We are heading toward the end of the semester and, of course, to the MFA Poetry Reading on Tuesday, December 13, at 7:00 p.m. in AF 209A. If you are around, please join us to celebrate our students and the conclusion of 2022.

I’m also pleased to announce the following work has been nominated for the AWP Intro Journals Project. Each year, any member program of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs can nominate only a few pieces for the competition. AWP announces the awards in the spring.

Fiction: “An Idle Afternoon on Rodeo Drive” by Audrey Fong
Poetry: “Oxygen” by Henneh Kwaku Kyereh, “I can’t sleep on the other side” by Emily Velasquez, “How To Resurrect A Beach House” by BFA student Amy Asmussen.

I also want to celebrate some faculty accomplishments, and I’m sure there are more than I’m naming here. Tom Zoellner has been awarded a Public Scholars grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities to work on his project titled Freedom’s Fortress. Jim Blaylock’s new novel Pennies from Heaven will be out any minute, Richard Bausch’s novel Playhouse will be out in February, and my own chapbook Gloss won the Midwest Chapbook Prize and will be out for the AWP Conference. This fall, Alicia Kozameh participated in the KJCC Poetry Series of creative writing in Spanish at New York University, and Mildred Lewis’s play /kom * plisit/ premiered this fall and is also available as a book. Our practice as writers continues to inform our teaching and mentoring of students.

If you have some good news, tell us what you’re up to. For those on Twitter or Instagram to follow us @ChapmanCWMFA

—Dr. Anna Leahy, Director of MFA in Creative Writing

Alum Achievements

Gregory Barraza
(MFA '97)

Gregory Barraza's book Critical Pedagogical Narratives of Long-Term Incarcerated Juveniles: Humanizing the Dehumanized was published by Rowman and Littlefield.

Steven Gallas
(MFA '18)

Steven Gallas's satire article "Joe Biden, Xi Jinping Bond Over Lindsay Lohan’s Netflix Rom-Com" was published in The Washington Post. Gallas is also now doing stand-up comedy.

Jason Thornberry
(MFA '21)

Jason Thornberry was featured this month in Response Magazine in an article discussing writing, teaching, and disability.

Student Achievements

Jay Dye
(MFA)

Jay Dye's poem "The Murder Vortex" was published in Phantom Kangaroo.

Dye's interview "Our own canon: A conversation with Nora Hikari" was published in Soapberry Review.

Also, Dye published the zine A Six Letter Word for Slime: Lemuria as Gender Identity.

Makena Metz
(Dual MFA/MA)

Makena Metz's musical Home for the Holidays will be featured for a concert reading on December 8th in Los Angeles. For registration information, visit the online event page.

Metz's song "Home for the Holidays" from the musical was presented in the Theatre Macher Showcase for the Alliance for Jewish Theatre.

Also, Metz's monologue "Reflection," from her play Blurrred: A Modern Fairy Tale, was published by Smith and Kraus.

Isabelle Stillman
(Dual MFA/MA)

Isabelle Stillman's story "With or Without the Dog" was published by Narrative Magazine.

Tlotlo Tsamaase
(MFA)

Tlotlo Tsamaase was a guest speaker at Futures Found in Translation at the Festival delle Scienze in Rome.

Tsamaase also conducted a book presentation in conjunction with her publisher in Florence and was a guest lecturer at the University of Milan.

Events

Inlandia is offering free writing workshops in poetry, prose, nonfiction, and memoir. The focus varies from writing about Black art to food writing to writing for children and young adults, and workshops for seniors will be available. To become part of the Inlandia community of writers, register today! All workshops are free and open to the public. Registration is required.

The final Tabula Poetica reading for the semester will be hosted by Dr. Genevieve Kaplan, on Tuesday, December 13, at 7 pm here on campus in AF 209A. Please join us during this poetry celebration featuring work from Chapman University's own MFA students.

AWP Conference Registrations

The MFA program will be headed to Seattle for AWP in March 2023! Information about registration waivers has gone out to current MFA students; current students should use a waiver to register. For alums interested in getting on the waitlist for a registration waiver or accessing online membership benefits, please email David at krausman@chapman.edu.

Volunteer Opportunities

Cris Mazza, fiction writer, memoirist, and assignment editor for American Book Review, is seeking volunteer book reviewers. She contacted our program precisely because of our reputation as book reviewers. ABR is published in hard copy and a digital edition available through university libraries and subscriptions. She assigns books for review rather than an open call for completed reviews. An assigned review is almost certain to be published in ABR. The wait-time for publication is long, but these are also substantive reviews and make a good portfolio for gaining paid work as a reviewer. Dr. Leahy is happy to meet with any student assigned a book review to discuss a draft. If interested, contact Cris Mazza at cmazza@uic.edu.

The 2023 Firecracker Awards for Independently Published Literature seeks volunteer readers. To apply, you must be a reader, writer, or editor engaged in the literary community. They encourage students of MFA or MA programs, alumni of programs, booksellers, staff members of arts organizations, instructors, and publishers to apply. To apply, complete the online application.

Publication Opportunities

Glassworks seeks nonfiction, fiction, poetry, hybrid pieces, and artwork both digitally and in print. The deadline for 2023 print issue consideration is December 15.

Honey Literary, a BIPOC-focused literary journal run by women, femme, and queer editors of color, is seeking submissions in the following categories: Essays, Hybrid, Animals, Interviews, Rants & Raves, and Valentines. This reading period (for Issue 5) ends December 15th.

Exposition Review seeks fiction, nonfiction, poetry, scripts for stage and screen, experimental narratives, visual arts, film, and comics for its eighth annual issue through December 31. They seek work exploring their issue's theme, "Lines." No fee, and it's a paying outlet.

Bridge, a Chicago-based not for profit publishing and programming organization, currently seeks fiction, spot illustrations, marginalia, hyper-short poetry, end-page comics, recorded readings, zines, reviews, photographer's chapbooks, and your turn testimonials for the upcoming volume of their annual journal. The deadline to submit is January 15, 2023.

The Philip Roth Residence in Creative Writing offers up to four months of unfettered writing time for a writer working on a first or second book. In the current application season, The Roth Residence is open to writers in any creative genre in the literary arts, including fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, graphic novel, etc. The residency provides an apartment in Bucknell's Writers' Cottage and a stipend of $5,000. The deadline is February 1, 2023.

Texas Review Press will be accepting submissions for the 2023 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize. The prize comes with $500, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book. Manuscripts must be between 20,000 and 50,000 words. There is $20 submission fee. The reading period will be January 1, 2023 to March 31, 2023.

Texas Review Press is accepting submission for the 2023 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize. The Prize comes with $500, a standard royalty contract, and 20 copies of the published book. Manuscripts must be no longer than 40 pages. There is a $20 submission fee. The reading period will be January 1, 2023 to March 31, 2023.

Kaleidoscope (a publication of United Disability Services) seeks fiction, nonfiction, poetry, artwork, and book reviews that challenge and overcome stereotypical, patronizing, and sentimental attitudes about disability. No fee, and it's a paying outlet.

Fresh Words is looking for poetry, short stories, essays, and plays for their regular monthly issues. Pieces are to be sent to freshwordsmagazine@gmail.com.

Poets & Writers has an extensive list of literary journals with website links and reading periods included, and you can filter by genre. There is also a good list of contests that rolls according to impending deadlines and a list of book review outlets.