Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Water~Stone deadline and next GLS Alumni Writers' Group meeting

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Water~Stone postmark deadline is Thursday, December 1.  Now that we're not students anymore, we can submit.  Yay!

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Monday, December 5, 2011
7-10 pm
The Sarah Hayes Residence

Please join us as we kick off the Hamline GLS Alumni Writers’ Group!

This multi-genre writers’ group meets the first Monday of every month at 7:00 pm, giving participants a chance to start the month off focused on writing.

The goals for this group are to build community, have fun, and support fellow writers as we strive to keep writing an active part of our busy lives. You are invited to bring pieces to share and/or workshop as well as any concepts or ideas you’d like to explore or get feedback on.

Come to one meeting, come regularly… It’s up to you.  For more information, including directions, and/or to get on the Writers’ Group mailing list, email Sarah at sarah@innerrealms.net.  You can also join the group on Facebook and get reminders sent.
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Thursday, November 17, 2011

This Thursday (Poetry), Friday (West Egg), and Saturday (Save the MALS program)

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Thursday, November 17th
7:30 - 9pm

Poetry Book Club will be at Har Mar Mall Barnes and Noble Bookstore at the corner of Snelling and County Road B.  Sarah Spleiss and a few others will secure some tables in Starbucks within the bookstore.  Enjoy discussing Red Bird by Mary Oliver!   Map here.

And for poetry book club lovers, Jean will email the nominations for next year out out for voting by the end of this coming weekend.  (This gives any stragglers one last chance to submit.)  Let her know!

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club usually meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (except for the Thanksgiving month exception). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.
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Friday, November 18th
7:30pm - 9:00pm

Rock Paper Scissors LAUNCH PARTY and Liver Demolition at the Turf Club
Celebrate the launch of this year's r,p,s and hear some readers from its golden pages!

1601 University Ave.
Saint Paul, MN 55104

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Saturday, November 19th
3:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Satish Jayaraj invited you to
Save the MALS program Planning meeting

1600 Englewood apt 103
St Paul MN 55104
 
From Satish:
 
"As some of you may know, a decision was made by the VP of Hamline, David Stern, to halt new students entering the MALS program and to shut it down after current students (myself included) graduate. I am going to be fighting this tooth and nail. I always loved the MALS program even as an MFA because of how well our beloved faculty integrated the two programs. If the MALS program is shut down over frivolous reasons, ( reasons which we will discuss) how much will the MFA deteriorate as a result? I am very afraid of how far this slippery slope will go. Some of us MFA grads know how remarkable the Hamline program is when we talk to MFA's in other programs, so it is as much an MFA concern as it is a MALS." 
 
"I am holding an emergency meeting at my apartment to brainstorm all the different creative ways at our disposal to put a plan into action and act on it. At the very least it will be a letter/essay writing workshop. At the most we'll do so much on multiple levels and reach several audiences that we'll overwhelm the V.P. into repealing his decision.  I'm looking to hear big, small, cliche, repetitive, weird ideas and anything between and beyond."

"I have a decent amount of writing instruments, but bring your own in case and bring your laptops if you have any (For research) Food and beer to keep us going will also be appreciated. I lack furniture for a large crowd, but I have plenty of soft carpet, no I will not be insulted if you think it prudent to bring soft cushions, or anything else for that matter that my pad might be missing. RSVP (612-568-7660) so I know what to expect, and it's never too late to start shooting out ideas and asking questions."
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Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Faculty Appreciation Potluck November 4th

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Friday, November 4
5:30pm - 7:00pm
Giddens Learning Center: Gallery Room

GLS alumni are getting together with our past faculty to thank them for their wonderful influence. Start thinking about what dish you'd like to bring.  Post your ideas on Facebook or at glsalumnibrd@hamline.edu.  Afterwards, you can head straight over to the Water~Stone reading if you'd like.

This is a great, low-key event where you can thank those great faculty members one more time for all they contributed to your education and growth as a writer.  Also a great place to try some amazing food.  And talk to your fellow alumni.  We'd love to see you there.

- your glsbrd
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Monday, October 10, 2011

Interview with Ann Iversion on her new book (reading at Hamline 15 October)

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It's a busy month and a busy week for alumni!  Here's another reading and an interview with the reader! 


GLS alum Ann Iverson will be reading from her new poetry collection, Art Lessons, at Hamline on Oct. 15, 7:00pm, in Giddens Learning Center. Ann and I finished up our MFA programs about the same time and have been in a writer's group together for about the past 10 years. Her art and poetry has been such an inspiration to me that I wanted to talk with her a little more about this new book and share it with the readers of this blog. If you haven't had a chance to read Ann's work, you now have three great books to add to your reading list.  --Teresa Boyer
 

Teresa: What inspired this third collection of poetry?

