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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Today's Events:

All posted events are located in the Schar College of Education Ronk Lecture Hall, Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio and are free and open to the public.
 
7 p.m. MFA Faculty Reading: Bob Cowser, Ruth L. Schwartz, and Jill Christman
 
About Today's Presenters:


Jill Christman
Jill Christman

Jill Christman’s memoir, Darkroom: A Family Exposure, won the AWP Award Series in Creative Nonfiction and was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2002. Recent essays appearing in River Teeth and Harpur Palate have been honored by Pushcart nominations and her writing has been published in Barrelhouse, Brevity, Descant, Literary Mama, Mississippi Review, Wondertime, and many other journals, magazines, and anthologies. Her work has appeared on Indiana Public Radio and in anthologies, including Writer’s Digest’s Rules of Thumb, Unbuttoned: Women tell the truth about the pains, pleasures and politics of breastfeeding, and Literature: the Human Experience. She is an Associate Professor of English at Ball State University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in creative nonfiction writing in the Creative Writing program and serves as Assistant Chair of Graduate and Undergraduate Programs in the Department of English.

Bob Cowser, Jr.
Bob Cowser, Jr.

Bob Cowser, Jr. is the author of three works of literary nonfiction and editor of a fourth. His most recent, Green Fields: Crime, Punishment, and a Boyhood Between, was published as part of the Engaged Writers Series at the University of New Orleans Press in 2010. A Professor of English at St. Lawrence University and on the faculty of the Low-Residency MFA at Ashland University, Cowser's essays and reviews have appeared widely in literary magazines and journals, including Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Brevity, and The Huffington Post. He lives on the Grasse River in Canton, NY with his wife Candace and their sons Jackson and Mason.

Ruth L. Schwartz
Ruth L. Schwartz, poetry, is the author of four books of poems, each the winner of a national award: Dear Good Naked Morning (Autumn House Press, 2005), selected by Alicia Ostriker for the 2004 Autumn House Poetry Prize; Edgewater (HarperCollins, 2002), a National Poetry Series winner chosen by Jane Hirshfield; Singular Bodies (Anhinga Press, 2001), recipient of the 2000 Anhinga Prize for Poetry; and Accordion Breathing and Dancing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996), winner of the 1994 Associated Writing Programs Competition. Her fifth collection of poems, Bone River, will be published by Autumn House Press in 2012. Ruth is also the author of a memoir, Death in Reverse: A Love Story (Michigan State University Press, 2004), and her creative nonfiction has appeared in the Utne Reader, The Sun, and numerous anthologies.

Ruth L. Schwartz
Recipient of over a dozen national writing awards, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Astraea Foundation, Ruth is also a lifelong explorer of consciousness and healing. In addition to her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, Ruth has a Ph.D. in Transpersonal Psychology, and offers workshops and retreats nationwide on the theme “The Writer As Shaman: Words as a Portal to the Soul.” Her website is http://www.thewriterasshaman.com/.
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