Nonprofit Organizaon SPRINGSPRING 2015 2015 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 Interview with Visiting Assistant Professor Sara Jaffe by Sam Axelrod, MFA FicƟon ‘18

Sara Jaffe joined the program’s faculty for the 2016 academic year as a visiting profes-

The University of Oregon is an equal-opportunity, affirma- sor of fiction. Her first novel, Dryland, was tive-action institution committed to cultural diversity and compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. This published by Tin House Books in Septem- publication will be made available in accessible formats ber 2015. Her short fiction and criticism upon request. © 2015 University of Oregon have appeared in Fence, BOMB, NOON, Paul Revere’s Horse, matchbook, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. Drawing on her experience as guitarist for post-punk band Congratulations Erase Errata, she also co-edited The Art of In this Issue Touring (Yeti, 2009), an anthology of writ- Sara Jaffe (SJ): So, to speak first about 2017 Graduates! ing and visual art by musicians. the publishing experience, and the recep- Sara holds a BA from Wesleyan tion of having a book out in the world—I University and an MFA from the Universi- think it certainly felt very vulnerable at ty of Massachusetts Amherst, and has re- first to open myself up to readers I don’t Interview with Sara Jaffe ...... 1 ceived fellowships from the Virginia Cen- know, and to being reviewed and stuff, Literary Reference ...... 2 ter for the Creative Arts, RADAR Produc- but I think almost across the board when I Faculty News ...... 3–6 tions, and the Regional Arts and Culture received unfavorable reviews, it seemed Program Awards ...... 6 Council. She is also a co-founding editor of pretty clear to me that they were not my New Herring Press, a publisher of prose readers. That what they felt I had failed to Kidd Tutorial Program ...... 7 chapbooks. do was not something I was trying to do Alumni News ...... 8–9 anyway. So that was reassuring in a way, FICTION POETRY — — — — — — Welcome New Students ...... 10–11 and sort of helped to clarify my intent. Reading Series ...... 12, 15 Kevin Bartz Joanna Chen During Spring term, Sara met with Sam That was one thing that was useful. Now strangers read my book. That’s a reality, Call for Alumni News ...... 14 Claire Luchette Allison Donohue Axelrod, a first-year MFA candidate in fic- tion, to talk about her writing. but I also have con- Giving ...... 15 Ishelle Payer Leah Gómez tinued to feel Charlie Schneider Erik Johnson Sam Axelrod (SA): Now that it’s a bit buoyed by the writ- Leah Velez Tia North behind you, what would you say you ing community that learned from writing and publishing Dry- I’ve built up over the land? Jaffe Interview — Cont’d page 2

16 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.eduLiterary Reference CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 1

