Guild Literary Complex October Sampler

This is a great week to get involved with the Guild Literary Complex and check out some of their Chicago literary events, because tomorrow begins their “Mid-October Sampler Platter.” There’s lots to choose from!

Tuesday Oct. 11th: “Crossing State Lines: An American Renga”
A film screening, discussion and renga poetry from Crossing State Lines: An American Renga with the Poetry Foundation. CSL features 54 poets from around the country, and the evening will include light refreshments, clips from a documentary film about the project, and the chance to be a part of a future Chicago renga.

Wednesday Oct. 12th: A Book Release Event with Renny Golden & Wendy Call
Poetry and non-fiction together in one night: Call will read from her new book, No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy and Golden will read from her new collection Blood Desert: Witnesses 1820-1880 (historical narrative poems about the settlement of New Mexico in the 19th Century).

Friday Oct. 14th: Submission Deadline for our Prose Awards for Short Fiction & Non-Fiction
You could win $250 in the annual Prose Awards! See the guidelines and the previous post on Ex Libris.

Friday Oct. 14th-Sunday Oct. 16th: Opening Weekend of Tour Guides 2011
The brand new show that takes you on an insider’s journey through Chicago’s quirks, pains and charms. Performed by a whole new cast of poet/performers in the stunning new Logan Square Arts Center.

For more information, click on the flyer or visit guildcomplex.org

And just a reminder: TONIGHT is the book release party for Prof. Amina Gautier and her new, award-winning short story collection At-Risk. Check out the details and come out for a great night!

More Upcoming Events

The Red Clay Review, the nation’s only literary review to feature exclusively the work of graduate and doctoral students, is seeking submissions for this year’s edition of the Review.  Red Clay Review is accepting poetry, flash fiction, short fiction, creative nonfiction, and one act/ten-minute plays from both new and established authors, with the desire to give voice to the many talented graduate and doctoral students who are starting or continuing their journey as authors.

There is no fee for submissions, and any student in a graduate or doctoral program is welcome to submit, not just those in creative writing programs. Please visit www.redclayreview.com for more information and full submission guidelines, or check out Red Clay Review on Facebook.

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In the next One Book, One Chicago event, DePaul’s Department of English, Stop Smiling and The Chicagoan present: Chicago as a Literary Muse. This reading, discussion and reception asks the question, “Who captures the Chicago of today as Bellow did in Augie March?” A few of the many who do will read from their work and talk about the inspiration that is Chicago. This reception and reading features Stuart Dybek, Achy Obejas, Natalie Moore, and Jaswinder Bolina as well as the finalists in the flash fiction contest. J.C. Gabel, co-editor/co-publisher of Stop Smiling Books and the newly revamped magazine The Chicagoan, serves as master of ceremonies.

This event will take place Thursday, Oct. 13 from 6:30-9pm at the Stop Smiling Storefront, 1317 N. Milwaukee Ave. Reservations are recommended; please email rsvp@stopsmilingonline.com.

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On Wednesday, Oct. 19, the DePaul Humanities Center will host an event with James Soderholm, Professor of English at The King’s School, Canterbury, and author of Beauty and the Critic: Aesthetics in an Age of Cultural Studies and Byron and Romanticism.

As part of the “Do the Humanities Make Us More Humane?” series, Soderholm will present his lecture, “Just Looking: Art, Attentiveness and the Moral Imagination” which explores the connections between our capacity for at once noticing the streaks of the tulip and the shrieks of the tortured. Drawing on music, painting, philosophy and literature, he will offer twenty-seven brief meditations on ‘the attentive’ and ‘the heartless’ as a way of suggesting that our moral perceptions may be sharpened by works of art.

The lecture will take place at the DePaul Humanities Center, Room 104 (2347 N. Racine Avenue) This event is FREE and OPEN to the public.

Spotlight on Amina Gautier

In anticipation of the release of her new book, At-Risk, and the book-release party taking place on campus this coming Monday, we would like to take this time to turn the Ex Libris spotlight on DePaul’s own Prof. Amina Gautier.

Praise for At-Risk, winner of the Flannery O’Connor award for Short Fiction:

“In this wonderful collection Amina Gautier writes with exhilarating insight and confidence about the lives of teenagers who are indeed at risk from themselves, their families and their friends. These are urgent and important stories.”
—Margot Livesey, author of The House on Fortune Street and Eva Moves The Furniture

“In these always engaging stories, Amina Gautier reminds us that behind the disturbing headlines are vibrant young people whose lives matter immeasurably. Gautier employs unflinching honesty to capture those lives, and she does so with clarity, dignity and genuine insight. At-Risk will break your heart even as it leaves you full of hope. It is a truly lovely book.”
—David Haynes, author of The Full Matilda

Amina Gautier is an assistant professor of English at DePaul University. Her work has appeared in the anthologies Best African American Fiction and New Stories from the South and in numerous literary journals including Antioch Review, North American Review, Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, and Southern Review.

The forthcoming At-Risk is a collection of stories set in Brooklyn, where some kids make it and some kids don’t, but not in simple ways or for stereotypical reasons. Gautier’s stories explore the lives of young African Americans who might all be classified as “at-risk,” yet who encounter different opportunities and dangers in their particular neighborhoods and schools and who see life through the lens of different family experiences.

On Monday, Oct. 10 please join the English Department, African and Black Diaspora Studies, and Women and Gender Studies in celebrating the release of this award-winning short-story collection. This book release party will take place at 6 p.m. at 325 Student Center. All are welcome to attend and congratulate Prof. Gautier on her amazing accomplishment!

NOTE: Last week, Ex Libris posted about Women’s Voices Weekend at Women and Children First bookstore. Please note that the lineup and some workshops in this event have been changed. Please visit the original Ex Libris post which has now been updated with the most recent information and flyer.

