American Literary Review Spring Student Reading March 29th

Please join us Friday, March 29th, for our second to last Graduate student reading of the year. The reading features poetry by Kyle McCord, Kara Dorris, Chelsea Wagenaar and Katy Brizendine, as well as non-fiction by April Murphy. All students and faculty are welcome to attend at 7:30 pm.

-Kyle McCord is the author of three books of poetry, including Sympathy from the Devil (Gold Wake 2013), which was a finalist for the Green Rose Prize and the Levine Prize.  He has work featured inBoston Review, Denver Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Verse and elsewhere. He's received grants or awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Baltic Writing Residency.  He's the lead content editor of LitBridge and co-edits iO: A Journal of New American Poetry.  He teaches at the University of North Texas in Denton.

-Kara Dorris is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Elective Affinities (Dancing Girl Press 2011) andNight Ride Home (Finishing Line Press 2012). Her poetry has appeared in several journals including The Tusculum Review, The Medulla Review, Harpur Palate, The Tulane Review, Cutbank, Crazyhorse as well as a the anthology Beauty is a Verb (Cinco Puntos Press 2011). She edits a poetry journal calledLingerpost and lives in Denton with four zany, mischievous dogs. 

-Chelsea Wagenaar is a doctoral candidate in poetry at UNT where she is also a teaching fellow. Her poems have been accepted or appeared recently in Gulf Coast, Ninth Letter, Salamander, and Barrow Street, and she is the 2012 winner of the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize through Nimrod. Her poetry manuscript has recently been a finalist for the Brittingham/Pollak Prize as well as the Perugia Press Poetry Prize. On bad days, she considers quitting graduate school to pursue the art of refurbishing thrift store furniture. 

-A 2012 finalist for the Richard J. Margolis Award, April Murphy is a doctoral candidate in creative writing at the University of North Texas. She currently serves as the Assistant Nonfiction Editor for American Literary Review. Her writing has been published in Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine and Mason’s Road. April is currently working on her first book Shrouded: Women Who Work With the Dead. She lives in Denton, TX with her dog Roan.

Visiting Writer Lisa Russ Spaar

Join us Tuesday, March 26th, as visiting writer Lisa Russ Spaar visits the UNT campus. Her reading will be in the Willis Library Forum and begins at 7pm.

Lisa Russ Spaar is the author of many collections of poetry, including Glass Town (1999, Red Hen Press), Blue Venus (Persea, 2004), Satin Cash (Persea, 2008), and Vanitas, Rough (Persea, 2012). She is the editor of Acquainted with the Night: Insomnia Poems, All that Mighty Heart: London Poems, and a collection of her essays, The Hide and Seek Muse: Annotations of Contemporary Poetry, a selection of her commentaries for The Chronicle of Higher Education, will be published in early March 2013. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Award, the Carole Weinstein Poetry Prize, and Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, and the Library of Virginia Award for Poetry. Her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry series, Poetry, Boston Review, Paris Review, Ploughshares, Slate, Shenandoah, The Kenyon Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many other journals and quarterlies. Her commentaries, essays, reviews, and columns about poetry have appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and elsewhere. Spaar writes a regular column about second books of poetry for the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Two Artists + Three Disciplines: Notes From a 20-Year Collaboration

Please join us tonight, Tuesday March 19^th, for Two Artists + Three Disciplines: Notes From a 20-Year Collaboration, a presentation by writer Ann McCutchan and visual artist Pat Alexander. The event begins at 7pm and is being held on the UNT campus, Sage Hall, room 176.

Since meeting in 1993 at an artist residency, Texas-based writer/musician Ann McCutchan and Baltimore visual artist Pat Alexander have collaborated on numerous intermedia projects, including a video, a book, and an evening-length work incorporating original music, dance, theater, and dynamic sculpture.  In this presentation of images and artifacts, they will discuss the ongoing evolution of their artistic friendship, the works they’ve created together and with others, and the value and challenges of working with artists outside one’s discipline.

 Ann McCutchan: A professional clarinetist for more than thirty years, Ann McCutchan specialized in contemporary music, frequently collaborating with composers. When she shifted her focus to writing, her work with Pat Alexander helped forge connections between music and words and expanded their visual elements. Ann is the author of four books, nine libretti or lyric texts for musical works, and numerous essays and articles on creativity and the arts.  She teaches creative writing at the University of North Texas and you can find her at www.annmccutchan.com

Pat Alexander: The need to consider music and text when collaborating with Ann McCutchan has enlivened Pat Alexander’s exploration of painting, drawing and installation. Alexander’s work has been widely exhibited in the United States as well as Japan and Germany.  She has received numerous foundation awards as well as residency grants in Turkey, France, Spain and Newfoundland.  She has been a Professor of Fine Arts at the Maryland Institute College of Art since 1993. www.patalexanderart.com

American Literary Review Graduate Student Reading

Please join us this evening, March 2nd, at 7:30 for an American Literary Review Graduate Reading, featuring poetry by Nate Logan and Jenny Molberg, fiction by Andy Briseño, and non-fiction by Shannon Sawyer. The event is free and open to UNT students and faculty.

Nate Logan has worked for American Literary Review as assistant poetry editor and poetry contest coordinator. Recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from delirious hem, Forklift, Ohio, and Ninth Letter among others. He is the editor of Spooky Girlfriend Press.

Jenny Molberg, a Texas native, earned her BA at Louisiana State University and her MFA at American University. During her time in Washington, D.C., she worked as an assistant editor at Poet Lore and was a Lannan Fellow at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Copper Nickel, Smartish Pace, Louisville Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review and The New Guard. Her poem "Narrative" was recently chosen as the 2013 winner of the Third Coast Poetry Contest, judged by Jane Hirshfield. She is a Teaching Fellow and PhD student in poetry at UNT.

Andy Briseno is a PhD student at UNT, where he is an assistant fiction editor for American Literary Review.

Shannon Sawyer is currently a PhD candidate at UNT, where she studies American literature of the 60s and 70s. She is working on a collection of essays about the criminal, awkward, and drug-induced lifestyles of her big fat redneck family.