SPRINGSPRING 2015 2018

New Ficon Faculty Interview with Karen Thompson Walker by Marcie Alexander, MFA Ficon ‘19

Karen Thompson Walker joined the pro- Marcie Alexander (MA): Your new novel, gram’s faculty in the 2017 academic year as a The Dreamers, comes out early next year. new Assistant Professor of ficon. Walker’s What's the premise? first novel, The Age of Miracles, was named Karen Thompson Walker (KTW): It’s about one of the best books of the year by People; a contagious sleeping sickness that spreads O, The Oprah Magazine; The Financial Times; through a small college town. People fall Kirkus; Publishers Weekly; Amazon; and Barnes asleep, and they can’t wake up. Eventually, it & Noble. It has been translated into 27 becomes clear that this strange perpetual languages and oponed for film by River Road sleep is accompanied by extraordinary Entertainment. Walker’s wring has also dreams. appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New MA: What led you to the idea? York Times, and Real Simple, and she gave a I've always been TED talk about fear and the imaginaon at interested in contagion TEDGlobal 2012. Karen previously worked as a stories. (Blindness, by book editor at Simon & Schuster and is a José Saramago, which graduate of UCLA and Columbia. Her new imagines an epidemic novel, The Dreamers, is set for release in Walker January 2019. • • • — Cont’d page 2 crwr.uoregon.edu Literary Reference CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 1

Literary Walker (connued from page 1) of blindness, is one of my favorite books and a major influence.) At the me that I Reference started wring this book, I was living in Iowa City. Living in a college town reminded ______me of some of the weirdness of college, and of the narrave possibilies of the crowded environment of a dorm floor, which is where The Dreamers begins. The FACULTY idea that it would be a sleeping sickness came a lile later—and actually came partly from a dream, as convenient as that may sound. I had a dream that I couldn’t Poetry wake up. I like wring about the uncanny elements of ordinary life, and sleep and dreaming are such clear examples. Garre Hongo MA: So it just fit right into what you were already working on. Daniel Anderson KTW: Right. It was returning to territory that I was interested in and wrote Geri Doran about in The Age of Miracles, which is the collision of ordinary life and ordinary people with some kind of extreme and strange disaster situaon, to see how it Ficon affects them, or how it does or does not change them. MA: How was the process of approaching and wring your second novel Jason Brown different for you than going in to your first? Marjorie Celona KTW: I think I was able to foresee problems a lile more successfully. And just Karen Thompson Walker the feeling of having wrien one novel before made me a lile more calm and a lile more confident, which are feelings that were totally absent when wring my Career Instructor first book. I didn't even know if I could do it. Can I even write 250 pages about the Cai Emmons same characters and world and situaon? Can this story even be something that Brian Trapp anyone would think to call a novel? Wring the second novel felt more like, I know I can write a novel, but is it going to be a good novel? Every novel has its own Instructors challenges, of course, and I’m always learning. Ulrick Casimir MA: Your first novel got a lot of posive crical recepon and acclaim—you Michael Copperman had TED talks, arcles in The Wall Street Journal, all these reviews and all these Miriam Gershow interviews, and I can imagine that felt both amazing and also kind of overwhelming. Tia North Do you feel like it affected your approach, or gave you any sort of hesitaon toward Jacob Powers your next novel at all? Or was it more like, great, that worked out, and so now I'm ______just going to go do that again? KTW: [laughs] No, I wouldn't describe it that way. I had a very strange and ADMINISTRATIVE lucky experience that the book got a certain amount of aenon. It was great, but for a writer, it was weird. I remember feeling that I was much more producve, and P. Lowell Bowditch more comfortable wring and in my wring head once me had passed. That first Program Director year or so, the reviews were in my head—even Amazon reviews, or even things people had said at readings, about things they didn't think worked. Or things that Julia A. Schewanick did, and I thought, well this me I'm doing the opposite.… It was just distracng, for Business Manager a while. That was 2012. I spent about four and a half, five years wring the new ______book. And the further I got from that crazy me, the easier it was to work. MA: Your previous book was narrated by a first person narrator, looking Creave Wring Program back on her life to the me when she was 12. Does The Dreamers have a similar 5243 University of narrave situaon? Eugene, OR 97403-5243 KTW: No, it’s in third person. It has a large cast of characters, and the narrave T: (541) 346-3944 voice dips into various people’s heads in different parts of the story. F: (541) 346-0537 MA: In choosing that, what was your reasoning behind, this is how I can best E: [email protected] tell this parcular story, versus the perspecve of your previous book, of an hp://crwr.uoregon.edu individual looking back on her experience? Walker — Cont’d page 14

2 COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

Art and the Ekphrasc Tradion Interview with Ma Donovan by Kae Haemmerle, MFA Poetry ‘18

