News of Note Week of November 9th

image by Jill Salahub

• SueEllen Campbell ran a workshop on teaching climate change in literature classes at the Western Literature Association conference on November 7 in Victoria, B.C.
• VCU’s literary journal, Blackbird, has published three of Camille Dungy’s poems: http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v13n2/poetry/dungy_c/index.shtml
• Ecotone, a literary journal published by the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, recently published “Differentiation,” an essay that chronicles some of the highlights of the trip Camille Dungy took to Barrow, Alaska this February: http://www.ecotonejournal.com/index.php/articles/details/differentiation
• Sasha Steensen will be reading in Iowa City at Prairie Lights Books on November 18th and in Chicago at Danny’s on November 19th.
• Debby Thompson’s “Strange Rays, Indeed,” a personal essay about radioactivity, has been nominated by Chautauqua for a Pushcart Prize.

Writer’s Harvest Reading: Sasha Steensen and Ira Sukrungruang

~From English Department Communications Intern Tim Mahoney

The Creative Writing Reading Series invited authors Sasha Steensen and Ira Sukrungruang to read selections of their latest work at the Writers’ Harvest Benefit on October 23^rd. For this event attendants were asked to bring in canned non-perishable food items to donate to the Larimer County Food Bank. Those who donated food items were given the chance to win great prizes from local business who also donated their goods and services to benefit the local food bank. On top of some incredible prizes including gift baskets from Whole Foods Market and Snooze, the Writers’ Harvest Benefit gave students and members of the community the chance to hear some truly amazing works of literature.

The reading, which took place in the University Center for the Arts Museum, began with CSU’s own Sasha Steensen who read selections from her latest chapbook House of Deer. The poems from this collection were about family, her childhood, and where she grew up. The book has been described as “a lyric inquiry into a personal history of the back-to-the-land idealism of the 1970s, with its promises and failings, naturalism gone awry, and journeys into the worlds of addiction, recovery, and, ultimately, family.” All of the poems Steensen read were from her new work — all except for the last, a new poem she’d been working on that very day. Her language and close attention to detail demonstrate her skill as a poet and her mastery of the craft.

Ira Sukrungruang took the podium next, and read some of his latest nonfiction essays. Sukrungruang is the author of numerous collections of nonfiction, including his memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy. Like Steensen, Sukrungruang demonstrated his skills in crafting nonfiction pieces that are both wildly entertaining and thought provoking. Each essay he read offered his audience a glimpse into his personal history growing up Buddhist in Chicago, but his careful and thoughtful writing made his experiences widely relatable.

As a writer I find these readings are wonderful opportunities to hear exceptional authors read their work, which often helps me in my own writing. Seeing how successful writers craft their poems and essays is a learning experience that every writer at CSU should take advantage of. CSU’s Creative Writing Reading Series will continue to bring authors to campus and I encourage anyone interested in hearing great poetry and prose to attend. Hopefully writers will take from these readings a new piece of knowledge that will help make their writing more insightful, impactful, and beautiful.

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Next reading in the Creative Writing Reading Series: Dinty Moore, University Center for the Arts, Museum, Thursday November 13th at 7:30 p.m.

Sponsors of the Reading Series include the English Department and Creative Writing Program at Colorado State University, Organization of Graduate Student Writers through ASCSU, Mike Liggett, Tae Nosaka, and the Poudre River Library District.

All events are free and open to the public. For additional information e-mail andrewnmangan@gmail.com. For a full listing of 2014-2015 Creative Writing Reading series events, please visit: http://english.colostate.edu/docs/reading-series-poster.pdf

Creative Writing Reading Series: Writers’ Harvest Benefit

The Creative Writing Reading Series is thrilled to present the Writers’ Harvest benefit reading THIS THURSDAY, Oct. 23, 2014, at 7:30PM at the UCA Museum, 1400 Remington Street, featuring award-winning authors Ira Sukrungruang and Sasha Steensen, in support of the Larimer Food Bank. Bring a non-perishable food item to donate to the food bank (e.g., canned tuna, peanut butter) for a chance to win a gift basket from Whole Foods, breakfast for two at Snooze, or other great raffle prizes.