Visiting Authors (continued) Jaffe Interview Annual Giving Literary with a tantalizing quote from Emily Dickinson: “When I state myself, years, and a lot of the most valuable more about making experiments in as the representative of the verse, it does not mean me, but a supposed Reminder Reference feedback I’ve gotten has been from various ways that I can sustain more person.” ______writers I’ve been in conversation effectively over shorter work. Obvi- C. DALE YOUNG FACULTY with for a long time, and I think that ously, there are the questions and much of the press or blurbs or read- stylistic tics that continue through- C. Dale Young is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently ings happened through people that I out all of one’s work, but to me it The Halo (Four Way Books 2016). His recently completed linked short made connections with, through feels pretty different. story collection will be also published by Four Way Books in early Poetry building community, for the last SA: Would you say you think of 2018. A recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment of the Garrett Hongo however many years. And that felt yourself as a novelist, or a short sto- Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Daniel Anderson really gratifying to me. Of course ry writer, or neither, or both? Is that Rockefeller Foundation, he practices medicine full-time and teaches in Geri Doran there was work that Tin House did something that you think about? the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers. as my publisher, but I also was able SJ: My ideal is to write three pages His spring term Kidd Talk, entitled “Doubt and Uncertainty: to activate these networks that I’ve or 250 pages. The Interrogative Gesture as Rhetorical Strategy,” emphasized the Fiction cultivated—not in order to have SA: So “both” would be the easy importance of questions in both poetry and fiction, with C. Dale Jason Brown them help me in a publicity sense— answer. providing examples from a wide range of texts by Elizabeth Bishop, Marjorie Celona but just having those connections SJ: Both. But I’ve never been a sol- Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty, and William Butler Yeats. and becomes really grounding and use- id fifteen-page short story writer. Sara Jaffe, ful. That’s never been my thing. CHINELO OKPARANTA SA: It’s as if you’d been working SA: Right. So, let’s go back a little. Visiting Writer Born and raised in Port Harcourt, , Chinelo Okparanta received up to this for a while. I know you’re Before writing, your main artistic her BS from Pennsylvania State University, her MA from Rutgers working on a collection of stories outlet was music. Do you feel you he faculty and staff in the Instructors University, and her MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A Colgate now, Hurricane Envy, but did pub- were once a “music person” and Creative Writing Program Cai Emmons University Olive B. O’Connor Fellow in Fiction, as well as a recipient T lishing a novel affect your novel- now you’re a “writing person,” or do are committed to advancing the Brian Trapp of the ’s Provost’s Postgraduate Fellowship in Fic- writing-life in terms of wanting to you still feel like you’re both? Can educational and scholarly mission tion, Okparanta was nominated for a US Artists Fellowship in 2012. start writing another one? Or per- you talk a little about how you made of the university. However, lim- She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award and an O. Henry haps the opposite.? that transition, and what your trajec- ited financial resources restrict ______Prize. Her debut short story collection, Happiness, Like Water, was cited SJ: When I was really ready to sit tory was like going from music to our ability to develop educational as an editors’ choice in the New York Times Book Review and was includ- ADMINSTRATIVE down and start the next project, I’d writing? Was writing always there? opportunities that benefit our stu- ed on the list of ’s Best African Fiction of 2013. The book STAFF been saying it was going to be a col- And do you miss playing music? dents. Donations to the program was nominated for the Nigerian Writers Award (Young Motivational lection, and then I felt like, “I don’t SJ: I always identified as a writer and program-related funds allow George E. Rowe Writer of the Year), longlisted for the 2013 Frank O’Connor Interna- want to write a collection of stories. I from the time I was really young. us to provide a competitive edu- Program Director tional Short Story Award, and a finalist for the 2014 New York Public want to write another novel. I want And I also played music from a pret- cation for our growing body of Library Young Lions Fiction Award, as well as the Etisalat Prize for to dive back into writing something ty young age, but the difference, I undergraduates and our graduate Julia A. Schewanick Literature. She was also a finalist for the 2013 Caine Prize for longer-form.” Which surprised me, think, when I got really into music— students through Graduate Business Manager African Writing, the 2013 Society of Midland Authors Award, and the because while I was writing the nov- both listening and playing, as a teen- Teaching Fellowships. 2014 Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative in Literature. Chinelo is ______el, I wanted to write stories in order ager—it defined my social world. So Please consider giving to the currently Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing at Bucknell to be able to work on that smaller I’d really say that the major shift that Creative Writing Program. Your University, where she is also C. Graydon and Mary E. Rogers Faculty scale. But since then I really have happened is that now my social gift will help maintain the pro- Creative Writing Program Research Fellow. She was recently named one of Granta’s Best Young gotten back into story-mode. I have world, and my artistic community, is gram's excellence and dedication 5243 University of Oregon American Novelists. some ideas for longer-form stuff that more writing-oriented, as opposed to to emerging graduate and under- Eugene, OR 97403-5243 In May, Chinelo read from her debut novel, Under the Udala Trees, I’m really excited to get back to—but music-oriented. But also, I have not graduate writers—our future lit- T: (541) 346-3944 the story of a 57-year-old Nigerian woman looking back on her adoles- it’s also been the right time for me to been playing music very much for erary voices. For more infor- F: (541) 346-0537 cence during the Nigerian Civil War and her first “forbidden” roman- be trying out different things in a the last few years. I just haven’t mation, visit our webpage: E: [email protected] tic relationship with a Hausa woman named Amina. In her Kidd Talk, shorter-mode. I’d say [the stories] http://crwr.uoregon.edu/give- http://crwr.uoregon.edu she outlined the research methods she used to write the novel, includ- are quite different from Dryland; it’s Jaffe Interview — Cont’d page 13 now/. ■ ing transforming family history and folklore into art. ■

