It’s been a good fall for Mountaineer writers. Read on to find out about our alumni and current student achievements. Please share your recent achievements by emailing Rebecca Thomas.

Alumni

Check out MFA alumna Sarah Beth Childers’ short story “Shorn” in Wigleaf.

Eric Cipriani (BA) won first place in a fiction contest sponsored by New Southerner_magazine for his short story “Everybody Knows This is Nowhere.”

Amanda Cobb (MFA) translated fourteen of Miguel Saporta Bon’s poems. She read the translations with him at a recent event co-sponsored by the English and Foreign Languages Department. Her poem “You Owe Me a Coke” will appear in The Boiler Journal. This fall, her poems “Dummy” and “Because I Said So” will appear in a special print “Trap Doors and Little Triggers” themed edition of Temenos Journal. Excerpts from her memoir Low-Self Esteem: My Jesus Years will appear this winter in Spitoon.

Renée K. Nicholson’s (MFA) essay “Coda: Partnering” is forthcoming in Blue Lyra Review, and her essay “Hair: A Short History” is forthcoming in Switchback. She has joined the book review staff of Los Angeles Review. Her interview with Steve Almond is in Fiction Writers Review. She was also just made a voting member of the Dance Critics Association.

Natalie Sypolt (MFA) has won Glimmer Train’s New Writer’s Contest. Her craft essay appears in November’s Glimmer Train Bulletin and her story “My Brothers and Me” will appear in the February issue of Glimmer Train.

Renee Nicholson and Natalie Sypolt will present “Radio Girls: Our Journey in Book Podcasting” at the annual Winter Wheat Writers’ Conference sponsored by Mid American Review at Bowling Green State University. Their podcast, SummerBooks, went from idea to over 700 hits in three months.

Laura Leigh Morris (MFA) will be Artist-in-Residence for the next two years at a Texas prison, the Bryan Federal Prison Camp. She will be teaching creative writing.

Current Students

Morgan O’Grady, MFA candidate in Poetry, will have her poem “Elegy to R.M.O, Not Yet Dead” published both online and in the next print issue of Susquehanna Review.

Shane Stricker, MFA candidate in Fiction, will have his short story “How to Lose a Mother and a Brother in the Same Day: The Story of a Drive-Thru Funeral” appear in an upcoming issue Midwestern Gothic.

Jacqulyn Wilson, MFA candidate in Poetry, has had her poem “Morning After a Snow Storm,” published in the August 2012 edition of The Orange Room Review.

by Rebecca Doverspike

When I listened to Professor Ethel Morgan Smith read from her new book, Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany, I was moved by the sense of calm searching in her prose. Professor Smith’s voice throughout this travel narrative asks insightful questions in order to understand her surroundings and herself within those surroundings. The writing here holds a reflective quality—the questions within her inner monologue allow readers and listeners to wonder about the space around themselves, too, and to see how assumptions differ from place to place.

The book takes place during Professor Smith’s Fulbright year teaching in Germany from 1997-1998. When I asked Professor Smith what she most wants people to take away from her book, she remarked that she wanted to show how, while traveling, one learns a lot about one’s self as well as the place. She also mentioned her unique perspective as an African American both in terms of seeing Germany through an American who is “elsewhere” as well as seeing America from a distance. I was especially intrigued with the differences she saw in the curriculum. For instance, Germany’s American Studies program had a particular interest in African American women writers. In this way, Professor Smith’s insights were invaluable to the department there. When I asked Professor Smith if “other” in the title refers to herself, she said, “When you’re traveling, everyone is the ‘other’.” The word can apply to all kinds of relationships: author, reader, foreigner, citizen, etc. The reflections, then, too, can come from all these angles and more.

Professor Smith formed many friendships while she was in Germany that she still has today. She mentioned that her friends were curious to see themselves on the page. That was a point I was curious about as well, as we converse a lot about audience in nonfiction and often ask ourselves if we’re okay with the people we portray in our writing reading our work. It wound up that everyone in her book was excited to see their names as characters, and they were happy with their place in the prose.

I’m in Professor Smith’s creative nonfiction workshop this semester, and she has told many intriguing stories from her time in Germany, as they naturally arise from our conversations. When she and I were talking about her book, she mentioned how any experiences teachers have become integrated into their teaching— “We need new experiences to give to our students,” she explained. Describing her experiences in Germany as something she was then able to give to her students really shows how much she cares about teaching and those she teaches. Just as she spoke about gratitude for having been treated so well as a guest in Germany, I felt gratitude for all she is able to bring to us, her students, from this experience and others in her life.

Perhaps my favorite moment during our conversation about her book in the middle of a busy week in Colson Hall was when we got to talking about the relationship between life and writing, as well as life and teaching. “People just think we sit here quietly all day long,” Professor Smith said, pointing at the still computer and bookshelves in her office, ”...but it’s more of a quiet madness.” We laughed at the truth of that.