Ira Sukrungruang, a Chicago-born Thai-American, is author of the memoir Talk Thai: The Adventures of Buddhist Boy and the poetry collection In Thailand It Is Night. He co-edited What Are You Looking At: The First Fat Fiction Anthology and Scoot Over, Skinny: The Fat Nonfiction Anthology, both published by Harcourt Brace. What Are You Looking At? is the first book that looks at the fat experience through the lens of literature. His essays, poems, and short stories have appeared in many literary journals, including Creative Nonfiction, the Sun, the Bellingham Review, North American Review, Crab Orchard Review, Post Road, and Brevity. He is at work on several projects: a memoir about his time as Thai entitled Monk for a Month; a memoir about his love for dogs, titled Buddha’s Dog; a collection of short stories, Happy Ends; and a collection of poetry, The Green We Speak.

Poet Sasha Steensen grew up in rural Ohio and Las Vegas. She earned a BA and an MFA at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a PhD in poetics at SUNY Buffalo. She is the author of several collections of poetry, including House of Deer (2014), The Method (2008), and A Magic Book (2004), which won the Alberta DuPont Bonsal Prize, as well as several chapbooks, including the collaboration Correspondence: For La Paz (2004) with Gordon Hadfield. She is an Associate Professor at Colorado State University.

A book signing and raffle will follow the reading. This event is free and open to the public.

News of Note Week of October 6th

The leaves turn color as renovations on Eddy Hall continue

• Samantha Iocovetto (MA in Creative Nonfiction, 2014) has a craft essay, “Defining the Ideal Essay,” on the Brevity blog. You can read it here: http://brevity.wordpress.com/2014/10/01/defining-the-ideal-essay/
• Dan Beachy-Quick gave a talk and a reading at University of Northern Texas.
• Tobi Jacobi has been selected to deliver the 14th annual Women’s Studies Boyer Lecture on Thursday, Oct. 23.  The Harriet Patsy Boyer Memorial lecture and reception will begin at 4pm in the Grey Rock Room in Lory Student Center.  Tobi’s talk is titled “Seeing Beyond Our Feet: Understanding the Possibilities and Limits of Feminist Writing Workshops Behind Bars.”
• Sasha Steensen recently read at the University of Nevada Las Vegas as part of the Black Mountain Institute’s alumni series.  She was interviewed by KNPR, Nevada’s National Public Radio.  You can listen to that interview here: http://knprnews.org/post/black-mountain-institute-hosts-poet-sasha-steensen
• Six sections of Felicia Zamora’s (MFA 2012) long poem “Quotient” were accepted for publication in the Spring 2015 issue of Crazyhorse, and her poem “{Honest} Random {Caused by Desire to De-Categorize} Self” has been selected for publication in the next issue of the Carolina Quarterly. Her manuscript Quotient was selected as a finalist for the 2014 Sawtooth Poetry Prize and a semifinalist in the 2014 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Prize. Her set of poems was chosen as a finalist in The Iowa Review Awards in poetry 2014, and her chapbook Imbibe {et alia} here was selected as a semifinalist in the 2014 New Michigan Press/DIAGRAM Chapbook Contest.
• Greyrock Review is now accepting submissions for fiction, non-fiction, poetry, visual art, and cover art. Students can go to greyockreview.submittable.com/submit to submit and read the guidelines. Submissions are open through December 1st.

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Fall Advising for Spring 2015 Registration

English department advising has changed over the last year or so. Basically, Academic Support Coordinators (ASCs) (Mandy Billings and Joanna Doxey) advise English majors who have completed up to 60 credits, and regular faculty advise students who have completed more than 60 credits and mentor students regardless of the number of credits they have completed. Mandy and Joanna’s office is Clark C-140.