2 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 15

Jaffe Interview (continued) you’re looking at me and I’m sitting in the middle somewhere, you’re also inevitably crossing eye paths Faculty News & Excerpts from Recent Work and grad school, I took a home workshop with Ca- with some other people. mille Roy, who’s an experimental writer there, and SA: It’s a cool move. And, finally, you’ve been Jason Brown “The grand one or the regular one?” John asked. that was super-formative in the ways that she totally quoted as saying, “I wish my students could call me Associate Professor of Fiction He heard his wife, Sarah, clucking in the air around pushed me out of New Yorker-style truisms, which is ‘Teach.’ ” Do you still feel this way? Would you like him. She didn’t need to tell him to leave the boy be. really what I had learned in college. To really think me and my classmates to start calling you “Teach”? Jason Brown won the Jeffrey E. His great-grandson frowned and pursed his lips. The smallness of his mouth reminded John of Caroline, the about the role of the body in literature, and the role SJ: I’m very happy with having my graduate stu- Smith Editor’s Prize from the boy’s mother, who measured her words like a butcher of the political, and how my queerness could make dents call me “Sara.” However, I think that I said that Missouri Review ($5,000) for his adding slices of roast beef on the scale. The more she itself felt on the page. story “Instructions to the Living because, while I don’t want to be called “Professor,” spoke the more he would have to pay. She’d actually SA: In our workshop this term, you’ve employed there is sometimes a way with undergraduates, being from the Condition of the Dead.” He also optioned been born in Maine, not California, but she was a Yan- some non-traditional aspects, most notably a repeal called by my name, I already feel on shaky ground his book Why the Devil Chose New England for His kee in name only. ■ of the infamous “gag rule.” Did anything particular around my sort of taking up space as an authority Work to filmmaker Lance Edmands, who is the writer inspire these choices? figure in the room, so, you know, “Teach” felt like and director of the film Bluebird and has worked for Marjorie Celona SJ: It’s something I’ve been thinking about doing acknowledging my position without needing to go so Lena Dunham. Jason will be a co-writer of the script. Assistant Professor of Fiction for a while—more recently because of reading people far as “Professor.” However, I think that, as I’m turn- Jason also submitted his two new books, the novel like Matthew Salesses, whom we discussed last ing 40 in a few weeks, I’m ready to recognize that I Outermark and the story collection The Wreck of the Marjorie Celona published a story, week, and talking about the ways in which the work- can be an authority figure in the room to the extent Ipswich Sparrow, to his agent. “Counterblast,” in the Spring 2017 shop structure can reinforce various existing hierar- that I need to be, regardless of what they’re calling issue of The Southern Review. She chies about whose opinion is valued. But there had me. From: “Instructions to the Living From the was also a recipient of research been something that sort of felt unsettling to me SA: Well, happy birthday. Condition of the Dead” grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the about it even before then—just when you sit back SJ: Thank you. ■ University of Oregon, and will be in residence at the The door hinges creaked, and the thudding footfalls and think about the fact that someone is being si- Mineral School during the summer of 2017. of his family shook the beams. What were they doing lenced during a discussion of their work. And I think here today, the day before Thanksgiving? Voices, the it’s useful for beginning writers’ workshops where crackling of grocery bags, firewood clunking in front of From: “Counterblast” the impulse to defensiveness is so strong, and I think Call for Alumni News the hearth (because they thought he was too old now to beginning writers really need to train themselves to carry it from the barn himself). They swarmed into every I found a beer in the fridge and watched my husband listen and to take in critique, and not to immediately Submit through our online portal: corner of the parlor and the kitchen with no thought to wash Lou. He filled a glass and tipped it over her head. He had found the bottle of baby shampoo I’d packed jump to any point that’s being made. But I really feel http://crwr.uoregon.edu/ the most important question, the same this year as eve- like, by the time writers are in graduate school, hope- ry year: who had brought the goddamned cheddar? In- with our toiletries and was soaping her with it. He or email: [email protected] shaped her hair into a tiny mohawk. I wanted to tell him fully they’ve at least, to some extent, worked through deed. Two years ago he’d put his foot down and said he (Subject: CRWR Alumni News) to protect her from the hard faucet by wrapping a dish- that defensiveness—or at least learned how to hide would no longer provide! So this year would be the same as last year: crackers and hummus from Califor- cloth around it. I wanted to tell him that she was getting it—and it can help to orient, in small ways, the con- Be sure to include your name, cold. He tipped too much water over her head, and she versation toward one that is going to be the most nia. genre, and graduation year. “Dad? Where are you?” called Caroline, his mealy- began to cry. I pretended that my feet were glued to the useful for them. mouthed granddaughter-in-law, a lawyer from California floor and that I couldn’t rescue her from my husband’s I also just think that, in a program that is as con- who always talked about the importance in old age of rough grasp. She looked at me with her sweet, helpless centrated and immersive as the U of O program is, regular bowel movements. A sharp slap on the stair- face, and I watched her little tongue quiver while she anything that can be done to make a little breathing case, hen another and another. Nowhere to retreat to cried. Barry told her it was all right. He told her he was room in the workshop, just in terms of how we’re except into his bedroom. almost done. He lifted her out of the sink and looked thinking about things, is useful. He heard no sound for almost a minute, so he around desperately for a towel. He was holding her di- rectly under the air vent and she was shivering, and I SA: You also avoid sitting at the head of the table. opened the door to the bathroom. Five small fingers couldn’t help it, I snatched her out of his arms and ran You usually sit in the middle, with the rest of us rested on the top step. The scruffy blond hair. The blue eyes and tanned face of his great-grandson, William with her into the bathroom, where I swaddled her in one common folk. of Lonnie’s aquamarine bath towels and held her until SJ: I was honestly surprised to hear that that was Palfry Howland (Will), resident of Ojai, California, a place, he gathered, where people lolled around in the she stopped crying. an anomaly. Well, I don’t want you guys to look at sun like overfed housecats. Having summited the top “You make me feel like a horrible father,” Barry me when you’re talking—I want you to look at each step, his great-grandson sighed. yelled from behind the closed bathroom door, “when other. And I think there’s more of a tendency to look “Daddy wants to talk to you,” he said and cocked his you do things like that.” Faculty – Cont’d page 4 at me if I’m at the head of the table. And at least if head. *

14 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 3

Faculty Jaffe Interview (continued)

