WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2018 Residency

“Research helps us avoid historical erasure." -- Poet Remica Bingham-Risher

This lecture discusses work by Ocean Vuong, Natasha Trethewey, Patricia Smith, and others. You'll find the readings here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1FbN0x0pLYCMrM6jywB0OPYgZEfQzwHZ90C1V4yOx3QM/edit#gid=0

Remica's work at residency was supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. You can discover more about her work here: https://www.remicabinghamrisher.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

Guest faculty Mesha Maren reads from her debut novel forthcoming from Algonquin Books in January 2019. The novel follows the story of Jody after her release from prison, alternating with chapters unfolding the months leading up to her incarceration.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

"Sometimes the things that we are most familiar with...are the things that we've lost the ability to elucidate." --JC, guest prose faculty

Learn more about Corcoran's debut story collection THE ROPE SWING here: http://jonathancorcoranwrites.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency

"So I started this novel that's asking the question, 'How do we deal with grief?'" --JT

Guest faculty Jacinda Townsend, author of "Saint Monkey" (winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best fiction written by a woman in 2014 and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize for best historical fiction), reads from her newly-completed novel.

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency

"I wrote about these traumas because I didn't want anyone else who might go through them to feel like they were alone." -- LJC

Guest memoirist Laurie Jean Cannady reads from "Crave: Sojourn of a Hungry Soul" for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council. Find out more about Cannady's work here: https://www.lauriejeancannady.net/

WV Wesleyan MFA Winter 2018 Residency

"We write the same story over and over again...until we write our way out of the story." -- RGH

Guest poet Rebecca Gayle Howell reads a selection of poems for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council.

Rebecca's AMERICAN PURGATORY won the 2016 Sexton Prize: http://www.rebeccagaylehowell.com

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

"They say Make a bowl of your heart." -- MCH

Guest faculty member Mary Carroll-Hackett reads a selection of poems for the Visiting Writers Series supported with funding from the WV Humanities Council.

Mary's DEATH FOR BEGINNERS was released in Oct 2017 with Kelsay Books: https://marycarrollhackett.com/

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

“Speculation is not factual claim; it’s conjecture based on research, observation, and instinct.” -- Jason Howard, guest writer partially funded by a grant from the WV Humanities Council

This lecture includes discussion of “The Lady with the Alligator Purse,” an essay by Sonja Livingston.

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

“Fiction runs naturally against stereotype, poetry should too, to work against the righteousness in yourself." -- Poet Rodney Jones

This lecture discusses work by Anne Carson, Michael Ondaatje, Gwendolyn Brooks, Larry Levis, James Wright, Karen Solie, and John Berryman. You'll find the readings here:

http://www2.wvwc.edu/mfa/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Jones.pdf

WV Wesleyan MFA Summer 2017 Residency

“Plot can be more unsettling than argument which can be answered.” In her summer lecture "What Is Light Without Dark?: Using Thematic Contrast to Build Narrative Tension and Character," Guest Fiction Faculty Mesha Maren quotes and discusses Eudora Welty's "Must the Novelist Crusade?" Other texts discussed in this lecture: Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian; Luis Alberto Urrea, The Devil’s Highway; Breece Pancake, “First Day of Winter”; Bonnie Jo Campbell, “The Trespasser”; Phil Klay, “Bodies”; Toni Morrison, Beloved; Amy Hempel, “In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried”