7/31/2012 - JC Hallman, Stephen Haven, Mark Irwin, Joe Mackall, and Robert Root

Today's craft seminars are divided into two sessions - one specifically for poetry and one specifically for nonfiction. Please note the location of the nonfiction seminar.

Today's Events:

"Complications of Meaning: Narrative Strategies in Frost" - Stephen Haven

1-2:30 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University

"Essaying the Image: Ekphrasticize Yourself" - Robert Root

1-2:30 p.m., Dauch College of Business and Economics, Ridenour Room, Ashland University

Second-Year Student Reading

Sarah Edwards, Laurie Murray, Megan Snyder, Sandy McWhorter, Ron Book, Carrie Krucinski, Bridget Pool, Elizabeth Christy, Nate Terry, and Jess Van Ness

4:30-5:30 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University

Reading by JC Hallman, Mark Irwin, and Joe Mackall

7 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University

Coming Tomorrow:
Ruth L. Schwartz and Laura Kasischke

About Today's Presenters:

JC Hallman

J.C. Hallman grew up in Southern California on a street called Utopia Road. He studied creative writing at the University of Pittsburgh, the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins, and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Hallman’s MFA thesis was titled “Utopia Road,” which was the name of a story later published in Hallman’s short story collection, The Hospital for Bad Poets.

Hallman’s nonfiction combines memoir, history, journalism, and travelogue, and has been compared to Alain de Botton and Bruce Chatwin. His first book, The Chess Artist, tells the story of Hallman’s friendship with chess player Glenn Umstead. His second, The Devil is a Gentleman, is an intellectual apprenticeship with philosopher William James. Hallman eventually realized that “Utopia Road” had exhausted neither his utopian heritage nor his interest and he wrote his third book of nonfiction, In Utopia, which explores the history of utopian thought and literature in the context of visits to six modern utopias in various stages of realization.
Hallman has also edited an anthology, The Story About the Story, which proposes a new school of literary response – “creative criticism.”

For more information about J.C. Hallman, visit his website: http://jchallman.com/.

Stephen Haven

Stephen Haven's book of poems Dust and Bread (Turning Point, 2008) was selected by the Ohio Poetry Association as co-winner in a competition to recognize the best book of poems published by an Ohio poet in 2008. He was named "Co-Ohio Poet of the Year" for 2009. Haven is also the author of two other poetry  collections, The Last Sacred Place in North America (New American Press, 2012) and The Long Silence of the Mohawk Carpet Smokestacks (West End Press, 2004), and of the memoir, The River Lock: One Boy's Life along the Mohawk (Syracuse University Press, 2008). The River Lock was nominated for a National Book Award by Syracuse University Press. A review of The River Lock in available online at http://www.contrarymagazine.com/Contrary/Haven.html

Haven published one other title in 2008, a collection of collaborative translations of contemporary Chinese poetry-- The Enemy in Defensive Position (with Wang Shouyi and Jin Zhong, Poetry Miscellany Chapbooks, University of Tennessee -- Chattanooga, 2008). He also edited and wrote the introduction for The Poetry of W.D. Snodgrass: Everything Human (University of Michigan Press, 1993).

Haven's poems have appeared in Salmagundi, Parnasus, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, Literary Imagination, World Literature (Beijing), Image, Crazyhorse, and in many other journals. He has a Ph.D. in American Civilization (literature, intellectual history, and American Painting) from New York University, where he wrote his dissertation under the direction of Harold Bloom, and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry from the University of Iowa. He is Professor of English and Director of the MFA in Creative Writing Program at Ashland University, where he also directs the Ashland Poetry Press.

Mark Irwin

Mark Irwin, poetry, was born in Faribault, Minnesota, and has lived throughout the United States and abroad in France and Italy. His poetry and essays have appeared widely in many literary magazines including The American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Poetry, The Nation, New England Review, and the New Republic. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop (M.F.A.), he also holds a Ph.D. in English/Comparative Literature and has taught at a number of universities and colleges including Case Western Reserve, the University of Iowa, Ohio University, the University of Denver, the University of Colorado/Boulder, the University of Nevada, and Colorado College.

The author of seven collections of poetry, including The Halo of Desire (Galileo Press, 1987), Against the Meanwhile (Wesleyan University Press, 1989), Quick, Now, Always (BOA , 1996), White City (BOA, 2000), Bright Hunger (BOA, 2004), Tall If (New Issues, 2008), and American Urn: New and Selected Poems (Ashland Poetry Press, 2013), he has also translated two volumes of poetry, one from the French and one from the Romanian. Recognition for his work includes The Nation/Discovery Award, four Pushcart Prizes, National Endowment for the Arts, Colorado and Ohio Art Council Fellowships, two Colorado Book Awards, the James Wright Poetry Award, and fellowships from the Fulbright, Lilly, and Wurlitzer Foundations. He lives in Colorado, and Los Angeles, where he teaches in the Graduate Creative Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

Joe Mackall

Joe Mackall is the author of Plain Secrets: An Outsider among the Amish (Beacon Press, 2007) and The Last Street Before Cleveland: An Accidental Pilgrimage (University of Nebraska Press, 2006). He is the co-founder and co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and co-editor of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize Series (in partnership with the University of Nebraska Press).

His articles have been published in a number of newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times and The Washington Post. His essays have appeared in several anthologies, literary journals, and recently on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition.” Mackall has a BA in English from Cleveland State University, an MA in English from the University of Central Oklahoma, an MFA in fiction writing from Bowling Green State University, and a Ph.D. in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of English at Ashland University.

Robert Root

Robert Root is the author of Postscripts: Retrospections on Time and Place (University of Nebraska Press, 2012), Recovering Ruth: A Biographer’s Tale (University of Nebraska Press, 2002), and Following Isabella: Travels in Colorado Then and Now (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009) as well as The Nonfictionist’s Guide: On Reading and Writing Creative Nonfiction (Rowman & Littlefield, 2007) and E. B. White: The Emergence of an Essayist (University of Iowa Press, 1998). He is the editor of Landscapes With Figures: The Nonfiction of Place (Nebraska, 2007), a book of essays of place and commentaries by authors, and the co-editor of the anthology The Fourth Genre: Contemporary Writers of/on Creative Nonfiction (Longman, 2009), now in its sixth edition. He is also the author or editor of nine other books and is the Interview/Roundtable editor for the journal Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction.


Root has taught at Central Michigan University, the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, and the Loft Writers Workshop in Minneapolis. His article “Collage, Montage, Mosaic, Vignette, Episode, Segment,” from The Fourth Genre, is often assigned in creative nonfiction courses across the country. An essay on writing and teaching, “A Double Life,” published in Writing on the Edge, won the 2007 Donald Murray Award for Best Essay on Writing and/or Teaching.

His essays have been published in many literary journals: “Knowing Where You’ve Been,” in Ascent, was named a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2004; “The Pattern of Life Indelible,” in Ecotone, was listed in 2007; “Postscript to a Postscript to ‘The Ring of Time’,” in The Pinch was listed in 2010, nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and given the Council of Wisconsin Writers Short Nonfiction Award. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Acadia National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Isle Royale National Park. He lives in Waukesha, Wisconsin.