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AWP 2015 Conference!
Thanks to all who represented our program well during the 2015 Association of Writers and Writing Programs' Conference and Bookfair in Minneapolis. Ten Ashland MFA faculty, one current student, and one alumna were involved as presenters, participating in a total of 15 different panels. Additional faculty members and students (past and present) were involved in off-site readings, book signings, and other events, including Jill Christman who is currently serving on the AWP board.
The great folks at AWP are already looking ahead to next year. Panel proposals for the 2016 conference in Los Angeles are due May 1st.
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Summer Residency News
Our line up for this summer is shaping up! Check the MFA website residency pages for updates as we start to schedule our faculty readings, update presentation titles, and add new events. Dates and times are already listed for our three main visiting writers (below): Lee Martin, Patricia Henley, and Patricia Smith.
Financial Aid Information
The priority deadlines for financial aid are March 1 for Summer, and May 1 for Fall/Spring. If you miss these priority deadlines, it does not mean that you are no longer eligible for aid. Students and prospective students may apply for aid at any time prior to the summer residency.
Visit http://www.ashland.edu/graduate/financial-aid to review steps to apply for financial aid.
New and continuing students who wish to apply for financial aid should complete a FAFSA, a summer loan application, and a fall/spring loan application. Details are available at the link above.
A reminder to graduating students: If you plan to request funding for summer 2015, you must submit a FAFSA and summer loan application.
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River Teeth Conference in May
The River Teeth Nonfiction Conference on May 29 - 31 will feature guest presenters Cheryl Strayed and Jerald Walker along with several MFA faculty members and other nonfiction stars. If you missed the April 15 deadline to take advantage of the super special Ashland MFA discount you can still apply. But don't wait too much longer: we are very close to reaching our maximum enrollment. See the River Teeth website for more information including a tentative schedule, speaker bios, and online registration.
Other Ashland News to Note:
Ashland University is seeking five writing assistants to assist other graduate students. Graduate programs you might work with include American History and Government, Business, Education, Health and Risk Communication, Leadership Studies, Nursing & Health Sciences, or Criminal Justice. Pay is $20/hr, up to 10 hours total per semester. The work may be done on-line. If interested, contact Susan Blake, sblake@ashland.edu.
Ashland University has a new president, Dr. Carlos Campo... and his background is in English! Read more.
A series of letters exchanged between novelist C.S. Lewis and a former Ashland College professor will be displayed on the Ashland University campus as part of an event set for May 7 at 7 p.m. in Myers Convocation Center. The event is free and open to the public. Read more.
Two Ashland Poetry Press books, J. David Cummings' Tancho and Richard Jackson's Out of Place, won the gold and silver prizes, respectively, in the Benjamin Franklin Awards for poetry. The awards are given out annually by the Independent Book Publishers Association.
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Faculty News
Follow @ashlandmfa on Twitter and the Ashland University MFA Program Facebook page for regular updates about our faculty, staff, alumni, and students.
Dan Lehman
Nonfiction Faculty
Dan Lehman has settled in for a semester in Taichung, Taiwan, where he is teaching American Literature and Advanced Composition during the Spring Semester at Providence University. Dan will deliver a lecture in May at the university on Everything I Never Told You, the award-winning novel written by AU MFA fiction faculty colleague Celeste Ng. It is Dan's hope to introduce this fine novel to scholars and students of contemporary American literature in Taiwan and to continue to develop a market for the novel at his new home away from home.
Mark Neely
Poetry Faculty
Mark's new book, Dirty Bomb, is now available from Oberlin College Press. His first book Beasts of the Hill won the 2011 FIELD Poetry Prize. Read more about the book, including a sampling of the poems.
Mark Irwin
Poetry Faculty
Mark's poem "When I See This X-Ray of a Hand's" and his new book from Ashland Poetry Press, American Urn, were featured on Poetry Daily on March 16, 2015.
Angie Estes
Poetry Faculty
Angie recently gave a reading of her poems at the University of North Texas and also read her work as part of the FIELD Poetry Prize Winners panel at AWP in Minneapolis. She also attended the awards ceremony at Claremont Graduate University in California to receive the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award on April 16. Congratulations once again to Angie for winning this major prize!