Ma Donovan is the finding ways to conjure it but not exhaust it. I don't know author of the collecon of if you’ve been to the Pantheon, but for me there's no essays, A Cloud of Unusual substute for standing in that space. Photographs are Size and Shape: Meditaons going to fail and certainly language as a medium is going on Ruin and Redempon, as to fail. But what I can do is ask quesons. Why am I so well as two collecons of haunted by and obsessed with this space? What am I poetry – Vellum and trying to get at? What is it about the light, that small Rapture & the Big Bam. window of sky, that is haunng me? Then at the same me you have to confront that seemingly impossible task • • • of trying to recreate an aspect of that, trying to focus on Kae Haemmerle (KH): The subjects of your poems so the minua and find a way to draw the reader's aenon oen are rooted in artwork and music. How have those to a parcular detail that you otherwise might not have subjects come to inform your poetry and interest in the appreciated as a viewer. Those are the moments for me ekphrasc tradion? where it’s actual invesgaon on my part. The course of Ma Donovan (MD): I've always been excited about the wring process is a meditaon where I'm just forced art and the ekphrasc tradion. Learning about a piece of to look at it and look at it and look at it. This is something art in the process of finding the poem is to find forms that that I feel poetry can and should do, in addion to change one's relaonship to that art and serve as an innumerable other things: teach us about the act of interrogaon of the piece, or expansion of that piece— looking and the world of art. something that can rupture the stasis of visual art and KH: The "I" speaker you deploy in Vellum is an work through narrave or ask quesons about it as a observer, a quesoner, a meditator. Was this a result of means of engagement. The poem is in part asking working in the ekphrasc tradion? Have you perhaps quesons about it, sing with it, trying to get to that changed your approach to the speaker with your more moment of the aesthec experience and then also recent collecon, Rapture & the Big Bam? pushing beyond that, which poetry affords as a narrave MD: When I look back at the poems in Vellum, which form or form that can include narrave. Oen for me, a at this point were wrien a while ago, it’s something that source of a poem might be having some sort of response I was cricized for when I was in grad school, that I didn't to a piece of music or an arst or a painng or sculpture have enough of myself in the poems. At the me, I really and just wanng to understand it and go through that act resisted the need to have the personal in there. Maybe of looking. Inevitably for me, even the act of wring the some of that was coming out of a resistance to the poem, whether it ends up being a failed poem or a piece confessional tradion, and I didn't feel like poems needed that I feel is finally seled or dislled, will have opened up to do that. But when I look back at them, I feel like those that work of art from the course of trying to approach it, poems can risk holding their cards too close, making it understand it, interrogate it. about the aesthec experience but not risking emoonal KH: How have you been able to balance that vulnerability in an emoonal persona as part of those moment of looking with the process of conveying— pieces. It wasn't something that I set out deliberately to without falling into abstracon—the beauty that’s in a do, but when I was starng as a poet it was definitely work of art? something that inevitably was a part of my process and MD: The task of the poem when it's approaching a habits as a writer. I feel like those poems could have been work of art is not to reproduce it. It's going to fail if it's improved by having more of the actual self in there, and trying to be merely illustrave. So for me I'm interested in by actual self I mean self as a construct. Donovan — Cont’d page 15 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 3

who demonstrate financial need, awarding approximately $50,000 each year. The Kidd Program used to be a year-long capstone course for advanced ficon writers and poets. However, last year the Kidd Program transioned to targeng introductory and intermediate level students as a gateway to more advanced classes with faculty— facilitang enrollment in the minor. Students now aend lectures each week by faculty members in poetry and ficon in the Fall term. In the Winter and Spring terms, Kidd students connue to work with their tutors to develop a crical, cra-centered paper called a Line of Inquiry as well as their creave porolios. Students Updang the Kidd collect their best work in the annual Kidd anthology and by Brian Trapp celebrate their progress with an end-of-year literary Kidd Director reading. This year, we rebranded the Kidd Program, changing The Kidd Program has undergone many the name from The Kidd Tutorial to The Walter and Nancy excing changes in its 25th year. Kidd Creave Wring Workshops. We hope the new name First, a lile history: Founded by will make it clearer to the UO undergraduate populaon Garre Hongo in 1991 with a bequest about what constutes the Kidd Program, namely, young from Walter and Nancy Kidd, the Kidd aspiring writers producing their own creave work and Program was modeled on the Watson Foundaon of helping one another grow as arsts. We also redesigned Rhode Island, the Hopwood Lectures and Contests at the our website and adversing material and expanded our University of Michigan, and the Harvard Tutorials. The visibility on campus. The results have been promising. Kidd Program aims for the same rigorous intellectual This year, we had a 50 percent increase in applicaons. In inquiry as these esteemed instuons. 2018-2019, we are welcoming our largest Kidd class ever, However, the model that the Kidd Program truly with 46 talented undergraduate writers. For the first me aspires to is the Wa’s Writer’s Workshop, a federally in many years, we are able to offer a second poetry class. funded program, directed by Dudley Randall, which In its 25th year, the Kidd Program remains commied included adult writers (Quincy Troupe, Lonnie Elder, and more than ever to its mission of helping undergraduate Stanley Crouch, among others) teaching middle school writers find their community here at the University of and high school students in the "inner city" of Los Angeles Oregon. during the summer of 1967. It was a way for the African In my first year as Kidd Director, it has been a bit American community to rebuild itself aer the Was nerve-wracking sheparding the program through so many riots. Community leaders saw the workshop as a way to changes. But I was also able to witness the powerful promote cultural life, raise moral, and build an African- opportunity that the Kidd Program offers. As I hosted the American literary consciousness. Borrowing from Was, lectures, I saw each speaker engage the students’ the Kidd Program aspires to be a community in every way: curiosity and passion for wring in a new way. As I helped to help students grow as arsts and individuals; to our tutors compile the Kidd Anthology this spring, I saw develop their own literary consciousness; to find their the quantum leaps forward that the Kidd students took as voices and be heard; and to make their pocket of the arsts and people. Reading through the mountain of world a beer place. applicaons this spring, I couldn’t help but be excited Kidd parcipants enjoy a highly individualized, intense about the progress these young writers would make in year of study in a small group seng, as well as access to just a year’s me. Throughout the year, I kept thinking: vising writers (at least two each term) in the Creave Man, I wish my alma mater had a program like this when I Wring Program’s annual Reading Series. In keeping with was an undergraduate student. I am connually struck by the bequest by Nancy and Walter Kidd, the Kidd Program how unique and special the Kidd Program truly is. We are also offers substanal scholarships to admied students lucky to have it. ■

