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Faculty Publications & Honors
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
More honors for Carolyne Wright
Carolyne Wright and translator/collaborator Eugenia Toledo in Chile; Wright’s work to be translated for publication in Chile
In October and November, Carolyne Wright was in Chile for a month on a travel grant from the Education and Culture Program of the international volunteer organization, Partners of the Americas, During this time she gave talks, readings, and creative writing workshops along with Seattle-based Chilean poet, literary scholar, and translation collaborator Eugenia Toledo--with whom Wright has been working for the past two years. Wright and Toledo gave presentations in Spanish and English (mainly Spanish) at the University of Chile and the Universidad Major, both in Santiago; the Chilean-Northamerican Institutes of Culture in Santiago and Temuco; the University of La Serena; the Universidad de la Frontera, Temuco; the Universidad Austral, Valdivia; and a major cultural and activities center for senior citizens and retired persons in Santiago called la Caja de Compensación Los Andes. for publication in Chile
The two poets also met and had exchanges with dozens of Chilean poets, writers, teachers, academics, professionals in all fields, and many "ordinary" Chileans. for publication in Chile
Since returning to Seattle, Wright and Toledo have been voted onto the Board of Directors of Washington State / Chile Partners of the Americas. As Co-Chairs of the Arts and Culture Committee for Washington State / Chile Partners of the Americas, Wright and Toledo hope to invite a Chilean poet / writer to Seattle, and will begin planning this visit in 2009. for publication in Chile
In addition, some poems from Wright's most recent collection, A Change of Maps (Lost Horse Press, 2006), will be translated to Spanish and included in a major anthology of American women poets, to be published by one of Chile's senior scholars of American and British literature, Rodolfo Rojo, Professor Emeritus of the University of Chile. for publication in Chile
Bruce Holland Rogers wins Micro Award
Bruce Holland Rogers has won the first annual Micro Award for fiction of under 1,000 words. The award was created and administered by writer Robert Laughlin. Rogers's story, "Reconstruction Work," was originally published on the literary web site flashfictiononline.com. Magazine and web site editors may nominate one story each year from their pages, and writers may also nominate one published story of their own by sending it to the awards administrator. A panel of three judges determines the list of finalists and the winner.
More honors for Carolyne Wright
Carolyne Wright's new book is Majestic Nights: Love Poems of Bengali Women (White Pine Press, 2008), an anthology of poems from West Bengal and Bangladesh, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Carolyne Wright.
About this anthology, poet and translator Chase Twichell has said:
Although these poems come directly out of an ancient tradition, they feel as contemporary as anything being written today. And though they are the work of many different poets, there's a coherence about the volume as a whole that gives the poems exactly the right context in which to be read. Whether yearning, flirtatious, angry, overtly sexual, bewildered, grieving, or joyful, they give full range of expression to the female experience of loving, both on a purely human physical and emotional level, as songs to a specific beloved, but also to the spirit's yearning for a higher power. Wright and her co-translators have managed to capture the force of this traditional Bengali fusion of loves, a concept little known in the West, and made it seem both natural and inevitable. These are marvelous poems, various, surprising, and passionate. Majestic Nights will live on my bedside table for the indefinite future."
More about Majestic Nights (Adobe PDF file, 135K)
More honors for Bonny Becker
Bonny Becker's new book, A Visitor for Bear, was read by Daniel Pinkwater on National Public Radio. As of June 23, it was number two on the New York Times bestseller list for picture books.
More honors for David Wagoner
David Wagoner will be the featured speaker at the Theodore Roethke Centenary Celebration at Penn State University on November 6 and 7, cosponsored by their Institute of the Arts and Humanities, the English Deptartment and the School of Music. The program will include musical settings of Roethke's poems as well as a reading by Wagoner of his own poetry.
More honors for Carmen T. Bernier-Grand
The Oregon Library Association's Children's Division 2008 Evelyn Sibley Lampman Award "For Significant Contributions to the Children of Oregon in the Field of Children's Literature."
Frida: ¡Viva la vida! Long Live Life!, written and illustrated Carmen T. Bernier-Grand (Marshall Cavendish), has been named 2008 Pura Belpré Author Honor Award Winner and has also been named an American Library Association Notable Book Award.