There is both quietness and a passion for understanding deeper than the surface throughout Reflections of the Other. A passion for understanding the history and geography of a place but also of one’s self. When such a personal quest can also open up readers to question their surroundings and themselves, that’s reflection at its truest. Read Reflections of the Other: Being Black in Germany to participate in that experience.

by Rebecca Thomas and Rebecca Doverspike

During nonfiction workshop, Kevin Oderman assigns each student one aspect of a work to consider: structure, content, or voice. In doing this, he makes us think critically about the craft. For us, this resulted in some of the best writing of our lives.By focusing so specifically on one element, we learn to pay attention to every detail. We learn how to mold and craft piece of work. We become careful writers. This doesn’t mean careful as in afraid to take risks; no, it is the exact opposite. We learn to take care with our writing, be thoughtful about it, and, just as important, to take ownership of our own style.

It’s no wonder, then, that the people of Colson Hall (both past and current students) have been a buzz about Kevin Oderman’s latest novel, White Vespa. According to Etruscan Press, the novel’s publisher, White Vespa is the story of “an American expatriate [who] hopes to quell his grief for a long lost son in the stillness of his photographs of the Dodecanese Islands. But soon friendship and then love for a woman wounded in her own family-born grief propel him toward life again, where stillness is set into motion and identity might be recovered, against odds, in a foreign place” (Etruscan Press).

The word’s out on White Vespa. Alumna and novelist Jessie Van Eerden says, “This is a book you savor, written in short lyrical sections that are at once spare, suggestive, and so multi-layered; the dialog especially reads slowly in my mind as if I am right there on Symi looking out at the water, in between bites of cheese and rough bread, listening, along with the characters, for all that’s unsaid beneath speech. How does Kevin achieve this intimacy, not only among characters who are travelers, strangers to each other, but also with the reader who is a stranger among these private and often wounded people? Perhaps by manifesting on the page so thickly and beautifully their longing for connection, each short chapter coming into being like one of Myles’ photos in the dark room revealing another dimension of that longing. From one of the italicized sections in Myles’ voice: ‘I watched slow smiles pass from face to face, I saw again how people care and find each other, if not forever, for awhile’ (128). Yes, there is a sense, too, of the ephemeral nature of connection. This is a beautiful book.”

We wanted to find out more about Kevin’s novel and his writing process, so Rebecca Thomas recently asked him a few questions.

RT: I’ve been reading a bit about your novel, and I’m really interested in hearing how the novel came together. I’m trying to avoid the word inspiration, so I think I’d like to know what drew you to the work. It’s always interesting to hear how subject matter calls the author.

KO: My answer to your question may not be useful, but here goes. The book started with an image, a clip of memory from when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. In it, I’m walking through a Safeway grocery store on N.E. 122nd & Glisan, in Portland, with a couple of other guys. One of them I don’t know too well, an older kid, magnetic, handsome, and we walk up behind a young mother dragging a little boy by the hand behind her, and the handsome kid trips the little boy, who falls face first onto the floor, and cries out, and the mother berates the boy, and the handsome kid, skirting by unnoticed, laughs, enjoying his meanness.

The tripped boy probably got over it in a few minutes; me, I’m still worrying that memory almost 50 years later!

I used the scene in White Vespa, near the end of the book, but I plucked it out of long-ago Portland and sat it down in Bodrum, on the coast of Turkey, in the summer of 1996. And, more importantly for the story, the character Paul grew from that bit of gratuitous meanness in the Safeway, and then Paul shaped a good deal of what happens in the book.

All of which must sound pretty roundabout, but the imagination, I think, is no great friend of the straight way. Indeed, what’s atypical about this example is that I kept the scene, the tripping.

RT: While I was in your class, you really helped me become more aware of structure. Structure in any genre always seems like a puzzle, figuring out how moments speak to each other best. Can you talk a bit about the structure of your novel and how it came together?

KO: “How moments speak to each other best,” that’s so well put! Don’t be surprised if I appropriate that formulation in class…

Structure. I’m not a natural storyteller. So when I sit down to write fiction I’m thinking about story from the get-go. In White Vespa, I worked hard to generate narrative pull out of the structure the story. The book is composed of many short chapters. Most of these chapters track one or another of the story’s main characters (close third) through a scene or two. And then a jump to the next chapter. Those jumps allow me to create narrative speed without car chases. Scene, scene, and almost no summary. In place of summary, doing some of the work of summary, I have comment, comments by the characters (they are a bunch of talkers) and comments from the central character’s daybook. Myles’ daybook. In the linear timeline of the book, the daybook entries come at the end, but I shuffled them in from the beginning, to register the impact of the summer’s events on him and to give the book more felt inwardness.

White Vespa is set in the Dodecanese islands, the Greek islands just off the coat of Turkey. Most of it takes place on Symi, but there is an excursion to Tilos and the book ends on Nissyros. Little islands, little worlds, places that feel comprehensible and yet suggest the big world, too. And these little Greek islands are quite seasonal, they awaken in May and return to sleep in September. I like that condensed year, the way it heightens the felt transience of things.

There is something of the enchanted isle in every Greek island, and deep down I suspect that The Tempest is churning the weather in White Vespa, though that never occurred to me while I was writing the book.

RT: I also wonder how you find the balance of drawing from “real life” as a fiction writer. I think of this in terms of your work as a nonfiction writer, too. Does the writing process change at all writing in different genres? How did you know that fiction was the right fit for this story?

