MFA Symposium for the 21st Century–Part II

Acclaimed author, Rikki Ducornet is coming to SDSU to lead an exciting workshop, a spirited reading, and a surprise performance at the MFA graduation celebration!

The workshop will focus on “The Amalgamation of Illustration and Prose” and will be held on Sunday, May 8th. For more information on this workshop, please contact Lisa Grove, translationsdsu@gmail.com.

Ducornet will read from her collected works alongside Author and SDSU Professor, Katie Farris in SDSU’s Love Library, Room 430 at 7 p.m. on Monday, May 9th.

Join MFA Graduates for some eating and greeting before Monday’s reading in LL 430 at 4 p.m. Stay for some sporadic sharing of MFA memories and excerpts from thesis manuscripts! **Please bring a snack or drink to share.

Rikki Ducornet is the author of seven novels including The Fan Maker’s Inquisition, an L.A. Times Book of the Year, and The Jade Cabinet, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. She has illustrated books by Robert Coover and Jorge Luis Borges. Her lithographs, drawings and paintings have been exhibited widely, including the Museo de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, Museau National de Cestro Coimbra, Portugal, the Fine Arts museums of West Berlin, Ixelles, Brno and Lille, and in the Biblioteque Nationale. In 1993 she received the Lannan Literary Award in Fiction.

Katie Farris’s poetry, fictions, and translations have appeared in various journals, including Verse, Spillway, Indiana Review, Washington Square, Hayden’s Ferry Review, New Orleans Review, and others. Her debut book, boysgirls, is forthcoming from Marick Press in Spring, 2011. She holds an MFA from Brown University and currently teaches Comparative Literature and Creative Writing at San Diego State University.

**This event series has been made possible by a generous grant from SDSU’s Instructionally Related Activities Foundation.

The Dean of American Storytelling! Tonight!

The Spring 2011 Polyphonic Workshop and Reading Series presents:

The ‘Dean of American Storytelling,’ Gioia Timpanelli!!

Gioia Timpanelli will share stories and read from her collected works Tonight, Monday, May 2nd at 7 p.m. in SDSU’s Scripps Cottage. This event is free and open to the public! Come early to secure a seat!

This is the final event in the Spring 2011 Polyphonic Series. You won’t want to miss it!

Often called the ‘Dean of American Storytelling,’ Gioia Timpanelli is today considered one of the world’s foremost storytellers – widely respected as both a master and scholar of the ageless art. She won two Emmy Awards(Citations of Merit) for Tales from Viet Nam and for her series of 30 programs on storytelling, Stories from My House. She has also received the prestigious Women’s National Book Association Award and most recently the Maharishi Award. She has performed her improvisational telling of ancient and modern stories throughout the United States. She has also performed in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Greece. She founded the storytelling at ARTPARK, Lewiston, New York, 1973-1983, and is one of the founding members of the New YorkStorytelling Center in New York City.
Her lastest book called What Makes A Child Lucky is published by W.W. Norton.

Next Up: The Dean of American Storytelling!

GIOIA TIMPANELLI is coming to SDSU!

*Sunday, May 1st: Workshop, “The Art of Storytelling”– 2 p.m. Location TBA– For registration information, please contact Meagan Marshall, marshall_meagan@yahoo.com
*Monday, May 2nd at 7 p.m.: Reading and book signing at SDSU’s Scripps Cottage

Often called the ‘Dean of American Storytelling,’ she is today considered one of the world’s foremost storytellers – widely respected as both a master and scholar of the ageless art. She won two Emmy Awards (Citations of Merit) for Tales from Viet Nam and for her series of 30 programs on storytelling, Stories from My House, on educational television, where she created, wrote, produced, and appeared in eight series of literature programs shown on PBS stations throughout the United States. She has also received the prestigious Women’s National Book Association Award, and recently the Maharishi Award. She has performed her improvisational telling of ancient and modern stories and given talks in collaboration with respected masters of other art forms- especially in the world of poetry and letters (Joseph Campbell, Robert Bly, James Hillman, Nor Hall, and Gary Snyder) throughout the United States, including The New School, The Art Institute of Chicago, The University of California, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The American Museum of Natural History, Il Santuario De Guadalupe in Santa Fe, John Hancock Hall in Boston, the Laurel Theatre in Knoxville, Riverwalk in New Orleans, the 1980 Winter Olympics, the Spoleto Festival, and The Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, and many other venues. She has also performed in Canada, Britain, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Greece. She founded the storytelling at ARTPARK, Lewiston, New York, 1973-1983; one of the first storytelling places for the revival of storytelling. She is one of the founding members of the New York Storytelling Center in New York City.
Her latest book called What Makes A Child Lucky is published by W.W. Norton.