Lou slept on my chest in the dark of From: The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays found the right way to really fit it in. I want to play er. We always tried to have a balance between more the bedroom while I watched the music with other people; it’s not that satisfying to me established and less established writers. The most news on Lonnie’s shitty black-and- And so, before long, I invented a book. In secret. At first, I told no one, but I white TV. Her chin dug into my col- to play by myself—especially because writing itself is recent thing we put out was a reissue of an early wrote that it was so in a diary of my own dreaming, as if it were a memory, so solitary. So I do miss it. The collaborative aspect, Lynne Tillman story, with illustrations by the painter larbone. Barry was in the living though I knew I had not lived it, that the book did not exist. But I convinced the public aspect. The instant gratification aspect. I Amy Sillman, and that was our first perfect-bound room doing angry push-ups. It was a myself that it did. In my diary, I wrote that I found it when I was five or six, miss all those things. book. We’ve been in a period of dormancy for the little after two. I’d just fed Lou. I rummaging around in the basement garage of my grandfather’s house on knew I should sleep. I could get Kamehameha Highway on the island of Oʻahu near the town of Hauʻula. I SA: Me too. So you’re a co-founder of New Her- last couple of years, just based on different people’s maybe two hours before she woke had been exploring in the shelves alongside the polished green Chevy, ring Press, where you publish limited edition chap- life craziness, but I believe we will produce again. again to nurse. I heard Barry setting careful to climb up on the floorboards, step on the seat, and push quickly books by writers such as Eileen Myles, Justin Torres, SA: You went to Wesleyan for college and UMass up the foldout couch. I thought with my bare foot from the dashboard and lowered passenger window on and Deb Olin Unferth. Can you tell us a little bit for your MFA. Did you have any writing teachers about what I would tell Lonnie when up so I could reach the high shelves crowded with things. My grandfather about that? that were particularly influential on your writing she got home. He snores? I wanted kept boxes full of sparkplugs, rayon lure skirts, seashells, and beach- SJ: In 2010, I believe, my and/or teaching life? to watch TV? The truth, which was washed glass up there out of which he fashioned curios for the tourists. A friend, the writer Jess Arndt— SJ: It’s an amalgam of all of that he was starting to sense I crèche of toy hula girls in the polished half-shell of a coconut. A kind of didn’t want him around? whose first collection just them. I took several work- Joseph Cornell-box with opihi, chips of colored glass, spotted cowries, and came out, which is very excit- shops as an undergraduate At that hour, every news story a starfish. ■ was about child abuse or murder. ing— she and I were eating with Tom Drury, and I just Some woman had decapitated her Mexican food with Lynne Till- felt it was the first time I was newborn in the neighborhood adja- man and talking about not treated as a real writer—that cent to Lonnie’s. Men were murder- Geri Doran quite knowing our place in the we all were respected and ing people all over the state. ■ Associate Professor of Poetry literary world, and Lynne said able to guide the conversation we should start a magazine. in a way that I think was Garrett After a yearlong sabbatical that included writing And so we thought about that meaningful to me. It’s hard to Hongo residencies in New York, Connecticut, Provence, for a minute, and we decided separate what you’ve learned Professor and Northern Spain, Geri Doran returned to Eugene we didn’t want to start a mag- from someone as a teacher of Poetry last fall with a largely finished manuscript, titled azine, and decided to start a versus what you’ve learned Blue Marble, which Tupelo Press has accepted for press instead. We did it with [from that someone] as a writ- Garrett Hongo publication. Geri’s poems were published or are our friends Jason Daniel er. I also had a really forma- gave readings at forthcoming in Southwest Review, The Arkansas Inter- Schwartz and Sara Marcus— tive workshop with Annie Vanderbilt, Tennessee, and Auburn national, Yale Review and New England Review. ■ Jason’s a fiction writer, and Dillard, who was much more this past fall. His most recent Sara’s mostly a nonfiction didactic in her teaching— book ,The Mirror Diary: Selected Es- “Crape Myrtle in Winter” (Southwest Review, Spring 2017) writer. I think in part because which is really not what my says, is forthcoming in August as we were just friends who style is like—but I think her part of the University of Michigan Drawn by the snow-shallow deck of the earth, the iced trees wanted to do something crea- attention to the sentence, and Press’s Poets on Poetry Series. He camber down: crescent branches, a glass-red dangle of berries. tive together, but I think, also, her sort of valuing of the sen- also has poems forthcoming in Po- Snow-caked limbs in the alder and sweetgum sheer, all of us felt some sense of be- tence as a mode of communi- etry and Harvard Review. Garrett ing in between different writ- cation is something I really will be taking part in the Smithson- cracking and avalanching. What loss in this great falling ing communities, or different carried with me. In graduate ian Institute's Festival of Asian is a delicate, bark-bare tangle of crape myrtle? modes of writing, and wanted to publish work that school I worked primarily with Noy Holland. She American Literature in July and could try to sort of bridge some of those gaps. So we would often start class by talking for half an hour. then join the faculty of the Bread The willowy, caramel tangle of myrtle, whose blossoming did three sets of four prose chapbooks. We decided Not a lecture, but just musing on what art had in- Loaf Writers Conference later in the once foretold a grief-cold sky. And this white spilling to do chapbooks because we liked the chapbook as a spired her recently, in a way that was nice in its po- summer. He has also been awarded on the winter terrace, the earth’s heart at its hearthstone, all this sort of currency in the poetry community, but it rousness and how it allowed us to think about some- residencies at the Camargo Foun- muted radiance—snowlight at the midnight hour— dation (Cassis, France) and The doesn’t happen as much in fiction. (I think this is be- thing other than fiction in the fiction classroom. And Lemon Tree House (Cetona, Italy). arrives like a foregone conclusion, or precipitous sorrow. cause of capitalism, but that’s a separate conversa- when I lived in San Francisco, between undergrad tion, maybe.) So we did these three sets of chapbooks Jaffe Interview – Cont’d page 14 that we saw as curated sets of four that went togeth-