Ann: This book comes from a personal need to burn the torch for art and poetry, which often gets overlooked in a world saturated with technologies and gloomy forecasts. During the war of which my stepson served three tours of duty (the subject of my second book, Definite Space) I needed to find what God meant and how making art and poetry helped me to define what it means to exist. I am here and I am alive. Making art and poetry help me to exist in such a confusing world. 

Teresa: It seems like such a short time since your last collection was published and I know you are creating art and working full-time, too. How do you manage to fuel and sustain such a rich body of work?

Ann: I have no idea! I have a motto: One by one I get things done, but ten by ten, I’m lost again. But really, the thought of getting messy with paints and putting on the last glazing effect keeps me energized and makes me whole. It’s a slow process, actually, depending on the situations that life offers us. I consider Van Gogh who painted over 900 masterpieces in a decade span and then consider what I’ve done in a certain way. My style at work is to keep those who follow energized with promise and acceptance, and, thus, that is returned to me. I believe in whimsy and whimsy energizes me. I have sisters and friends who believe in me and a wiener dog who keeps me laughing despite the pressures. And I don’t have small children, yet a stepson who has served three tours of duty in Iraq so the emotional strain is quite significant.

Teresa: How is this collection different from your previous ones?

Ann: This collection feels more like my first collection, Come Now to the Window, in that I did not have one topic, as I did in Definite Space. It’s a whirl of poems that came together gracefully only due to Kirsten Dierking’s extraordinary talent in vision and manuscript arrangement. But on the other hand, weaving through them are the gracious experiences of life and what it has to offer. When my second book was in publication mode, I began to write again, stretching towards a new understanding after the effects of the book Definite Space, based on my stepson’s three tours of duty in Iraq as a Military Police Officer and canine dog handler. Art offered and offers me solace. Like right now as I write, I’m thinking of my newest piece out in my makeshift garage/art studio and want to tackle it some more, but the job and life demands, this interview does not. I love it. Staying in the moment of what you love is important and I love this.  Truly I do.

Teresa: How does your practice of art inform your practice of writing and vice versa?

Ann: It’s a peculiar, amazing exchange and happens either in the moment of working in both genres or just on a crazy day of work and then I see or hear something that triggers the connection. When I paint and my mind is clear of crap, often lines come to me. Yet when I write, my mind is not often cleared of crap and so…I think visual arts is often more freeing because you don’t have to worry so much about how it will be interpreted. That could be wildly debated, but in my experience in working in both creative activities, I just get less freaked out when I show a painting or collage to the world or even friends versus a poem.

Teresa: What poets and artists are you most interested in today?

Ann: Joyce Sutphen, Arlinda Henderson, Tim Flugum, Li Young Lee, Mary Oliver and the list goes. Sometimes I am very inclined about reading a book about war. The Holocaust haunts me.

Teresa: What subjects continue to interest you as an artist?

Ann: Big wild flowers. That’s the only thing I know how to do. I’m not a trained artist but just a person who likes color and add beauty to my small world.

Teresa: What advice do you have for other Hamline alumnus who are trying to pursue publication?

Ann: Be good to people, because people are good. Be generous with your love for the world. Start small, publish in local venues first. Don’t disregard what you might think is a trite opportunity. But then go for the gusto and try to crack the glass domes of prestigious journals. Poetry and life are strange and peculiar and beautiful and magnificent, and the best yet: unpredictable. Even in this world intoxicated with technology, there is a place and need for poetry. If it makes you happy to write, keep doing it. It’s your legacy. Throw your hand-held device into the pond and write.

Teresa: Where can we find your book, Art Lessons?

Ann: Hamline bookstore, Amazon, technical devices for reading books (whatever they might be and they are cool though I am not familiar with them,) and small local bookstores as well as mainstream.  

Ann Iverson is a visual artist and poet and has worked in education for years. She holds Masters degrees in both fine arts and liberal studies from Hamline University in St. Paul, MN. Her work has appeared in several literary magazines. Ann’s poetry collections include Come Now to the Window published by Laurel Poetry Collective, Definite Space, and now the soon to be released Art Lessons published by Holy Cow! Press. A few of her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s public radio segment, ‘Writer's Almanac.’ Ann's artwork was recently selected and installed in the new University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital. 


If you'd like to conduct an interview or be interviewed for the blog, contact us
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Saturday, October 8, 2011

Book Festival this Saturday 15 October!

This event is tons of fun, so if you've never been, give it a try this year.  They have panels and lectures and readings and a book sale and tables set up by local publishers and literary magazines (including Water~Stone).  Rain Taxi sponsors it, and they may still need some volunteers if you want to help out. See their website for all the fabulous details.  (There is a lot going on.)

Some GLS-related folks are making appearances this year!  If I missed anyone, let me know, so we can add them to the list.

