Prof. Karen Volkman congratulates Laurel Nakanishi (MFA '12) at her thesis reading: A Dozen Ways to Drown
Susan Cheever will read nonfiction on Friday, September 28 at 7 pm in the Dell Brown Room of Turner Hall.
Cheever is the author of four memoirs: As Good As I could Be, Home Before Dark, Note Found in a Bottle and Treetops; biographies about Louisa May Alcott, Bill Wilson, and a typical American woman according to census numbers; five novels; a literary history of American Transcendentalism; and a book about addiction - Desire: Where Sex Meets Addiction. She is currently working on a biography of E.E. Cummings and a history of alcohol titled Drinking in America. Cheever has written essays, book reviews and articles for many publications including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Talk Magazine and The Washington Post. She was a regular writer at Newsweek and a columnist at Newsday for many years, participating on a Pulitzer Prize winning team at Newsday. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and an Associated Press award, as well as a member of the Authors Guild Council and a director of the Board of the Yaddo Corporation. Cheever teaches in the MFA programs at Bennington College and The New School.
Judy Blunt's essay, "Cooking from Scratch," is featured in the hand-crafted book Wo/Men at Work, the first imprint of the University of Utah’s growing Book Arts Program which is now off the presses and available for purchase from Red Butte Press. Wo/Men at Work captures two vignettes of American labor, each story set in Montana in the middle of the 20th century. One, Ralph Powell’s “Everything’s Dangerous,” describes the life of cowboys who choose to perform in rodeos, reflecting both the economics of the time as well as the cowboy’s pride in his multi-faceted skills. The story was written in 1941 as part of a Federal Writers Project but not published until now. On the literal flip side of the book is a contemporary essay, “Cooking from Scratch,” composed for the book by writer Judy Blunt, author of the 2002 memoir Breaking Clean. Blunt writes about growing up on a Montana ranch in the 1950s and explores the notion of “women’s work” in the context of running a ranch as well as how that upbringing influences her—and her family members—today.
Sharma Shields (MFA '04) is the author of the short story collection Favorite Monster, winner of the Autumn House Fiction Contest. Shields' short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Iowa Review, Fugue, and The Sonora Review. Her numerous awards include the Tim McGinnis Award for Humor, a grant from Artist Trust and the A.B. Guthrie Award for Outstanding Prose. Shields lives in Spokane with her husband and young son. As an Information Specialist for the Spokane County Library District, she founded T.W.I.N.E. — Teen Writers of the Inland Empire — a writing club for area youth.
J.Robert Lennon's (MFA '95) latest novel, Familiar, will be coming out with Graywolf Press in October. Lennon is the author of seven novels, including Castle and Mailman, and a story collection, Pieces for the Left Hand. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Playboy, and The New Yorker. Lennon lives in Ithaca, New York, where he teaches writing at Cornell University.
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual, somber visit to her son Silas’s grave when something changes. Actually, everything changes: her car, her clothes, her body. When she arrives back home, her life is familiar—but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother Sam is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger, than she remembers. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own. Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? Elisa believed that Silas was doomed from the start, but now that he is alive, what can she do to repair her strained relations with her children? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is—something that might be impossible, for Elisa, for anyone. In FAMILIAR, J. Robert Lennon continues his profound and exhilarating exploration of the surreal undercurrents of contemporary American life.
Creative Writing Program | Department of English
Liberal Arts 133 | The University of Montana
Missoula, MT 59812-6120
Phone: (406) 243-5231 | Fax: (406) 243-2556
Email: Creative Writing Program Coordinator at karin.schalm@mso.umt.edu
Graphics, Design, and Layout by Lindsey Weber, Monica Koemans and Brook Davidson of Spectral Fusion Designs.
Copyright The University of Montana, 2007. All Rights Reserved.
All photographs Aimee Gervais Lewis.