KO: As a reader, I appreciate the energies that authors can generate out of the many ways in which fiction and nonfiction overlap. Ambiguities that won’t be resolved keep their charge. But, as a writer, I’ve not been called to such work. My nonfiction is strictly constructivist, built out of experiences, and on the occasions when I’ve thought imagination was called for, as part of the experience, I’ve made it clear where the imagined bits begin and end. And, writing fiction, I have included very little of my own experience, almost none. The places, however, in both Going and in White Vespa, are there. It’s important to me that they be there, though I’m not quite sure why, and I recognize that the way I see Granada (in Going) and Symi in White Vespa colors those places quite distinctly in my descriptions of them, probably out of all recognition in some cases.

Anyway, the simple answer to your second question is that I knew White Vespa was fiction because it only happened in my head.

The writing process, fiction, nonfiction, is more or less the same, involves sitting in a chair, waiting for some words to turn up, and then messing with them.

RT: I was curious about your writing process for this novel. How did the project evolve? I can only imagine how time consuming teaching is. How do you find the balance between teaching and writing? So many of us MFA students are terrified of being able to find the time to write once we graduate.

KO: Well, I doubt that the demands on my time are any greater than the demands on yours. And I haven’t found a balance between teaching and writing. I don’t even feel them as competing demands that often: I do the teaching first. That decision is made before I get to choosing. And, because of that, I don’t feel torn and certainly not terrified.

I have mostly written during the many breaks in the academic calendar. I have written best off by myself away from Morgantown. Could I have written more if I wrote all the time, no doubt, but I’m not so sure I would have written better. I like to imagine, anyway, that, working slowly, I’ve been able to find my way further in to what I have to say in a novel or indeed in an essay. For me, persistence is the cardinal virtue.

That said, I don’t think my way of doing things is best or even admirable. It’s just what I find, looking back, that I have done. Every writer I’ve met seems to have found a way around the constraints on imagination. And every one seems to have found a differents way. You’ll find your way, too; I’m confident on your behalf.

The generosity in Kevin’s last answer is seen in everything he does: his time and attention to drafts in workshop, his thoughtfulness about writing, and his own work as well. It only seems inevitable then that Kevin Oderman would end up with, as Jessie Van Eerden says, “a beautiful book.” Luckily for us, White Vespa is just that.

by Rebecca Thomas

2012 Virginia Butts Sturm Writer-in-Residence Jaimy Gordon with Sturm students

It was a week when a hurricane brought feet of snow. While our mothers texted us to ask if we could live in our houses for days without power, we were preparing to meet powerhouse author Jaimy Gordon. Luckily, we never had to test our ability to survive off of canned beans and expired soda. The power stayed on, we went to school, and we worked with an amazing writer all week. Yes, the writing gods smiled on us Morgantownites: we dodged Sandy, and we met Jaimy.

Jaimy Gordon is this year’s Virginia Butts Sturm Writer-in-Residence. Every year, WVU graciously brings in an author, selects a few lucky students to work with her, and gives the students a book of the author’s to boot. And this year WVU chose amazingly well. Jaimy Gordon is the National Book Award winner for her novel Lord of Misrule. She has also written three additional novels – Bogeywoman, She Drove Without Stopping, and Shamp of the City-Solo: A Novel. She is also an incredibly generous person.

For the past two years, we’ve been reading Jaimy’s novels in my fiction workshop. We read Lord of Misrule and marveled at her ability to capture the voice so precisely of such different characters. We read Bogeywoman and fell in love with her protagonist and her prose. Jaimy’s use of an asterisk makes me swoon! And then Mark Brazaitis told us that she was our Sturm author. He reminded us of the deadline to turn in work to be selected for the workshop. I don’t think I was the only one who panicked over what to turn in.

I don’t think I needed to be so fearful though. All week, Jaimy devoted her time to the Sturm workshop. She started the week with a public reading from Lord of Misrule. The Sturm workshoppers sat together, and we smiled at each other throughout it in a “I can’t believe this is happening” sort of way. During the workshop, she gave detailed feedback, talked to us individually about our stories, and regaled us with writing wisdom: “ask yourself if you can find a way around [the word] seemed,” she told us, reminding us that the word feels “less sure of itself.” “Very is almost always a wasted word,” she said. I jotted down as much as I could, and looking around the room, I noticed most of the other workshoppers doing the same.

Morgan O’Grady, a first year MFA candidate in Poetry, was also impressed by Jaimy’s generosity. “What stuck with me was how much Jaimy cared about each of us,” Morgan wrote. “She really had a wide knowledge and was extremely accepting and kind.”

But Jaimy’s extensive knowledge wasn’t just contained to the classroom. We spent post-workshops sipping champagne, feasting on Little Caesars pizza, and talking shop. Yes, we all were exhausted by Friday, but it’s not often you can hear a National Book Award winner talk about the writing process over Crazy Bread. But alas, it had to come to end. As the last of the snow melted, Jaimy said goodbye, and we all felt a little lost.

Connie Pan, a third year MFA candidate in Fiction, might have summarized Sturm week the best. She writes, “Sturm was a whirlwind week, and I mean that in the most magical sense. It felt a little—or a lot—like falling in love. I remember walking home and saying to my fellow Sturmies, ‘I feel alive!’ Yes, exclamation point. I knew the Virginia Butts Sturm Workshop was going to be a great experience, but Jaimy surpassed that expectation on so many levels. She was extremely generous with her advice on everything from craft to life. She made herself available in and outside of workshop. She made my paper bleed, which I was grateful for. She helped me see things about my chapters that I would have never realized had I not submitted them. When she left, I felt like I was saying goodbye to a great friend. Yes, I spent the weekend in sweatpants with Chinese and Netflix, revising my chapters, of course.”