Panel This Must Be The Place: Representing Minnesota 
12:30 pm Rain Room
Mary Rockcastle

Morning Mixer
10:00–10:30 am
Geoff Herbachfor  Stupid Fast
Lightsey Darst for Find the Girl

See you there!

Friday, October 14th Happy Hour and Reading

Friday, October 14th
5-6:30 Happy Hour
7:00 Reading

You may have heard that Deborah Keenan and Barrie Borich will be part of a reading featuring contributors to American Tensions: Literature of Identity and Social Justice.  (This is one star-studded anthology, holy cow!)  The reading starts at 7:00 pm in the Kay Fredericks Ballroom in the Klas Center.

If you plan to attend the reading or if you just want to say hi, we'd love to invite you to join us at a happy hour at Old Chicago in Roseville before the event. (The 8" pizzas are $3 until 6!)  We’ll be there from 5‑6:30 pm at the Old Chicago located at the corner of County Road B & Snelling Avenue.

Hope to see you there!

- your glsbrd

Monday, October 3, 2011

Call for poetry book club suggestions (due October 15th)

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Jean is taking nominations for next year’s poetry book club selections.  Please send her 1-3 choices with a short sentence (or two or three) about why you’d like us to read the poet and/or book.  When you’re choosing it would be helpful if you would do a search or call Micawbers (where we get a discount) to see if the book is available and in paperback.

Nominations: due by October 15th 
Voting online by mailing list members: after that

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.
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Thursday, September 15, 2011

Poetry Book Club meets September 29th (correction!)

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s September book is Flood Song by Shewin Bitsui. We'll be meeting at Jean's from 7:30-9 and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates.

Publisher's weekly describes Flood Songs as "a sequence of untitled fragmentary lyrics, which, taken together, form a long poem that is part stream-of-consciousness road movie of the Southwest and part visionary investigation of personal memory."  Sherman Alexie likes it, too (high praise in my book).

Poet Haley Lasche, who suggested the book, says:
I’m starting to realize that in my literary tastes, I’m being drawn more frequently to the same publishers. I didn’t mean for this to happen; however, in the last six months, I’ve accidentally bought four books from Copper Canyon Press. The poetry collection Flood Songs is one of those titles. At first, it was the landscape of the page, how the white space created in the bloated top margins meet the first lines which began to feel like the morning horizon. And then it was how the human body senses the world surrounding it: both what is natural and what is man-made. In Bitsui’s acts of lyricism, I forget about my own needs for narrative. I am reminded that there are many ways to meditate.

Sound like something that makes you want to read and come discuss with us?! Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.  (We'll be taking suggestions for the next year of poetry goodness soon, so be sure you're on the list!)

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Come to Jean Larson's Book Release Party This Thursday

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Thursday, September 15 · 7:00pm - 10:00pm

Broadcraft Press has just published Jean's book of poems about the Boundary Waters and Lake Superior.   Please come hear a few of the poems from The Superior Life and celebrate with her!

2238 Carter Ave
St. Paul, Minnesota 55108
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Tuesday, August 30, 2011

GLaaS Fall Planning Meeting Monday September 12th

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September 12 
6:30 
Ginkos Coffeehouse (just across Snelling and one block south of the Hamline campus)

Want to get involved in talking about ideas for and creating events for fall semester?  
See you there . . . :)
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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Poetry Book Club meets August 25th

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s July book is The House of Belonging by David Whyte. We'll be meeting at Jean's and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates.

Reviewers seem to universally agree that this is powerful stuff.  "We owe a debt of gratitude to David Whyte for work which lacks the obscure, murky, digressive qualities often associated with poetry and which are responsible for turning large segments of the reading public away from quality literature.  He writes with exquisite simplicity about life's monumental concerns: love, creativity, aloneness, beauty. These are the very things which, by virtue of their universality, should be easily perceptible, but which we have made endlessly complicated," B.A. Brittingham says.

Here's what Beth Gedatus, who suggested this book for the club, has to say about it:
"Perhaps I read some of his work during National Poetry Month. I am not sure. One thing is certain whatever it was I read/heard struck a cord in me. When this happens I become compelled to research the poet/writer.  Anyway, shortly after that I found his book, The House of Belonging in a women's clothing store- they probably had 3 different books in the entire store but as Whyte had just come to my attention I viewed the discovery as clandestine and happily paid the clerk.

"I am drawn to the poetry of the common day, the common life and the commonality of human emotion. For example in the poem THE WINTER OF LISTENING, Whyte speaks of solitude 'No one but me by the fire,/ my hands burning/ red in the palms while/ the night wind carries/ everything away outside.' He goes on to call our attention to, 'All this petty worry.' And that is exactly what it is, 'petty worry' and I imagine each and every one of us can lay claim to spending countless minutes and hours within our days on just that, petty worries. I like to be reminded of this so perhaps in the future I will recognize when I am uselessly burdening myself with petty worries.

