Mark your calendars for Wednesday, June 5, 2019 from 7-8 p.m. to hear two innovative historical fiction writers--TaraShea Nesbit and Shena McAuliffe--share their insights on transmitting truth through fiction and making fictive lives feel real on the page. 

The event will take place in Harmon Hall, Room 136 on the St. Charles campus.

Nesbit’s book, The Wives of Los Alamos, a New York Times Editor's Choice and Amazon Best Book of the Month, uses a first-person plural point of view to explore the insular lives of the wives of the scientists who built the atomic bomb in the New Mexican desert during WWII. Nesbit's work has appeared in Granta, The Guardian, The Collagist, Fourth Genre and other journals. She joins us from Miami University in Ohio. 

McAuliffe’s book, The Good Echo, rooted in research on a forward-thinking yet flawed dentist of the 1930s, opens in the voice of a ghost child, telling the story of his mother and father. McAuliffe's short stories and essays have nominated for Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in various journals as well as in the Best American Short Stories anthologies. She joins us from Union College in New York.

Nesbit and McAuliffe are old friends, a nice reminder of writers’ working friendships. Come enjoy an energizing evening for writers and readers!

The event, part of the MFA in Writing program’s Craft Talks series, will take place in Harmon Hall, Room 136, on the main Lindenwood University campus in St. Charles. Admission is free. Co-sponsor Left Bank Books will have books available for the authors to sign.

A flier is attached HERE if you care to share via email or post in your office or favorite local coffee shop. Feel free to bring friends, co-workers, and family.

(Directions: From 70, travel south on Kingshighway. You will cross First Capitol Street, and enter campus by turning left on Watson Street, a small road at the northern edge of the old campus. On Watson Street, pass your first left into campus. Drive 0.1 miles and take your second left into campus. Harmon Hall is on your right, down the hill. Turn right and right again into the Harmon parking lot. Parking is available in front of Harmon Hall. Signs will be posted to mark the route.)

Feel free to contact Gillian Parrish, assistant professor, MFA in Writing program, with any questions: gparrish@lindenwood.edu

Enjoy watching Kij's Craft Talk (YouTube)

On Thursday, March 28, 2019 from 7-8 p.m. to hear award-winning fantasy and sci-fi author Kij Johnson shared her insights from her experiences as a novelist and editor. (One need not be a fantasy or science fiction fan to benefit from the craft talk—Johnson is an engaging speaker with keen insights into the inner workings of fiction!)

Johnson’s work has been recognized with three Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards, and the Hugo, the Sturgeon, and various other awards. Her most recent books are The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe (a re-telling of an H.P. Lovecraft tale through the eyes of a female protagonist—read a review from NPR); "The River Bank" (a sequel to Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows); and her first collection of short fiction, At the Mouth of the River of Bees, published by Kelly Link’s Small Beer Press (read a review). Johnson also wrote two wonderful novels set in Heian Japan: The Fox Woman and Fudoki. 

Kij has worked in publishing, comics, trading card and roleplaying games, and tech. She currently serves as associate professor of creative writing at the University of Kansas, where she is also associate director for the Gunn Center for the Study of Science Fiction.

The event, part of the MFA in Writing program’s Craft Talks series, will take place in Harmon Hall, Room 136, on the main Lindenwood University campus in St. Charles. Admission is free. Light refreshments will be served. Co-sponsor Left Bank Books will have books available for Kij Johnson to sign.

A flier is attached if you care to share via email or post in your office or favorite local coffee shop. Feel free to bring friends, co-workers, and family.

(Directions: From 70, travel south on Kingshighway. You will cross First Capitol Street, and enter campus by turning left on Watson Street, a small road at the northern edge of the old campus. On Watson Street, pass your first left into campus. Drive 0.1 miles and take your second left into campus. Harmon Hall is on your right, down the hill. Turn right and right again into the Harmon parking lot. Parking is available in front of Harmon Hall. Signs will be posted to mark the route.)

Feel free to contact Gillian Parrish, assistant professor, MFA in Writing program, with any questions: gparrish@lindenwood.edu

 The Lindenwood University MFA in Writing program will host author Susan Schultz on Saturday, Sept. 15, from 7 to 8 p.m. in the Old Post Office Building (815 Olive Street, St. Louis, MO 63101).

Schultz, who serves as a professor at the University of Hawaii, is the author of several books of criticism on contemporary American poetry, as well as books of her own prose poems, which have been described by Greg Bem in Rain Taxi as “dense and thorough [yet] also airy, exciting, provocative” and “adventurous.” Schultz’s creative work, which includes her Memory Cards books, written in conversation with thinkers such as Thomas Traherne, and a poetic chronicle of her mother’s decline from dementia, Dementia Blog, garnered an Elliott Cades Award for Literature in 2016.  She is the founder and editor of Tinfish Press, which has been publishing poetry from the Asia-Pacific region since 1995.

Schultz’s professional bio statements always include the fact that she is “a lifelong Cardinals fan”—and she is visiting STL all the way from Hawaii to catch some Cards games. As we all live much closer to the Cardinals home plate, why not spend the day at the ball park on Saturday, September 15 (Cards vs. Dodgers! Aaaaaand the day of the Lindenwood First Pitch!), grab a bite of dinner, and head over the Old Post Office to hear Schultz share about her writing process?

The Craft Talk series takes a participatory approach, providing a chance to talk with writers about their work. Left Bank Books will be joining us with copies of Schultz’s books. We invite the St. Louis literary community to come join the conversation! 

For more information, please contact Gillian Parrish, assistant professor in the MFA in Writing program, at gparrish@lindenwood.edu. See the event flier. Read more about Schultz. 

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The MFA in Writing program is pleased to host Kali VanBaale on Saturday August 11 from 3-4 p.m. in the Library and Academic Resources Center (LARC) Theatre, room 343. 

VanBaale, who is one of our MFA program faculty, writes novels in a vein that has been called “Midwestern Gothic.” Her novels have garnered awards as well as high praise, with Publisher’s Weekly observing that “Fiction doesn’t get more real than this.” Novelist Laura Kasischke says, "The Good Divide is everything a reader could ask a novel to be… Each sentence is a surprise, and every turned page brings more strange and familiar, beautiful and terrible events into higher and higher definition.” 

Read more about Kali—and come join us to hear her insights from her on the writing process and path to publication. View event flier. Please contact Gillian Parrish, assistant professor MFA in Writing program with questions: gparrish@lindenwood.edu.