Live Literature
Spring 2013
Montclair State University is fortunate to claim outstanding faculty-writers as our own. Our poets, dramatists, novelists, memoirists, and writers of other genres are published locally, nationally, and even internationally, and because of the multitude of writers we're privileged to offer "Live Literature" events throughout the year. Find more information about our current faculty writers. At “Live Literature” events, typically two or three writers share a stage, first reading their work, and then responding to questions from the audience. Attending a “Live Literature” event is a wonderful way for students to gain perspective on the writing process.
Students in College Writing II: Writing and Literary Study will typically be required to attend at least one “Live Literature” event; this is a requirement to be enjoyed:
Spring 2013 Live Lit Section Assignments
For all classes that meet on Monday and Wednesday, your students are required to attend Live Lit either on Monday March 4 at 5: 30 pm in the Student Center Ballroom or Wednesday, April 24 at 4 pm in University Hall 1070.
For all classes that meet on Tuesday and Thursday, your students are required to attend Live Lit either on Tuesday, February 5 at 4 pm in the Student Center Ballroom or Thursday, April 4 at 7 pm in the Student Center Ballroom.
For all classes that meet on Monday and Thursday, your students are required to attend Live Lit either on Monday March 4 at 5: 30 pm in the Student Center Ballroom or Thursday, April 4 at 7 pm in the Student Center Ballroom.
For all classes that meet on Tuesday and Friday, your students are required to attend Live Lit either on Tuesday, February 5 at 4 pm in the Student Center Ballroom or Thursday, April 4 at 7 pm in the Student Center Ballroom.
For all classes that meet on Wednesday and Friday, your students are required to attend Live Lit either on Monday March 4 at 5:30 pm in Student Center Ballroom or the Student edition of Live Lit on Wednesday, May 1 at 4 pm in University Hall 1070.
Schedule for Spring 2013:
Thursday, January 31st
6pm
Memorial Auditorium
"Grand Slam" Poetry Slam
Sponsored by Speaking Through Silence, MSU's student-run poetry organization. Hear ten MSU student-poets compete for five spots on the MSU Slam team! (A poetry slam is a competition where poets perform their poetry and receive scores from the audience.). Tickets are $5 for MSU students, $7 for other attendees and must be purchased online at www.grandslam2013.eventbrite.com. There will be music and other live entertainment in between the rounds. For some idea of what this event will be like, see a video of the MSU Slam Team at CUPSI 2012—a national competition held every year—here.
Tuesday, February 5th
4pm
Student Center Ballroom
Claudia Cortese, poetry
Claudia Cortese's poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best New Poets 2011, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, and Rattle, among others. Her first collection of poems, which is currently traveling the land of book contests, was named a semifinalist for the University of Wisconsin's Brittingham and Pollack Prize. A recent nominee for a Pushcart Prize and a third place winner in Baltimore Review's literature contest, Cortese lives and teaches in New Jersey. A few online links to her work include: "Epithalamium," "Sarah's Mom Maker Her Long Dresses of Lace," "The Field Curdles," and "Slippery Banjo."
Karla Greenleaf-MacEwan, fiction
Karla Greenleaf-MacEwan majored in dance at Wesleyan University and received her MFA at Brooklyn College. Before becoming a writer, she worked as a dancer, choreographer, creative movement instructor, recreational specialist and massage therapist. She now works as an adjunct professor in the First-Year Writing Program at Montclair State. Her fiction has been published in the Brooklyn Review and the WomenArts Quarterly Journal and is forthcoming in The Ledge Poetry and Fiction Magazine. She lives in Maplewood, New Jersey where she is raising her two sons and working on a novel. She is very happy to be teaching Introduction to Fiction Writing at MSU this semester.
Liz Martin, poetry
Liz Martin is a poet and an Editorial Assistant for Map Literary, a contemporary journal of writing and art. Before becoming a teacher, she won numerous New Jersey Press Association awards for her journalistic endeavors. Currently, Liz is working on a collection of poems about love, longing and Neanderthals.