"Further on in the poem the exquisite stanza; 'Inside everyone/ is a great shout of joy/ waiting to be born.' Whyte's poetry is accessible which is important to me. At times I find myself adrift in some contemporary poetry, questioning whether I am 'getting it'. As an apprentice to poetry I enjoy work that allows a gentle immersion into the art form; work that rewards with insight and perspectives worth pondering.

"I learn so much from the group discussions and I look forward to hearing how others feel about the book. I rely on others to help me deepen my appreciation for, and understanding of, this magical genre we call poetry."
Sound like something that makes you want to read and come discuss with us? Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Gatsby Party August 31st

Join us on Wednesday, August 31st when GLS and West Egg Literati host the annual Gatsby Party to kick-off another academic year.  It’s a great way for students, faculty, and alumnae/i to re-connect and welcome new students to our community.  The party starts at 6:15 pm in the backyard of the GLS house at 1500 Englewood Ave.  We’ll be serving some refreshing beverages and delicious finger food.  Activities include the ever-popular haiku contest and croquet on the lawn.

If you think you’ll be coming, we’d love an RSVP to help with our planning.  Just respond back to this email if you can join us.  In the case of inclement weather, the festivities will be moved to East Hall 5.

We hope to see you all there.  It really is an a great way to welcome new students and say hello to those you've missed over the summer.


- Jenny McDougal (President of West Egg)

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

Cracked Walnuts on a Rampage

Readings from Hamline alumni and others all over the Twin Cities are still  happening.  Hope you got a chance to see us On Ice or elsewhere.  Check the Cracked Walnuts Facebook page for the most updated information and additional details.  Here are a couple upcoming readings. 


Writers Honoring the Dead

Friday, August 12 · 6:30pm - 9:00pm

Join us to hear a range of literature from poetry to prose from writers who are addressing concepts of death in this very unique location.

Karen Youso hosts.  Featured readers will include Jim Rogers, Donna Isaac,  Karen Youso, Victoria Peterson-Hilleque and Didi Koka.

Doors open at 6:30; reading starts at 7 and ends at 8:30. (The chapel closes at 9 sharp.)

For more information on the Cracked Walnut Reading series click on the link at satishjayaraj.tumblr.com.

Chapel Information:
(612) 781-1999
hillside-cemetery.com


Midtown Global Market
   
Monday, August 22 · 6:00pm - 7:30pm

Midtown Global Market
920 East Lake Street
   
Join us for an international bazaar of literary readings from local Twin City writers.

The reading starts at 6:00 and ends at 7:30, but feel free to come early to mingle and explore the wonders of the Global Market.

Satish Jayaraj will be hosting.  Featured writers will be Alison Morse, Kevin Z Yang, Saymoukda Vongsay, Shannon Gibney, Satish Jayaraj, and Christian Villarroel.

For more information on the Global Market visit http://www.midtownglobalma​rket.org/ or call (612) 872-4041

For some more details on this reading series, check out the comments from this post.

Monday, August 1, 2011

July Poetry Book Club Rescheduled to August 10th: Don't Miss It!

Wednesday, August 10th
7:30-9 PM

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s July book is Waterlight by Kathleen Jamie. We'll be meeting at Jean's and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates.

Indiebound says, "Her poetry--rendered sometimes in the Scots dialect, sometimes in the descriptive bursts of a naturalist's field guide --confronts gender, sex, landscape, and nationhood with the vivacity of an essential poetic voice."

Here's what Paulette Warren, who suggested this book for the club, has to say about it:

'The London Sunday Times called Kathleen Jamie "the leading Scottish poet of her generation." This collection of her poems, from Graywolf Press, begs to be read aloud as her words resonate from the reader's ear to the soul. Jamie's landscape is both simple and exotic through her command of language and brogue -- ultimately celebrating the mysteries and musicality of life.'

Sound like something that makes you want to read? Pick up your copy from Micawber's in St. Paul (sale price for members of our club - yet another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency). Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Check out Alison Holland's blog: Not Your Church Cookbook

Name of your blog: Not Your Church Cookbook

What your blog is about: It's a journal of food and faith by a vegetarian with somewhat Unitarian Universalist views living in a rural Minnesota town with few vegetarians and perhaps even fewer Unitarians.

Your name (if you're not blogging anonymously): Alison Anderson Holland

Years you were in the program (year you graduated from Hamline): 2006-2009 ('09)

When you started blogging: May 2011

Why you blog: I started blogging to get myself writing again.  Since the completion of my MALS degree, I haven't found/made the time to write much.  This was my solution.

Who your intended audience is: Those interested in reading about vegetarian cooking, a faith journey, and its relation to raising kids and relating to family and friends in a rural Minnesota town.  While I often talk about my family, I don't aim to be a "mommy blogger."  When I mention my kids, I relate it back to food and/or faith. 