Next Up: Celebrated Author, Brian Evenson!

Brian Evenson is coming to SDSU to lead a generative workshop and an engaging reading. The workshop will focus on the “Art of of Fiction” and will be held on Sunday, April 10th at 2 p.m. For more information on this workshop, please contact Meagan Marshall, marshall_meagan@yahoo.com. This workshop will likely fill up fast; secure your spot today!

Evenson will read from his collected works on Monday, April 11th at 7 p.m. in Scripps Cottage. This event is free and open to the public!

BRIAN EVENSON is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novellaBaby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York’s top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship.

TONIGHT!

SDSU’s MFA Weekend: Featuring G.C. Waldrep!

The Spring 2011 Polyphonic Workshop and Reading Series presents: SDSU’s MFA Weekend, featuring:

Acclaimed Poet and Historian, G.C. Waldrep!

G.C. Waldrep is coming to SDSU to lead an informative workshop and a spirited reading. The workshop will focus on the “Art of of Pastoral Poetry” and will be held on Thursday, March 17th. For more information on this workshop, please contact Meagan Marshall, marshall_meagan@yahoo.com. The last day to register is Wednesday, March 16th– Hurry to secure a spot!

Waldrep will read from his collected works on Friday, March 18th at 7 p.m., alongside Author and Translator, Boris Dralyuk, and Poet and SDSU Visiting Professor, Piotr Florczyk, in Scripps Cottage. This event is free and open to the public!

**Just Added: Come hear current SDSU MFA Students and Alumni read on Saturday, March 19th at 7 p.m. at TheBook Works (2670 Via de la Valle, Del Mar). This event is also free and open to the public– Refreshments and inspirational entertainment will be provided!

G. C. Waldrep (Ph.D., Duke University; MFA, University of Iowa) is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Goldbeater’s Skin (2003); Disclamor (2007); and Archicembalo (2009), winner of the Dorset Prize. His work has appeared in many journals, including Poetry,Ploughshares, Harper’s, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Boston Review, New England Review, Colorado Review, New American Writing, and Tin House, as well as in Best American Poetry 2010. His work has earned prizes and residencies from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the Campbell Corner Foundation. He was a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow in Literature. Waldrep is also the author of Southern Workers and the Search for Community, a historical monograph on the lives of Southern textile workers during the early twentieth century. At Bucknell he teaches creative writing, directs the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, and serves as Editor-at-Large for the Kenyon Review. Waldrep’s fourth poetry collection, Your Father on the Train of Ghosts–in collaboration with John Gallaher–is due out from BOA Editions in April 2011.

Check out our first poem! A ‘dropping lines’ original!

We asked attendees of the Christian Wiman event to leave us a line of poetry/prose– we put them all together, and this is the final product! Enjoy!

Tonight, we will share one plate

I drop you a dotted line, let
your imagination fill the spaces.
I am not ready to face
it— Let alone know if I can embrace it;
little falconie
alights on your balcony,
talons printing in the blood;
he will love you like a spent bulb.
Now looking back down this tunnel,
it’s hard for me to pretend,
that I can see my life, when I can only
see the end—

(Let’s walk the long way from the parking lot!)