Thank you, Jaimy, for a week that left us wanting to write. Thank you, Jaimy, for a week where we all got swept up in writing. Thank you, Jaimy and WVU, for giving us such a “whirlwind” of an experience.

Find out more about the Sturm Writer in Residence program , and hear Jaimy read from her Lord of Misrule.

by Christina Seymour

I heard once that the best works ask riveting questions; they don’t force answers or resolve. This can be said for Tracy K. Smith’s Life on Mars. In her poems, she trusts that if we cannot put words to our beliefs, then they will emerge naturally as subtext if we investigate the subject matter of our lives—our choices of where to be, what to listen to, and why. Smith takes things that haunt her like David Bowie, her father’s death, dark matter, and hate crimes and explores them until what results is a nebulous network of human thought, inconsistent and fallible as it is—a collection of what festers, what shimmers, what grows, what happens beside us, invisibly, in that space we can’t catch but know is there.

It’s Considered Good Luck When it Rains on Your Big Day, so Our Future Looks Bright:
Meet the MFA Class of 2015
by Connie Pan

On the day of the Second Annual MFA Rooftop Reading, I anxiously counted down the seconds of my last summer shift at the Morgantown Brew Pub, excited for our night at the Montmartre. Everything was planned perfectly: clock out time was four and the reading was at seven; after the reading, I would pack my bags and be off to the Mitten (aka Michigan) early the next morning to kiss the rest of summer goodbye with weddings, family, and friends. During my shift, I was so excited I started my sidework as soon as I clocked in. During lunch I married ketchups. No, there were no brides and grooms, or grooms and grooms, or brides and brides. I consolidated the condiment, washing the squeeze bottles, only to refill them again with my second favorite condiment. (My favorite, you wonder? Soy sauce, duh!)

Fists through the double doors and the squeak of sneakers on kitchen tile broke my meditation. “Hurry, come outside. You’ll never believe this,” the kitchen manager said.

I followed, almost wiping out in my nonslip shoes. We busted through the doors to join the other three Brew Pub workers under the awning for a surreal sight. Hail, an inch in diameter, pinged the roof, pelted the wood, covered the six tables vulnerable to the weather, and plunked into the Mon. It fell for three minutes, but the storm clouds remained with its rain and lightning, cracking the sky and drenching everything without an umbrella or an overhang.

I wish I could pretend COW played it James Dean-cool, but we didn’t. Over the following several hours, the COW officers checked the hourly weather reports, arranged alternative plans (inside), and exchanged texts like, All this lightning doesn’t mean good things for our party in the sky. And, Man, roofs and lightning make me noivous.

Trying to trust that the evil-looking cartoon of 40-60% showers lurking over our night wouldn’t come true, we dressed up. We toted umbrellas and kept our weather apps warm, heading eight stories into the sky to the roof of Hotel Morgan.

It was nothing short of miraculous. As MFAs, one by one, walked themselves to the middle of the roof like an offering to the vast sky, there was not so much as a grumble of thunder, let alone a crash of lightning. The only bangs were the bangs our writing made in the picturesque Montemarte, with its white tablecloths, its crystal glasses, and its great view. The way I look at it, the newbies must be good luck. Their presence and words held the storm at bay. Meet our lucky charms, the Class of 2015!

FICTION

John Bryant says, “Hey, it’s John! What are you doing? That sounds cool. I’m one of the new MFA fiction people here. I’m tall and pale and often confused. My students call me the ‘awkward tree’ or the ‘giant 12 year old.’ I like to watch Plan Nine from Outer Space, because it’s one of the few bad movies that believes in itself. And I think there’s something sweet about that. My biggest influence is Jack Handey (SNL’s “Deep Thoughts”) because there is no one who could ever sound as naive and dangerous as him. I like meeting new people. But pretty soon I want them to leave. Just joking. Good luck with the next bio!”

Mari Casey is from Point Pleasant, West Virginia. She is best friends with the Mothman. Her likes include dogs, Aimee Bender, Junot Diaz, baking, social justice, Italy, David Bowie, and her boyfriend. Her dislikes include mayonnaise, the GOP, cats, Emily Dickinson, and oppression. She once beached a houseboat on Stonewall Jackson Lake. Mari got her BA in Creative Writing at Ohio University. She has a dog named Barbarella, in honor of the Jane Fonda sci-fi classic. She is a fiction writer, but this is all fact.

JoAnna St.Germain grew up in Oakland, Maine, and never strayed too far from home before settling in Morgantown a couple months back. She’s been writing since the age of six. At first, she wrote because her oldest sister was a literary fiend, and JoAnna wanted to be just like her. At some point, however, probably almost exactly around week ten of her junior year of high school, she realized she couldn’t live without writing and that she’d better just go ahead and devote her life to it. These days, she mostly keeps her teaching materials obsessively ordered for fear of losing anything, resists the urge to fill her apartment with cats, and writes, and writes, and writes.