Blogs you like to read: I read a lot of blogs.  That's one reason I was prompted to do this.  The Chaos Chronicles, On BeingSpousonomics, and Dinner: A Love Story are a few of my favorites.

Advice to or question for bloggers: Don't be shy about sharing your work with friends.  They'll no doubt encourage you.  I am a true introverted Minnesotan, but once I got up the courage to begin posting links on my Facebook page, I was amazed by the positive response my friends expressed.

PS: I also began writing a blog for work (December 2010) on the latest news, events, and issues in (rural) regional healthcare: http://staffblog.healthcare-allianceorg/

Thank you for this opportunity to share my new blog(s)!

Friday, July 8, 2011

TIC Reading July 9th: check this line-up out!

Saturday July 9th
8pm
the Soap Factory

TalkingImageConnection and The Soap Factory present

"Erasers and Other Memories, a TalkingImageConnection reading"

Writers Lightsey Darst, Sarah Hayes, John Jodzio, Katie Leo, Alison Morse, G.E. Patterson, and Annette Schiebout spin poems, stories and more in response to "The Erasers," an international exhibit of artists curated by Corinna Kirsch. According to Kirsch, "The works in this exhibition are all ‘erasers’: both objects imagined as something more important and mysterious than their physical shape might suggest and objects which contain the action to efface, censure, and delete the past."

at the Soap Factory
514 2nd Street SE Minneapolis

free admission

For more information contact 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org. TalkingImageConnection brings together writers, contemporary art and new audiences in art galleries around the Twin Cities.  For more information call 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org.

Writer Bios:

Originally from Tallahassee, Lightsey Darst writes, dances, writes about dance, and teaches in Minneapolis. Her Find the Girl, published by Coffee House Press in 2010, was selected for a Minnesota Book Award. Her other awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Minnesota State Arts Board. She hosts the writing salon “The Works”.

Sarah Hayes is a writer and visual artist, working in the forms of poetry, creative non-fiction and photography.  Her recent writing focuses on the coalescence of science and emotion, physics and attraction, relationships and mathematics, and other such juxtapositions. Her work has appeared in Zenith City Arts, The Muse, and Dust & Fire.

John Jodzio is a winner of the Loft-McKnight Fellowship. His stories have appeared in One Story, Barrelhouse, Opium, The Florida Review and various other places in print and online. His short story collection, If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home, was recently published by Replacement Press. He lives in Minneapolis. Find out more at www.johnjodzio.net.

Katie Hae Leo is a playwright, poet, and essayist. Her work is published or forthcoming in Water~Stone Review, Kartika Review, Midway Journal, Asian American Poetry & Writing, and Asian American Plays for a New Generation, among others. Her latest play Four Destinies will premiere at Mixed Blood Theater in October.

Alison Morse’s poetry and prose have been published in Water~Stone Review, Natural Bridge, Rhino, Opium Magazine, and The Pedestal, among other places.  She also runs TalkingImageConnection when she's not teaching or tutoring English or writing about the arts for mnartists.org.

A featured poet-performer in New York’s Panasonic Village Jazz Fest, G.E. Patterson is the author of two books of poems.  His work has garnered a Minnesota Book Award and fellowships from the Jerome Foundation and the Minnesota State Arts Board.  Last year, he was honored by New York City’s Fund for Poetry.  His writing can be found in several magazines and anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, Blues Poems, Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam, Poetry 180, Isn’t It Romantic, American Letters and Commentary, nocturnes: (re)view of the arts, Open City, Provincetown Arts, Seneca Review, Swerve, Xcp: Cross Cultural Poetics, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project’s Poets and Poems.

Annette Schiebout writes and performs with TalkingImageConnection, Spiked Coffee, Urban Hillbilly, Story Slam and is published in rps.  She is a 2009 SASE Writer to Writer mentee. She received her MFA from Hamline University where she served as the president of the student organization West Egg Literati.  She teaches writing and communications classes at the University of Wisconsin – River Falls.

How could you miss it?!

Tuesday, June 7, 2011

Jessica Fox-Wilson's new book!

Dave Bonta started his review by saying, "There are — it occurs to me as I finish this book — too many love poems in the world, and not nearly enough poems about desire."  Another reviewer said, "Poet Jessica Fox-Wilson knows a basic and important truth: we are made of stories.. . . But this poet knows something even more important—we have the ability to re-tell and re-shape those stories, to configure them in line with our own experience and to find a truth in them that isn’t the 'received' truth of their packaging."  (A thoughtful reflection on the themes of wanting and needing can be found here.)

Jessica Fox-Wilson, MFA '05, has released her debut book of poetry, Blameless Mouth. The book explores the cycle of hunger, consumption and satiety. The collection traces the poet’s relationship with hunger from childhood to womanhood, uncovering what it means to feel forever wanting. Her work also considers the cultural legacy of hunger, through stories of starving children and hungry women, like Hansel and Gretel, Persephone, Eve, and others. Blameless Mouth illuminates the struggle of living daily with the contradictory pressures to want less but take more and searches for satiety in a culture that encourages insatiability.

