8/6/2012 - Mira Bartok, Joe Mackall, and Sarah M. Wells

Today's craft seminars are split sessions, with concurrent poetry and nonfiction seminars.

Today's Events:

"Spreading the Word: Poetry in Public" - Sarah M. Wells

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

"Recreating Scenes" - Joe Mackall

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

Reading by Mira Bartok

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

Coming Tomorrow:
Mira Bartok, Angie Estes, Deborah Fleming, and Thomas Larson

About Today's Presenters:

Mira Bartok

Mira Bartók is a visual artist, children’s book author and the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir, The Memory Palace, which won the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, noted in The Best American Essays series and has appeared in numerous literary journals, anthologies and magazines, including Fourth Genre, Kenyon Review, and Another Chicago Magazine. Mira has also received grants and fellowships from the Fulbright Program, the American Scandinavian Foundation, Pen-American, among others. She lives in Massachusetts where she is a frequent commentator for New England Public Radio and runs Mira’s List, a website that helps artists find funding and residencies all over the world. She is currently at work on a book about the history of wonder. 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.

Sarah M. Wells

Sarah M. Wells is the author of Pruning Burning Bushes from Wipf and Stock Publishers (2012), and a chapbook of poems, Acquiesce, winner of the 2008 Starting Gate Award through Finishing Line Press (2009). Poems by Wells have appeared or are forthcoming in Alimentum, Ascent, Christianity & Literature, JAMA, Literary Mama, Measure, New Ohio Review, Nimrod, Poetry East, Puerto del Sol, Rock & Sling, and elsewhere. Her essays have been published by Ascent and River Teeth.

Sarah's poetry has been honored with two Pushcart Prize nominations. Her essay in Ascent, "Those Summers, These Days" was listed as a notable essay in the Best American Essays 2012. She has received scholarships to attend the Key West Literary Seminar and West Chester Poetry Conferences.

Sarah serves as the Administrative Director for the low-residency MFA program at Ashland University and Managing Editor for the Ashland Poetry Press and River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. She lives in Ashland, Ohio with her husband, Brandon, and their three children, Lydia, Elvis, and Henry.