“Embraced,” by Martha Rhodes

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Poetry faculty member Martha Rhodes was recently featured in Plume. Read an excerpt of “Embraced” below:

Embraced

I have visited an ancient redwood and heard it creak
as I’ve rested my cheek and ear against its trunk. It has received
my deepest sobs and my hundreds of fingerings along its soft bark.
Leaning into it, I have whispered to my most darling ones—
Mother, Lucy, my multi colored cats—as if they’ve coursed through
the tree’s vascular system to form an inner pool— their happy noise
so audible! I have stopped at the tree for hours over years,
in the shadow of Mt. Tam, and I have napped, at tree’s base,
inebriated, by the moldy brew of its memories, boiled up
to commingle with the mist of my breathings
of nose, mouth and cells so that I must slow, resist
rushing past, to recall the paddings of creatures
before me as well as my own over years…

 

Find the rest of this poem, as well as two others, here: https://plumepoetry.com/embraced/

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Library of Congress, “Life of a Poet: Dana Levin”

Poetry faculty Dana Levin appears in The Life of a Poet series from The Library of Congress.

 

To watch on the Library of Congress YouTube channel, click here.

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Hear 20 Years in Your Ear +

Twenty years of lectures—from January 1995 to the present—are now downloadable from the MFA Audio Store at www.wwcmfa.org. Friends of Writers is grateful to Rolf Yngve, Reed Turchi, and Molly Little for their invaluable and ongoing efforts to make our extraordinary lectures available to the public.

 

AND, visit our YOUTUBE page to view short video excerpts of lectures from the past five years: Friends of Writers on YouTube

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Ready to Bid? 40th Anniversary Auction Teaser…

The 40th Anniversary of the MFA Program for Writers is just around the corner! Come join us in Swannanoa for a day-long celebration of the program, featuring faculty/alumni panels, an evening gala with dinner and dancing—and a silent auction!

This week’s sampling of items you can bid on at the silent auction:

 

BAKOPOULOS MUGSHOT

Novel Manuscript Review from Dean Bakopoulos—up to four hundred pages, focusing on pacing, structure, character, and plot, with a 10-20 page single-spaced, packet-style letter and one follow-up exchange. (And is there anyone among us who doesn’t long for another packet-style letter?)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Club visit with Joan Silber in New York Csilber.jpgity or via Skype! Consider getting a group of Wallies together and turn this one into a mini-Bookshop!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

CPhillipsFOWAnd Across Our Faces, a signed and numbered limited-edition chapbook, from Carl Phillips, published by Aureole Press in 2015, and specially inscribed by Phillips for the 40th Anniversary. This chapbook, with 5 poems, is truly a work of art, with illustrations of microscopic plankton printed in two colors on specialty paper.

 

 

 

And that’s not all—next week, see which Boston-based faculty member is offering a book club in-person or Skype visit. Working on an essay? Don’t miss next week’s auction teaser to find out which faculty member will read and respond to it. And if you didn’t see last week’s offerings, take a look at the Friends of Writers blog to see what you missed.

Not able to make it to Swannanoa this year? Consider buying in advance at the fixed Swannanoa Superstar price by midnight June 25 and the item is yours (Swannanoa Superstar prices released on June 13: check back!)

 

 

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Taylor Graduates!

For the past four years, this guy has been invaluable to making our residency experience pleasant and comfortable and as smooth as possible.

Congratulations, Taylor, on graduating from Warren Wilson College.  Thanks for all you have done and do for the MFA Program.

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Reminder about Conference Scholarships

A reminder to anyone wishing to attend this year’s MFA Alumni Conference but who may need financial assistance to come, the deadline for scholarship applications is this Saturday, May 7. Details can be found at friendsofwriters.org.
Additionally, due to an oversight, for those wishing to secure a spot with an initial deposit, the amount of that deposit is $250.
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One More WWC/MFA Panel AND a Party Invite!

S233. Writers and the Greater Community: How to Make a Difference

Gold Salon 1, JW Marriott LA, 1st Floor
Saturday, April 2, 2016
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

This panel features leaders of community outreach programs for students, low-income adults, and hospitalized patients to talk about the value of writers helping others to find their voices and how it can deepen one’s engagement with the world. Panelists discuss the challenges and rewards of building outreach programs, and the unexpected synergies of service work and creativity. How to get started, where to volunteer, and the balance of community outreach with writing is also explored.

Moderator: S. Kirk Walsh has worked as a writer in schools and other institutions, such as hospitals and domestic violence shelters. In 2007, she founded Austin Bat Cave, a writing and tutoring center for kids that provides free writing workshops. She is a fiction writer and a graduate of NYU’s writing program

Vivé Griffith has directed Free Minds, a program offering free college humanities and writing classes to low-income adults in Austin, Texas since 2007. A published poet and essayist, she holds degrees from the Michener Center for Writers at UT (MFA) and the University of Cincinnati (MA, English).

Joel Arquillos is the executive director at 826LA, a nonprofit writing and tutoring organization that serves youth ages 6–18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and supports teachers by helping them get their students excited about writing.

Ami Walsh is a writer in residence with the Gifts of Art Program at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor. She helped to start a bedside storytelling program for hospitalized patients in 2012. She is a fiction writer and a graduate of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

AND

Gil Soltz invites all Wallies to a celebration of the YEFE NOF residency

THE YEFE NOF RESIDENCY

presents a *CONTRE SOIRÉE at RESIDENT L.A.

Thursday, March 31 @ 6-8pm

YNR invites you – Writers, Researchers, & Designers – to our happy hour to celebrate the making and completing of projects. We offer an exceptional place to work in the mountains of Lake Arrowhead. Come on 3/31 to meet those involved and to learn more. For information about 2016-2017 applications go to yefenof.com

 

*the party happening in the midst of a party

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Quarterly Digest of Awards and Books

41hwrnBYx-L._SX327_BO1,204,203,200_The Language of Paradise by alum Barbara Klein Moss (fiction, ’96) was  published by Norton in April, 2015.

 

514CJlsj3jL._SX310_BO1,204,203,200_The Writer’s Almanac published the poem “Detroit Pheasant” from the collection Trumbull Ave. by alum Michael Lauchlan, (poetry, ’91).

 

“Homesteaders,” a story by alum Elisabeth Hamilton, was published in the Summer 2015 issue of The Colorado Review.

 

Alums Lucy Anderton (poetry, ’05) and Laura-Gray Street (poetry, ’97) each have two poems published in the same Summer 2015 issue of The Colorado Review.

 

513xw2mo1nL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_Alum Lynette D’Amico’s (fiction, ’13) novella Road Trip has been published by Twelve Winters Press. Additionally, her nonfiction piece “In the Split” appears in the 2015 issue of The Ocean State Review.

 

Alum Mark Solomon (poetry, ’93) has published the chapbook Her Whom I Summoned. Contact [email protected] to order copies.

 

61X4KnqQS4L._SX329_BO1,204,203,200_Faculty member Lauren Groff edited the Summer 2015 issue of Ploughshares Literary Journal. Her new novel, Fates and Furies, will published by Riverhead Books in mid-September.

 

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Special Reception at AWP

During next week’s AWP conference, the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College is hosting a reception for students of color who are interested in pursuing a degree.  Please help us spread the word to any friends or colleagues who might be interested.

WWCMFA+prospective+SOC+reception+AWP+2015

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