MFA in Writing Program Celebrates 10th Year
Spalding’s Brief-Residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program Celebrates Its 10th Birthday, Announces Gift
Spalding University’s brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program celebrates its 10th birthday with a party, reading, and announcement of a donor gift at 3:30 p.m. November 13 in the Egan Leadership Center, 901 S. Fourth Street, Louisville, Kentucky.
The celebration features 10-minute readings by faculty members: acclaimed Appalachian author Silas House, Kentucky Poet Laureate Maureen Morehead, award-winning playwright Eric Schmiedl, and Program Director Sena Jeter Naslund. Spalding University President Tori Murden McClure, herself an alumna of the MFA program, will make remarks.
Media welcome. McClure, Naslund, House, Morehead, Schmiedl will be available for interviews 3:00-3:30 p.m.
A panel of alumni will speak briefly. Panelists include J. Terry Price (fiction), president of the Spalding MFA alumni association; Frank X. Walker (poetry), author of Isaac Murphy: I Dedicate This Ride; Diana M. Raab (creative nonfiction), author of Healing with Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey, and Kelly Creagh (writing for children and young adults), author of the Nevermore young-adult fantasy trilogy.
In addition, Raab will be recognized for a monetary gift to the program to fund a lecture series beginning in May 2012. Each spring, a major author will be named The Diana M. Raab Distinguished Writer in Residence at Spalding University. The author will present a public lecture at Spalding and meet privately with Spalding MFA students and faculty. The recipient for Spring 2012 is to be announced at a later date. Raab was a member of the Spalding MFA program’s first incoming class in 2001.
A reception and cake-cutting begins at 4:45 p.m. in the Egan lobby. Afterward, guests are invited to stay for the program’s semiannual Celebration of Recently Published Books, featuring Spalding MFA faculty members, beginning at 6:00 p.m. Featured authors include K.L. Cook (Love Songs for the Quarantined, a collection of short stories), Lesléa Newman (Donovan’s Big Day, a picture book), Robert Finch (A Cape Cod Notebook, a collection of essays), and Susan Campbell Bartoletti (Naamah and the Ark at Night, a picture book). Cook, Newman, Finch, and Bartoletti will sign books afterward. Book sales will be handled by Follett Bookstore.
The birthday celebration and readings are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. Parking is available nearby.
WHO:
Tori Murden McClure, M.Div., J.D., M.F.A., President, Spalding University, author of A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean
Sena Jeter Naslund, Ph.D., Program Director, Spalding University’s brief-residency Master of Fine Arts in Writing Program
Silas House, acclaimed Appalachian author and Spalding MFA faculty member
Maureen Morehead, Kentucky Poet Laureate and Spalding MFA faculty member
Eric Schmiedl, award-winning playwright and Spalding MFA faculty member
WHEN: November 13, 2011.
Remarks, gift announcement, and reading at 3:30 p.m. Cake cutting at 4:45. Celebration of Recently Published Books at 6:00 p.m., with book signing to follow. Books provided for sale by Follett Bookstore.
WHERE: Egan Leadership Center, 901 S. Fourth Street.
Free parking is available in Egan Leadership Center lot, off Fourth Street.
WHY: In October 2001, Program Director Sena Naslund and Administrative Director Karen Mann launched the brief-residency MFA in Writing program. It was a nervous time, just a month after the September 11 terrorist attacks, and Naslund and Mann were uncertain whether the 40 enrolled students would still be willing to board planes to travel—some from as far as California and Alaska—to Spalding, not knowing what the as-yet-untested program would hold. Despite the founders’ concerns, all 40 students and eight faculty members made the trip, coming together for the first of the program’s intensive 10-day residencies. “Our goal was to create a superior, innovative creative writing program of national importance. We wanted the Spalding MFA to be intellectually stimulating and emotionally supportive—a uniquely wonderful place to work and study,” Naslund said.
Since the program launched, the number of low-residency MFA in Writing programs in the U.S. has jumped from five to about fifty, and Poets & Writers magazine has named the Spalding program a Top Ten low-residency MFA in Writing program every year since it began ranking low-residency programs in 2010. In the low-residency model, each semester begins with a residency in which students and faculty come together for workshops, lectures, and other curriculum; students are paired individually with faculty mentors and complete the rest of the semester in independent study conducted at home.
Since the first class entered the program in 2001, the program has quadrupled in size. Current enrollment stands at 167. Screenwriting and playwriting have been added to the original areas of fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and writing for children and young adults. In 2007, the program added a summer semester with residency abroad. The program has graduated 381 students from 40 states as well as several foreign countries. Alumni and current students have published or produced more than 240 books, films, and plays.