Using retellings of the familiar stories - Grimm's fairy tales, Adam and Eve - Fox-Wilson investigates the female body, its appetites and injuries, the relations between fathers and daughters and between a woman and her own image. Obsessed with violence and its repercussions, these poems imagine an alternate creation myth in which a woman struggles to take control of her own destiny. – Jeannine Hall Gailey, author of Becoming the Villainess
Jessica Fox-Wilson’s poetry casts seasons of light on what it means to be human.  She elevates plain spoken story to elegance, seamlessly weaving narratives to create a lovely kaleidoscopic image. – Darci Schummer, whose fiction has appeared in Conclave:  A Journal of Character, Paper Darts, and Volume One
Jessica Fox-Wilson has written a ferocious, elegant, tough-minded collection of poems.  Her exploration of what it means to be hungry, of what the culture asks of its girls and women, compels the reader's attention and a kind of allegiance with the fierce voice of the narrator.  Braiding myths, tales, and sacred texts with her own compelling present-time narratives, we travel with a poet unafraid to speak truth to power, wherever that power resides, however evident or hidden.  In the poem where she explores the definition of the word, lacuna, the poet gives us this definition: an empty space, a missing portion, in something which is otherwise continuous.  I think of the deep and continuous traditions of poetry, and I think Jessica Fox-Wilson has filled an empty space, a missing portion, with her exceptional, beautifully crafted poems.  Buy this book. Consider it food, a full portion which will leave you satisfied and inspired by her gifts as poet. – Deborah Keenan, author, most recently, of Willow Room, Green Door: New and Selected Poems, Milkweed Editions

If you're interested in learning more about Blameless Mouth, visit the book's Facebook page and the book's website. Blameless Mouth is currently available on Lulu, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.com.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Poetry Book Club May 26th

Thursday, May 26th
7:30-9 PM

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s May book is Dogged Hearts by Ellen Doré Watson.  We'll be meeting at Jean's and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates. 

Tony Hoagland says, "Dogged Hearts reminds us why the arts are called the humanities: because they remind us how to be human."  Wow.

Here's what Haley Lasche, who suggested the book, has to say about it:
As a reader, of course, I have a few favorite authors: the ones whom I know will inspire me and let me get lost in their thoughts. I don’t have a lot of favorite poets, but the ones whom I love the most are poets I am instantly drawn to, without rhyme or reason ;) In general, though, when I shop for poetry books, I don’t look for that same comfortable kind of inspiration; I know that kind of inspiration is rare for me.

Instead, when I look for books of poetry, I look for the first poem to open my eyes to a new puzzle. It might be something I’m confused about in my own writing or it might be something in the poem that I just don’t feel 100% confident that I understand. This is how I came to choose Ellen Dore Watson’s ­Dogged Hearts for our book club.

In reading the poem “Lew’s Late Love,” I was in the puzzle from the first line. The poem sated my need to see how Watson would use my current year’s obsessions (line breaks and narrative), but also, it reminded me of how effortlessly a good poet can use musicality and how a rebel poet can push a reader off center leaving him or her with just enough breath to approach the poem again.

Remember that Micawbers Books in St. Paul has a sale price for members of our club (another great reason to support your local bookstores), and they do have this hard to find volume just for us. 

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house (Barnes and Noble at Har Mar in case of emergency).  Read part, read all.  Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's mailing list.

- your glsbrd

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Do you like adventure? Want to do a reading this summer?

Dear writers of Hamline,

Whether you are a fiction writer, essayist, poet, or CNF writer.  I am in the midst of organizing a summer reading series that will take place in as many different locations throughout the twin cities as possible. My plan is to put people into little groups of 4 and 5 where each group will perform a reading in either a local library, coffee shop, or generally any place that will welcome our art into their establishment. My goal is to make this fun and easy for all participants.

If you are interested in being a reader for this event then e-mail your name and e-mail address to me at sjayaraj01@hamlineuniversity.edu. I will later send everyone a survey that asks for more specific information so that I can sort people into groups and areas that will make this an overall convenient and enjoyable event series.

Satish Jayaraj
Hamline MFA Graduate 2009
Current Hamline MALS student

Monday, May 2, 2011

Create keepsakes for new graduates on May 7 (also a planning meeting)

The Best Gift You'll Ever Make 
(Book arts with Su Smallen)
Saturday, May 7
3 - 6 PM

GLaaS would like to create a beautiful gift for our 2011 graduates. We'lll be hand-binding books that will include wisdom from GLS faculty. In addition to creating a gift for a graduate, you will also be learning (or polishing) valuable bookmaking skills.

