West Virginia Wesleyan College’s Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program will host a Visiting Writers Series during the program’s upcoming Summer 2019 Residency. These events are free and open to the public. The writers will be reading from their original work, and copies of their books will be available for sale. All readings will be held on Wesleyan’s campus, in Loar Auditorium in Loar Hall of Music.

BELLE BOGGS, July 6 at 7 pm

Belle Boggs is the author of The Gulf, a novel; The Art of Waiting, a book of essays on fertility, medicine, and motherhood; and Mattaponi Queen, a collection of linked stories set along Virginia’s Mattaponi River. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the North Carolina Arts Council and is an associate professor and director of the MFA program at North Carolina State University.

JONATHAN CORCORAN & ERIC WAGGONER, July 7 at 7 pm

Jonathan Corcoran is the author of the story collection, The Rope Swing, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards and long-listed for The Story Prize. He received a BA in Literary Arts from Brown University and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Rutgers University-Newark, where he teaches writing. He was born and raised in a small town in West Virginia and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. 

Eric Waggoner is Executive Director of the WV Humanities Council. His literary criticism has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and book collections, most recently American Literature in Transition, 1970-1980 (Cambridge UP, 2018). Over a 19-year music and cultural journalism career, he has written hundreds of profile pieces and book, album, concert, and film reviews, and published long-form interviews with artists and musicians. He is founding editor and publisher of Latham House Press, a micropress dedicated to releasing first chapbooks by promising Appalachian writers.

MATT RANDAL O’WAIN & SAVANNAH SIPPLE, July 8 at 7 pm

Matt Randal O’Wain holds an MFA from Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program. Currently, he teaches creative writing at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. O’Wain is the author of Meander Belt: family, loss, and coming of age in the working class south (American Lives Series, Bison Books, 2019) and Hallelujah Station and other stories (Autumn House Press, 2020). His essays and short stories have appeared in Oxford American, Guernica, Booth, Hotel Amerika, Zone 3, among others.

Savannah Sipple is a writer from east Kentucky. Her debut poetry collection WWJD and Other Poems (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2019) explores what it is to be a queer woman in Appalachia. With a beer-drinking Jesus as her wing-man, she navigates this difficult terrain of stereotype, conservative Evangelicalism, and, perhaps most, shame. Her writing can be found in Southern Cultures, Salon, Appalachian Heritage, Waxwing, and The Offing. She is the recipient of grants from the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and the Kentucky Foundation for Women. A writer, editor, and teacher, Savannah resides in Lexington, Kentucky with her fiancée, Ashley.

CAMERON BARNETT, July 10 at 7 pm

Cameron Barnett is a poet and teacher from Pittsburgh, PA. He earned his MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh in 2016, and his first collection, The Drowning Boy’s Guide to Water, was selected by Ada Limón in 2017 as the inaugural winner of the Rising Writer contest from Autumn House Press. In 2018 he was a finalist for the NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Literary Work in Poetry.

A READING FROM FEMININE RISING, July 11 at 7 pm

Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility is an anthology edited by WVWC MFA alums Andrea Fekete & Lara Lillibridge. The collection brings together women of all races, nationalities, and sexual orientations to reflect on the unique experience of womanhood. International poets and essayists, both award-winning and emergent, unite to celebrate women’s differences, while embracing their sameness. The reading will feature Philippi, WV contributor Cheryl Denise and WVWC MFA alumni contributors Rachel Hicks, Lisa Hayes Minney, Jessica Spruill Waggoner, and Mary Imo-Stike.

Wesleyan’s low-residency MFA in Creative Writing offers an apprenticeship model that enables students to earn a graduate degree without having to uproot their lives. Students come together for an intense ten-day residency—on campus in summer, at Blackwater Falls State Park in winter—and complete their semester course work through correspondence with a mentor. Launched by Irene McKinney, who served as WV’s Poet Laureate until her death in February 2012, the program continues to honor her vision: the dynamic faculty is committed to fostering the creation of fine literature, particularly literature that explores place and identity. This program is the only one of its kind in the state.

For more information about the readings, or about Wesleyan’s creative writing program, please visit the MFA website: www.wvwc.edu/MFA

Or contact MFA Director Doug Van Gundy: mfa@wvwc.edu, 304.473.8523.