POETRY

Jessica Guzman was born and raised in Southwest Florida. She received her bachelor’s degree in English from the University of South Florida in Tampa, where she wrote poems about porches, fortune-tellers, and being a walking stereotype. During the summer of 2006, she took a road trip to the Grand Canyon where she learned that everything—from a city in Texas to the vein behind her left knee—is yellow. Her writing has been obsessed with the synchronicities of the world ever since. Before moving to Morgantown, she spent her free time disguising herself as a tourist and eating Chipotle (not always at the same time). Now, she forms her schedule around visiting Pittsburgh to eat Chipotle.

Koh Xin Tian is from Singapore, where she worked as a research assistant, translator, and transcriber. She graduated from the National University of Singapore, where she majored in English Literature. In her new American life, Xin Tian enjoys yard sales, exploring the wonders of Morgantown and being the self-appointed publicist of Park Jae-sang.

Patric Nuttall is from Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he studied Poetry at Western Michigan University. Some things he likes other than poetry and poets: Star Wars, Flogging Molly, and Game of Thrones.

Morgan O’Grady is originally from Southern California, but she loves the East Coast in a biased way. Since moving here, she has lost her freckles but found a love of poetry. This is why she is now pursuing her MFA in poetry at WVU. She often knits, stares up at the sky, or bakes cookies; it is difficult for her to accomplish all three at once. She likes to clap, hop around in circles, and read new authors. She is extremely pleased to spend the next three years working and thinking about poetry.

Jacqulyn Wilson lives in Morgantown with her son, Quentin. Her poem, “Morning After a Snow Storm,” appeared in The Orange Room Review.

CREATIVE NONFICTION

Troy Copeland grew up in Manchester, a middle-Georgia mill town. However, he hails from Athens, Georgia, one of the best college towns in the nation. There, he spent, what he considers, some of the most remarkable years of his life as a high school literature and composition teacher. Winning “Teacher of the Year” twice—once from the student body in 02-03 and again from the faculty in 05-06—he also spent a great deal of his “free” time reading, writing, and acting. His pursuit of the MFA in creative non-fiction is none other than a labor of love for the idea of the human as a condition and expression of what he considers to be an essentially psychological, self-critiquing experience of existence.

Hannah McPherson is from West Virginia and got her undergraduate degree in English and Creative Writing here at WVU. She writes creative nonfiction with a focus on travel writing and religious study as a means to understand the world around her. She spent two weeks in Turkey in the summer of 2011 that influenced her focus and identity as a writer. Her favorite style of nonfiction is a short essay; her favorite online journal is Brevity. She is most influenced by nonfiction writers such as Abigail Thomas, Dinty Moore, and Jo Ann Beard, fiction writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro and Alice Munro, and the poet/nonfiction writer, John Haines. Hannah enjoys the WOW! Factory in Morgantown and would, for the record, paint anyone a plate, pitcher, or piggy bank any time they want. She is accepting donations to feed this pottery-painting obsession. She lives in South Park with her Yorkie, Samoa, who was named not after the Native American tribe, but rather, the Girl Scout cookie.

Sadie Shorr-Parks is from Philadelphia. She studied Writing and Art Theory at Syracuse University. She writes Creative Non-Fiction, mostly lyric essays with experimental form but some funny ones, too. In the past four years, she has lived and worked in India, England, and France. But the year before she joined us in Morgantown, she lived in a small town at the foot of the Appalachian Mountains. In her spare time she enjoys going on rain-walks, playing piano, eating copious amounts of Thai food, and napping.

The rooftop reading was only three months ago, but it seems like just yesterday. If you haven’t gotten the chance to meet our first years yet, meet them now. And if you have had the pleasure of already meeting them, meet them again. Sure, three years seems like a long time, but—believe me—it’s over before you know it, so cozy up to this batch of talented and charming MFAs. They don’t fear danger. They met us on a roof in a lightning storm and read.

By Morgan O’Grady

Mark Brazitais called me on a rainy-day Saturday and admitted me into graduate school. Immediately, I jumped around on my bed while the calm voice on the other end of the phone explained what my admittance meant. I commenced official professor research, known to some as professor stalking, and discovered that Mark has many achievements: a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Best American Short Stories Award, the Iowa Short Fiction Award, and he is published in, among many other places, Ploughshares, The Sun, Poetry International, and Hayden’s Ferry Review. To top this off, he has four other published works: a novel, Steal My Heart; two collections of stories, the Iowa Short Fiction Award winner The River of Lost Voices: Stories from Guatemala and An American Affair: Stories; and the ABZ Poetry Prize award-winning book, The Other Language: Poems. Currently, Mark has two prize-winning new books coming out: a collection of short stories, The Incurables, and a forthcoming novel, Julia & Rodrigo.

I’m sure Mark Brazaitis did not jump up and down on his bed in February when he found out that his collection of stories, The Incurables, won the The Richard Sullivan Prize for Short Fiction. That’s okay; I have it covered.

His collection is being compared to Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio, and it is just as haunting. Mark said he was not intentionally setting out to write an updated version of Anderson’s collection, but it’s not hard to see the similarities. All of the stories take place in Sherman, Ohio. When I googled Sherman, Ohio, a military training ground came up as well as a Wikipedia page about John Sherman, aka the “The Ohio Icicle.” By placing his stories in Sherman, Mark says it allowed him to “populate it” and not worry about a town with established memories.

