English MFA News
Paula Coomer (M.F.A. 1999). Coomer’s seventh book and second novel, "Jagged Edge of the Sky," will be released March 29, 2016. The novel will have its local launch April 29 at the Lewis-Clark Center for Arts and History in Lewiston and Spokane launch on April 2 at Auntie's Bookstore. More about Coomer is available at www.paulamariecoomer.com.
Sayantani Dasgupta (M.F.A. 2009, Lecturer) has two books forthcoming: a chapbook "The House of Nails: Notes on a New Delhi Childhood" (Red Bird Press, MN) and a collection of long form essays titled "Oscillation: Essays on India, America and the In-Between" (Two Sylvias Press, WA). Her essay “My Grandfather's Red Chair” has also recently won first place in Dukool Magazine’s 2016 Creative Nonfiction Contest.
Canese Jarboe (Second-Year Poetry) accepted an editorial internship with River Styx for the summer of 2016. Her poem "herbal abortion" was published in Queen Mob's Teahouse and three of her poems appeared in Noble/Gas Quarterly. Jarboe will serve as co-editor-in-chief of Fugue for 2016-2017.
Jeff P. Jones (M.F.A. 2005, Lecturer). Jones's novel "Love Give Us One Death" is forthcoming from Texas Review Press, having won the George Garrett Fiction Prize. He has recently published short stories in The Antioch Review and Water~Stone Review, and a poem is forthcoming from Hotel Amerika. One of his stories won the 2015 Meridian Editors' Prize.
Courtney Kersten (Third-Year Nonfiction). Kersten’s essay “The Season for Shapeshifting” is forthcoming from The Black Warrior Review. Her essay “The Disappearing Midwestern Girlhood” can be found in the latest issue of Storm Cellar Quarterly.
Annie Lampman (M.F.A. 2009) has accepted a clinical assistant professor of creative writing position with the WSU Honors College starting August 2016. In fall ’15 she was named head fiction editor for the literary journal Blood Orange Review. Her essay, “The Joints That Hold Us Together” was published by The Massachusetts Review (Fall ’15) and selected by the MR editors for a 2016 Pushcart Prize nomination. Her poem “War and Surgery” won first place (and a Kindle Voyage) in the Everybody Writes contest (November 2015); her poem “Everything You Are” is forthcoming from The Meadow (Summer 2016); and her poem “Passage” was selected for inclusion in the 2016 anthology Poetry & Place. Her essay “Moving Out” was published by Mothers Always Write and Ten to Twenty (Spring 2016); her essay “Confessions of Uncharitable Thoughts Toward Others” was republished by The HerStories Project (February 17, 2016); and her essay “Into the Desert” from her 2014 BLM wilderness artist in residence experience is forthcoming from High Desert Journal (Fall 2016).
Grant Maierhofer (First-Year Fiction). Maierhofer recently published or has short fiction forthcoming at Queen Mob's Teahouse and Rivista Letteraria. His essay, "The Novelist as Failure, the Language as Failing; a Recursive Reading of Melville's Pierre" was recently published via 3:AM Magazine. His second novel, "Postures," was published last fall, and "PX138 3100-2686 User's Manual," an experimental novella, is forthcoming in spring from Solar Luxuriance.
Bethany Maile (B.S. English 2009, Lecturer). Maile's essay "Anything Will Be Easy After This" was listed as a notable selection in this year's Best American Essays. Her essay "We Sought But Couldn't Find: Coming Up Empty in David Shields' 'Death Is The Mother of Beauty'" is forthcoming in the anthology Essay Daily: A Reader (Coffee House Press).
Ron McFarland (Professor of English) has authored a biography of Lt. Col. Edward J. Steptoe (1815-1865), published by McFarland & Co. (Jefferson, NC): "Edward J. Steptoe and the Indian Wars." Heavily outnumbered by tribes from the Northern Plateau region, Steptoe’s troops managed a nearly miraculous escape on the night of May 17, 1858. Steptoe Butte, located between Pullman and Spokane, is named in his memory.
Cameron McGill (First-Year Poetry). McGill was recently named Fugue's poetry editor for the coming 2016-17 academic year.