4 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 13

Reading Series Faculty Cai Emmons Brian Trapp Instructor of Fiction Instructor of Fiction

Cai Emmons recently placed In the Fall of 2017, Brian Trapp her third novel, Weather will take over as Director of Woman, with Red Hen Press. the Kidd Tutorial Program. One of her stories appeared in Brian also serves as the Fiction Tri Quarterly and another was Editor of Memorious. He Solmaz Sharif Ocean Vuong Rick Barot C. Dale Young Chinelo Okparanta a finalist in the Missouri Review received his PhD in English editor’s contest for which there were 3,000 appli- and Comparative Literature from the University of SOLMAZ SHARIF awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger cants. Cai has also been awarded two writing resi- Cincinnati, where he was the Associate Editor of the Poets. His work has been translated into Albanian, dencies in the US and a third in Europe. Cincinnati Review. Brian’s fiction and essays have Solmaz Sharif was born in Istanbul to Iranian par- Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, French, Italian, Hindi, been published or are forthcoming in the Sun, Narra- ents. She holds degrees from U.C. Berkeley, where Spanish, and Ukrainian. From: “Her Boys” tive, Ninth Letter, Gettysburg Review, MELUS, and she studied and taught with June Jordan’s Poetry for Brevity. He is currently at work on a novel and a the People, and New York University. Her work has The thing that bothered Talmadge the most on this SARA JAFFE memoir. visit was the smell of the place. It was as if a bunch of appeared in The New Republic, Poetry, The Kenyon Tim’s friends had been sitting around for days burping Review, jubilat, Gulf Coast, Boston Review, and Witness. In November, Sara Jaffe (visiting assistant professor From: “Twelve Words” beer and pizza, farting, never cracking a door or win- The former managing director of the Asian American of fiction for 2016-2017) read from her novel, Dryland. dow. They kept the heat too high—Lila claimed she Writers’ Workshop, she has been awarded a In her Kidd Talk she spoke about the use of first- My twin brother, Danny, could say twelve words: Eh. couldn’t adjust it—cooking the air’s smell into something “Discovery”/Boston Review Poetry Prize, scholar- person point of view in her novel, as well as how she Eh-eh. Hi. Yeah. More. Momma. Dada. I-an. Arra. Day- unbreathable. Lila, sixty-three, and Tim, twenty-four, are ships from NYU and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Confer- learned from the techniques of film to create convinc- day. Annie. Eddie. At the end of our visits, I wanted just living together in the same house Tim and Talmadge one. ence, a winter fellowship at the Fine Arts Work ing and dynamic scenes. (See Sara Jaffe interview in grew up in, but it no longer resembles the tidy cozy “You say my name right now,” I said. “Say I-an.” Center in Provincetown, an NEA fellowship, and a this newsletter.) home of her childhood. The roof leaks and some of the We were in “Cascade Falls,” though there were no Stegner Fellowship. Most recently, she has been beige siding has come off in front and the small side falls. It was just what his group home renamed “Unit B” selected to receive a 2014 Rona Jaffe Foundation RICK BAROT yard has become a cemetery for a collection of Tim’s to sound more like a home, more like the nearby, over- Writer’s Award as well as a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy dead vehicles. Inside there are things everywhere, un- Rick Barot, a 2016 Guggenheim recipient, has pub- priced housing developments in the exurbs of Cleve- necessary objects in places they have no business be- Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship. She is currently a land. “Cascade Falls” was a wing in a facility for severe- lished three books of poetry with Sarabande Books: ing. Why, for example, is there an axe in the foyer? Who Jones Lecturer at Stanford University. Her first ly disabled children and adults. It was clean and anti- The Darker Fall (2002); Want (2008), which was a final- has left a waffle iron on the coffee table? Why can’t Tim poetry collection, Look, was released by Graywolf septic, with walls lined in gold-plated donor plaques and ist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 trash his empty beer cans and rein in his cast-off sweat- Press in July 2016. elaborate, swirling abstract canvases drawn by the resi- Grub Street Book Prize; and Chord (2015), which shirts? Throughout Talmadge’s childhood the place was dents with an art therapist’s “assistance.” The art thera- received the UNT Rilke Prize, the PEN Open Book neat and clean, mostly due to Lila’s efforts. But now pists said the residents told them what to draw through OCEAN VUONG even Lila leaves her own trail of sludge. She’s been un- Award, and the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn their body language and eye motion, that they could employed for the last two years and in that time she’s Ocean Vuong, born in Saigon, Vietnam, currently Award. It was also a finalist for the LA Times Book infer intent, could tell what the residents were thinking: collected unemployment and grown fat. She and Tim lives in New York City. He is the author of Night Sky Prize. move left, move right, circle here, square. I doubted have vats of excuses for their sorry state, the difficulty With Exit Wounds (2016), the winner of the 2016 His February Kidd Talk considered the aspect of this, even for my brother, who was the smartest one. If of finding jobs, blah, blah, blah, but Talmadge blames Whiting Award. A Ruth Lilly fellow of the Poetry voice in fiction and poetry as a nexus of three anyone could divine his intent, it should be me, his twin, only their overall laziness. It’s unlikely to change, she the one who stewed with him in the same amniotic flu- Foundation, Ocean has also received honors and elements: character, circumstance, and craft. Discuss- knows that. And yet, once every six weeks or so she con- id, the one who should have a bond with him beyond awards from Poets House, the Elizabeth George ing passages from wide range of writers (Flannery vinces herself otherwise, and bolsters her hope again words, some psychic tether between our brains. But Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Sal- O’Connor, Thomas McGuane, Malcolm Gladwell, and makes the visit with another envelope containing a even after 28 years of practice, I had enough trouble tonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Academy of Yanis Ritsos, Franz Wright), he explored such check that her mother squints at as if it’s not nearly knowing what he was thinking. Still, it was a convincing American Poets, and a Pushcart Prize. His poetry attendant concerns as the spectrum of credibility, enough. ■ story: At the annual fundraiser, the paintings were auc- dissonances of tone & personality, and motor and fiction have been featured in Kenyon Review, The tioned off and “Cascade Falls” raked it in. ■ Nation, New Republic, , The New York mimicry. He ended his talk, titled “What Voice Is,” Times, Poetry, and the American Poetry Review, which Visiting Authors – Cont’d page 15