Mark says he kept his collection “without judgement” as it moves through the themes of mental illness and family struggles. The Incurables is culturally signficant to the millions in America suffering from mental illness, and for those that don’t, it may feel cathartic to live vicariously through lives that, quoting Mark, “[go] off the rail.” Even if Mark is not a former porn star or a sheriff like some of his characters, he is able to connect emotionally and, as he says, “understand them and feel what they feel.” The Times Literary Supplement reviewed the book and said, “The Incurables deserves a lasting place among regional story cycles; it brings small-town Ohio palpably alive and combines a comic relish for the bizarre with a tenderness towards human frailty.” Recently, New Pages added to the praise, calling The Incurables “[masterful],” “hilarious,” and “haunting.”

More good news arrived later in the year when Mark’s novel Julia & Rodrigo won the 8th Annual Gival Press Novel Award. His novel will be published by Gival Press in 2013. Julia & Rodrigo focuses on a relationship between two Guatemalan teenagers in love and their struggles to overcome societal and cultural norms. He first wrote a synopsis of the novel during graduate school at Bowling Green University. A modern day “Romeo & Juliet,” Mark did think about the archetypal idea, but he did not focus on it because historically this is one of the ways, as he says, “romance works.”

The novel explores Guatemalan society’s cultural awareness of race, ethnicity, and class. Mark explained to me the division between Catholics and Evangelicalism and Protestants, Ladinos and indigenous, and landowners and farm workers; Julia and Rodrigo are in opposite categories on all accounts. And this all happens during the Guatemalan Civil War. The small town setting allows all of these dichotomies to clash beautifully because there is no way to avoid contact. Thaddeus Rutowski, the final judge of the contest, said “this finely crafted novel goes a long way toward answering the question of whether human free will can overcome fate, or God’s will.”

Mark is currently working on stories set in a skating rink. A mysterious place, and sort of scary, hopefully we will see a collection of these stories soon. In the mean time, go ahead a pick up a copy of The Incurables and pre-order your copy of Julia & Rodrigo.

COW Making Her MOO-oves
by Connie Pan

I’m sure you’ve heard of us, the MFA graduate organization, COW (short for the Council of Writers). We’re groundshakers. Last year, we stomped around town and hoofed it as far as Chicago all in the name of words and the fabulous Creative Writing Program here at WVU. This year is no different. It’s only November, and already, we’re shaking ground. Since August, we’ve had our meet-and-greet, three meetings, two readings, and two fundraisers. Sometimes, we raise funds at our readings; sometimes, we read while we raise funds.

AUGUST

Our first event of the year was the Second Annual MFA Rooftop Reading at the Montmartre on top of Hotel Morgan. The MFAs, new and old, braved the threat of lightning and rain to show the newbies what this program has. Some of the first years even had the gusto to show us their chops, and, let me tell you, the new batch of MFAs sound—and look hey, hey, hey!—good.

From there, COW hit it full throttle. In need of funds, we kicked off the semester by dragging all of our furniture, books, jewelry, hats, knick-knacks, whose-its and whats-its out on Rebecca Thomas’ porch for the South Park-wide garage sale. We raised twice the amount as last year, and we hope to continue that tradition next year. After we towed all the leftover goodies into the Thomases’ basement, we set up for our annual MFA Meet-and-Greet, where the new first-years got a chance to rub elbows, bump hips, and share conversation with the Creative Writing faculty and the second and third-year MFAs.

SEPTEMBER

(Planning, planning, planning. You’ll see why in October.)

OCTOBER

In addition to the garage sale, we’ve had two additional fundraisers. At a bake sale early in the month, we pushed goodies to the Mountainlair traffic and raised over eighty dollars. Not only was it lucrative, it was also fun heckling passersby: “Cookies make Mondays better;” “Buy a brownie, ace your test;” “Pumpkin! Come and get your pumpkin! Pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin scones.” The entertainment alone was worth a dollar. After the winter, look for more bake sales and witticisms from us.

Our third fundraiser of the semester was the EGO / COW Book Sale / Bake Sale, where we join forces with the English Graduate Organization for a giant sale in Colson 130. This year, because of Hurricane Sandy, we extended the one-day-only book and bake sale to a week event, moving three tables into the hall for Colson class-takers and pursuers.

Our second reading was our Formal Fall MFA Reading at the Arts Mon. The event was emceed by our brave first-year MFA candidate in creative nonfiction, Hannah McPherson, whose thoughtful introductions put a warm spin on the night. She called everyone up by first retelling the reader’s pithy thought on writing and then added the formula: If __ wasn’t a writer, they would be __ . Hannah’s spin on the non-writing life doesn’t look too bad. As for me, if the writer thing doesn’t pan out, being Sherman Alexie’s personal assistant wouldn’t be too shabby.

THE FUTURE

Wowza. Thus far, it has been one impressive semester. I’m proud to be the COW President this year, and I’m ecstatic to have such a wonderful team backing the organization for the 2012-2013 school year. Vice-President Shane Stricker; Secretary Christina Seymour; Treasurer Rebecca Thomas; Publicity partners-in-crime, Sara Lucas and Jessi Kalvitis; and Journal Committee, Jessi Lewis and Rebecca Doverspike; COW would be nothing without your hard work and dedication.