4 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

Reading Series

From le to right: Michael Copperman, Robin Coste Lewis, Ma Donovan, Mia Alvar, Mary Jo Salter, and Andre Dubus III

MICHAEL COPPERMAN (MFA Ficon ‘06) began She thrilled us by allowing us to be the first audience our reading series with a cra talk about navigang to hear an excerpt from her upcoming novel. Her cra different types of retrospecon, a common challenge talk covered many methods ficon writers can use to faced during first dras. communicate a character’s emoons to the reader. During his reading, he read from his memoir, Teacher: Two Years in the Mississippi Delta, which was a finalist for MARY JO SALTER has published eight books of the 2018 Oregon Book Award in creave nonficon. poetry, including A Phone Call to the Future: New and Selected Poems, Nothing by Design, and The Surveyors. ROBIN COSTE LEWIS is the 2015 Naonal Book She served as co-editor of three edions of The Norton Award winner for her book Voyage of the Sable Venus. Anthology of Poetry and is a Krieger-Eisenhower Professor Her poetry has appeared in The Massachuses Review, in The Wring Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Callaloo, The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, VIDA, and Through an analysis of Dickinson’s heightened Phantom Limb, among others. She holds an MFA from aenon to language, her cra talk considered the NYU and an MTS in Sanskrit and comparave religious significance of words as both signifiers and things in the literature from the Divinity School at Harvard University. world. The lecture focused on the unconscious work a In her cra talk, she read from “Boarding the poet does that changes word choice and movates Voyage,” her lyric essay about the archaeological act of decisions later in a poem. researching that went into the wring of Voyage of the Sable Venus. ANDRE DUBUS III is the author of six books including House of Sand and Fog which was adapted MATT DONOVAN, author of two poetry collecons, into an Academy Award-nominated moon picture. He Vellum and Rapture & the Big Bam, as well as the essay has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The collecon A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditaons Naonal Magazine Award for Ficon, two Pushcart Prizes, on Ruin and Redempon. He is the recipient of an NEA and an American Academy of Arts and Leers Award in Fellowship, the Rome Prize in Literature, a Pushcart Prize, Literature. and the Larry Levis Reading Prize. As a novelist and short story writer, he gave a His cra talk explored the role of syntax in the elegy cra talk about abandoning outlines and following the through close readings of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real subconscious when construcng a narrave. He encour- Cool,” Frank O’Hara’s “The Day Lady Died,” Rickey aged students in the audience to make their art their first Laurenis’ “Wring an Elegy” and a scene from Hamlet. priority. In an unconvenonal reading, Dubus personalized MIA ALVAR’s short story collecon, In the Country, the event by chang with the audience about his life won the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Ficon. experiences and his upbringing. He then read an excerpt Her work has also appeared in Book from his memoir, Townie, that detailed the moment he Review, One Story, The Missouri Review, The Cincinna knew he’d become a writer. ■ Review, and elsewhere. crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 5

Faculty News

Mat Johnson Marjorie Celona Professor of Ficon Assistant Professor of Ficon

Mat Johnson joins the university in Marjorie Celona’s story “Counter- a shared posion with English and blast” won an O. Henry Award and will begin teaching in the Creave will be reprinted in The O. Henry Wring Program in Fall 2018. Prize Stories 2018. Marjorie was the Mat is the author of the novels recipient of a Faculty Research Loving Day, Pym, Drop, Hunng in Award from the Office of the Vice Poet and Former Harlem, the nonficon novella The President for Research and Innova- Great Negro Plot, and the comic on and a Faculty Research Grant Program Director books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He from the Center for the Study of Passes Away is a recipient of the American Book Women in Society. Both grants were Award, the Arst in support of her second novel, Ralph Salisbury, Professor Emeritus James Baldwin Fellowship, The which will be published in Canada, of Creave Wring and Literature, Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a the UK, and Spain in 2019. In former director of the MFA in Barnes & Noble Discover Great New addion, she was a Vising Writer at Creave Wring and editor-in-chief Writers selecon, and the John Dos Willamee University and at Ohio of the Northwest Review, passed Passos Prize for Literature. University, and will be a Vising away on October 9, 2017. Writer at the Mineral School next Ralph began his career at the September. University of Oregon in 1960. Early on he directed the MFA in Creave Wring program (which he helped to develop) in addion to serving as editor-in-chief of the Northwest Review for six years. He also edited A Naon Within, an anthology of contemporary Nave American wring (Outriggers Press, New Brian Trapp Geri Doran Zealand) and won many accolades in Career Instructor of Ficon Associate Professor of Poetry poetry, including a Rockefeller Foundaon Residency at the Villa Brian Trapp was a Vising Assistant In this last year, Geri Doran's poems Serbelloni, Bellagio, Italy; the Professor at Willamee University, have appeared in Yale Review, New Chapelbrook Award; the Northwest where he taught creave wring and England Review, and A Poetry Poetry Award; three Fulbright disability studies. He won an Oregon Congeries (a feature of the online professorships to Germany and Arts Fellowship in Nonficon for his journal, Connotaon Press). Her new Norway; and an Amparts (USIS) memoir-in-progress, Twelve Words. poetry collecon, Blue Marble, is lectureship in India. ■ He also received a wring residency forthcoming in 2019 from Tupelo at Centrum in Port Townsend, WA. Press.

