Master of Fine Arts

Readings for 2009 - 2010

 

READINGS FOR FALL 2009

October 22, 1230-200PM, Millennium Student Center, Century Room C. Irish Writer, Journalist, Photographer, and Journalist Helena Mulkerns will speak on her experiences while working with the United Nations in Central America, Africa, and Afghanistan. Her presentation is entitled “Glimpses of Everyday Life in the Field”.
Ms. Mulkerns’s work has been published and exhibited widely, including work that appeared in the most recent issue of Natural Bridge. Sponsored by the Smurfit-Stone Professorship in Irish Studies and Center for International Studies.

Monday 9 November 2009 - 5:30 PM. RIDLEY PEARSON: EYES ON CHINA: A year of teaching creative writing at Fudan University, Shanghai. Century Room C, 3rd floor
Millennium Student Center, UM-St. Louis. Sponsored by the Center for International Studies and the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing program, Department of English,University of Missouri-St. Louis.
Ridley Pearson is a #1 nationally best selling author of more than 25 crime fiction novels as well as a dozen novels (several co-written with Dave Barry) for younger readers. His books have been translated into 22 languages and are in print in over seventy countries. Ridley adapted his novel, "The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer", as a two hour ABC TV movie (2003), and has written television documentaries, including "Alcoholics Anonymous", for theA&E network. His crime novels are known for their detailed forensics. Research conducted for his novel, "Undercurrents" (1988), has gone on to help investigators solve three real-life homicides. At the request of authorities, Ridley also contributed to the task force attempting to catch the Washington, DC sniper. "Peter and the Starcatchers" (co-written with Dave Barry) has been adapted for the stage by Rick Elice (Jersey Boys) and is being producedby Disney Theatrical. In 1990, Ridley was the first American to be awarded the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Fellowship in Crime Fiction at Oxford University. In 2008-2009 Ridley served as a visiting professor in the College ofInter national Language and Literature at Fudan University, Shanghai, China. He lives in St. Louis with his wife Marcelle, and their two daughters.

November 12, 1230-145PM, SSB Building, Room 331. Irish-American Voices. A poetry reading by two widely-published Irish-American poets. Katherine Kirkpatrick (Appalachian State University) and David Lloyd (Le Moyne College). Sponsored by the Smurfit-Stone Professorship in Irish Studies and Center for International Studies.

December 1, Tuesday. Jason Sommer and Allison Funk will read their poetry and discuss writing. Gallery 210, UMSL, 44 E. Drive, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121. At 7 PM. This event is free and open to the public. Contact: 314-516-5590. 7 PM.The Tumbling Box is the title of Allison Funk's newest book of poetry, from which she will read on December 1. Funk is the author of three earlier collections of poetry: The Knot Garden; Living at the Epicenter; and Forms of Conversion. She has received the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize and awards from the Society of Midland Authors, the Poetry Society of America, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Jason Sommer is author of three poetry collections: Lifting the Stone, from Forest Books, London, and from the University of Chicago Press, Other People’s Troubles, and The Man Who Sleeps in My Office. He was awarded a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Fellowship for his work and has held the Mirrielees Fellowship in Poetry at Stanford University, as well as fellowships from the Bread Loaf and Sewanee writer’s conferences. He won The Society of Midland Authors award for poetry and was a finalist for PEN U.S.A. West’s literary prize. Sommer teaches literature and writing at Fontbonne University, where he also directs the Honors Program.


December 18th, Friday, A Reading by graduating MFA fiction writers and poets, in the E. Desmond and Mary Ann Lee Theater of the Touhill Performing Arts Center, UMSL, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63121, 7:30-10:00 PM. The readers will be Inda Schaenen, Steve Adams, Julia Gordon-Bramer, Jason Dockery, Kenny Squires, Aaron Johnson, Rebecca Brown-Gregory, and Katy Dwiggins.

READINGS FOR WINTER/SPRING 2010

Dave Carkeet, May 4, Tuesday, Gallery 210, UMSL, 44 E. Drive, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121. At 7 PM. This event is free and open to the public. Contact: 314-516-5590. 7 PM.
David Carkeet is the author of five novels, including three New York Times Notable Books—Double Negative, The Full Catastrophe, and The Error of Our Ways, all featuring linguist-protagonist Jeremy Cook.  His honors include an Edgar nomination, an O. Henry Award, an NEA Fellowship, and the AWP Creative Nonfiction Award for his 2005 memoir, Campus Sexpot.  In 2010, Overlook Press will publish a new novel, From Away—a comic mystery set in Vermont—and will reissue his three Jeremy Cook books.  Carkeet grew up in northern California and lived for 30 years in St. Louis, where he taught linguistics and writing at UMSL, directed the MFA program, and edited Natural Bridge.  In Vermont, his current home, he plays the trumpet relentlessly. For more information see David's web site at www.davidcarkeet.com.

May 5, Wednesday, A Reading by Poet Randall Mann, Gallery 210, UMSL, 44 E. Drive, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO 63121. At 7 PM. This event is free and open to the public. Contact: 314-516-5590. 7 PM.
Randall Mann is an American poet. He was born in Provo, Utah in 1972, the only son to Olympic Track and Field medalist, Ralph Mann. He is the author of Breakfast with Thom Gunn (University of Chicago, 2009), Complaint in the Garden (Zoo Press, 2004), winner of the 2003 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry, and co-author of the textbook Writing Poems (7th ed. Pearson Longman, 2007). Mann currently lives in San Francisco, California.

Mann received Masters Degree in Fine Arts from the University of Florida in 1997.
Randall Mann’s poems are often set within the landscape of Florida or California. Influenced by Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Bishop, and Donald Justice, Mann’s poetry—at once vulnerable, unflinching, and brave in its ambivalence—explores themes of loss, attraction, brutality, and expectation. Of his preference for working in form, Mann says, “Form helps me approach more comfortably the personal, helps me harden argument.”

Mann is the author of Complaint in the Garden (2004), which won the Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry, and Breakfast with Thom Gunn (2009). He is co-author of the textbook Writing Poems (2007). David Baker, poetry editor and judge for the Kenyon Review Prize, wrote that Mann “re-creates the landscape and flora of the Caribbean and Florida with great precision, its saw palmettos and egrets, its ‘feathery-leafed locusts’ and ‘punctual monsoons.’ He follows, in other words, a long line of observers from Donald Justice back through William Bartram to Ponce de León and Cabeza de Vaca.”

In response to critics who have regarded the open portrayals of homosexuality in his work as radical, Mann responds, “If tenderness between two men is radical—and I suppose it is—then the shameful world needs a new radicalism.”

May 14th, Friday, A Reading by graduating MFA fiction writers and poets, in the E. Desmond and Mary Ann Lee Theater of the Touhill Performing Arts Center, UMSL, One University Blvd., St. Louis, MO, 63121, 7:00-9:30 PM. The readers will be Leah Holbrook, Joe Betz, Regina Popper, Bridget Healy, and Beth McConaghy. There will be a party with food and cash bar. This event is free and open to the public. For information contact 314-516-5590 or visit www.touhill.org.