"Frida: ¡Viva la vida! Long Live Life! uses lyrical free-verse poems which comprise the heart of a well rounded biographical work for older children. The poems, written in impassioned first-person voice, follow the arc of Frida Kahlo's life from birth to death. The opening birth poem and the closing death poem set a tone of self-determination firmly placing her in history, in her family and in her country."
More honors for Kathleen Alcala
Kathleen Alcala is reading at 5:30 on March 5 at Benaroya Hall as part of a series of readings by readings by twelve selected recipients of the Artist Trust/Washington State Arts Commission Literary Arts Fellowships from the last 20 years. Seattle Arts & Lectures, Artist Trust, and the UW Simpson Center for the Humanities, in celebration of their 20th anniversaries, are co-sponsoring the readings.
Kathleen Alcala's The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing was recently selected as one of Margaret Guerrero's "Top Picks" in the 2007 Southwest Books of the Year competition. Southwest Books of the Year is a prestigious award in Southern Arizona sponsored by the Pima County Public Library, Friends of the Pima County Public Library, Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records, and the Arizona Historical Society.
Recognition for Susan Zwinger
Susan Zwinger has an important essay in a new book, Teaching About Place, edited by Laird Christensen and Hal Crimmel, University of Nevada Press. The book focuses on teaching students about their local ecology, geology, economics, community planning and sociology in order to, as Susan says, "restore a powerful belief in our connection to the landscape which holds us."
Bruce Holland Rogers continues to put his time in Europe to good use
Rogers has been invited to read and speak at an English-language literary festival in Vienna which is funded in part by the U.S. Embassy.
At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Lisbon, Whidbey MFA instructor Bruce Holland Rogers in November spent four days in Portugal speaking about creative writing. He was a guest at the Universidade Lusófona's annual conference on the fantastic where he debated the future of the short story with Portuguese authors and read from his award-winning story collection The Keyhole Opera (just published in Portugal as Pequenos mistérios). Helectured on "The Creative Writing Workshop" at the Universidade Nova de Lisboa and on "The Psychology of Writing in General and the Short Story in Particular" at the Universidade Clássica de Lisboa.
Recognition for Bonny Becker's latest
Barnes and Noble has selected Bonny Becker's new picture book, A Visitor for Bear (Candlewick), for its picture book wall for the month of March. A Visitor for Bear will be on display at all major stores across the country. The wall of face-out books features about 25 new picture books each month.
A Visitor for Bear will also receive a *starred* review from the upcoming February issue of School Library Journal.
Honors for a member of our Governing Board
Lorraine Healy, MFA (New England College), the newest member of the MFA Governing Board, has recently been awarded the Lois Cranston Poetry Prize by Calyx Press as well as the PostRoad Poetry Prize, awarded by the journal of Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass. Ms. Healy, a native of Argentina and a resident of Freeland, Washington, teaches poetry at Antioch University in Seattle and through the Whidbey Island Writers Association's community classes.
More Honors for Carolyne L. Wright
Carolyne L. Wright will be the next Thornton Writer (Poet) in Residence at Lynchburg College in Virginia, for eight weeks from January - March 2008 (latter half of January till late March). She will live on campus, teach a weekly reading-based workshop, hold individual conferences, and give a public reading..
That post will be followed by serving as the Distinguished Northwest Poet at Seattle University for spring quarter (end of March - mid-June). Both of these short-term posts, she says, will leave time for her own writing and for Whidbey courses.
David Wagoner appointed a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow
Poet, novelist and dramatist David Wagoner has been appointed a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, one of about 100 from all disciplines—ex-cabinet members, diplomats, writers, retired judges, the head of the ACLU, the director of the League of Women Voters, etc. Under the jurisdiction of Princeton, their bios and curriculums are posted for the delight of about 250 independent colleges all over the country. The administrators of those colleges select a visiting fellow and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation finances the week-long stay of that Visiting Fellow on campus, giving a lecture, tutoring or work- shopping students, reading his/her own work, and so on.