English freshmen and sophomores should meet with an ASC for pre-registration advising for spring semester 2015. If you are uncertain who your ASC is, you can check your assignment on your RAMweb account.  Please contact Sheila Dargon to schedule your advising appointment with either Mandy or Joanna.

Juniors, seniors, and transfer students with 60 or more credits will be advised and given their advising codes by their English department faculty advisor/mentor. They have also been assigned an ASC and can schedule an appointment with Mandy or Joanna through Sheila Dargon.

Please schedule your appointment in advance of your RAMWeb Registration date.

News of Note for the Week of September 8th

Pulitzer Prize-winning Beat poet & eco-activist Gary Snyder will be reading at the Organ Recital Hall this Wednesday, Sept. 17th, at 7:30 p.m. NO TICKETS ARE REQUIRED. It is first come, first served, so people should arrive early.

In other news:

• This summer, Jacket2 released a feature on the second-wave Objectivist poet John Taggart, edited by Matthew Cooperman. A collection of 17 essays, appreciations, reviews, poems and career appraisals, the 200 page feature included, among other things, a group poem, “Seeds Sown for John Taggart,” composed by Matthew and recent MFAs, including Joanna Doxey, Lincoln Greenhaw, Anamika Dugger, Kaelyn Riley, Hannah Holler Blair, Sarah Louise Pieplow, Rachel Linnea Brown and Mickey Kenney. The poem (and the feature) evolved out of a Graduate Poetry Workshop back in 2011, where they read Taggart’s new and selected poems, Is Music. More information can be found at: http://jacket2.org/feature/reasons-singing-john-taggart
• EJ Levy gave a reading at Politics & Prose in DC last weekend; she will read at DePauw, give the Beck lecture at Denison, and read at the Kenyon Literary Festival next month as winner of the 2014 GLCA New Writers Award in Fiction. Her essay on marriage appeared in Salon this summer: http://www.salon.com/2014/07/29/im_a_lesbian_marrying_a_man/
• Sasha Steensen and Dan Beachy-Quick have published essays in the Taos Journal of International Poetry and Art.  Sasha’s essay, “With Pleasure: Gertrude Stein and the Sentence Diagram” can be found at http://www.taosjournalofpoetry.com/with-pleasure-gertrude-stein-and-the-sentence-diagram/, and Dan’s essay,  “Of Time and Timelessness in the Poetic Sentence,” can be found at http://www.taosjournalofpoetry.com/of-time-and-timelessness-in-the-poetic-sentence/
• Debby Thompson’s essay “The Four Stages of Cancer,” which was published in Upstreet, has been nominated by that journal for a Pushcart Prize.
• Kristina Quynn taught a TILT seminar this week, “Reading Closely: Harnessing the Power of Literary Studies to Boost Student Learning.” In attendance were CSU faculty and graduate students from a range of departments, including Veterinary Science, Economics, Sociology, Computer Science, and many more.
• Poems by Mary Crow have been accepted for publication in several literary magazines: “And Then” by Illuminations, “Blown Away” by Mojave River Review, “Full Circle” by Big Muddy, and “Double Agent” by Driftwood Press Literary Review.

Reading and Silent Auction to Benefit CSU Alumnus Keith Jentzsch

On August 7th, CSU alum Keith Jentzsch was severely beaten by an unnamed assailant while investigating late-night fireworks in his neighborhood. He remains in intensive care, and will face a long recovery. To aid in his convalescence a number of writers and artists in the community are holding a benefit reading and silent auction Friday, September 12th, with all proceeds going to his long-term care.

 

Besides getting his MFA in Art, Keith was also the Programs and Exhibitions Coordinator for the University Art Museum, and the person responsible for maintaining the gallery during all of our reading events there. We cordially invite you to come out to the event and contribute to Keith’s recovery.