Tiffany Midge (M.F.A. 2008). Midge’s most recent poetry collection, "The Woman Who Married a Bear," is just out from University of New Mexico Press and won the Kenyon Review Earthworks Prize. Midge is Moscow Idaho’s inaugural poet laureate and is a contributor for Indian Country Today Media Network. Her nonfiction is featured online in The Toast, Butter Blog; fiction online at Hinchas de Poesia; and recent poems featured online at Okey-Pankey and Electric Literature. Follow @TiffanyMidge on Twitter
E.M. Sloan’s (M.F.A. 2008) historical nonfiction book, "When Songbirds Returned to Paris," was published in December, 2015, by Booktrope. The story is told from a unique perspective through the author’s bloodline to Cecily Lefort, the protagonist and secret agent in France during WWII. Sloan authentically recreates Cecily’s life — through poignant dialogue — from the discovery of both British and French war documents, letters and archives. This book is the culmination of Sloan’s 2008 M.F.A. in creative nonfiction from UI, plus 12 years of international research. Sloan will be presenting workshops on her research strategies in New Mexico in May, 2016, and the book is being nominated for the American Library in Paris Book Award.
Alexandra Teague (Assistant Professor of Poetry). Teague's poems have recently appeared in Copper Nickel, Beloit Poetry Journal, Pleiades, and Indiana Review, and are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Barrow Street, and elsewhere. Her second book, "The Wise and Foolish Builders," was published by Persea in Spring 2015 and has been positively reviewed by Booklist, The Huffington Post, The Rumpus and elsewhere. After book launches in Moscow, at the AWP convention, and in San Francisco, she has read at literary festivals and universities including San Francisco’s Litcrawl, The Marin Poetry Center and The Blacksmith House series in Cambridge. At AWP 2016, she will join Cynthia Marie Hoffman, Nicky Beer, Kathryn Nuernberger and John Nieves on a panel called Serial Killers: How to Survive the Series Poem.
David Thacker (M.F.A. 2010). Thacker’s poems have appeared recently in Best New Poets 2015, Mid-American Review, Vinyl, Poet Lore and Fogged Clarity. New poems will soon appear in Plume, Subtropics and Colorado Review. He is currently a Ph.D. student in poetry and poetics at Florida State University.
Lauren Westerfield (First-Year Nonfiction). Westerfield was recently named the next nonfiction editor for Fugue Literary Journal for the coming 2016-17 academic year and looks forward to representing both Fugue and The Rumpus (where she is an Assistant Essays Editor) at this year's AWP conference in Los Angeles.
Joe Wilkins (M.F.A. 2007). Wilkins is the author of a memoir, "The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry," winner of a 2014 GLCA New Writers Award, and two previous books of poetry, "Notes from the Journey Westward" and "Killing the Murnion Dogs." His most recent full-length collection, "When We Were Birds," was selected by Billy Collins for the Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series. A Pushcart Prize winner and National Magazine Award finalist, Wilkins has published essays, poems and stories in The Georgia Review, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, The Sun, Orion and Slate, among other venues. As the winner of the Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency from PEN Northwest, he and his family spent the summer of 2015 in an off-the-grid cabin along the Rogue River in the Klamath Mountains of Oregon. Wilkins lives with his family in western Oregon, where he teaches writing at Linfield College.
Lindsay Wilson (M.F.A. 2006). Wilson's book of poetry "No Elegies" won Quercus Review Press’s spring book award in 2014 and was published in 2015. In Spring 2016, he is returning to Moscow, ID, for an alumni reading at Book People.
Robert Wrigley (Professor of Poetry). Wrigley’s new book tentatively titled "BOX" will be published by Penguin in April, 2017. Poems have recently appeared in The Moth (Ireland), Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria), Fogged Clarity, Shenandoah, Poetry Northwest, Cascadia Review and Southampton Review. His poems have also been translated into German by Ron Winkler, in two magazines: Manuskripte (Austria) and Ostragehege (Dresden). In April 2016, he’ll be Distinguished Visiting Poet at the University of Nevada-Reno. Next winter (Jan-March) 2017, after his UI retirement, he'll be Lois & Willard Mackey Distinguished Professor of Creative Writing, at Beloit College, in Wisconsin.