Literary Lounge with Bunny Goodjohn and Writers from the Stonecoast MFA program
- Friday, October 19th, 7:30pm
- Randolph College professor Bunny Goodjohn, and MFA writing students from Stonecoast, will answer questions about regional MFA programs
Anthony D’Aries is the author of The Language of Men: A Memoir (Hudson Whitman/Excelsior College Press, 2012). He received the 2010 PEN/New England Discovery Award in Nonfiction. His work has appeared in The Literary Review, Solstice: a Magazine of Diverse Voices, The Good Men Project, and two anthologies: Tarnished: True Tales of Innocence Lost (Pinchback Press) and All the Livelong Day: An Anthology of Writings about Work (Motes Books). Excerpts from The Language of Men received honorable mention for Fourth Genre’s Michael Steinberg Essay Prize and a nomination for the 2011 Best of the Net nonfiction award. Anthony served as Randolph College’s 2011 Emerging Writer-in-Residence. A graduate of the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program, he currently teaches literacy and creative writing in correctional facilities in Massachusetts.
Award-winning North Carolina author Sheila Webster Boneham writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, much of it focused on animals, nature, and travel. An omnivorous reader, Sheila resists conventional labels and does not believe in drawing lines between literary and commercial writing. She is currently working on several projects: a series of essays about traveling the U.S. by train, a memoir cum wide-ranging meditation on the human-canine connection, a novel, several poems, a screenplay, and a mystery series. Sheila has taught writing for many years in the U.S. and abroad, and holds a doctorate in folklore from Indiana University. For fun she takes long walks and plays with animals.
Bunny Goodjohn’s novel Sticklebacks and Snow Globes was published in America (Permanent Press), Australia (Scribe) and Russia (Centrepolygraph) and was included on the Kirkus Best of 2007 list. She has published in various journals including The Texas Review, The Cortland Review, Zone 3, and Connecticut Review, and recently won Reed Magazine’s Edwin Markham Poetry Prize 2011. Bunny teaches English at Randolph College in Virginia and is working on a novel entitled The Beginning Things and on Running 24 North, a collection of poetry. She blogs at www.bagoodjohn.blogspot.com
Meriah Crawford is a writer, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and a private investigator. She has also been a horseback riding instructor, library page, programmer, prepress tech, graphic designer, technical editor, software tester, systems analyst, program manager, and has even been paid to put M&Ms into little baggies for bingo. Meriah’s published writing includes short stories, a variety of non-fiction work, and a poem about semi-colons. For more information, visit www.mlcrawford.com. Or, if you buy her a glass of port, she’ll tell you some of the stories she can’t put into writing.
Deborah Williamson is a 2010 graduate of Stonecoast MFA at University of Southern Maine. While studying the nonfiction genre, she developed a passion for “mosaic” or “braided” essays, which weave seeming disparate elements into a multi-layered whole. Williamson is a co-owner of a family farm, Seven Oaks Lavender Farm, in Virginia. As a small farmer, Williamson’s writing often includes her perspective on agriculture, entrepreneurism, farm politics, and the local food movement. Family history, family relationships, and frank self-reflection are equally important themes in her writing. Williamson is at work on a memoir that contains elements of all the aforementioned interests.
