Professor Publications

Professor Rob Nixon reviews the novel Eddie Signwriter by South African poet Adam Schwartzman in the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

Professor Emerita Kelly Cherry has a new story, "Serious Love," in the current issue of Commentary.

Springtime Poetry to Melt Your Snowy Heart

THE MONSTERS OF POETRY PRESENT:

Dan Beachy-Quick, Dan Rosenberg, Alicia Rebecca Myers, Erika Jo Brown, Micah Bateman, and Laurel Bastian.

Friday, April 30. 7:30 p.m. The Project Lodge, 817 E Johnson, Madison, WI.

DAN BEACHY-QUICK is the author of four books of poems: North True South Bright, Spell, Mulberry, and most recently, This Nest, Swift Passerine. Collaborating with the poet Srikanth Reddy, he also worked on the double sonnet sequence in Mobius Crowns. A book of interlinked meditations on Melville’s Moby-Dick, A Whaler’s Dictionary, was published in the fall of 2008 by Milkweed Editions. He edits poetry for the journal A Public Space. He currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at Colorado State University, and is a visiting writer at The Iowa Writer’s Workshop for Spring 2010.

DAN ROSENBERG’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in several magazines, including 6X6, Subtropics, Third Coast, and Conduit. He is currently a Teaching Fellow at Augustana College. His first chapbook, A Thread of Hands, will hopefully be released by Tilt Press in time for this reading.

ALICIA REBECCA MYERS received her M.A. in English from The University of Georgia and her M.F.A. in poetry from New York University, where she was a Goldwater Writing Fellow. Her chapbook of poems, Greener, was released from Finishing Line Press in 2009. She teaches at Augustana College in Rock Island and is the co-editor of the online literary journal Clementine Magazine. Rebecca blogs at www.FromSohotoSilo.blogspot.com.

ERIKA JO BROWN is from New York, where she founded the Chinatown reading series Floetry at 169. She edits Stretching Panties magazine, an annual collection of experimental poetry, architecture and drawing. She’s currently an MFA candidate at The Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she’s hacking away on Lyrical Load, a manusc-ript dealing with the Midwest.

MICAH BATEMAN grew up in Jacksonville, Texas, and inhabits spaces in St. Louis, Missouri, and Iowa City, Iowa, where he can be seen getting his poetry on in The Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poetry can be seen getting its poetry on in CutBank, Pebble Lake Review, Night Train, and some other places. He would like you to know he is, it is written, the number-one fan of the poetry of both Dan Beachy-Quick and Erika Jo Brown and dreams of one day owning their first typewriters or at least some styled up autographed publicity photos.

LAUREL BASTIAN was a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Fellowship and her work can be found in Cream City Review, Nimrod, Margie, Puerto del Sol, Anderbo, Tar River Poetry, Whiskey Island Magazine and other publications. She is on the English faculty of Madison College and has run a poetry workshop at a men’s prison for the past several years.

Wendy Barker reads! (Thursday 4/29)

Wendy Barker's novel in prose poems, Nothing Between Us: The Berkeley Years, follows "the bittersweet, erotically compelling love affair between a young white married high school teacher and one of her African-American colleagues." (Sandra Gilbert)

Get ready for "miniskirts and macrame, Betty Friedan and VW's, hot tubs and 'The Whole Earth Catalogue'... the politics of race and the complexities of infidelity infuse this book of secrets, taboo, community, and the women's movement." (Denise Duhamel)

And finally, from Alicia Ostriker: "This is flash fiction with a twist...when you're done, you want to lick the bowl."

Come lick the bowl with us.

Thursday, April 29
7pm-8pm
Helen C. White Hall, Rm 6191

Poet Sharon Dolin reads this Thursday 4/22

The Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing presents an evening with poet Sharon Dolin this Thursday at 7:00 pm in 6191 Helen C. White. Dolin was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY. A Fulbright Scholar to Italy, she holds a Ph.D. in English from Cornell University and an M.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dolin is the author of four books of poetry and five chapbooks. Says Robert Mueller of Dolin's work, "The poetry engages us for a kind of fluent struggle, that of a virtuoso budding to top form."

Join us!

Thursday, April 22
7pm-8pm
Helen C. White Hall, Rm 6191

Brouwer and Doerr receive Guggenheims

Congratulations to former Institute Fiction Fellow Anthony Doerr and Institute Poetry Fellow Joel Brouwer on their 2010 Guggenheim Fellowships.

The Sandbox Reviewed in NYT Sunday Book Review

The Sunday New York Times Book Review calls former Institute Fiction Fellow David Zimmerman's The Sandbox a "gripping first novel." Read the entire review here.

Alyssa Knickerbocker Receives Axton Fellowship

OK, it's official: the University of Louisville has awarded the Axton Fellowship in fiction to our own Alyssa Knickerbocker (MFA '10/fiction). The fellowship provides two years of generous support for a recent graduate of an MFA program, during which the fellow writes, teaches, and actively participates in Louisville's writing community. We are thrilled on Alyssa's behalf and also proud that she joins the ranks of our other Axton Fellows: Lauren Groff (MFA/fiction) and Derek Mong (Institute Fellow/poetry).

Publication News: Sommerville and Bakopoulos

Congratulations to former undergrad Patrick Sommerville--shown here strumming on the old banjo at last week's AWP conference in Denver--on the release of the paperback version of the award-winning The Cradle, an event ballyhooed in The New York Times' Paperback Row.

And kudos, too, to former MFA-er Dean Bakopoulos and former fiction fellow Adam Stumacher. Both who have fiction in the current edition of Barnstorm, Dean with an excerpt ("Harmony") from his forthcoming novel My American Unhappiness and Adam's with a short story, "Dogfish Happiness."

Jesse Lee's Latest Book is Out

This fabulous cover adorns Professor Jesse Lee Kercheval's newest book, Brazil, winner of the Ruthanne Riley Memorial Novella Contest. You can read all about it here on the Cleveland State Poetry Center website.

The Brittingham-Pollak Poetry Prize Reading

Join us for an evening of prizewinning poetry! Nick Lantz, winner of the Felix Pollak Prize, and Jennifer Boyden, winner of the Brittingham Prize, will read from their new books, just out from the University of Wisconsin Press.

Wednesday, April 14
7pm-8pm
Helen C. White Hall, Rm 6191

In "The Lightning that Strikes the Neighbor's House," Nick Lantz explores the transformative power of tragic and miraculous experiences...the Challenger explosion, Bigfoot, a love letter written from inside a missile silo, a mother naming and renaming a family's short-lived pets, and a plea for post-9/11 redemption.

Jennifer Boyden's "The Mouths of Grazing Things" is an unflinching, lyrical meditation on nature's forced exodus from the human, and the forms of longing, estrangement, magnetism, and self-otherness that ensue...