With Fall Semester coming to an end, we have much to look forward to this Spring Semester. COW will be at AWP in Boston (look for us at table W7!), where not only will we be bragging about our ever-growing and fabulous MFA Program, but we will also be advertising the drop-date of our new literary journal, The Cheat River Review. A big THANK YOU to Jessi L. and Rebecca D. for getting what at times seemed like the-most-impossible-project-ever up and soon-to-be running.

And what are we so adamantly raising all this money for, you wonder? We’re looking to bring a creative nonfiction visiting-writer to campus. Something is in the works, but it seems a little premature to announce it before it’s officially arranged, huh? Until then, we’ll keep our lips sealed, and my fingers will refrain. We are also living in the wake of last year’s glory. COW was able to bring in two poets, Zachary Schomburg and Matt Zapruder, last spring, and we’re looking to live up to and continue that achievement. So far, it’s looking good!

Like I said, COW is making her moves, and we’re breaking ground in a lot of ways. If you would like to get in on this COW fun and CVliciousness, come join us at our meetings. We’ll be gathering Monday, December 3 from 3:30-4:00PM in the always-sexy Colson 223. We hope to see you there! To be up to date with all the COW happenings, check out WVU’s Creative Writing Website or follow us on Facebook

by Rebecca Thomas

Once a month, I hike up Grant Street to the Honors Hall Dorm and am allowed to spend some time with some very impressive students. For an hour or two, we come together to talk and practice creative writing. Started in 2008 and renewed until 2014, the Bolton Writing Workshop is funded by a generous gift from Ruth and Russell Bolton and works with the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences as a way to improve freshman writing. Creative Writing Professor and Bolton Professor for Teaching Mary Ann Samyn created and coordinates the program as a workshop that brings creative writing to the WVU dorms (Read More about the Bolton Program). MFA in Poetry and the 2011-2012 Bolton Assistant Lisa Beans writes that Mary Ann’s “main goal for the workshops [is] for the students and leaders to have fun which will in turn lead to improvements in writing. It also gives students perhaps the only opportunity to learn about creative writing as their schedules might not give them the opportunity to enroll in creative writing classes” (The Bolton Writing Workshop).

During workshop, I sit around the table with Honors Hall dormers, and we talk, read, and write all things fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. By the end of the night, I’m always amazed by the work these students turn out in such a short period of time. Plus, there are usually some pretty tasty treats baked by Honors Hall Resident Faculty Leader Christine Garbutt. Writing, reading, and eating? It’s basically the perfect night.

But I’m not the only one who has had the opportunity to work with the Bolton Writing Workshop Program. Recently, I chatted with two people affiliated with the Bolton Workshop in the Summit Dorm. Rebecca Doverspike, MFA Candidate in Nonfiction, leads the workshops there, and Kelly Sundberg, MFA in Nonfiction and the Live Learn Community Specialist for Summit Hall, graciously hosts them.

Kelly, a recent MFA graduate, has just started her position at Summit Hall. She lives there along with her husband, Caleb Winters, the Resident Faculty Leader, and their wonderful son, Reed. Kelly is no stranger to the Bolton Writing Workshop. As an MFA student, she worked with the Honors Dorm before I did.

I asked Kelly how it felt to host the workshops instead of teaching them. She said, “hosting a Bolton is much different from planning it. Planning the Bolton workshops was hard initially. I wasn’t sure what would be popular or resonate with the residents, but as the year progressed and I knew my core group of attendees better, I had an easier time planning activities they would enjoy.

“In comparison, hosting is easy. I just get to make some good food, have my great friend Rebecca over, and listen to a fantastic group of budding writers! Here in Summit, we also have an RA, Alex Collins, who heads the Creative Writing Club. He’s done the heavy lifting as far as promotion, and he’s managed to get some really varied and interesting students to attend. Every workshop, I can’t wait to sit back and see what Rebecca has prepared for them. She offers such insight into the students’ writing, and I’m always a little stunned by the insights they have in return.”

The idea of being stunned by the students’ insights seems to be a common experience with the Bolton Writing Workshop. I know working with my Boltoneers I’m often made to rethink a piece of writing or a certain aspect of the craft. Rebecca Doverspike agreed. She said, “One of the things I love about writing is that everyone has a story (multiple stories), and I love listening to those stories both on the page and off. The Bolton Workshop is important because it provides a community space to practice telling those stories, and I think everyone learns a lot through writing and hearing other people’s work. I like the feeling that we’re pausing from our busy lives to sit together, converse, and write. It’s not required of any of the students to be there; the participants are so willing to be present and open, which makes so much possible. After each workshop, Kelly, Caleb, and I have remarked on how great the students are. We have a lot of fun, and I feel the students give a lot of energy back through their writing. I’m interested in drawing out stories from people in the community, wider than just the classroom, and the Bolton Workshop is one wonderful way of doing that.”

