Purdue University College of Liberal Arts
Information for
Creative Writing Program
News
Alums! Current students! We want to hear from you. If you have news or announcements, don't forget to let us know. We're going to do our best to post your goings-on here on the News page. Please contact Director of Creative Writing Porter Shreve and check here every few months for updates.
CURRENT NEWS
In an article entitled “The MFA Guide: How to Decide Where to Apply” from Poets & Writers Magazine, the MFA Program at Purdue is one of only fifteen programs mentioned by name and cited for offering extensive funding and an atmosphere of support. Also, Purdue is featured among the country’s select programs in the forthcoming second edition of The Creative Writing MFA Handbook, edited by Tom Kealey.
A key reason for our success is the quality of our students. Everyone is writing at a high level, and just this past year, two MFA poets and two MFA fiction writers were recognized with prestigious national awards. Fiction writer Mehdi Okasi’s story “Salvation Army” was selected by series editor Natalie Danford and guest editor Mary Gaitskill for the 2009 Best New American Voices anthology. Mehdi also won first place in the national Joyce Horton Johnson Fiction Award at the Key West Literary Seminars, first place in the statewide 2008 National Society of Arts and Letters Contest and several prizes at Purdue Literary Awards, including the Bud and Betty Knoll Award for Best of Contest for his short story “The Incident.”
First year MFA fiction writer Christopher Feliciano Arnold’s story “Light, Sweet Crude” won first prize in the 2008 Playboy College Fiction Contest and received honorable mention in the Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest. He was honored in the statewide 2008 National Society of Arts and Letters Contest and at Purdue Literary Awards. His work has appeared in Northwest Review, McSweeney’s, Slice Magazine and in the book review pages of The Tennessean.
And third MFA year poets Mindy Gutowski and Brian Dunn (who, as it happens, were married in July) both won national AWP Intro Awards in Poetry. Brian’s poem “Elegy with Wingdings, Ancient and Modern,” will appear in Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Mindy’s poem, “Affinity,” will appear in Artful Dodge. Mindy was also honored in the statewide 2008 National Society of the Arts and Letters Contest, and Brian won the Tom Andrews Clapping Award at Literary Awards.
As always the Purdue faculty had a busy and productive year. Marianne Boruch published her sixth collection of poetry, Grace, Fallen from (Wesleyan University Press) in February 2008 and gave a campus reading from the well-received book. A chapbook, Ghost and Oar, came out in October from Red Dragonfly Press, and in the fall Marianne was a Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts’ Center for Artistic Endeavors, working on her seventh collection of poetry. Also, in fall 2007, Marianne was awarded the CLA Educational Excellence Award.
Bich Minh Nguyen traveled to New York, Seattle, Portland, Houston, Miami and various cities in the Midwest for the paperback publication of her acclaimed memoir, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner (Viking Penguin), and the book has been adopted in English classes in many universities. Bich also recently signed a two-book contract with Viking/Penguin for her anticipated first novel, Short Girls (forthcoming June 2009) and a second novel due to be published in 2011.
Donald Platt’s poems have appeared recently in Western Humanities Review and on the websites of Poetry Daily and Verse Daily. Several of his poems are forthcoming in Another Chicago Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review, Green Mountains Review, Seneca Review, and Iowa Review. A translation from Catullus will appear in The Classical Outlook. His fourth book, Dirt Angels, is scheduled for publication by New Issues Poetry & Prose in the spring of 2009.
In Fall 2007, Porter Shreve was a Fellow in the College of Liberal Arts’ Center for Artistic Endeavors, and in Fall 2008 he will travel to more than fifteen cities for Houghton Mifflin’s September publication of When the White House Was Ours. Publishers Weekly writes: “Shreve's third novel skillfully interweaves the story of teenager Daniel Truitt with that of the United States at a crossroads.... The political backdrop is perfectly played, as is the bittersweet nostalgia that makes the book and its freewheeling gang irresistible.”