6 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

P. Lowell Bowditch Cai Emmons Professor of Classics Career Instructor of Ficon

Program Welcomes New Director Cai Emmons’ new novel Weather Woman will be Lowell joined the program to take the place of published by Red Hen Press Professor Rowe who served the program from 2010 on Oct. 9, 2018. Margot to 2017. Lowell will serve as the program’s director Livesey calls the book, through June 2020. “deeply fascinang and Professor Bowditch has been at the university extremely mely.” Eileen Pollack says it is, “a riveng tug-of- since 1993 and has taught a wide range of language war between science and intuion.” Caroline Leavi raves: “I and literature courses on epic, tragedy, gender and love this novel so much I want to marry it.” In June and July, sexuality in anquity, and the Augustan era. She is Cai will be driving a transit van throughout the northwest currently wring a book on love elegy and Roman and to Colorado to hand-deliver advance review copies to imperialism. independent booksellers.

Garrett Hongo Professor of Poetry

Garre Hongo released a new essay collecon, The Mirror Diary, in the presgious Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press in November 2017. “The Mirror Diary tracks the emergence of an original poec voice and a learned consciousness amid mulple and somemes compeng influences of complex literary tradions and regional and ethnic histories. Beginning with a literary inquiry into the history of Japanese Americans in Hawai`i and , Garre Hongo draws on his own history to consider the mosaic of American idenes—personal, cultural, and poec—in the context of a postmodern diaspora.” In addion to readings in California and Washington this past year, Garre’s poems have appeared in the Harvard Review and Renga for Obama. He has poems forthcoming in New England Review, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, and the Asian American Literary Review. Last summer he parcipated in the Smithsonian Instute’s Asian American Literary Fesval and taught at Bread Loaf Writers Conference. This spring and summer he will be a Lucas Fellow at the Lucas Arst Retreats at Villa Montalvo (Saratoga CA), vising arst at the American Academy (Rome, Italy), and fellow at the Djerassi Arst Retreats (Woodside CA). ■ crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 7

Student News

Scholarships, Fellowships, and What’s Next

From le to right: Amanda Cox, Blaine Ely, Kae Haemmerle, Ndinda Kioko, Kieran Mundy, and Erik Neave.

Amanda Cox (Poetry ‘19) annual fellowship is designed to support writers com- Amanda was awarded The Miriam McFall Starlin pleng their first book, and provides a generous spend, Poetry Prize. This summer award honors a first-year office space, and an intellectual community for the recipi- program student in poetry. ents. Ndinda will teach a creave-wring workshop each semester and give a public reading of her work. Blaine Ely (Ficon ‘18) Ndinda also won the Logsdon Award for Creave Blaine will join the University of Houston's PhD Ficon Wring for 2018. This prize honors a second-year program in Literature and Creave Wring in the fall. program student in ficon.

Kae Haemmerle (Ficon ‘18) Kieran Mundy (Ficon ‘19) Kae was named a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Kieran’s story “Melon” appeared in Hobart in January, Scholar. She will aend the workshops in Tennessee 2018. Her story “Homonyms” was named one of Wigleaf’s in July. Top 50 Very Short Ficons of 2017.

Ndinda Kioko (Ficon ‘18) Erik Neave (Poetry ‘18) Ndinda received an Olive B. O’Connor Fellowship in Erik also was named a Sewanee Writers’ Conference Ficon from Colgate University for 2018–19. The Scholar for 2018. He will join Kae in Tennessee in July. ■

Annual Giving Reminder

Consider giving to the Creave Wring Program. Your generous support helps us educate students, strengthen our program, and prepare tomorrow’s writers—our future literary voices. There are a variety of ways to support the program and gis of all sizes are a powerful investment in our mission and community. Whether you are making a one-me gi, making a pledge of recurring contribuons, considering a planned gi, or establishing an endowed fund, donaons to the program and program-related funds allow us to provide a compeve educaon for our growing body of undergraduates and graduate students. The faculty and staff in the Creave Wring Program are commied to advancing the educaonal and scholarly mission of the university and we thank you for your generosity. For more informaon, visit our webpage: hp://crwr.uoregon.edu/give-now/.