Rebecca goes on to remind us of how valuable the workshop is. “One of my favorite Bolton moments was during the first workshop in Summitt Hall,” she said. “I had played them some NPR 3-minute fiction stories. We talked about ways of solidifying a moment in prose such that readers know there’s a lot behind/beneath the story, and that it also could continue, but that the moment works in and of itself as a piece, too. At one point I looked up from writing, sipping hot chocolate, and eating Kelly’s delicious homemade ice cream, and saw that everyone was writing rapidly with such focus! That in and of itself was a great feeling. Then, after we read our pieces aloud (some were even performed), I overheard one of the students say to his friend, “I haven’t written in years!” and seemed so refreshed and excited to be trying it again. Teaching composition, working at the Writing Center, and being a graduate MFA student, I forget sometimes that writing can be far away from people’s daily lives, and I realized the Bolton draws it closer, makes it accessible again.”

Kelly voiced these thoughts, too. While her perspective on the program hasn’t exactly shifted in her new role as a Bolton host, she did say that she has “a finer appreciation for it.” She continued, “We have a niche group of students who attend the Bolton workshops, and most of them come because they have a genuine interest in writing, but they aren’t English majors. I think it’s important to provide that creative outlet in the dorms, especially for students who might be unable to take creative writing courses due to time constraints. The Bolton workshop also gives the students an opportunity to interact with faculty and graduate students in a way that’s both informal and intimate.”

And this is what makes Bolton so special. For a few hours each month, we create a writing community. For a moment, we put schoolwork and life aside, and we all just write. As a workshop leader, it’s special to be a part of this. Rebecca had a similar experience. “Another favorite aspect of the Bolton Workshops is the atmosphere with Kelly and Caleb as RFL’s,” she said. “They create such a warm environment for everyone. It’s clear to me that they have good rapport with students and that the students really look forward to being in that space. They’re amazing hosts—from homemade food to their welcoming personalities. They put everyone at ease just by being themselves. One evening, Caleb’s homemade Potato and Leek soup made its way into several poems (including one of his), and it was nice to see students not only comfortable in but also inspired by their surroundings.”

This community might just be my favorite part of the workshop. I run into Honors Hall students in the halls at school or at the Farmers’ Market on Saturdays. We chat and briefly recapture that communal feeling. As the past Honors Hall leader, Kelly still runs into her past Boltoneers, too. She said, “I had a great group of young women who attended [the workshop], and I appreciated getting to know them as people. I learned a lot of really special stuff about them through their writing. Now, when I run into them on-campus, I love to give them hugs and catch up. Here at Summit Hall, the dynamic is a little different, but equally awesome. There is a lot of performance that happens organically. One night, we had students reading poetry, slam poetry, short fiction, and a monologue! The students are so much fun. It makes me happy to be an educator and part of such a vibrant community.”

Indeed, it does make us all happy, and whether it is with potato-leek soup, muffins, or words, it makes us full. To find out more about the Bolton Writing Workshop program, read our blog. Better yet, come to our December 2nd winter reading in the Honors Hall at 6 pm.

The Difference a Space Makes
Student Spotlight: Connie Pan
by Shane Stricker

For many of us who are lucky enough to know her, she is ConniePan. For those of you who don’t, you might refer to her as Connie Pan. The difference is a momentary pause—a half of a breath being drawn in or escaping. The difference is minimal. But, that’s not quite correct is it?

The difference is in the details, in knowing how well ConniePan handles her settings—whether they be the shorelines of Hawaii where developers are pushing and pulling locals from their traditions or the frozen tundra of an unhappy household trapped in the clutches of Michigan winter. The difference is in understanding her attachment to backstory. The difference comes in seeing the sheer quantity of work she puts herself through, in seeing her lists—handwritten, sprawling manifestos of everything from laundry duties to finishing her first draft of her thesis. The difference is in understanding that ConniePan was put on this earth to write, to not just write but to write beautifully.

Whether it began with her grandmother taking her to the library when she was almost too young to read or with the ugly Army notebooks her father used to bring home—he was an enlisted man, stationed all across this country—ConniePan’s determination to educate herself, to notice the details that most of us ignore, began at an early age. Her mother made her promise that she would get an education. Her being—a soul that wanted to be an artist—forced her to notice the rarely seen, to revel in the minutia that makes a story come to life, that makes a group of fictional characters stand up and walk around your living room.

If you know ConniePan, you understand her drive toward perfection. You understand her work ethic. If you know ConniePan, you cheer for her, celebrate in her accomplishments—a Pushcart nomination for an excerpt from her novel, published in Rosebud; publication of her poetry in the Hawaii Review. You cheer for her because you believe in her characters. You cheer for her because you believe in her words. You cheer for her because she has, and will once again, cheer for you.

Next time you pick up a piece written by ConniePan, make sure to notice the details, the compassionate handling of character, the attractiveness of her sentence-level writing. Make sure to notice the space between Connie and Pan. Make sure to remove that space because now, even if you don’t know her on a personal level, you understand the difference between ConniePan and Connie Pan.

Connie Pan is an third year MFA candidate in Fiction. She is currently the Council of Writers’ President and served as their secretary last year. While she does not know what, exactly, the future holds, she is excited about it. She says, “the last time that I had no idea what my future held, I ended up here [at WVU], and I believe I ended up exactly where I was supposed to be. As of now, I’m compiling my dossier, which is a very fancy word for all the work that I have been doing in sweatpants, but I’ll be applying for fellowships and anything that has the promise of time for writing and health insurance.” Health insurance and time to write certainly seem like the perfect combination, and we’re certain that ConniePan’s future holds just that and more.