WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY

Arizona author coming to WMU to read in Gwen Frostic Series

An accomplished poet from Arizona is coming to town next month to take part in the Western Michigan University Gwen Frostic Reading Series.

Barbara Cully, a longtime instructor at the University of Arizona and author of four books of poetry, will read from her works at 8 p.m. Thursday, April 5, in Room 157 of the Bernhard Center. The reading is free and open to the public.

Cully has taught in the University of Arizona Department of English for 26 years. She is the author of two poetry collections from Penguin Books, “Desire Reclining” and “The New Intimacy,” and two others from Kore Press, “Shoreline Series” and “That Place Where.” A new collection, “Under the Hours,” is forthcoming in May, while “Cully Selected Poems” is set for publication in 2013. Cully also is co-editor of two writing books, “Writing as Revision” and “Entry Points.”

Cully has received fellowships from the Arizona Commission on the Arts and been Writer-in-Residence for the YMCA Writer’s Voice. She also has taught at WMU’s Prague Summer Program.

The Frostic Reading Series presents acclaimed creative writers from across the nation and beyond. Every year, a diverse range of readings that encompasses poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and drama attract both campus and off-campus audiences.

Go to wmich.edu/english/events/frostic.html for more information.

WMU alumna named a Hodder Fellow by Princeton arts center

The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has announced the selection of Western Michigan University alumna and award-winning author Melinda Moustakis as a Mary MacKall Gwinn Hodder Fellow.

Moustakis is one of four writers named a Hodder Fellow for the 2012-13 academic year. The award was created to provide artists in the early stages of their career time to undertake significant new work.

“The Hodder Fellowships are awarded to artists during that crucial period when they have demonstrated exceptional promise, but not yet received widespread recognition,” notes Lewis Center Acting Chair Michael Cadden in making the announcement. ”We have a very strong and diverse group of artists joining us next year, and we look forward to what this opportunity for what Mrs. Hodder termed ’studious leisure’ will enable them to accomplish.”

Hodder Fellows may be poets, playwrights, novelists, creative non-fiction writers, translators, or other artists and humanists who have shown great promise. While many have published a first book or created other work that has contributed to their field of endeavor, the fellowship provides them time to move their work and explorations to the next level. Artists from anywhere may apply in the fall each year for the following academic year. Their proposals include specific work to be undertaken during the fellowship period.

Moustakis plans to work on her first novel during her fellowship, a full-length book that captures the Alaskan fishing community and its many complicated relationships between fishermen, fisherwomen, guides, locals, tourist, scientists and the wilderness and wildlife.

“I hope, more than anything, to learn and grow as a writer and an artist,” Moustakis says, “and to take full advantage of this opportunity to write a novel.”

After earning a master’s degree from the University of California Davis, Moustakis received her doctoral degree from WMU, working closely with Dr. Jaimy Gordon, WMU professor of English. The result of her doctoral dissertation was her first book, “Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories,” a collection of linked short stories that illuminates the bare-knuckled lives of three generations of homesteaders pitted against the Alaskan wilderness.

The book earned the budding author a coveted Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction and the Maurice Prize. She also was recently named a 2011 “5 Under 35″ writer by the National Book Foundation. The Hodder Fellow designation adds to her growing list of accomplishments.

“I am very excited and honored to be a Hodder Fellow next year,” Moustakis says. “What a dream–to be given time and resources to devote myself to writing the next book, to be part of an arts center that houses creative writing, dance, visual art and other media, where writers such as Chang-rae Lee, Joyce Carol Oates and Jeffrey Eugenides are members of the creative writing faculty.”

WMU Ethics Center starts spring season with Ninth Amendment talk

The Western Michigan University Center for the Study of Ethics in Society will kick off its spring season of events next week with a talk on the Ninth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Dates and times of other presentations in the series, the speakers and locations and titles of their presentations are:

• April 9, 7 p.m.–Dr. Chris Higgins, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008 Richmond Center, “Teaching as Ethical Quest: Pitfalls and Possibilities.”

California poet opens spring Frostic Series; Campbell, others on tap

An accomplished California poet, short story writer and novelist will lead off the spring Frostic Reading Series this week at Western Michigan University, while several other noted wordsmiths, including WMU alumna Bonnie Jo Campbell, are on deck.

Upcoming reading dates, the authors, times and locations are:

• April 5: Barbara Cully, 8 p.m., Room 157-158 Bernhard Center.

• April 19: Sean Clark, 8 p.m., Room 157-158 Bernhard Center.