Announcing the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry & Creative Prose Winners

Transcription

1 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Chris Jones Announcing the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry & Creative Prose Winners The Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose offers twelve emerging Minnesota writers the opportunity to work intensively with six nationally acclaimed writers of prose and poetry. Selected participants work throughout the year with the six mentors, and all participants and mentors give public readings at the Loft. Dates for those readings will be announced this fall. This program is funded by the Jerome Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Park Construction Company, and by the generous support of Loft members ENTRIES AND SELECTIONS The Loft Literary Center received 277 entries to the Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose, from which the preliminary judges had the difficult task of choosing 20 finalists per genre. We received 99 entries in nonfiction; 90 poetry applications; and 87 fiction submissions. Nonfiction Selections Nonfiction mentors Kao Kalia Yang and Dani Shapiro selected Annette Schiebout, Jenny Krueger, Molly Cooney, and Kinzy Janssen for the program. Honorable mentions went to Jody Lulich, and Lucie B. Amundsen. Finalists are Kelly Westhoff, Glenda Reed, Luke Reiter, Carissa Jean Tobin, Rhea Davison-Edwards, Mackenzie Epping, Katherine Schaefer, Amy Fladeboe, Kristin Bridges, Jessica Lind Peterson, Kimberly J. Brown, Carolyn Grose, Michele Semerit Strachan, and Lori Young-Williams. Poetry Selections Poetry mentors Matt Rasmussen and Patricia Smith chose poets Timothy Otte, Rhea Davison-Edwards, April Gibson, and Kate Lucas.

2 Honorable mentions went to Jacob Little and Sonja Sharp. Finalists are Tish Jones, Eva Song Margolis, Isela Xitlali Gomez, Valerie Deus, Jasmin Rae Ziegler, Anna Binkovitz, Amy Fladeboe, Hallie Wiederholt, Todd Pederson, Michael Lee, Gabriella Anais Deal- Marquez, Krisanne Dattir, Rebecca T. Fremo, and Louisa Castner. Fiction Selections Fiction writers selected for the program by mentors Diego Vázquez, Jr. and Ru Freeman are Karlyn Coleman, Rebecca Diaz, Susan A. Wolter, and Mary Stein. Honorable mentions went to Beth Mayer and Ben Barnhart. Finalists are Nicole Montana, Bridgit Albrecht, Laura Kaliebe, Amit Bhati, Cyril Thomas, Alison Morse, Jada N. Vaughn, Sophia Kim, Leslie Bazzett, Beth Dalby, Trisha Collopy, Kristin Bridges, Cristina Pippa, and Eugénie de Rosier. BIOS FOR THE LOFT MENTOR SERIES WINNERS Karlyn Coleman was recently awarded a Minnesota Emerging Writers Grant. Her stories have been published in Paper Darts, McSweeney s, Canvas and Revolver. Her story, Ice Roads was awarded first place in fiction and is forthcoming in Crab Orchard Review. She lives in South Minneapolis with her husband, two boys, and a dog named Happy. Molly Cooney is a queer writer, mother, and teacher, who spends as much time as possible outdoors. She graduated with her MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and her work has appeared in The Gettysburg Review and The North Dakota Quarterly. When she s not paddling in Arctic rivers or backpacking in the mountains, Molly lives in a century old house with her partner, one-year-old baby, and four-legged friends. Rhea Davison-Edwards is a writer from the greater Twin Cities area. She has a bachelor's degree in English Literature, with a Creative Writing Emphasis, from the University of Minnesota, and an MFA from Minnesota State University in Mankato. She enjoys working across genres. Rebecca Diaz graduated from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University with her BA in Writing & Literature. She is a lover of eco-rebels regardless of the fact she was raised by Christian fundamentalists in rural Crookston, MN. She currently lives in northwest Minnesota with her dog near her one true love, the Red Lake River, where she also examines the tributaries of language, healing, and zealotry addiction. Rebecca has been published in S(y)mposium, BASE: Building Alliances for Social Engagement, Flaneur Foundry Arts Journal, fre-quen-cy: the poethics of change, Monkey Puzzle Magazine, Stays Magazine, and others.

