Poetry Student Wins Lettre Sauvage Chapbook Contest

Grace Curtis, soon-to-be graduate in poetry from the Ashland University MFA program, just won the Lettre Sauvage chapbook contest for her manuscript, The Surly Bonds of Earth. Stephen Dunn, the judge of the contest, had this to say about Grace's chapbook:

"In Grace Curtis' The Surly Bonds of Earth, we feel in the presence of a voice richly capable of blending image and statement as it explores its various concerns. Behind that voice is an intelligence we learn to trust, and a sense of narrative tact (most evident in "Weeding") as she thinks her way down the page. The 'outer seriousness, inner humor' quality that Frost championed is hers as well. Many pleasures here, many tones."
-- Stephen Dunn

Grace will give a reading from her thesis Thursday, July 29 at 6:30 p.m. as part of the Ashland University Summer Residency program. A complete schedule of events is available on the Ashland University website.

Alum Publishes Chapbook with Finishing Line Press

Jen Kindbom, Ashland University MFA class of 2009, has had her chapbook, A Note on the Door , accepted for publication by Finishing Line Press. It will be published in the spring of 2011. Advance sale copies may be purchased on Finishing Line Press's website. About A Note on the Door , Kathryn Winograd has the following to say: " A Note on the Door sparkles in the best tradition of American poetry: the ordinary world made new through the simple vernacular and cadences of American speech. Jen Kindbom is the fay spirit sprinkling our dirty porches, crying babies, and noxious beetles with her magic dust. These are the poems I'll pin to my neighbors' doors."

Interview with Kyle Winkler

After talking to Lisa Nik, it only seemed right to keep the good juju going and interview one of our newest fiction faculty members, Kyle Winkler. You can learn everything you ever wanted to know about Kyle from this interview and from his website . Thanks to our lovely and talented intern, Angela Manasieva for preparing this interview. 1. Where are you from and how do you use your surroundings to write? I'm from southwest Indiana originally. Rolling hills, farmland, corn, wheat. LOTS of corn and wheat. My landscapes have affected me heavily in my writing. All that tall crop and the sometimes isolating farmland in the autumn during sunset can do a lot to make one feel...creeped out? Hah. I've tried to use my small town upbringing to good effect, as well. I grew up most of life in a working class to middle-class home in the rust belt. So I'm often trying to evoke the experiences and attitudes of the sorts of folks I grew up around and with. And those experiences were, to so...

AU Ranked in Poets & Writers MFA Index

The annual MFA issue of Poets & Writers is out, and Ashland University's MFA program is listed among the 26 low-residency programs featured. Of the 47 low-residency MFA programs currently available in the United States (Association of Writers and Writing Programs), AU ranks second in job placement, fourth in fellowship placement, and 11th in selectivity. While the program did not place in a six-year popularity survey, it placed 19th in the popularity survey for 2011. We'll take post-graduate successes over applicant popularity any day. The 26 programs that Poets & Writers chose to feature "are those that either placed in the first 25 in a popularity survey taken over six years by a total of 302 applicants to low-residency programs or appear in the first 25 in at least two of the following three categories: selectivity (how selective they are in accepting applicants), fellowship placement (which had the most graduates receive any of forty-two creative wr...

Ashland University MFA Program

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