12 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 5

Walker to Join Program Faculty Next Fall ieran Mundy is from a tiny During 2015-2016, Karen Thompson Walker taught in the program as a Visiting town in New Hampshire. She Assistant Professor and she has recently been appointed as a full-time member of the K graduated from the College of faculty beginning in Fall 2017. Wooster in 2016 with a BA in Karen is the author of the novel The Age of Miracles, which was a New York Times English, and has spent the past bestseller, an Indies Choice Award, a Goodreads Choice Award, and a finalist for the arcie Alexander grew up in year working as a wilderness trip Barnes & Noble Discover Award. Translated into 27 languages, it was named one of the rural Texas. She graduated M leader, volunteering on organic best books of the year by the Financial Times, Publishers Weekly, People, O., The Oprah from the University of Texas at farms, and exploring South America. Her interests Magazine, Kirkus, and Amazon, and has been selected as a community read by several cities Austin with degrees in English include mountains, baking bread, the New York and universities. A television series based on The Age of Miracles is being developed for AMC by Shawn Levy and Biology. After graduation, she Times Daily Mini, and listening to three-part harmo- (producer of Netflix’s Stranger Things). worked for a marketing group and ny. She is excited to spend this summer in New Karen previously worked as a book editor at Simon & Schuster and is a graduate of UCLA and Columbia. an environmental nonprofit, and Hampshire working as a glorified pack mule for the She is currently at work on her second novel. ■ spent a combined four years living, working, and Appalachian Mountain Club’s backcountry hut sys- traveling across 34 countries. She returned to Austin, tem. Eugene will be the largest city Kieran has ever where she currently teaches English as a Second Lan- inhabited, and she looks forward to becoming part of guage at a nearby high school. She is looking University of Oregon’s literary community. forward to being part of the literary community at Current Student the University of Oregon, as well as mountains, Program Awards mma Stockman isn’t sure beaches, and those rainy days perfect for getting News where she is from. She could work done. E be from upstate New York, where

Claire Luchette The Miriam McFall The Logsdon Award for she was born, but maybe she’s lexa Aman is an Afghan- Fiction ‘17 Starlin Poetry Prize Creative Fiction Writing from the childhood afternoons of American writer who was A California, where she opened her Claire’s stories have appeared in raised in Orange County, Califor- the Spring/Summer issue of first journal and wrote herself into Katie Claire nia. She received her BA in English it. Or she could be from Connecticut, its New Eng- Glimmer Train and the summer Haemmerle Luchette from the University of Southern land beauty irrevocably lost, because it was also issue of Indiana Review, with Poetry ‘18 Fiction ‘17 California in Los Angeles, and has another forthcoming in the winter where she turned thirteen. Maybe she’s from New participated in fiction workshops York City, where she graduated from NYU in 2013. 2018 issue of Ploughshares, one of at USC and the Iowa Writer's Workshop. She is im- Maybe she’s from the cramped space above a bicy- America’s most prestigious liter- mensely grateful to be included in the UO fiction co- cle’s handlebars, the crumbling shoulders of roads, ary magazines. hort for 2017 and looks forward to further develop- where she lived for two months, riding from Maine ing her acuity as a reader and writer. to Washington after graduation. She might be from