3 April Gibson is a poet and essayist. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Chicago State University. Her work can be found in Naugatuck River Review, As/Us, Tidal Basin Review, Literary Mama and elsewhere. A Chicago native, April currently resides in Edina, Minnesota with her two sons. Kinzy Janssen is an editor, blogger, and poet living in St. Paul whose work has been published in Wisconsin People & Ideas, Volume One, and Innisfree Poetry Journal. She is currently Social Media Editor at The Riveter Magazine and News Editor at StaffingTalk.com. She s always in the mood for karaoke and craft beer, and fancies herself a gardener after one semi-successful year. She loves musing about the Midwest and its boundaries, regionalisms, and weather. Jennifer Krueger is a freelance writer living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work has appeared in Revolver, The Evening Street Review, Front Porch Journal, and elsewhere. She has also published over one dozen non-fiction books for children under a pseudonym. She is a stay-at-home mom who has taken classes at The Loft Literary Center for the past four years. Kate Lucas works as a writer and educator in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poems and essay writing have appeared in sleet magazine; rock, paper, scissors; Studio One; and the anthology From the Pews in the Back, and she received an Honorable Mention in the 2013 Loft Mentor Series for Poetry. She received her MFA from Hamline University and served as assistant poetry editor for Water~Stone in Timothy Otte writes texts that are meant to be both read & performed. As an artist he is interested in hybridity and performance and has collaborated with many artists in a variety of mediums. He is from and lives in the Twin Cities. Annette Schiebout travels, sings, writes and performs fiction, creative nonfiction and poetry with Prairie Fire Lady Choir, TalkingImageConnection, Cracked Walnut, Urban Hillbilly, Story Slam and she is published in rps, Ó Bhéal, and others. Her poetry film received an Audience Choice Award at the Co-Kisser Poetry and Film Festival in 2012 and she was a SASE Writer to Writer mentee through Intermedia Arts. Annette is a freelance writer, creative consultant and adjunct English professor living in the Twin Cities. Mary Stein s fiction can be found or is forthcoming in Caketrain, The Brooklyn Rail, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review and Spartan Lit. Her critical writing can be found online at Numéro Cinq. She received her MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been nominated for New Stories from the Midwest. She currently teaches through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshops and is the assistant editor of Conduit literary magazine. S. A. Wolter spent her childhood on a cattle ranch and farm in northwestern North Dakota. Following career opportunities and paychecks, she has lived most of her adult life in the metropolitan areas of Phoenix, Saint Paul, and Minneapolis. She currently

4 resides in Eden Prairie with her husband, a transplanted Californian; two children, with whom laughter is always an option; and her writing companion, a small dog named Macy. BIOS FOR THE MENTORS Ru Freeman was born into a family of writers and many boys in Colombo, Sri Lanka. After a year of informal study at Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, she arrived in the United States with a Parker ink pen and a box of Staedler pencils to attend Bates College in Maine. She completed her Masters in Labor Relations at the University of Colombo, and worked in the field of American and international humanitarian assistance and workers rights. Her political writing has appeared in English and in translation. Her creative work has appeared or is forthcoming in VQR, Guernica, World Literature Today and elsewhere. She is a contributing editorial board member of the Asian American Literary Review, and a fellow of the Bread Loaf Writer s Conference. She is the author of the novel A Disobedient Girl (Atria/Simon & Schuster, 2009), which was long-listed for the DCS Prize for South Asian Literature, and translated into several languages. Her new novel, On Sal Mal Lane, is published by Graywolf Press in She calls both Sri Lanka and America home and writes about the people and countries underneath her skin. Matt Rasmussen s poetry has been published in Gulf Coast, Cimarron Review, H_NGM_N, Water~Stone Review, New York Quarterly, Paper Darts, and at Poets.org. He s received awards, grants, and residencies from The Bush Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The Minnesota State Arts Board, Jerome Foundation, Intermedia Arts, The Anderson Center in Red Wing, MN, and The Corporation of Yaddo. He is a 2014 Pushcart Prize winner, a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and teaches at Gustavus Adolphus College. His first book of poems, Black Aperture, won the 2012 Walt Whitman Award and was a finalist for the National Book Award in Dani Shapiro is the bestselling author of the memoirs Devotion and Slow Motion, and five novels including Black & White and Family History. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Tin House, One Story, Elle, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times, and has been widely anthologized. She has taught in the writing programs at Columbia, NYU, The New School and Wesleyan University, and she is cofounder of the Sirenland Writers Conference in Positano, Italy. She is a contributing editor at Travel + Leisure. She lives with her family in Litchfield County, Connecticut. Her new book, Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, was published in Called a testament to the power of words to change lives, Patricia Smith is a renaissance artist of unmistakable signature, recognized as a force in the fields of poetry, playwriting, fiction, performance and creative collaboration. She is the author of six critically-acknowledged volumes of poetry, including Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the 2013 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy American Poets and finalist for the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America;

5 Blood Dazzler (a National Book Award finalist), and Teahouse of the Almighty (a National Poetry Series winner), all from Coffee House Press; Close to Death and Big Towns, Big Talk, both from Zoland Books, and Life According to Motown, just released by Tia Chucha Press in a special 20th anniversary edition. She also edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. She is a Cave Canem faculty member, a professor of English at CUNY/College of Staten Island, and a faculty member of the Sierra Nevada MFA program. Diego Vázquez, Jr. is a poet, novelist, storyteller. Vázquez comes from indigenous migrants who crossed invisible lines to become immigrants under the same sky. He has never met an illegal human. He is grateful for his ongoing participation in The Women s Writing Program at the Ramsey County Correctional Facility. This remarkable experience allows him new insights into the strength and joy of the human heart. Vázquez is the recipient of multiple awards and grants and is the author of Growing Through the Ugly. He is completing work on a forthcoming novel, Border Town Sky. Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer, is the co-founder of a company dedicated to helping immigrants with writing, translating, and business services. Yang is a graduate of Carleton College and Columbia University. She is currently working on her second manuscript, Still, Fluttering Heart: The Second Album. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Kao Kalia Yang is a teacher, public speaker, and writer. ###END### Incorporated in 1975, The Loft Literary Center is one of the nation s leading independent literary centers. The Loft advances the artistic development of writers, fosters a thriving literary community, and inspires a passion for literature.