8 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

The Walter and Nancy Kidd Wring Compeon

Ficon winners with personalized citaons by guest judge, Andre Dubus, III 1st Selene Steets 2nd Garod Drumm 3rd Patrick Riley “Crystal” “Waning” “Confina” “Wrien with griy, evocave, and “Told in the wonderfully authenc “’Confina’ is a wise, compassionate, honest prose, ’Crystal’ is a haunng voice of a troubled young girl with and naturalisc gem. I could have lament, a cry for connecon in a too much weight on her shoulders, spent a novel’s stretch of pages with place where all the es that bind ‘Waning’ brims over with a myriad of these compelling characters in The have broken. This is a deeply emoonal truths. It also show-cases Crooked Mountains of Italy.” affecng, moving, and important the work of a truly gied young short story, and it marks the appear- writer.” ance of a talented new writer among us.”

Pictured below from le to right:

Patrick Riley (Ficon, 3rd place) and Sarah Hovet (Poetry, 1st place) with guest author, Andre Dubus, III

Poetry winners with personalized citaons by guest judge, Mary Jo Salter 1st Sarah Hovet 2nd James Barton 3rd Veronica Fernandez‐Alvarado “The Arst” “Pieter Bruegel: “Amor de Veracruz” Winter Landscape, 1565”

"In ‘The Arst,’ the poet lavishes "This poem begins by seeing into the “’Amor de Veracruz’ deals with a careful aenon on the various minds of people depicted in a social problem, physical and verbal creaons of a taoo arst, as if they Breughel winter landscape, although abuse in families, with a sense of the were masterpieces in a museum. But the people themselves ‘cannot see complicated compromises people these taoos are the work of a beyond the river’s bend.’ That is, oen make. The poem’s best ‘cartographer’—they map the world they can neither see beyond their moment is in its ending, when the and also are dispersed all over the daily environment, nor beyond the harsh words of family members world, on the bodies of people. The bounds of the painng that frames coexist with their choice (daily, it taoos are described in words them. The poet not only sees but seems) to make peace at the end of whose precision mirrors the hears everything going on in the the day." ■ taooist’s, and whose musical winter landscape, and makes a harmonies make us delight in them welcome connecon between further." Flemish sixteenth-century culture and a small town of the present." crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 9

Welcome

Angela Bogart‐Monteith years trying to find something else to He holds a BA in religion from and an MA in Angela originally hails from North major in. Family friends have warned wring from Coastal Carolina Univer- Idaho, where her family has lived for her about the solitary life of a writer, sity. Between degrees, Mark has four generaons. She graduated with which at mes has pushed her away worked as a heavy metal photojour- a BA in Creave Wring from the from it—but secretly, she longs for nalist, a professional photographer, University of Colorado Denver, the quiet, calm of it, and she day- over-the-road trucker, and a mental where she worked behind the scenes dreams about owning a cat. health specialist. He is an avid collec- with Copper Nickel. tor of paperback horror and all Since leaving her home-town, Chris Connolly things Punisher, a collecon he will she spent the last decade living in Chris was born and raised in Dublin, be thinning down to help make the southern Germany; Chicago, IL; Ireland. Having spent much of his trek to Eugene with his son, Victor. Bend, OR; and Denver, CO, and is twenes working strange jobs, thrilled for the opportunity to study travelling to strange places, and at the university and trade in the dry making a series of strange decisions, Steven Kiernan Colorado climate for the mushroom- he decided to make one last one and Steven was born and raised in strewn mountains of coastal Oregon. try to write. He's been doing so for Northern California. At 17, he joined Beyond whole-heartedly locking her- the past few years, mostly from his the U.S. Marine Corps, where he self away to write for the next few room in the basement of a decrepit, served as an infantryman from years, she plans to make me for crumbling, riddled old Georgian 2005–2010. During his deployment poery, gardening, and possibly mansion. to Iraq, he was wounded in an IED beekeeping. He's very much looking forward to blast which resulted in the amputa- escaping his basement and moving on of both legs and spent two years Beatrice Bugané 5,000 miles to kick things up a notch recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital. Beatrice is from Brasília, a city in in Eugene: learning, meeng, teach- Aer being medically discharged, Brazil that is shaped like a plane— ing, seeing—all the important things. he received a BA in English Literature fing, given the many countries she from the University of Virginia and is has resided in. Finding many books Mark Hennion now looking forward to pursuing an along her travels, ficon has pro- Mark spent his early years reading MFA in creave wring. His work has vided her a sense of connuity and and wring horror and slipstream appeared in Kenyon Review Online, stability she has yet to encounter in ficon in Harrisburg, PA. Since then, The Wrath‐Bearing Tree, and O‐ life. he has lived in Colorado Springs, CO; Dark‐Thirty. She will graduate from Brown Manhaan, NY; and most recently He has been spling his me University in May of 2018 with a Myrtle Beach, SC. between Fredericksburg and Char- degree in English and a readiness to He is a veteran of the U.S. Army loesville, VA, with his wife and two write more stories—she has spent and served as a Cavalry Scout with dogs. ■ too many of her undergraduate the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment during Operaon Iraqi Freedom.