The reading/auction will be held at the Downtown Artery, 252 Linden Street, 6-10 p.m. Readers include Dan Beachy-Quick, Sasha Steensen, Matthew Cooperman, Aby Kaupang and Grant Souders, among others. Details for the event can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/events/454322678043305/?ref_dashboard_filter=upcoming

News of Note for the Week of August 25th

Eddy Remodel Plan

Welcome to Fall Semester 2014! Please remember that while Eddy is undergoing a remodel, the English Department offices have moved to the Behavioral Sciences Building, Rooms A104-112, (the phone number is the same). Also, the Writing Center was relocated to Johnson Hall Room 119D. Most faculty offices are now located in Ingersoll Hall.

English Department Office Hours: The English Office hours are 7:45 a.m. to 4:45 p.m. (closed during lunch, 12:00-1:00 p.m.). Located in the Behavioral Sciences Building, Room A105.

The Writing Center: The Writing Center will open for limited hours beginning September 2nd, and regular hours September 8th. Temporary location during the Eddy remodel is in Johnson Hall Room 119D (through the building’s south entrance). Also there are evening hours in Morgan Library and TILT. For the full schedule, check out their website at writingcenter.colostate.edu.

In other news:

• John Calderazzo‘s essay “Traveling with Aliens: How Climate Change Made Me Change My Life,” will appear in High Country News‘ September “Writers and Books” issue. A chapter from John’s book Rising Fire will be republished in Currents of the Universal Being: Explorations in the Literature of Energy, forthcoming from Texas Tech University Press.
• Camille Dungy’s poem, “Complicit (to breathe together),” has been published in The Best American Poetry 2014.
• Aparna Gollapudi’s essay, “Personhood, Property Rights, and the Child in John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government and Daniel Defoe’s Fiction” has been accepted for publication in the journal Eighteenth Century Fiction.
• Sasha Steensen’s long poem on the High Park Fire, “Afire, it itself made” was published by Omniverse: http://omniverse.us/poetry-sasha-steensen/.  She was interviewed for Late Night Library: http://latenightlibrary.org/sasha-steensen/.  Several reviews of her new book House of Deer have appeared.  You can find them at Jacket2: http://jacket2.org/commentary/sasha-steensens-house-deer-other-domestic-histories, The Rumpus: http://therumpus.net/2014/07/house-of-deer-by-sasha-steensen/, Full Stop: http://www.full-stop.net/2014/06/18/reviews/laura-creste/house-of-deer-sasha-steensen/, and American Microreviews: http://www.americanmicroreviews.com/#!house-of-deer-by-sasha-steensen/c
• Two of Airica Parker’s poems will appear in the next edition of Aurora magazine.
• Over the summer, Dan Robinson’s personal essay, “Our Taos Hum,” was published in TWJ Magazine; and his short story, “This Blackdamp World,” was published in the anthology Crime and DisOrder. He will present a paper on “The Inexpressibility Topos in Chapter I of Hemingway’s In Our Time” at the “Literature, Memory and the First World War” Conference at the US Military Academy at West Point in a couple of weeks; he was also invited to participate as part of a panel on Hemingway’s Nick Adams Stories in October in Michigan. The paperback release of his first novel, After the Fire, has been put back to Autumn 2015 by Skyhorse Press. His third novel, Death of a Century: A Novel of the Lost Generation, will be published by Arcade Press in June 2015; and the first reading for that novel will be at the US World War I Museum in Kansas City in June 2015.

Upcoming Reading:

News of Note for the Week of May 12th

The hallways of Eddy are much quieter these past few days, the calm before the “storm” of an upcoming renovation.

