FALL 2014
Robert Michael Pyle, Non-Fiction - 9/4/2014
Robert Michael Pyle writes essays, poetry, and fiction from an old Swedish farmstead along a
tributary of the Lower Columbia River in southwestern Washington. His eighteen books include
Wintergreen and The Tangled Bank. As a Guggenheim Fellow, he has received the John Burroughs
Medal and several other writing awards. Pyle’s poems have appeared in magazines including the
North American Review, and in a chapbook, Letting the Flies Out. Evolution of the Genus IRIS is his
first full length book of poems.
Faculty Reading: George Looney, Poet - 9/11/2014
A mysterious woman in a sequined dress gracefully riding an elephant. Majestic buffalo grazing
alongside. A fat man, seemingly kaleidoscopic in the sun’s rays, inches ever closer to the woman.
And an encroaching row of John Deeres presses close behind them. Structures the Wind Sings
Through is framed by loss in much the same way that Looney’s previous poetry has been, but, as
always, this loss is different. From the cracking concrete of construction, Structures elevates the
reader to a circus of road workers drunk in taverns, to sparrows fluttering in disconnect, and to a sea
of multicultural cries that break the barriers of time to form an apocalyptic frontier that equally
embraces and denies faith.
George Looney has been published most recently in Cimarron Review, The Aurorean, Georgetown
Review, The Cape Rock, Prairie Schooner, Spillway, and The Greensboro Review. He has six other
collections of poetry including Monks Beginning to Waltz (2012) and A Short Bestiary of Love and
Madness (2011), as well as the novella, Hymn of Ash (2008). He is the Editor-in-Chief for the
International Literary Journal, Lake Effect.
Alice Friman, Poet - 9/18/2014
Alice Friman’s The View from Saturn endeavors to look at life on earth from two perspectives at
once: objectively, as if from a great distance, and subjectively, focusing in on the body with all its
cells and hungers. Her poems dance between these two vantage points, trying to find a rhyme and
reason to our day-to-day lives. With dark humor and lyrical honesty, The View from Saturn provides
both a telescopic and microscopic look at ourselves, exploring how in our smallness, and perhaps
foolishness, we are still capable of attaining a measure of nobility. Friman now lives in Milledgeville,
Georgia, where she is Poet-in-Residence at Georgia College.
John Minichillo, Fiction - 10/9/2014
Minichillo cleverly dishes out a resounding twist on Melville’s classic tale of Moby Dick that reexamines identity, race, and our connection to nature, all while poking fun at our contentment with
heated socks in an era defined by global warming. Publisher’s Weekly has claimed The Snow Whale
to be "subtle and outrageous in equal measure," while the LA Times says it’s "pure hilarity all
around." Minichillo’s work has also appeared in Third Coast, In Posse Review, Carve Magazine, and
Mississippi Review. He lives and teaches in Tennessee, where he is also one of the founders of the
Nashville Fiction Workshop.
Thesis Reading (Students TBA) - 12/4/2014
Thesis Reading (Students TBA) - 12/11/2014