Ashland University MFA Program

Congratulations are in order for MFA nonfiction faculty members whose essays have been recognized as Notable Essays in the 2014 Best American Essays anthology. Jill Christman, "Borrowed Babies," Iron Horse, 15.3 (Jill's ebook, " Borrowed Babies ," is now available from Shebooks as well!) Steven Harvey, "The Vanishing Point," Southern Review , Winter 2013 Daniel W. Lehman, "'Proper Names Are Poetry in the Raw': Character Formation in Traumatic Nonfiction," River Teeth, Fall 2013 Sarah M. Wells, the MFA program administrative director and current nonfiction MFA student, also appears in the notables list for her Brevity essay, " Field Guide to Resisting Temptation ." Congratulations!

If you missed your chance to be on campus for the MFA summer residency, you can still experience a small bit of Ashland by watching videos from this year's residency. Here are links to the videos that are available from this summer (not all sessions were recorded): Kristen Iversen  Reading  (July 20, 2014) Craft Seminar : "The Art of Weaving Memoir and Journalism" (July 21, 2014)  Rosanna Warren Reading  (July 21, 2014) Craft Seminar  "Seeing into Saying" (July 22, 2014) Angie Estes, Leila Philip, and Joe Mackall Reading  (July 22, 2014) Stephen Haven Poetry Craft Seminar "Contrapuntal Movements in the Personal Poem: Lowell & Levis" (July 23, 2014) Steven Harvey and Robert Root Creative Nonfiction Craft Seminar  "Sentences and Sequences: Crafting Prose by Touch & Sound" (July 23, 2014) Judith Kitchen Reading  (July 23, 2014) Craft Seminar "The Poetry In/Of Prose" (July 24, 2014) Kat

Two essays, one by Ashland MFA faculty member Steven Harvey and one by alum Jon Kerstetter, will be featured in Best American Essays 2013 , the long-running series published by Houghton Mifflin Books and edited by Robert Atwan. The award-winning essays were first published in River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative , housed in Ashland University's MFA Program . Steven Harvey is an honored graduate faculty member in the Ashland MFA, and Jon Kerstetter is a 2011 Ashland MFA graduate who was a combat physician and flight surgeon for the U.S. Army and who completed three combat tours in Iraq. Bestselling author Cheryl Strayed ( Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Coast Trail ), the guest editor of the 2013 Best American Essays , chose Harvey's and Kerstetter's work from among the many hundreds of entries that Atwan and she reviewed this year. Strayed is one of four writers who will visit the Ashland University MFA Summer Residency in 2013. That River Teeth: A Journa

We're ready for another full day of writers and writing... are you? Today's Events: "Authentic Curiosity: the Most Neglected Tool of the Creative Nonfiction Writer" - Andre Dubus III 1-2:30 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University Reading by Steven Harvey, Robert Root, and Ruth L. Schwartz 7 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University Coming Tomorrow: JC Hallman, Stephen Haven, Mark Irwin, Joe Mackall, and Robert Root About Today's Presenters:

It's day one of the public events for the Ashland University MFA Program! Today's Events: "Enriching the Text" - Steven Harvey and Kathryn Winograd 2-3:30 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University Reading by Andre Dubus III 7 p.m., Schar College of Education, Room 138, Ashland University Coming Tomorrow: Andre Dubus III, Steven Harvey, Robert Root, Ruth L. Schwartz About Today's Presenters:

Several of the Ashland University MFA Program's faculty members appear in the Notables section of the  Best American Essays 2011 anthology.  Congratulations to Steven Harvey (" Blood Mountain ," Ascent, March 9), Robert Root (" Time and Tide ," Ascent , August 1), and Kathryn Winograd ("Bathing," Fourth Genre , Spring). Notables are selected by the series editor, Robert Atwan. For the complete list of Notables and the Table of Contents for this year's anthology, visit Houghton-Mifflin .

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. 2-3:30 p.m. Poetry and Creative Nonfiction Faculty Craft Seminar “Writing About Art/Finding Art Within, or: How Giotto Painted My Poem” with Jill Christman and Angie Estes 7 p.m. MFA Faculty Reading Schar 138 Robert Root, Steven Harvey, and Carmen Giménez Smith 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 a