10 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

New Students

Dewey Fox He studied language and litera- aspects of naming as a linguisc tool, and the place of human conscious- Dewey was born and grew up where ture at Indiana University, earning ness in the larger natural world. He the Susquehanna River empes into his BA in Middle Eastern Language & also likes anime, animals, and spend- the Chesapeake Bay, and he has Culture with a minor in creave ing me in the woods. He is beyond lived in Balmore, MD, for the last wring. He spent several years as an excited to join this year’s class of decade. English teacher between the West incoming MFA students and to His occupaonal history is varied: Bank, Cairo, and South Korea with connue his studies in poetry at the sportswriter, police reporter, roofer, snts back in Tennessee working in University of Oregon. editor, teacher, crab steamer, water cafés where he honed his sandwich deliverer, clothier, and forthcoming, cra. student of poetry at the University of Most recently, he earned his Natalie Staples Oregon, which is a dream that he MA in English at East Tennessee Natalie received her BA in English, State University where he specialized with an emphasis in Creave Wring, keeps waing to wake from. A jour- th nalist and ficon writer for most of in 20 century Brish literature, from Kenyon College in 2014. Since his adult life, he decided to direct all parcularly on the work of Welsh graduaon, she has worked for a his energies to poetry aer reading a poet R. S. Thomas. college-access program, The Schuler copy of Charles Wright's Country He enjoys hiking with his wife Scholar Program, that serves under- Music that he purchased at a used Rachel and his puppy Nova, and he’s represented students in the Chicago bookstore. thrilled to connue reading, wring, area. As a wring program associate, Outside of reading and wring, he and exploring with the folks and she teaches wring to ninth- enjoys painng, playing guitar, and forests of Oregon this fall. through twelh-grade students. leng the Orioles break his heart She grew up on the east coast and every baseball season. He's going to Nathaniel Nelson has spent eight years studying and drive from Maryland to Oregon at Nathaniel hails from Chaanooga, living in the Midwest; she can’t wait some point in August with nothing TN, by way of Crawfordsville, IN, and to see what the west coast has to but his clothes and boxes of books— . He discovered poetry offer! Her interests include riding he's more excited about this than he while working on his BA in English horses and ogling at strangers' dogs. can convey here. Literature, which he earned from She is thrilled to be studying poetry Sewanee: The University of the at Oregon this fall. ■ Jonathan Hill South. Currently, he works as the Jonathan was born in Atlanta, GA, Tennessee Williams Post-Bacca- and raised in Fairview, TN, a rural laureate Fellow for the Sewanee town outside Nashville, where he Writers’ Conference. grew up playing soccer, geng lost Recent poec interests include in the woods, and reading in his the luminosity of everyday objects, family’s bucolic backyard. gender expression, identy, and fluidity, the posive and negave crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 11

Alumni News

Chrisan Knoeller Award‐winning Civil Copperman Named MFA Poetry ’81

Twilight reviewed Finalist for Oregon Chrisan Knoeller has published at Huffington Post Book Award book chapters and arcles widely on both crical and pedagogical topics,

including internaonally in Canada Jeffrey Schultz (MFA Poetry ’03) is a Mike Copperman (MFA Ficon ’06) and Australia. His work on environ- was named one of five finalists for rare two-me winner of the Naonal mental history as well as Midwestern the 2018 Oregon Book Awards/Sarah Poetry Series: and Nave American Literature has Winnemucca Award for Creave  2013 for What Ridiculous Things appeared in leading ecocrical Nonficon. His book, Teacher: Two We Could Ask of Each Other journals including Interdisciplinary Years in the Mississippi Delta  2016 for Civil Twilight Studies in Literature and Environ‐ (University Press of Mississippi), was Jeff is a Vising Assistant Professor of ment and the Journal of Ecocricism. selected by judges Steven Church, Creave Wring at Pepperdine/ This wide-ranging work is Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Seaver College (Malibu, CA) where consolidated in his new book-length, Lia Purpura. he served as Interim Director of ecocrical study, Reimagining Creave Wring (2014–2015). Environmental History: Ecological Memory in the Wake of Landscape Change (University of Nevada Press, published in October 2017). Veach Releases Debut Collecon In addion, Chrisan was promo- ted to Full Professor of English at

Purdue. He is past President of Cindy Veach’s (MFA Poetry ’82) debut Society for the Study of Midwestern poetry collecon, Gloved Against Blood, Literature. has been published by CavanKerry Press. Gloved Against Blood explores the fraught relaonships of four generaons of Call for Alumni News women against a backdrop of the patriarchal texle mills of 19th century Submit through our Lowell, Massachuses, that were fueled online portal: by the blood and sweat of exploited mill girls and enslaved African-Americans hp://crwr.uoregon.edu/ in the south. This collecon speaks to family, lost love, infidelies, or email: [email protected] abandonment and the close work, women’s work, of mending what is torn, (Subject: CRWR Alumni News). Be and making it like new despite the forces of inherited histories. sure to include your name, genre, and graduaon year.

12 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

2017 Philip Levine Prize Elizabeth George Foundaon for Poetry Grant Winners

Tina Mozelle Braziel (MFA Poetry ‘15), Claire Luchee (MFA winner of the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Ficon ’17) and Phoebe Poetry, directs the Ada Long Creave Bright (MFA Ficon ’16) Wring Workshop for high school have been awarded students at the University of Alabama- compeve grants Birmingham. Her collecon, Known by from the Elizabeth Salt, will be published by Anhinga Press in George Foundaon. 2019. Her chapbook, Rooted by Thirst, The Foundaon makes was published by Porkbelly Press in 2016. arsc grants to Her work has also appeared in The Cincinna Review, unpublished ficon writers, poets, emerging playwrights Southern Humanies Review, Tampa Review, and other and organizaons benefing disadvantaged youth. journals.