Stephen Haven, Director
Poetry Faculty
Steve's poem "Heartland" was included in Asheville Poetry Review: 20th Anniversary Issue, 1994-2014. His poem originally appeared in a 2011 issue of Asheville Poetry Review. Asheville Poetry Review is distributed nation-wide and in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales. In the U.S. the journal is carried by most Barnes and Noble bookstores.
Steve also published the essay "The Persistance of Poetry" in the Spring 2015 issue of North American Review. The essay discusses changes in Chinese poetry in the 20th and 21st centuries and responds to an article on Chinese poetry published in the North American Review in 1901. In the same issue of the journal, Steve also published six collaborative translations from the poetry of three Chinese contemporary poets: Yang Jian, Lan Lan, and Mo Fei. His co-translator is Li Yongyi, Professor of English at China's Chongqing University.
Kate Hopper
Nonfiction Faculty
Kate's third book, Silent Running is now available, published by Triumph Books. Kate co-authored the book with Robyn Schneider. It is the memoir of a family's journey with autism and running. Read the prologue here.
Jill Christman
Nonfiction Faculty
In Jill Christman’s writer life, she enjoyed the opportunity to think about the first essay she ever wrote (perhaps)—“A Stone Pear”—in this month’s online version of The Fourth River: “The Frog Slip of Time.” Also, a new essay, “Leading the Children Out of Town” will appear in the summer issue of Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers (ten years in the making because it took her the longest time to figure out what she was trying to say and finally found inspiration in The Pied Piper).
In her AWP-board role, Jill hopes y’all had a fantastic time in Minneapolis. She is chairing the 2017 conference committee for the 50th-anniversary celebration in Washington, DC, so if you have any great ideas, please let her know! Panel proposals for the 2016 conference in Los Angeles are due May 1st.
Bob Root
Nonfiction Faculty
Bob Root has contracted to publish Walking Home Ground: Time, Terrain, Transition with Wisconsin Historical Society Press. It’s a book about coming to terms with where you live through reading earlier writers and traveling their landscapes as well as wandering your own. Bob's craft essay from the 2014 AWP, "The Matter of My Book," went online at Triquarterly on April 15.
 Leila Phillip
Nonfiction Faculty
Leila has a new book coming out this fall with New Rivers Press. Water Rising is a collection of her poetry combined with watercolors by the visual artist, Garth Evans. Publication date is September 15, 2015.
Water Rising has already been getting strong praise. Chris Merrill wrote: "Water Rising is a marvelous collaboration between an artist and a writer, in which lines and colors and words blend and merge to celebrate a small corner of the world. Garth Evans and Leila Philip teach us how to see a place anew, as if a secret were breaking open. And now that we know the secret, which is that every place demands love and attention, nothing will ever be the same again.”
Water Rising began as a collaboration between a visual artist and a writer but has grown into a musical collaboration with internationally renowned composer Shirish Korde. To learn more about this art collaboration, visit the website www.water-rising.com.
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Alumni News
Samir Atassi 
Class of 2014
Samir wrote an article for the River Teeth website titled Where Have All the Overmedicated Mermaids Gone. It is a review of Elissa Washuta's memoir My Body Is a Book of Rules.
Grace Curtis 
Class of 2010
Grace participated in the Borderlands Reading Series at Main Street Books in Mansfield, Ohio, on Saturday, April 18th. She read from her book The Shape of a Box. Grace was also interviewed by Ron Rollins for the Dayton radio show Miami Valley Voices which aired on March 5 on WHIO (1200) radio. Grace's prose poem "Brown Dress" was selected by Silver Birch Press to be part of their "Me, As a Child" online series.
Marilyn Bousquin 
Class of 2011
Marilyn was part of an AWP Conference panel, "The Power of Vulnerability in Nonfiction." The panel also included MFA student and former administrative director Sarah M. Wells, MFA faculty members Bonnie Rough and Kate Hopper, and nonfiction great Brenda Miller.
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Program Staff
Erika Gallion
Summer Intern 2015
Erika will spend most of her summer completing an internship at the American University in Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in Kent State University's Higher Education Administration and Student Personnel Program.
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