2019 Summer Residency Updates!

The May 15th deadline to apply for the July residency as a new student is approaching! If you are planning to apply, please contact Paige Webb, the Administrative Director (pwebb2@ashland.edu), or Christian Kiefer, the Program Director (ckiefer2@ashland.edu), if you have questions.

The 2019 Summer Residency is July 22 - August 2, 2019.

Visiting Editors

For the summer residency, five visiting editors will come to Ashland to share their expertise in a publishing panel, as well as meet individually with graduating students about their manuscripts.

Publishing panel: Saturday, July 27 at 1:30 p.m. in Ronk Lecture Hall
Participating editors: Mary Biddinger, Kelly Caldwell, Cassie Donish, Eric Obenauf, Hilary Plum

Mary Biddinger, Visiting Editor in Poetry

Mary Biddinger is the author of five full-length poetry collections, including Small Enterprise and The Czar. Her sixth book, Partial Genius, will be published by Black Lawrence Press in August 2019. She teaches literature and creative writing at The University of Akron and NEOMFA program, and edits the Akron Series in Poetry for The University of Akron Press. Biddinger has been the recipient of three Individual Excellence Awards in poetry from the Ohio Arts Council, and received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 2015. Find her online at marybiddinger.com and @marybid on Twitter.

Kelly Caldwell, Visiting Editor in Creative Nonfiction 

Kelly Caldwell writes and works at Washington University in St. Louis. Her prose and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in a number of print and online publications, including Fence, The Seneca Review, Phoebe, Small Po[r]tions, Entropy, PopMatters, MAKE Magazine, Slant, Pacific Standard Magazine, The Rumpus, and VICE. She is the Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Spectacle.

Cassie Donish, Visiting Editor in Creative Nonfiction 

Cassie Donish is the author of the poetry collections The Year of the Femme (University of Iowa Press, 2019), selected by Brenda Shaughnessy as winner of the Iowa Poetry Prize, and Beautyberry (Slope Editions, 2018). Her nonfiction chapbook On the Mezzanine (2019) was selected by Maggie Nelson as winner of the Gold Line Press Chapbook Competition. Her writing has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Best New Poets, Colorado Review, VICE, jubilat, Gettysburg Review, Kenyon Review Online, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis, and she currently teaches and writes at the University of Missouri in Columbia. (Photo by William Youngblood). 

Eric Obenauf, Visiting Editor in Fiction 

Eric Obenauf founded the publishing company Two Dollar Radio with his wife, Eliza. Their publications have been honored by the National Book Foundation, named Notable Books at New York Times, finalists for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and placed on the best-of-the-year lists at O, The Oprah Magazine, the Washington Post, NPR, and others. He was included in Publisher’s Weekly’s “50 under 40” list, and was a finalist in the magazine’s 2016 “Star Watch” program. Two Dollar Radio runs The Flyover Fest, which is a multidisciplinary festival featuring artists working in music, literature, and film over the course of 3 days in Columbus, Ohio. In 2017 they opened a bookstore/bar/plant-based café and event space called Two Dollar Radio Headquarters. Read more at twodollarradio.com.

Hilary Plum, Visiting Editor in Fiction 

Hilary Plum is the author of the novel Strawberry Fields, winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose (2018); the work of nonfiction Watchfires (2016), winner of the 2018 GLCA New Writers Award; and the novel They Dragged Them Through the Streets (2013). She has worked for a number of years as an editor of international literature, history, and politics. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program and is associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. 

Visiting Writers 

Justin Phillip Reed, Visiting Writer in Poetry 

Reading: Tuesday, July 23 at 7:00 p.m 

Craft Seminar: Wednesday, July 24 at 1:30 p.m. 

Dan Chaon, Visiting Writer in Fiction 

Reading: Wednesday, July 24 at 7:00 p.m. 

Craft Seminar: Thursday, July 25 at 1:30 p.m. 

Hanif Abdurraqib, Visiting Writer in Creative Nonfiction 

Reading: Monday, July 29 at 7:00 p.m. 

Craft Seminar: Tuesday, July 30 at 1:30 p.m. 

Hanif Abdurraqib, Visiting Writer in Creative Nonfiction 

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals. His essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. His first full length poetry collection, The Crown Ain't Worth Much, was released in June 2016 from Button Poetry. It was named a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Prize, and was nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award. With Big Lucks, he released a limited edition chapbook, Vintage Sadness, in summer 2017 (you cannot get it anymore and he is very sorry.) His first collection of essays, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, was released in winter 2017 by Two Dollar Radio and was named a book of the year by Buzzfeed, Esquire, NPR, Oprah Magazine, Paste, CBC, The Los Angeles Review, Pitchfork, and The Chicago Tribune, among others. He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow, an interviewer at Union Station Magazine, and a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine. He is a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet/essayist Eve Ewing. His next books are Go Ahead In The Rain, a biography of A Tribe Called Quest due out in 2019 by University of Texas Press, and They Don't Dance No' Mo', due out in 2020 by Random House. Yes, he would like to talk to you about your favorite bands and your favorite sneakers. (Photo by Andrew Cenci).

Dan Chaon, Visiting Writer in Fiction 

Dan Chaon’s most recent book is Ill Will, a national bestseller, named one of the ten best books of 2017 by Publishers Weekly. Other works include the short story collection Stay Awake (2012), a finalist for the Story Prize; the national bestseller Await Your Reply, and Among the Missing, a finalist for the National Book Award. Chaon’s fiction has appeared in Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize Anthologies, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, the Shirley Jackson Award, and he was the recipient of an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Ohio and teaches at Oberlin College.

Justin Phillip Reed, Visiting Writer in Poetry 

Justin Phillip Reed is an American poet and essayist. He is the author of Indecency (Coffee House Press), winner of the 2018 National Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the 2019 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, as well as the chapbook A History of Flamboyance (YesYes Books, 2016). His second full-length collection of poetry, The Malevolent Volume, will be released in Spring 2020. He is the 2019-2021 Fellow in Creative Writing at the Center for African American Poetry and Poetics. His work appears in African American Review, Best American Essays, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Obsidian, and elsewhere. A three-time high school expellee and an ex-college dropout, he received his BA in creative writing at Tusculum College and his MFA in poetry at Washington University in St. Louis, where he served as Junior Writer-in-Residence. He has received fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Conversation Literary Festival, La Maison Baldwin, and the Regional Arts Commission of St. Louis. Reed was born and raised in South Carolina. (Photo by Raven Jackson).