Don't worry if you have never done anything like this. This event is the perfect time to give it a try. Meet us at the GLS House, and bring an open heart and willing hands (exact-o knives and glue sticks if you have them). Hope to see you there.

Summer GLaaS planning meeting
Saturday, May 7 
after book arts completion (around 6 PM)

If you have ideas for summer, please be sure to be there around 6 to share and help plan.  If you can't make it but still want to be involved, let us know.  Send your ideas or an email about how you'd like to help.

Green Light Sendoff
Saturday, May 21
4:30 PM

If we don't see you at either of these, we hope to see you at the GLS House for the Green Light Send-off.  Be the first to congratulate the newly minted GLS grads.  Say hello to friends (and professors).  Bring a fantastic dish to share!

- your glsbrd

Sunday, April 24, 2011

MALS forum this Saturday! (April 30th)

MALS Spring Forum
Saturday, April 30 
1:00 pm
East Hall, Room 106 (former Law/Grad building)
MALS Grads Share Synthesis Projects

I went to this last year, and it was amazing.  It's the MALS equivalent of MFA thesis readings.  Graduates get a chunk of time to talk about their research and findings and read out loud a bit.  Come and listen to what they've been thinking about for years.  You won't regret it. 

The following students will be sharing the critical research and analysis from their synthesis projects:

  • Jason Maher You Are Here: Lessons from the Evacuation of British Children During World War II
  • Cynthia Rapacz From Resistance to Trust: Empowering the At-Risk Student through Sustainable Teaching
  • Gabrielle Rose Once and Future Rebels: A Lyric Inquiry into the Roles of Myth and Disobedience in the Human Endeavor Towards the Divine 

Other details: Free and open to the public.  Light refreshments will be available throughout the afternoon.  Please RSVP to aeide02@hamline.edu

- your glsbrd

Saturday, April 23, 2011

Poetry Book Club Thursday April 28th

Thursday, April 28th
7:30-9 PM

The Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club’s April book is “Thistle” by Melissa Kwasny. We'll be meeting at Jean's and possibly taking advantage of the porch, if the weather cooperates. (I know; I'm a dreamer.) The porch would be a great place to sit while talking about this meditative work that deals with vegetation, humanity, and springtime.

Remember that Micawbers Books in St. Paul has a sale price for members of our club (another great reason to support your local bookstores).

Hamline GLS Alumni Poetry Book Club meets on the last Thursday of each month from 7:30-9 at Jean Larson's house. Read part, read all. Sit back or engage. Come monthly, come sometimes. Flexible and low key. (Unless someone decides to raise a ruckus.)

Email Jean at jeanielars@comcast.net for more information and/or to get on the Book Club's Mailing list.

- your glsbrd

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Poetry Reading with JIM COPPOC and KRIS BIGALK Wednesday!

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Wednesday, April 13
12:00pm - 1:00pm

"The Nest," located on WEST campus, lower level in the New Student Space
3300 Century Avenue North
White Bear Lake, MN

April is National Poetry Month, and Century College is going all out with a reading by Kris Bigalk and Jim Coppoc!

Kris Bigalk has recently published poetry in Water~Stone Review, The New York Quarterly, and the cream city review, and has work forthcoming in Mead: A Magazine of Literature and Libations. She serves as Director of Creative Writing at Normandale Community College, and curates the Banfill-Locke Reading Series.

Jim Coppoc ('09) is an award-winning poet and performer, a Lecturer in the English Department and the American Indian Studies program at Iowa State University, and the author of three books and three chapbooks of poetry (with a couple other genres mixed in).

For more details about these great poets, go to www.jimcoppoc.org or www.krisbigalk.wordpress.com/about.

See you at the reading!
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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Come to our GLAAS-TIC Mini-Writing Retreat!

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Line to Line: A GLAAS-TIC Mini-Writing Retreat in response to Tim Carroll

April 9th
noon-1:45

Please join GLAAS and TIC at the Soap Factory as Tim Carroll performs-draws his new installation for the entire afternoon. We plan to be there dressed in our warmest clothes (the Soap Factory is not heated) and writing new stuff using Tim's artwork to inspire us (we may get him to talk to us, too, but he has to keep drawing at the same time).

1:45-?

We'll head to a room at Wilde Roast where we can recharge, revise, and read work to each other. It'll be a great way push the boundaries of our writing, build community, and hear each other's voices.

(There is no charge but we strongly suggest buying at least a cup of coffee at Wilde Roast.)

Please let us know you're coming by April 7th. See you there!
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Saturday, March 5, 2011

Join us for drinks after Richard Bausch's reading this Tuesday

Tuesday, March 8 · 8:30pm - 11:30pm
Turf Club Inc

The GLS alumni Association (GLaaS) invites students and other alums to join them for libations and camaraderie at the Turf Club on Tuesday, March 8, following the Richard Bausch reading that night (see below). The Turf Club is located at 1601 University Avenue West (just west of Snelling). GLaaS will spring for the first round of drinks (beer or wine), so be sure to stop by after the reading and join in the fun!