Mary Leader is looking forward to the publication, by the University of Iowa Press, of 12 x 12: Conversations in Poetry and Poetics, edited by Christina Mengert & Joshua Marie Wilkinson. Mary’s project-book Inkstone, an experiment based on poems by Japanese women, is currently a Finalist for the Dorset Prize, at Tupelo Press. She has individual poems forthcoming in Yale Review, Pool, and Pleiades. In summer 2008 she taught in the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Patricia Henley has been publishing short stories recently in journals such as Glimmer Train and Puerto del Sol and has also been working on a novel that has taken her on several research trips to Clarksdale, Mississippi. Sharon Solwitz has recently completed a novel set in Chicago, Michigan and Israel, and over the past several summers has been a featured presenter in the Writing Workshops in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
For a small program, our alumni have published a remarkable number of poems, stories, essays and books, and this year was one of the most productive yet. Congratulations to 2003 MFA Alum Bryan Penberthy whose debut collection of poetry, Lucktown, won the National Poetry Review Book Prize and was published in 2007. Lucktown was also honored as a finalist for the T.S. Eliot Prize, as well as an Honorable Mention in the Stevens Manuscript Competition.
Congratulations to 2004 MFA Alum Sara E. Lamers, whose first book of poems, A City Without Trees, was published in 2007 by March Street Press. Her work has appeared in many journals, most recently in Main Street Rag, Fugue, Rattle, and Iodine Poetry Journal, among others.
2003 MFA Alum Ely Shipley’s first book of poems, Boy with Flowers, won the 2007 Barrow Street Press book prize judged by Carl Phillips, and will be published in 2008. He also won the annual Western Humanities Review poetry award judged by Edward Hirsch and The Virginia Faulkner Award from Prairie Schooner. He was a finalist for the 2007 Academy of American Poets’ Levis Prize judged by Susan Howe and The North American Review's 2003 James Hearst Award judged by Li-Young Lee.
Brent Goodman (MFA 1995) has published two chapbooks – Trees are the Slowest Rivers and Wrong Horoscope – and in 2008 Black Lawrence Press will publish his first full-length collection: The Brother Swimming Beneath Me. Brent’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Diagram, Rattle, Puerto Del Sol, Green Mountains Review, The Beloit Poetry Journal, and Gulf Coast.
Congratulations to 1997 MFA Alum Fred Arroyo, who published his first novel The Region of Lost Names with the University of Arizona Press as a part of its Camino del Sol Series in 2008. A recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Indiana Arts Commission, Fred’s work has appeared in Washington Square, Pinyon, Writing on the Edge, and Crab Orchard Review.
Martin Walls (MFA 1997), winner of a 2005 Witter Byner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, will publish his third book of poems, The Solvay Process (Tiger Bark Press), in Spring 2009. Martin’s collaboration based on his first book can be found at the website: www.smallhumandetail.com
2007 MFA Alum Gretchen Steele Pratt won the Southwest Review’s 2007 Morton Marr Poetry Prize for a poem written in traditional form. Her recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Southern Review, Iowa Review, Greensboro Review, Rattle, Southwest Review and Poetry Daily.
2006 MFA Alum Leslie St. John won the 2007 MacGuffin Prize, judged by Thomas Lux, was runner-up for the Florida Review prize, and was nominated by Lisa Lewis and Ai at the Cimarron Review for a Pushcart Prize. Leslie’s recent publications include Arkansas Review and Crab Orchard Review’s special issue Come Together ~ Occasions, Ceremonies, and Celebrations.
Congratulations to 2003 MFA Alum Aaron Michael Morales, who published his chapbook, From Here You Can Almost See the End of the Desert, in 2008. Luis Alberto Urrea wrote the introduction to the title, published by Momotombo Press (University of Notre Dame, Institute for Latino Studies).
English and Creative Writing alum Emily Rosko won the 2007 Glasgow Prize for Emerging Writers, awarded annually by Shenandoah and Washington and Lee University, for her book Raw Goods Inventory from the University of Iowa Press (2006).
English and Creative Writing alum Marla Alupoaicei won the $10,000 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize for her group of three poems: “The Opening,” “Terre Haute, and “How the Light Gets in.”
