New Faculty for Spring 2012

The Ashland University MFA Program extends a warm welcome to Thomas Larson and Bonnie J. Rough, joining the program as honored visiting graduate faculty this spring.

Thomas Larson is the author of The Saddest Music Ever Written: The Story of Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings" and The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative, Ohio University Press / Swallow Press, now in its third printing. He teaches, lectures, and holds workshops on memoir writing throughout the United States.

Larson writes personal essays, memoir, feature articles, book reviews, and literary criticism. For the last twelve years, he has been a contributing writer for the weekly San Diego Reader where he specializes in investigative journalism, narrative nonfiction, and profiles.

His writing has appeared in numerous reviews and journals, among them Tampa Review, The Gettysburg Review, Southwest Review, Antioch Review, Fourth Genre, Amazon.com/Shorts, the Anchor Essay Annual: The Best of 1997, Contrary Magazine online where he does quarterly book reviews, and New Letters where his memoir, "Mrs. Wright’s Bookshop," won the journal’s Reader’s Award for the Essay in 2008.

Bonnie J. Rough is the author of the memoir Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA, which won a 2011 Minnesota Book Award. Her writing has appeared in anthologies such as The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best Creative Nonfiction, and periodicals including The New York Times, Huffington Post, The Sun, The Iowa Review, Defunct, and Brevity. Rough, who has her MFA from the University of Iowa, has taught at The Loft Literary Center and is a prose editor for Versal.

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...

Alum Valerie Due Wins Strayed/VIDA Memoir Scholarship

Valerie Due, graduate of the Ashland University MFA Program in 2009, is the winner of the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat Cheryl Strayed/VIDA Memoir Scholarship. Valerie was one of 95 scholarship applicants considered for the full scholarship to attend the Wild Mountain Memoir Retreat March 13-15. Congratulations, Valerie! Full press release is available here .

Ashland University MFA Program

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