Monday, March 4th
5:30pm
Student Center Ballroom
Todd Craig, fiction
Todd Craig is a product of Ravenswood and Queensbridge Houses in Queens, New York. He is a writer, educator, and deejay. Straddling fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry, Craig’s texts paint vivid depictions of the urban lifestyle he experienced in his community. His first novel, tor'cha (pronounced torture), was published in 2008, and his most recent short story, "spy verse spy" is published in Staten Island Noir (Akashic Books). For more info, click here.
Ann Evans, memoir
Ann Evans has lived in Greece for eleven years, taught language and writing for thirteen years, supported her children as a legal secretary and speaks six languages, but the most important fact related to this reading is that after two divorces, life got lonely, untenable, and so she started dating again. At sixty, she found herself on Internet dating sites at the very beginning of this new way of life. She dated younger men, married men, strange men—she even visited one delightful man for a month in Zimbabwe. And then she wrote about it. The reading today is part of that story. The blog on her website www.annandersonevans.com continues the story.
Julia Wagner, poetry
Julia Wagner is a poet and faculty lecturer in First Year Writing at Montclair State University. She has taught previously at Fairleigh Dickinson University and Brooklyn College while obtaining her M.F.A in Poetry. Her poems have been published in Nexus Magazine, The Brooklyn Review, and Lungfull Magazine. Poems also appear in Praxilla, an online poetry journal. Recent poems explore laboring in the negative and writers block and can be read here.
Thursday, April 4th
7pm
Student Center Ballroom
Robin Caine, fiction
Robin Caine has published stories in the Sound & Literary Art Book, the Bryant Literary Review, Fringe Magazine, Bound Off and elsewhere. She received her MFA in fiction writing from the University of South Carolina. She is currently a full-time Lecturer at Montclair State University.
Rita Jacobs, memoir
Rita Jacobs is Professor of English at Montclair State University where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing, American Drama, and American Fiction. Her books include Tommy: The Musical and The Way In: Journal Writing for Self-Discovery, recently re-issued in paperback. In fall 2012, Random House commissioned her to write a series of twenty columns entitled "From Journal to Memoir" which were published on their Biographile website and are the jumping off place for a new book. She is also a widely published book reviewer and journalist.
Stacie McCormick, fiction
Stacie McCormick earned her PhD in English from The Graduate Center, City University of New York. She recently published "Navel-Erasing: Androgyny and Self-Making in Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon and Jamaica Kincaid’s The Autobiography of My Mother" in the collection Imagining the Black Female Body: Reconciling Image and Print in Visual Culture. She has written book reviews for Callaloo and The Southern Quarterly. She is currently working on a book project on pain and the black female body. Her creative writing and literary scholarship both feature topics that include issues of land, migration, property, the body, and dislocation.
Wednesday, April 24th
4pm
University Hall 1070
Christine Giancatarino, creative non-fiction
Christine Giancatarino has worked in various capacities as a theater practitioner creating, performing, and dramaturging theater work. Her theater interests include the translation of theory into practice, the dramaturgy of the body in performance, and the process of writing as a physical action. Her interests have allowed her to partake in workshops with Phillip Zarrilli, the SITI Company, and the Workcenter of Jerzy Grotowski and Thomas Richards. In addition to her theater work, she spent two years teaching ESL in southern Japan. She received her MFA in Theater from Columbia University.
Maria Giura, memoir
Maria Giura received her PhD from SUNY Binghamton and teaches first-year writing and memoir at Montclair State University and is assistant director of the first year writing program. Her poetry has been published in The Paterson Literary Review and VIA. Her essay, "Why So Long Memoir?," was published in Prime Number, a Press 53 publication here. She was a finalist for the Milton Center Fellowship, which supports emerging writers in bridging imagination and religious faith. Maria is currently at work finishing a memoir.
Jill Rosenberg, fiction
Jill Rosenberg earned a BA from Vassar College and an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana. She was the winner of the 2005 River City Fiction Contest, and she has been published in the North American Review, the Pinch, and other journals.
Wednesday, May 1
4pm
University Hall 1070
Student Edition of Live Lit!
Join us to hear the creative work of this year's winners of the English Department's fiction, poetry and creative nonfiction contests. More detils to follow.
For More Information or to List Similar On-Campus Literary Readings email Bonnie Dowd, Assistant Director of First Year Writing, at dowdb@mail.montclair.edu.
last updated April 2013