Award-winning author Richard Bausch will be presenting a reading of his work on Tuesday, March 8 at 7:00 pm in the Kay Frederick’s Room of the Klas Center.  Bausch is on campus March 7 & 8 as a visiting writer with the Graduate School of Liberal Studies.

A Georgia native, Bausch is the author of eleven novels and eight collections of stories, including the novels Rebel Powers, In The Night Season, Hello To The Cannibals, Thanksgiving Night, and Peace; and the story collections Spirits, Someone To Watch Over Me, The Stories of Richard Bausch, and the most recently Something is Out There. An acknowledged master of the short story form, Bausch's work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Harper's, The New Yorker, Playboy, The Southern Review, The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, and The Pushcart Prize Stories.


Monday, February 7, 2011

TIC Reading This Saturday

If you haven't been to a TIC reading, come to this one! Dress warmly and bring a blanket to keep you toasty while you look and listen to readers responding to art. There's great energy here, and I recommend bringing a notebook, so you can write as the inspiration strikes (and it will strike).

"ALL OUR BE-LONGINGS, a TalkingImageConnection reading"

Saturday, February 12 · 8:00pm - 10:00pm

The Soap Factory
514 2nd Street Southeast
Minneapolis, MN

Writers Sarah Fox, Didi Koka, Alison Morse, Andy Sturdevant, Bryan Thao Worra, and Stephanie Wilbur Ash invent poems, songs, and stories in response to Rosemary Williams' installation "Belongings" at the Soap Factory.

Free admission and hot cider. For more information call 612.623.9176 or email yackmor@talkimage.org.

TalkingImageConnection brings together writers, contemporary visual art and new audiences in art galleries around the Twin Cities. For more information contact yackmor@talkimage.org.



Writer Bios:

Sarah Fox is a teacher, student, and doula. Her poetry collection Because Why was published by Coffee House Press, and her poems, essays, and reviews have been published in a variety of literary magazines and anthologies, most recently Conduit, Rain Taxi, ElevenEleven, Spout, LUNGFULL!, ActionYes, and Tammy. She's received grants and fellowships from the Bush Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Jerome Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board and was awarded the 2010 Academy of American Poets James Wright Prize for poetry. She lives in NE Minneapolis where, with John Colburn, she co-imagines the future Center for Visionary Poetics and nurtures a relationship with entheogenic plants.

Didi Koka is writer, Healer, Mother, recent MFA grad. Winner of the 2010 Best Poetry Thesis from Ham, she has published essay in Confluence, interviews in Water~Stone, and poetry in Minnesota Medicine and rock, paper, scissors. She has conducted poetry groups for healing professionals and has performed poetry with the Heal the Earth Collective. She is interested in the voicing of beings, sensate, imagined and inanimate, and the interplay of life and its aftermath, public and private lives, natural and human-created forms or systems. Briefly. anything and everything that defines itself in opposition.

Alison Morse’s poetry and prose have been published in Natural Bridge, Water~Stone, Rhino, Opium Magazine, The Potomac, and mnartists.org, among other places. She also runs TalkingImageConnection when she's not teaching or tutoring English.

Andy Sturdevant is a writer, artist, arts administrator and layabout based in South Minneapolis. His writing has appeared in mnartists.org, Rain Taxi, Mpls. St. Paul, Art Review and Preview! and Heavy Table. He is the host of Salon Saloon, a monthly live-action arts magazine held every fourth Tuesday at the Bryant-Lake Bowl. Andy also recently wrote an essay on the visual culture of the Midwest that will appear in the catalog for The Spectacular of Vernacular exhibition, opening at the Walker Art Center in January 2011. A book of his illustrations, Handsome Liberals, will be published in 2011 by Location Books.

Bryan Thao Worra is a Laotian American poet whose books include On the Other Side of the Eye, Winter Ink, My Dinner With Cluster Bombs and Touching Detonations. He has received support from the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Loft Literary Center and the Playwrights Center. He holds a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature and the Council on Asian Pacific Minnesotans Leadership Award for excellence in the arts. His work is taught internationally and appears in over 100 publications around the world including Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States. He resides in North Minneapolis.

Stephanie Wilbur Ash lives in Mankato and Minneapolis. She is the co-creator of more than 45 episodes of the Electric Arc Radio Show and PowderKeg Live!, and co-creator of the full-length musical Don't Crush our Heart! When she's not writing musical theater and scripted radio, she is writing short stories. When she is not writing short stories, she is writing a novel. When she is not writing a novel she is very sad and hard to live with. She has two boys and an X-box that they bought with their own money, which they pooled together with their friend Leo's money, so what could she say then, huh? What was she supposed to say then?