Jenna Lynch Paul Hoobyar MFA Poetry ‘13 MFA Ficon ’89

Jenna Lynch recently accepted a posion Paul Hoobyar’s novel, Rogue River at Fairleigh Dickinson University (Tea- Reprieve, going to print later this spring, neck, NJ) as the Reading and Wring is about a fishing guide who is confronted Specialist in the Academic Support with a mul-naonal corporaon's plans Center. Her chapbook, The Mouth of to open a heap-leach mine in the lower Which You Are, was accepted for publica- Rogue Canyon to mine gold. As the guide on by Finishing Line Press and is due out July 2018. learns more about the devastaon that the mine could Her work has appeared in Construcon Magazine, The wreak in his beloved Rogue River, the acon shis to his Westchester Review, Newtown Literary, Forkli, Ohio, and others' efforts to fight the corporaon and its among others. She was named a finalist for the 2013 Joy minions. Harjo Poetry Prize by Cuhroat: A Journal of the Arts, and Paul worked as a fishing guide, whitewater kayak has received fellowships and residencies at the Vermont instructor and adventure travel writer in the Pacific Studio Center and the Norman Mailer Writers Colony. Northwest for two decades. Jenna lives in Astoria, Queens (New York).

Eliza Roerman Jacob Berns (MFA Ficon ‘15) MFA Poetry ‘06 Jacob’s story “Frieda, Callie, Kelly Lou” will be featured in an upcoming episode of Painted Bride Quarterly’s podcast Eliza Roerman’s chapbook, Dirt Eaters, and published in the journal’s annual print edion. selected by Brenta Shaghnessy for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Award will be J. Sllwell Powers (MFA Ficon ‘16) released in 2018. Jake has been awarded a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Eliza's poetry has appeared in Volta, Center in Provincetown for 2018–19. Quarterly West, Colorado Review and Poetry Internaonal, among others. She has received fel- Allison Donohue (MFA Poetry ‘17) lowships from the Vermont Studio Center and Squaw Val- Allison’s poems, “All Night I’ve Been Hearing Them ley Community of Writers. Currently she lives in Portland, Soly Begin” and “The Fires," will appear in Ninth Leer’s OR, and pracces nursing. special issue on climate coming out Summer 2018. ■ crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 13

Walker (connued from page 2) KTW: It felt like it grew out of the premise. Inherent- on of the earth, so I decided to try wring a short story ly, the contagion is spreading from one person to another with that detail in mind, except a more extreme version. person, so I was interested in following it to the next That was really the first me I wrote something that was person who gets it. If I had limited the book to one point outside of regular, real life. A few years later I came back of view I wouldn't have goen to explore that as much. to that story and turned it into a novel, but from the me I also wanted to try something that was different from I read Blindness to the me when I was deep into wring my first book. I had not wrien much in third person, so The Age of Miracles, I became more and more interested there's a lot I had to learn and figure out about how it in how writers figure out how to write about the fantas- could funcon. Third person can somemes feel clunky. cal, and what they're using those elements for. You have to figure out how to make it feel like you're MA: You went to UCLA for your undergrad, and inhabing a character, almost like a first person narrator. to Colombia for your MFA. Were there any writers or But I also like the semi-omniscient feeling of third person, teachers there who had an especially strong influence on where the narrator is oen inside people's heads, but you, or who you felt taught you something integral and there's informaon coming from the outside world as important that stayed with you unl now? well. KTW: Aimee Bender and Mona Simpson were my MA: Between compleng your MFA and your first teachers in college. They were both really crucial. In novel you worked in publishing. Did that experience I graduate school, Nathan Englander was one of my nfluence your work or wring in any way? teachers. He was really influenal just in terms of how KTW: I was an editorial assistant and eventually to think about story, how story can work. There was also moved up to editor. I think it made me a beer writer of the level of seriousness and almost sacredness that he sentences, because I was used to eding other people's treated wring, and how hard he worked at it. How many sentences. It also gave me a beer sense of long form hours, how perfeconisc he was. Those kinds of things narrave. In graduate school, I thought more about short stayed with me. stories. But in publishing I was constantly helping people MA: What’s something you’re reading now or have refine these long book-length projects. It taught me read recently that you enjoyed or has affected you in something about how a story can be told over a few some way? hundred pages. KTW: I recently read Exit West by Mohsin Hamad, MA: Based on the reading we've done for your which I just loved and then put on the syllabus for my graduate courses, it seems like you have all sorts of course. It's a nice example of how a story with a literary influences. And you've menoned before that fantascal element can really be about the real world. you've not always wrien, or always been interested in That line between what's real and unreal doesn't have to wring, fantascal ficon. Can you talk a lile bit about be as clear or as fixed as we might otherwise think. what led you to embracing the fantascal in your work? MA: What has your experience been like in the When I was younger I was interested in the fantascal program this year? in the way that kids oen are, but my reading was mostly not in THE DREAMERS that direcon. The one fantas- Karen Thompson Walker’s second novel, The Dreamers, will be published by cal book that I really did love in Random House in January of 2019. Television rights have been oponed by high school was Slaughterhouse Warren Lilefield, execuve producer of The Handmaid’s Tale and Fargo, at Five. But I didn't ever think of Fox 21 Television Studios. myself as planning to write in that way. Then in graduate school I took a fantascal KTW: I’m really excited to be here. It has been so nice ficon class, where I read Saramago’s Blindness for the to work with both undergrads and graduate students, first me. Then, the final assignment for the course was and it keeps making me think, especially working with to write a short story with a fantascal element. That graduate students—about the things I was trying to figure same semester, I’d read that, in 2004 the earthquake in out when I was a student. It has just been such an Indonesia really did, by a ny amount, change the rota- interesng, and challenging and sasfying, experience. ■