Oak Bluffs, Massachusetts, where she has lived the Charlie Schneider The Walter and Nancy Kidd ogan McMillen grew up on a better part of the last four years, learning how to Fiction ‘17 small farm outside of Minne- Writing Competition in Poetry and Fiction L write when no one was watching. Her fiction centers apolis, and later earned his BA in Charlie was recently named a Tin on family and inheritance. She is eager to move to Poetry Judge: C. Dale Young creative writing at Oberlin Col- House Scholar, which entails a Eugene and to learn more about her writing, her old lege. For the past couple years, full scholarship and room and 1st Place John Mulcare “The Emptiness of Fields” homes, and her new one. ■ board at their summer workshop. 2nd Place Jessie Box “A Letter to My Skeleton” he's been studying ethics at the He’ll also attend the Aspen Sum- 3rd Place Samuel Styles “Coyote Nailed to Barn” University of Chicago, and work- mer Words Juried Fiction Work- ing part-time at a bar. He's an X-Files enthusiast, shop. In the fall, he has residen- Snoop Dogg apologist, and a frequent visitor to the cies at Elsewhere Studios in Colo- Fiction Judge: Chinelo Okparanta Mall of America. His favorite author right now is rado and at Hawthornden Castle Laura van den Berg, and his favorite book is None of 1st Place Emma Saisslin “Old Money” in Scotland. ■ Your Business. He looks forward to writing, teaching, 2nd Place Ciara Gaffney “The Treatment” and perhaps being abducted by Bigfoot while camp- 3rd Place Stephanie Schillger “Fixin’ & Findin’” ing in the woods.

6 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 11

Kidd Tutorial Program Thank You! Welcome New Students

The Kidd Tutorial Program George Rowe is a unique three-course Professor of English esse Gonzalez is a proud undergraduate sequence Editor, Comparative Literature J product of New Jersey, that was created by Profes- though he has spent the last four sor Garrett Hongo nearly years suffering through Ithaca twenty-five years ago in winters while studying English nna Ball was born in Wash- response to a generous be- and Spanish at Cornell University. ington, DC and raised in the quest from Nancy and A In an effort to escape the snow, he Maryland suburbs. Growing up, Walter Kidd. The original spent half of his junior year in Havana, Cuba, read- she did artistic and acrobatic design was derived from ing Borges under the watchful eye of José Martí. gymnastics, which she credits for both the undergraduate While he traces his roots to Puerto Rico, not Cuba, he cultivating her creative expression tutorial program at Har- considers himself a part of the larger Caribbean and discipline. She has been inter- vard University and the diaspora, obsessing over the concepts of physical ested in language and literature for many years, writ- Watts Writers' Workshop, a feder- those with “low” need), with the After seven years of serving as the exile and spiritual dislocation. In his poetry, he tries ing poetry, studying Spanish and Italian, and earning ally-funded program, directed by total amount of scholarship mon- Director of Creative Writing, to engage these ideas through juxtapositions and the her BA in Linguistics at the University of Maryland. Dudley Randall, that included ey awarded totaling approximate- Professor George Rowe will retire use of Caribbean images in unexpected places. While She lived in Rome for two years, where she taught adult writers (Quincy Troupe, ly $50,000 each year. this spring. George came to us he has never been to the Pacific Northwest, he has English, and hopes to spend time abroad again in the Lonnie Elder, and Stanley In Fall 2016 we inaugurated a from the English Department, and fond childhood memories of hiking and camping future. Currently, Anna is living and working at a Crouch, among others) teaching new chapter in the history of the has been a great friend of our throughout the Northeast and is excited to see if Zen Buddhist meditation center and farm outside of middle school and high school Kidd Tutorial Program in order to program and a great support to those things are indeed like riding a bicycle or if he San Francisco. She's happy for the chance to continue students in the "inner city" of Los improve the way the Kidd articu- all those who have taught and has forgotten them completely. exploring the West Coast, and to write in a new envi- Angeles during the summer of lates with the minor in creative studied creative writing at ronment, when she moves to Eugene in the fall. 1967. Since its inception, the Kidd writing. We want to attract un- Oregon. He has overseen curricu- aley Laningham got her Program has been an integral part dergraduates in the their first and lum changes, new faculty hires, BA’s in Creative Writing and manda Cox grew up in Mos- H of the UO creative writing com- second years to the Program so structural changes that allowed Spanish at Pepperdine University cow, Idaho, surrounded by munity and functioned as a cap- that they can move on to working us to increase graduate student A in the Los Angeles area. Her wheat fields and wily coyotes. stone experience for advanced with faculty in advanced semi- stipends, and the tenure and pro- interests include comedy, how the Dubbed the Heart of the Arts, Creative Writing students. The nars. We also want the Kidd Tuto- motion of many of us. We owe world is kind of ending right now, Moscow allowed her to explore participants enjoy an intense, rial students to have more en- George a great debt and are sad to the investigation of identity print-making, swing dancing, jazz highly individualized, year of gagement with the faculty with see him load up his fishing gear. politics, what faith is, understanding history through choral performances – and, of study in a small group setting, as whom they will work after they Happy for him, sad for ourselves. class, the millennial relationship to irony and cliché, course, an excellent reading series. She earned her well as access to visitors (at least have finished the program. Start- ■ and music. Her dad was born in Bakersfield, BA in creative writing in 2014, and after spending a two each term) in our reading se- ing last fall, all Kidd students at- California, and her mom in Cali, Colombia. She summer transcribing and editing letters for her men- ries. Participation in the Kidd Pro- tend fiction and poetry lectures, thanks them both for their help moving her belong- tor’s memoirs, she hopped the Pacific over to her cur- gram is by application only (in which are designed to introduce ings across the country in seeming constancy. She rent residence in Nagano, Japan to work as an assis- either poetry or fiction). In keep- students to both genres and pro- refuses to be casual about how excited she feels to be tant language teacher at two high schools. On days ing with the bequest by Nancy vided by the professorial faculty studying poetry at Oregon. not spent correcting papers, she enjoys losing mar- and Walter Kidd, the Kidd Pro- in Creative Writing. In the Winter velously at claw machine games, hiking in the moun- gram also offers substantial schol- and Spring terms, Kidd students tains behind her house, and singing her heart out in arships to admitted students who work with their tutors to develop karaoke booths. She’s looking forward to escaping demonstrate financial need. In creative portfolios and a critical, the humidity and getting back to her roots in the recent years, the awards have craft-centered paper called a Line