Threshold Literary Arts Journal, Daniel Alarcon at DePaul, & More

Threshold is DePaul’s award-winning, all-student journal of literature and art, and they need your help to make this year’s issue happen!

Threshold is soliciting applications for editors for the 2012 issue. If you are interested in getting involved, please write a 1-2 page application letter describing your relevant experience and commitment, as well as your vision for the magazine, and place it in faculty adviser Prof. Dan Stolar’s mailbox in McGaw 255 by Wednesday, Oct. 12th.

If you are interested in working with the magazine, but not necessarily taking on the commitment of being co-editor, please submit a note with your name and experience by the above deadline.  Please indicate what you might like to do for the journal in this letter. These letters will be passed along to the eventual co-editors as they form their staff.

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This Thursday, Oct. 6th, the DePaul Center for Latino Research, the English Department, and the Department of Modern Languages/Spanish present two events with writer Daniel Alarcón, whose new novel is At Night We Walk in Circles.

From 2:30-4pm at the Munroe Building #114-116, Alarcón will lead a session for creative writing students entitled “Thinking Visually: Adapting a Short Story to a Graphic Novel.” In the evening there will be a 6pm reception in Cortelyou Commons, followed by a conversation and reading with Alarcón at 6:30 (leaving you plenty of time to head over to Lion’s Head afterwards for the meet & greet!).

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Words Apart, a new literary magazine project of MA and MFA students at Emerson College, is issuing a call for submissions for their inaugural issue. Writers are invited to explore Civil Rights as an “Unfinished Project” and imagine how it can be reignited, but submissions do not need to be thematic. Words Apart is accepting fiction, poetry, essays, investigative journalism, and many other genres of writing and visual arts.

The submission deadline is December 1st. Please visit www.wordsapartmag.com for more information, submission guidelines, and — starting on Oct. 14th– a preview of the inaugural issue.

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Timber, the new graduate-run literary journal based out of CU-Boulder’s MFA program, is currently accepting poetry and fiction submissions for its second issue. Timber publishes one web and one print issue a year, and will be accepting submissions until February 1st. Please submit 3-5 poems (any submission with less than three poems will not be read) and fiction pieces of 5000 words or less.

More information on Timber can be found at timberjournal.com, and submission quidelines and instructions can be found on Timber’s submishmash page.

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The Midwest Graduate Students Conference on Writing is issuing a call for paper proposals for the 2010 conference, “Radical Writes:
Composition, Creative Writing, and New Media,” which will take place March 30-31st at Southeast Missouri State University.

Any student currently enrolled in a graduate writing program may propose a presentation. Proposal abstracts should be 300 words maximum and may cover any topic on creative, technical, new media, or composition writing. Proposals are submitted electronically, and the deadline for proposals is December 1, 2011. Current MAE and MAWP students should have received details via email, but please contact Dr. Missy Phegley, mphegley@semo.edu, (573) 651-2633 or Dr. Susan Swartwout, sswartwout@semo.edu with any questions or with completed paper proposals.

The Return of E.G.S.A.

If you’re a returning MAE or MAWP student, you might have been thinking, I wonder what happened to E.G.S.A. If you’re new to the program, you’re probably thinking, What in the world is E.G.S.A.?

In either case, Ex Libris has the answers.

The English Graduate Student Association (E.G.S.A.) brings together students in the Master of Arts in English and Master of Arts in Writing and Publishing graduate programs, seeking to enhance the experience of the students in both programs through social and cultural events in and around Chicago. Check out E.G.S.A.’s Ex Libris page for information on some of last year’s events, including two previous conferences, and keep checking back, because updates will be coming soon!

E.G.S.A.’s first meeting of the year will take place at the end of this week. Please refer to the following invitation sent by Angel Woods to ALL current MAE and MAWP students.

Hi All!

Join us this Sunday Oct. 9th, for the first official meeting of the English Graduate Student Association!!

This is EGSA’s second year, and we need your help planning this year’s social/cultural activities and literary conference.

So if you want to get involved and get to know other MAE/MAWP students, come on out!

When: Sunday, October 9, 2011 @ 4:00pm

Where: SAC (there’s a pit with couches/chairs just as you walk in)

P.S. After the meeting, we’re walking over to John Barleycorn in Lincoln Park (658 West Belden)

Hope everyone can make it! We are all looking forward to another great year of E.G.S.A. events and conferences.

Faculty News and MAWP Meet & Greet

We’re starting the week off on a high note, with news about publications from two of our faculty members and an invitation to a MAWP gathering.

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Prof. Michele Morano‘s essay, “Boy Eats World,” is published in the current issue of the creative nonfiction journal, Fourth Genre. In addition, her essay, “Evenings at the Collegeview Diner,” which appeared last fall in Water~Stone Review, has been named a “Notable Essay” in this year’s Best American Essays anthology. Congratulations to Prof. Morano on these great honors!

Kathleen Rooney‘s second single-authored book of poetry, Robinson Alone Provides the Image: A Novel in Poems, has been accepted for publication by Gold Wake Press.  The book is scheduled for release in November, 2012.  Congratulations to Prof. Rooney on this outstanding accomplishment!

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All current Masters in Writing and Publishing students are invited to come out this Thursday night, Oct. 6, and hang with your fellow MAWP students and profs. Festivities will take place at the Lion Head Pub, 2251 N. Lincoln. Prof. Miles Harvey and others will show up around 8pm, and Prof. Michele Morano and others who are in class that night will come as soon as they are free.

This will be a casual, non-DePaul-sponsored event, meaning the drinks aren’t free, and there’s no pressure to show up, but Prof. Morano promises there will be cheap beer and grub, and a good time had by all. Hope to see you there!