When did you decide
that sweater shock, that leather frock
could suit a deck of cards,
like the one docking around
on two legs. The squawk of it!
The trees danced like young boys
with hands in their pants holding
back their piss with whispers and creaks.
Was that a breeze?
Or a peony
speaking Chinese
to the rose?
Her lips juicy red—
Apple red
like a twig in the tunnel
of your magnetic ear—
syrup asphyxiates,
honey cakes.
The wings, the sings,
the bruised rings on my wings.
A fish dropped down,
smooth as an ironed dollar.
Anything that can happen
will happen on speech day,
the shy, icy music we’re caught in,
over and of
that beloved dust.
Go through and through,
over there and over
there, like the Buddhist do.

Next up…G.C. Waldrep!

*Thursday, March 17th: Workshop, “Craft of Poetry”– Time/Location TBA– For registration information, please contact Meagan Marshall, marshall_meagan@yahoo.com
*Friday, March 18th at 7 p.m.: Reading and book signing at SDSU’s Scripps Cottage

G.C. Waldrep received a BA from Harvard University in American History in 1990 and a Ph.D. in American History from Duke University in 1996. His first poetry collection, Goldbeater’s Skin, won the Colorado Prize for Poetry (selected by Donald Revell) and was published by the Center for Literary Publishing. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Tin House, Gettysburg Review, and Image, among other journals. From March 1995 to 2000, Waldrep was a member of the New Order Amish Community at Yanceyville, North Carolina, where he worked as a baker, carpenter’s helper, and window maker. Currently he is a member of the Old Order River Brethren. Waldrep spent 2003-05 at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He also served as a visiting professor of the humanities and social sciences at Deep Springs College in California.

III. Palm Beach, Florida, 1987

Some Buicks still genuflect to the idea of motion. This one does.
Some Buicks are blue. Some Buicks are deists, like Thomas Jefferson,
and some Buicks owned slaves. Some Buicks have freed them.
Some Buicks have classified the petals
of the orchard peach, the hybrids and the demes,
some Buicks maintain private shrines to William Bartram.
This is all very natural.
Currently I am looking at everyone else’s hands to guess
(who is an angel.) (who moves among us.)
Some Buicks rest on fresh asphalt, within the lines, some Buicks
views these lines as commands, some rebel, this is in the nature of some Buicks.
Not like the stretch limos hoarding their brass buttons & bits of foil.
Not like the gabby Hondas.
Some Buicks have not yet entered this conversation. Some Buicks are marked on maps.
Some Buicks are vertical but not these. Some Buicks shine.

Christian Wiman Reads Tonight! (2/28)

Come feed your artistic appetite tonight at 7 p.m. in SDSU’s Scripps Cottage! Poet, Christian Wiman will read from his selected works, sign books, and answer your most pressing questions about poetry, publishing, and more!

Christian Wiman is coming!

Christian Wiman is coming to SDSU to give a generative workshop and an engaging reading. The workshop will focus on the “Form and Pulse of Poetry” and will be held on Sunday, February 27th. For more information on this workshop, please contact Meagan Marshall, marshall_meagan@yahoo.com.

Wiman will read from his collected works on Monday, February 28th at 7 p.m. in Scripps Cottage. This event is free and open to the public!

This is the premier event in SDSU’s 2011 Polyphonic Workshop and Reading Series. You won’t want to miss it!

*Born and raised in Texas, Christian Wiman is a writer of both poems and essays. His poetry and prose collections include The Long Home , Hard Night, Ambition and Survival, and, most recently, Every Riven Thing. He lives in Chicago, where he is the editor of Poetry magazine.

Lord is Not a Word
By: Christian Wiman

Lord is not a word.
Song is not a salve.
Suffer the child, who lived
on sunlight and solitude.
Savor the man, craving
earth like an aftertaste.
To discover in one’s hand
two local stones the size
of a dead man’s eyes
saves no one, but to fling them
with a grace you did not know
you knew, to bring them
skimming homing
over blue, is to discover
the river from which they came.
Mild merciful amnesia
through which I’ve moved
as through a blue atmosphere
of almost and was,
how is it now,
like ruins unearthed by ruin,
my childhood should rise?
Lord, suffer me to sing
these wounds by which I am made
and marred, savor this creature
whose aloneness you ease and are.