is a DIY lyric device of attention crossed by bewilderment that with any luck carries a faint rhetorical aftersound, just enough to bother you and perhaps show what can be managed with fewer words than might be good for you.

Handouts will be provided. No experience necessary but curiosity would be grand.

Public Readings: Saturday, January 6
In Canon Lounge, Gladfelter, 8:15 p.m.

Gabrielle Calvocoressi
Robert Boswell
Connie Voisine
Antonya Nelson

Public Readings: Thursday, January 4
In Canon Lounge, Gladfelter, 8:15 p.m.

Michael Parker
Martha Rhodes
Marisa Silver
Daniel Tobin

The public is welcome to attend the morning lectures and evening readings in fiction and poetry offered during the Master of Fine Arts Program winter residency.  Events last approximately one hour. Admission is free. The schedule is subject to change.

For more information, call the MFA Office: (828) 771-3715.

Readings will begin at 8:15 PM in Canon Lounge, Gladfelter, unless indicated otherwise.

READINGS by FACULTY

Wednesday, January 3—8:00 PM

Lesley Nneka Arimah, Christine Kitano, Bennett Sims, Dana Levin, Anna Solomon

Thursday, January 4

Michael Parker, Martha Rhodes, Marisa Silver, Daniel Tobin

Friday, January 5

C.J. Hribal, Marianne Boruch, Nina McConigley, Maurice Manning

Saturday, January 6

Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Robert Boswell, Connie Voisine, Antonya Nelson

Sunday, January 7

Jeremy Gavron, Daisy Fried, Megan Staffel, Alan Williamson

Monday, January 8—no readings

Tuesday, January 9

David Haynes, Debra Allbery, Dominic Smith, Matthew Olzmann

READINGS by GRADUATING STUDENTS

 Wednesday, January 10

Kathleen Crowley, Gregory Miller, Kristen Hewitt, Christina Ward-Niven

Thursday, January 11—Fellowship Hall, behind Ransom Chapel

Kate Kaplan, Robin Rosen Chang, Kate Lister Campbell, Shannon Winston

Friday, January 12—4:30 PM, Fellowship Hall; followed by graduation ceremony

Sonya Larson, Carlos Andres Bates-Gómez, Meghan Williams  Read more

The MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College is delighted to announce that one of its alumni, Trish Marshall (poetry, ’17) will return as its new MFA Project Manager: Academic Affairs.  Her office expertise, knowledge of MFA practices and policies, and abiding passion for the program will all be invaluable assets in this role. Trish will join the office team on September 12.

Pictured: Trish and her fellow Project Manager, Caleb.

The program website includes a link to a bibliography of all alumni book publications of which the program is aware, currently well over 700 books:

http://www.wwcmfa.org/alumni/alumni-bibliography/

Please help us keep this list as complete as possible by uploading your new publication information through a form on the site:

https://docs.google.com/a/smith.edu/forms/d/1YazT-pftQh3Syg9q34Iesy26vqqsQDWAP11dFdeos1U/viewform

The form will ask for your:

1. first name, last name,
2. the year in which you graduated,
3. the genre in which you graduated, fiction or poetry,
4. whether you graduated from Warren Wilson or Goddard,
5. the title of your book,
6. the name of your publisher,
7. year of publication, and
8. specify novel, short fiction, novella, book of poems, chapbook, anthology, translated poetry, translated fiction, or “other” (explain).

Please also share any additional information regarding awards the publication received. And thank you for helping us to keep the bibliography as up-to-date as possible.

Thank you for helping to maintain the bibliography, which is one of the resources that attracts new writers to the program.

Patrick Donnelly

http://www.patrickdonnellypoems.com