Kyle Beachy Published in The Classical!

Kyle “rock'n steady” Beachy

Professor, Novelist, and overall nice guy Kyle Beachy has recently published the first two of what will be a series of essays: critical looks at the activity of skateboarding, what it may or may not mean to the world around it, an exploration into the subculture as a whole. Read the essays here!

The first essay, ‘You’re Not Me: Nyjah Huston and Inflationary Spectacle,’ deals with the marketability and aesthetics of skateboarding, as well as detailing the fallibility of an unlikely hero.

The second essay, ‘A Chronicle of Doing It,’ shows the corporate capitalization on skateboarding merchandise, and the subculture’s resistant embrace of this new attention.

Kyle’s writing serves as a great example of his ability to pursue the nontraditional, and to find markets underserved in the exchange of insightful, literary thinking. Let’s all give a warm congratulations to Kyle on his recent success!

Kolak Published in OVS Magazine

Marynia "Experimental Writing is the Best Writing" Kolak

Recent Roosevelt MFA Graduate, former Graduate Assistant, and awesome non-fiction writing Gal Pal, Marynia Kolak, has been published in OVS Magazine! Her two poems, "En Leon" and "sensing the perfume of your fresh kill" are in their Summer 2011 issue, which you can order here!

OVS Summer 2011 Issue!

OVS was started in 2009 to give new and established artists and writers a place to publish their work in a respectable peer-critiqued journal. OVS is based in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and publishes the very best in poetry and artwork! Marynia joins the ranks of writers like Sherman Alexie and Killarney Clary - who have poetry published in the very same issue (SERIOUSLY, order it here)!

Forthcoming for Marynia is another publication (What!), this time from Inertia Magazine. Her poem, "El Zopilote", will be published in the New York based online literary journal. They hope to seek out the best new talent! That is why her work will be included! Look for it soon!

Marynia is excited to have these major publications, and doubly excited because two of the poems came out of a story in her thesis. She could be triply excited if you congratulate her, and if subsequently asked about the story these poems sprang from, maybe she'll be quadruple enough excited to tell you about it! Who knows!

2011-12 Writer-in-Residence: Kathleen Rooney

Roosevelt is proud to welcome poet and non-fiction writer, Kathleen Rooney, as the Writer-in-Residence for the 2011-12 school year! Kathleen will be teaching a Creative Non-fiction workshop in the fall and a Poetry workshop in the spring.  

Kathleen Rooney has written the poetry books Oneiromance, and, with Elisa Gilbert, That Tiny Voluptuosness, as well as the non-fiction books, For You, For You I Am Trilling These Songs and Live Nude Girl. Her limited edition chapbook, After Robinson Has Gone, was recently released by Graying Ghost Press. She is an active participant at the Chicago Poetry Brothel, and countless literary events and readings in (and outside of) Chicago, and is even a founding editor at Rose Metal Press. Goodness! If that wasn't enough, she's teaching English and Creative Writing at DePaul University too!  

The prolific Kathleen Rooney will be a welcome addition to the Roosevelt MFA program and its excited students! 

Reading Series Welcomes Kim Dana Kupperman, March 29th

This coming Tuesday, the Roosevelt Reading Series welcomes Kim Dana Kupperman, author of the critically acclaimed collection of essays, I JUST LATELY STARTED BUYING WINGS, from Graywolf Press. This powerful collection has received the 2009 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize in Nonficion from the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. Kim is the founder of Welcome Table Press, which dedicates itself to publish and celebrate the essay and all of it's forms. She also is the current managing editor of The Gettysburg Review and teaches nonfiction at Fairfield University. Her writing has appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Fourth Genre, Baltimore Review, Best American Essays 2006, and many, many more publications.  

Come on by, Tuesday, March 29th! Coffee and conversation will commence at 4:30, and the reading itself will begin at 5:00. Say hello to friends and some great literary nonfiction, and goodbye to March as it flies away, on wings, perhaps, perhaps not.    

Micah McCrary on Freelance Journalism, Newcity

Meet Micah McCrary, Roosevelt MFA Student and freelance journalist. Here Micah talks about how he got started writing for the Chicago publication, Newcity.

I graduated from Columbia College Chicago in December 2008, and after kick-starting a career in freelance journalism after studying under Sam Weller, author of The Bradbury Chronicles, I immediately looked for an internship in the city of Chicago that would allow me to write. Sam was once a staff writer at Newcity, and he recommended that I offer to intern for them. He told me I'd write more there than any other place in the city as far as an internship goes, and I did. I sent them a cover letter, a Q&A I'd previously done with a screenwriter, and a couple of spec samples, and they called me in for an interview a few days later.

I got started there a few weeks after graduation, my first research assignment handed to me on the first day of the job and my first article my second week. It wasn't a feature, but rather something called a Moxie, a short (around 500 words) creative nonfictionesque piece about a happening in Chicago. Moxies are [usually] in third person, written in vivid detail of whatever's going on. My first Moxie was called January Strip, and covered an Improv Mafia no-pants El ride.

After a few Moxies I was given longer assignments—nothing for the front page, of course—that were more detailed and in-depth. My interviewing skills got better, my transcribing skills got better, and before long I was ready to report on anything my editor would assign me. I've covered everything from openings of bookstores to drunken spelling bees to air sex championships—anything you'd expect to find in an alternative newsweekly like Newcity.

When my internship ended I continued to write for them on a freelance basis (they no longer have staff writers, only contributing writers and editors), and have continued to do so for about a year. Writing something as simple as a Moxie led to bigger and deeper things, and I'm incredibly glad that I got my start at Newcity rather than somewhere in a mailroom.