14 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018

Donovan (connued from page 3) KH: The poec self. KH: Was wring in the essay form a way to sub- MD: Exactly. More of the “I” as a dynamic first consciously work with poetry, take a break from it, let person narrator rather than the “I” serving merely as a ideas fester and then return to it? remote observer asking quesons, because the ekphrasc MD: For me in part it was. It was a way of shaking tradion can also risk the kind of a voice of a docent or myself out of my habits as a poet. Suddenly I'm wring in museum door. Poems have opportunies to do some- a genre I've never wrien before. So even though many of thing more dynamic and complex than that. I don't think my essays do behave like poems and a lot of my cks and the emoonal stakes can only be generated by having a styles are probably sll embedded in those prose essays, version of the self or the personal speaker in a poem. I it felt so liberang to be working in a new genre and feel resist the idea that every poem needs to have that. But I as if I was moving through a blueprint of a piece in an do think it is a clear means to an end. If overall the body enrely different way, that was different than a standard of the work is resisng those personal structure I may have relied on through some emoonal stakes, eventually that can be of my poems. a more limited experience for the reader. KH: I noced many of your essays As I have moved forward as a writer, were wrien in a fragmented structure. I'm much more interested in the oppor- Was that a way of bringing in an idea of tunies that having more of myself and poetry? personal experience in them can afford. MD: Absolutely. I'm sll interested in The essays that I wrote, for example, the lyricism and the associave leaps. In have more of my own experience in the braiding that those essays do in prose, them. you can find corollaries with my poems. So KH: Aside from consideraon of the yes, my habits are definitely sll there. personal, did you noce a large KH: The same braiding and weaving difference in process when wring those that defines the lyric essay, that connects essays? disparate parts, is a lot of what poetry MD: Here’s the story of how I found does. my way into nonficon. I was trying to MD: Right. Through those associate write about the Trinity Test Site—the place in New connecons, to be suggesve rather than exhausve. The Mexico where the world’s first nuclear bomb was lyric essay means you are trying to brush shoulders with— tested—and I wrote a terrible poem about it. There was to associate with, to interrogate through—ambiguity and so much happening there on site. There was a Boy Scout accrual in a way that the academic essay doesn’t. I want troop that was running around and so much complicated the act of wring a poem to be similar to the act of history to bring into it. So I couldn't start with a place of wring an essay. We inherit the word “essay” from the compression as a poem might require. Form and French verb for “to try,” and I think in any successful enjambment went out the window, and it was incredibly essay you’re trying something out, you're asking liberang for me to forget about line breaks and forget quesons. It is an interrogave act, and if I come out of a about compression and suddenly write in prose. I felt like poem and haven't learned something about myself or I was given a new lease on life in terms of being able to about the content that I'm wring about, that poem has ask all the quesons that I wanted to ask and incorporate failed in some ways. I don't want to have a poem all the history and all of the details that I wanted to from suddenly reveal itself to me from the start. Those poems that visit. Given my interest in engaging with that have always felt dead on arrival to me. Robert Frost has complicated subject maer, it made sense to address it in that maxim "No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. a much more direct way via prose. That's not to say No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader.” I poems cannot do that, but for me it was incredibly feel the same way. I want there to be a moment of liberang for my process and for that piece to just make revelaon for me as a writer and new understanding sure that I could say it exactly the way I wanted to say it through the course of wring, because otherwise I don't and have a more direct engagement with the reader. know why I'm doing it. ■ crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 15

Nonprofit Organizaon U.S. Postage College of Arts and Sciences PAID Eugene OR CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM Permit No. 63 5243 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403-5243

The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirma- tive-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This publication will be made available in accessible formats upon request. © 2015 University of Oregon

In this Issue

Interview with Karen Thompson Walker ...... 1 Literary Reference ...... 2 Interview with Ma Donovan ...... 3 Kidd Creave Wring Workshops ...... 4 Reading Series ...... 5 Faculty News ...... 6–7 FICTION POETRY Student News ...... 8 • • • • • • Giving ...... 8 Sam Axelrod Maha Abdelwahab Kidd Wring Prize Winners ...... 9 Blaine Ely Kae Haemmerle Welcome New Students ...... 10–11 Nicky Gonzalez Erik Neave Alumni News ...... 12–13 Ndinda Kioko Sarah Skochko Ryan MacLennan

16 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2018