• The Eddy Building will be going through a remodel beginning the week of May 19^th! The English Department offices will move over to the Behavioral Sciences Building, Rooms A104-112. The phone number will remain the same.
• The Writing Center will be relocating to Johnson Hall Room 119 for the summer (and the 2014-15 academic year). We will reopen on Tuesday, May 27 and will close on Thursday, August 7. The Writing Center will be open during the summer Mondays through Thursdays 10:00am-12:30pm. While we offer walk-ins if they are available, we recommend that clients make appointments with us to guarantee a consultation. To make an appointment, please visit: https://colostate.mywconline.com/. Thanks, and we look forward to serving you!
• The Eddy 300 Lab will close early Friday, May 16^th at 2:00 pm. It will remain closed during the Eddy Building construction. Students needing to print please use the Clark Lab.
• Tobi Jacobi gave a keynote on research sustainability and ethics highlighting her prison work in the Composition and Cultural Rhetoric program at Syracuse University. She also began work on 20th Century prison narratives from the New York Training School for Girls with the non-profit Prison Public Memory Project in Hudson, NY in mid-May.
• Community Literacy Center (CLC) interns, Elise Yenne, Brittany Devons, and Olivia Pait successfully completed their year-long community writing teaching with two public readings as the Spring 2014 SpeakOut! journal was launched during the last two weeks. Thanks to assistant director Lauren Alessi for her leadership all year!
• Sasha Steensen talks about her new book with Maggie Millner at ZYZZYVA: http://www.zyzzyva.org/2014/05/13/the-beauty-and-violence-of-a-family-and-of-a-nation-qa-with-sasha-steensen/
• Ian Blake has accepted a position at Holyoke Junior and Senior High School in Holyoke, Colorado to teach English.
• Pattie Cowell’s “Resisting the Border:  Natural Narrative, Everyday Story” was published recently in Western American Literature 48:4 (2014): 445-463.

News of Note from the Week of May 5th

image by Jill Salahub

Did you know that Eddy Hall is undergoing a remodel? It will begin soon and take about 16 months. This week, they put up one panel of the new facade on the south side of the building (see above image), and half of the third floor is packing their things into boxes to be temporarily moved into other locations while the work takes place. The English Department main offices will move over to the Behavioral Sciences Building, Rooms 104-112, (the phone number will remain the same). Stay tuned!

Today is the last of Spring 2014 classes! Good luck to everyone on finals, as well as final papers and projects, teachers and students, and a special wish for the best of luck to our graduating seniors.

• Libby James (MA English ’71) is a local and national running legend who lives here in Fort Collins. She is featured in this great story on ESPNW, Libby was also featured recently in an article in the Denver Post, “Libby James, 75, ready for Colorado Running Hall of Fame.”
• Leslee Becker’s story, “The Bonaventure,” has been accepted for publication in The Vermont Literary Review.
• Two of Camille Dungy’s poems were translated into French and published in a special section of Siècle 21: Littèrature & Société edited by Marilyn Hacker.
• EJ Levy will judge Tupelo Quarterly’s Open Prose Contest (Prize $1,000): May 27, 2014, deadline. For additional information, see: https://tupeloquarterly.submittable.com/submit/29128  EJ’s essay “Bread” appears in the current issue of The Normal School. EJ’s short-short story “Talk to Her” appeared in Kenyon Review online in April.
  https://www.kenyonreview.org/kr-online-issue/2014-spring/selections/e-j-levy-342846/
• Sasha Steensen’s new book House of Deer is now out with Fence Books: http://www.fenceportal.org/?page_id=5195. She has several new poems out in the latest issue of Jubilat, and next week she leaves for a week-long reading tour on the east coast.
• Beth Lechleitner’s mezzo-soprano daughter, Kate Mathews, will be presenting Copland’s settings of 12 Emily Dickinson poems on June 7, at 7:30 p.m. at the Magnolia Music Studio (210 W. Magnolia, Corner of Magnolia and Mason). Tickets available at: http://emilydickinson.brownpapertickets.com/ To learn more about Kate, visit her website:  http://www.katemathews.com/
• Man in the Moon: Essays on Fathers & Fatherhood, published by the Center for Literary Publishing and distributed by the University Press of Colorado, is now available (www.upcolorado.com or amazon.com). The anthology features essays selected from several literary magazines and includes work by our own Debby Thompson and Dan Beachy-Quick, plus many other fine writers.
• The University of Nebraska Press, observing that they consider it a “lasting contribution to Western literature,” recently released a Bison Books paperback edition of David Mogen’s memoir, Honyocker Dreams, Montana Memories (2011).