Congratulations to 2005 alum Sarah Green, whose poem about a Lafayette strip club called “Chances Are,” originally published in Gettysburg Review, has been selected for the 2009 Pushcart Prize anthology. Sarah was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Oberlin College last year and this year is back in Boston teaching and writing and playing music.
Additional congrats to alums Sarah Layden, Anna Lowe, Chielozona Eze, Rebekah Silverman, Cody Lumpkin, Tadd Adcox, and Emily Koehn for recent publications in Evansville Review, Freight Stories, Cimarron Review, Bellingham Review, Eclectica, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Warrior Review, South Dakota Review, New South, Louisville Review, New Orleans Review, Quick Fiction, Pleiades, Puerto del Sol, and Greensboro Review.
2007-2008 was another terrific year for Purdue events. Visiting writers included memoirist Ishmael Beah, fiction writer Kate Bernheimer, poet and critic Norman Finkelstein, poet and prose writer Adam Zagajewski, fiction writer, essayist, poet, playwright and critic Joyce Carol Oates, poet Sterling Plumpp, novelist Donald Bain, poet Sue Ellen Thompson, fiction writer Sandi Wisenberg, memoirist and activist Terry Tempest Williams, fiction writer and memoirist Cathy Day, poet Mark Jarman, fiction writer Peter Ho Davies: and fiction writer and Literary Awards keynote speaker Michael Chabon.
On February 29, 2008, Sycamore Review, Purdue’s nationally acclaimed journal of literature, opinion and the arts threw a party to celebrate twenty years of publication and to help support and expand the journal’s Looseleaf workshops, a public community enterprise to promote and foster the written word. Party organizers Theresa Smith, Jessica Mehr, Mehdi Okasi, Daryll Lynne Evans, Dan Tyx, Katie Connor, and Patrick Nevins, among others, arranged for donations from twenty-four local businesses, and thousands of dollars worth of prizes were given away in a raffle to raise funds for Sycamore and Looseleaf. With live jazz and great food and drink, a good time was had by all as Sycamore took a Leap Day leap into its bright future.
Sycamore Review also put out three excellent issues in 2007/2008. Sycamore 19.2 featured poetry by Lucia Perillo and Jim Daniels, fiction by Jacob M. Appel, winner of the 2007 Wabash Prize for fiction, Judged by Dan Chaon, and an interview with memoirist and fiction writer Bich Minh Nguyen. Sycamore 20.1 featured poetry by David Shumate, Poetry by Jude Nutter, winner of the 2007 Wabash Prize for Poetry, judged by Eavan Boland, and an interview with fabulist and fiction Writer Kate Bernheimer. And Sycamore 20.2 featured fiction by Matthew Simmons, winner of the 2008 Wabash Prize for Fiction, judged by Richard Bausch and interviews with fiction writers Peter Ho Davies and Michael Chabon.
Congratulations to Editor in Chief Mehdi Okasi, Managing Editor Patrick Nevins, Assistant Director of Creative Writing Daryll Lynne Evans, Poetry Editors Keverlee Burchett & Mindy Gutowski, Fiction Editor Jon Sealy, Nonfiction Editor Jessica Mehr, Web Editor Eric Scovel, Looseleaf and MFA Student Reading Series Coordinator Dan Tyx, and the entire staff of Sycamore Review on a great year.
And Special congratulations are due to nine recently minted MFAs, who on March 28, April 4 and April 11 gave readings from their thesis manuscripts: Jessica Mehr, from her novel What You Can Live With; Keverlee Burchett, from her poetry collection One Giant Want; Daryll Lynne Evans, from her novel-in-stories Our Lady of the Rockies; Mindy Gutowski, from her poetry collection how many; Brian Dunn, from his poetry collection I Take My Glasses Off; Patrick Nevins, from his novel Old Bourbon; Jon Sealy, from his novel Issaqueena; Benjamin Kolp, from his story collection Partial Map of the Known Universe; and Anna Lowe, from her poetry collection A Little Task in Which You Crawl Out of the Sea.
For the Spring 2008 Purdue MFA Program Newsletter (in pdf format), click here.