Pacific Northwest. ranged from $3,000 (for students of Inquiry. ■ with “high” need) to $1,200 (for 10 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 7

Alumni News Schultz Wins Reiss Publishes National Poetry 22nd Book

Series Award Bob Reiss Göknar Publishes Fenton Publishes Fiction ‘76 Jeffrey Schultz

New Collection of Second Collection Poetry ‘03 Bob Reiss’s 22nd novel, Vector,

Poetry will be published this July by Jeffrey Schultz was one of five Berkley under the pen name of Erdağ Göknar Elyse Fenton winners of The National Poetry Series’ 2016 Open James Abel. In March, Newsweek magazine Poetry ‘94 Poetry '07 Competition for his poem “Civil Twilight” (chosen published his coverage of Arctic issues. Bob will be a by David St. John). writer in residence at the Anchorage (Alaska) A two-time winner of The National Poetry Museum in June. Erdağ Göknar’s Nomadologies, a Elyse Fenton’s second ollection of Series (2016 and 2013), Jeffrey is a Visiting Professor Nomadologies Sweet Insurgent Bob’s work has appeared in significant literary and scholarly poetry, Sweet Insurgent (Saturnalia of Creative Writing at Pepperdine/Seaver College in Erdağ Göknar Elyse Fenton Magazine, Newsweek, Outside, Rolling Stone, Parade work of poetry on Turkish diaspo- 2017), is the winner of the Alice Malibu, California. ra and Turkish-American cultural Fay di Castagnola Prize. (Her first and Smithsonian. His has also advised 60 Minutes conflict, will be published in April collection, Clamor—was the win- and NBC Nightly News on Arctic issues. 2017 by Turtle Point Press (a divi- ner of the 2010 Dylan Thomas sion of Random House). Prize, Cleveland State First Book Erdağ is the award-winning Award and Bob Bush Memorial translator of Nobel laureate Orhan Award.) Her work has been Jacob Berns’ (Fiction ‘13) story “Continues” was Pamuk’s My Name is Red and published in The New York Times, Wilson’s New published in Volume 29 of The Briar Cliff Review.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s A Mind Best New Poets, American Poetry Release Marks Ezra Carlsen (Fiction ‘15) recently published at Peace. Nomadologies is his first Review, Pleiades, Brain, Child, and stories in Fogged Clarity and The Masters Review, and collection of poetry. Prairie Schooner, as well as featured on NPR’s All 40 Years of Writing has a story forthcoming in TriQuarterly. Things Considered and PRI’s The World. Miles Wilson Fiction ‘68 Karen Locke’s (Poetry ‘76 ) poem “About Despair” was included in the anthology The Absence of Some- thing Specified, edited and published by Quinton Hal- Mak Receives Bright Wins Miles Wilson’s latest book, Woodswork, New and lett, Colette Johnopulos, Laura LeHew, and Cheryl Selected Stories, 1977-2017, will be published by the Loetscher. Elizabeth George APS Fellowship University of New Mexico Press. Miles’ literary Foundation Grant papers have been acquired by the Southwest Writers Josha Nathan (Fiction ‘16) received a 2017 Oregon Collection at Texas State University, which also holds Literary Fellowship for a Writer of Color. Josh Mak Phoebe Bright the papers of Cormac McCarthy, Sandra Cisneros, Michelle Peñaloza (Poetry ‘11) was awarded resi- Fiction ‘15 Fiction ’15 Sam Shepard, and Larry McMurtry. “On Tour with dencies at Caldera (Sisters OR) and the Lemon Tree Max,” one of the stories from his short story House Residencies (Camporsevoli, Italy). Josh Mak was awarded a $20,000 grant from the Eliz- Phoebe Bright was chosen from more than 1,000 ap- collection, Line of Fall, was recently optioned by an abeth George Foundation, which provides artistic plicants to receive the A Public Space Fellowship, a 6- Academy Award-winning director. He was also Susan Rich (Poetry ‘96) has new work coming out in grants to unpublished fiction writers, poets, emerg- month award for new writers that includes mentor- recently named Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Alaska Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, Nasty ing playwrights, and organizations benefiting disad- ship from an established author, publication in the English by Texas State University, where he was Women Anthology (Lost Horse Press) and Poetry vantaged youth. magazine, and a contributor’s payment of $1,000. She founding director of the MFA program. will work such with established writers as Jesmyn Inter-national's Best of Anthology (McSweeney's). ■ Ward, Jamel Brinkley, and Sara Majka.

8 UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Spring 2017 crwr.uoregon.edu CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM 9