Writing Eastern Kentucky conference set for Nov. 14
The Morehead Writing Project and Montgomery County Council for the Arts have announced that Morehead State University’s creative writing faculty and 2009 Chaffin Award winner will serve as the featured speakers at the Writing Eastern Kentucky conference on Saturday, Nov. 14, in Mt. Sterling.
MSU creative writing faculty Crystal Wilkinson, Chris Holbrook, George Eklund, and Rebecca Howell will join 2009 Chaffin Award winner Mark Powell to lead sessions at the conference for both writers and teachers of writing. The focus of the conference, which is sponsored by the MSU Center for Regional Engagement, is on writing about place and offers sessions based on that theme. A number of regional authors and teachers also will lead sessions.
Preregister for the conference by Oct. 15 for just $40; advance register by Nov. 2 for $50; or pay $65 at the door. The day will conclude with the 2009 Chaffin Award presentation, a reading by the award winner, and a book signing by the many published authors presenting at the conference. The reception, award ceremony, and book signing are free and open to the public. The registration form and more conference details are available at http://moreheadwritingproject.org/wekycon.html.
The conference fee includes four hours of professional development credit for teachers.
MSU's writer-in-residence, Wilkinson was the first place winner of the 2008 Denny C. Plattner Award in Poetry from Appalachian Heritage for her poem “Terrain” and is the author of “Blackberries, Blackberries” and “Water Street.” Nominated for both the Orange Prize and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, she has received recognition from The Kentucky Foundation for Women, The Kentucky Arts Council, The Mary Anderson Center for the Arts, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and is a recipient of the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Literature. Her short stories, poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies. She also has taught in the brief residency MFA in Writing Program at Spalding University and the MFA in Creative Writing at Indiana University-Bloomington.
Coordinator of MSU's newly formed BFA in Creative Writing Program and an associate professor of English, Holbrook recently released his second book of fiction, “Upheaval,” a collection of stories. Before joining MSU in 2003, Holbrook taught English at Alice Lloyd College. He earned an M.F.A. degree in fiction writing at the University of Iowa and has completed residency fellowships at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Mass., and at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Holbrook has won numerous awards for his writing, including MSU’s Thomas and Lillie D. Chaffin Award for Appalachian writing for “Hell and Ohio: Stories of Southern Appalachia,” and three Individual Artist Al Smith Fellowships for fiction writing from the Kentucky Arts Council.
Eklund received his M.F.A degree from the Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and has taught at MSU since 1989. His work has appeared in “The American Poetry Review,” “Beloit Poetry Journal,” “Cimarron Review,” “Crazyhorse, Epoch”,” The Laurel Review”,” The Massachusetts Review,” “Mid-American Review,” “The North American Review,” “Quarterly West, Sycamore Review,” and “Willow Springs,” among other publications. He has been awarded the Al Smith Fellowship in Poetry by the Kentucky Arts Council.
Howell is a writer and documentary photographer. She is the author of “The Hatchet Buddha”(Larkspur Press) and was the photographer for Arwen Donahue's “This is Home Now: Kentucky's Holocaust Survivors Speak” (University Press of Kentucky). Her work has been collected in Plundering Appalachia (Deep Ecology Foundation) and “The Artist as Activist” ( University of North Georgia Press), and she is the recipient of fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council, The Zantker Foundation, and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. During her tenure as the director of the Women Writers Conference, she received the 2004 Sally Bingham Award for excellence in activism and arts benefiting Kentucky women.
Mark Powell is an American novelist. He is the author of the novels “Blood Kin” and “Prodigals,” and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Breadloaf Writers' Conference. He teaches in the English Department at Stetson University in DeLand, Fla., and serves as the fiction workshop leader for the Hindman Settlement School's Appalachian Writers Workshop and the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival at Lincoln Memorial University.
Posted: 10-9-09
