The Windfall Release Party to celebrate the new issue will be held at the University Club at 7:00 pm Thursday the 26th. All are welcome!

Truman alumnus and international writing talent,  Prawal Parajuly Sharma will be reading from his work on Wednesday, April 18, 2012 at 7:00 p.m. in the SUB Georgian Room. A reception will be held at the University Club at 8:30 p.m.

Jack Turner visit details.

Jack Turner studied philosophy and Chinese at the University of Colorado, Stanford University, and Cornell University, and taught philosophy at the University of Illinois. He was a Woodrow Wilson National Fellow at Cornell and has served on the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee. He continues to lecture, most recently at the universities of Montana, Utah, Puget Sound, and Illinois, at Carleton College and Whitman College, and for a variety of other institutions including Greenpeace, theMurieCenter, theTetonScienceSchool, and the Wharton School of Finance Leadership Program. He is a Visiting Scholar in the Environmental Humanities graduate program at the University o fUtah. In 2007, he received the prestigious Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award.

During the 1960s he climbed extensively in Colorado,Yosemite, and the Tetons. He has lead more than 40 treks, trips, and exploratory expeditions to Pakistan, India, China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and Peru. He climbed inWyoming’s Teton Range for 48 years, guided there for 35 years, and is the former president of the Exum Mountain Guides and School of American Mountaineering in Grand TetonNational Park. Until he retired, he was a certified AMGA alpine guide.

The Universityof Arizona Press published his book of environmental essays, The Abstract Wild, in 1996. It is now in its fifth printing and is used by more than 50 colleges, mostly in environmental studies programs. St. Martin’s Press published his memoir of the Tetons, Teewinot: A Year in the Teton Range, in June 2000. A new book for St. Martin’s, Travels in the Greater Yellowstone, was published in 2008. He is at work on a philosophical tract dealing the concept of wildness entitled Wildness 101, a new collection of essays for St Martin’s, The Eagle’s Eye, and a trio of novellas set inJackson Hole.

Jack Turner lives in Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, with his wife Dana.

April 20, 2012

  For Children in Grades 4-6 in Northeast Missouri

Pre-Registration for all festival events required.

Click here for full details.

Former faculty member, Ladelle McWhorter, who is now the James Thomas Professor in Philosophy Professor of Environmental Studies and professor of Women, Gender, and Sexualities Studies in the Department of Philosophy University of Richmond, Virginia will speak at Truman Friday, March 30, 4:30 pm in the SUB Activities Room. . Her lecture is entitled “Savages and Throwbacks: Racism and Heterosexism in 20th-Century America.”

     Mar 15, 2012, KIRKSVILLE, Mo.—Three T. S. Eliot Prize poets will visit Truman March 29 to promote poetry and highlight their prize-winning books published by Truman State University Press, now celebrating 25 years of publishing. These poets reflect a range of styles, ages, ethnicities, and locales.

     Rhina Espaillat, Mona Lisa Saloy, and Dean Rader will be on the Truman campus as guest lecturers in several creative writing classes. They will all take part in a discussion panel at 1:30 p.m. in the SUB Alumni Room to talk about the craft of poetry and getting started in publishing. The poets will read from their prize-winning books at 7 p.m. in the SUB Down Under where books will be available to purchase. The public is welcome at these events.

     Espaillat, author of the 1998 prize for Where Horizons Go, has published eight books of poetry and won numerous awards for her work. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she taught high school English in New York City and is a frequent reader and speaker at universities.

     Saloy, author of the 2005 prize for Red Beans & Ricely Yours, has had her prose and poetry published in many anthologies and magazines. Her folklore research and writing focuses on the culture of New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina. She teaches at Dillard University.

     Rader, author of the 2010 prize for Works & Days, has published widely in poetry, American Indian studies, and popular culture. He teaches at the University of San Francisco.

     The T. S. Eliot Prize, sponsored by the University Press, was first established in 1997 and receives national recognition for the quality of work published. Each year the Press receives about 500 manuscripts for the competition, and a well-known poet selects a final winning manuscript. The author wins $2,000 and publication.

Rhina Espaillat:

Mona Lisa Saloy:

Dean Rader:

Although we do not typically think of her as a “devotional” poet, Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s use and defense of devotional verse appear early in her career, in the 1830s.  They also figure into one of her later poems, “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point” (1848), which reveals the effects of brutal disempowerment on the identity and psychological integrity of a slave mother.  In this text as well as in her 1838 volume The Seraphim and Other Poems, Barrett Browning seeks to create a kind of “new utterance” in devotional verse that speaks in concert with the poems of Christina Rossetti, a writer well-known for her devotional texts in the nineteenth century.  In Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) and The Prince’s Progress and Other Poems (1866), Rossetti brings together ideas of secrecy and devotional poetics in order to reveal ways in which fallen women might regain their spiritual and social equilibrium in Victorian culture.  Through lively and passionate means, both writers invest tropes of the human soul in devotional poetics with powerful analyses of religious, gender, literary, and social conventions.  In my presentation I will discuss how Barrett Browning and Rossetti give us a new perspective through which to view Victorian women’s religious verse.

Heather Cianciola is a Lecturer in English and has taught at Truman for five years. She earned a B.A. from Grove City College and an M.A. and Ph.D in English from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.  She says that though she didn’t realize it at the time, she started to develop a love for and obsession with devotional poetry when a high school English teacher suggested that she read “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The evening at Wrongdaddys started out with the sweet tunes of the TruMen. Once the TruMen finished, the poets started to get warmed up. They tested the ‘water’ with a sacrificial poet. The first poet got in the audience’s faces and no topic was off-limits. The first round started out with eight poets. The judges, several randomly selected audience members, rated the poetry they heard with point cards like on popular games shows such as “Dancing with the Stars”. There were several 10s the first round, but the judges became more ruthless as the night went on. The second round narrowed the competition down to five poets. The audience booed and cheered the judges’ scoring. By the third round, only three poets had survived. They slammed their poetry and even slammed their opponents’ poetry. The competition was cut-throat and the judges could feel the heat from the audience. Low scores were booed and the judges were heckled. Finally, the winners were announced after much suspense. Peter Johnson placed third and earned $25. Kristen Wright placed second and earned $50. The first place winner was Hope Benefield who earned $75. After the conclusion of the poetry slam, the floor was cleared for a dance party. Throughout the night, there were about one hundred people that came to see the poetry slam. There was also a mention of a poetry slam team forming, so check out this budding poetry team even if you are not a English major. We are hoping to have another poetry slam in April.

Alaska’s self-proclaimed fiddling poet, Ken Waldman, painted a picture of his poetry’s setting by describing the remote and desolate snowy terrain of Alaska. He set the mood for the evening by playing his fiddle before he read his poetry. Then, he shared a  poem about a party that he threw for one of his classes in Alaska. This was no ordinary party. It was a phone party. The class celebrated the conclusion of its studies over a conference call. There was even music and refreshments. One classmate had made cookies and mailed one to each student so that they could eat them together. Even in Alaska, where the students had never been in the same classroom together, they found a way to build a community. Waldman told some jokes from his time in Alaska and explained how people in Alaska say “I jokes” when they share a joke. Waldman went on to explain that the main form of transportation in Alaska was by plane. He told the audience that he was a plane crash survivor. Then he shared a couple of poems about his plane crash experience. However this was not the only disaster he has written about. He went on to share a poem about when his friend’s house burned down. He described all the musical instruments that were destroyed in the fire by giving the audience an idea of what sounds they might have made when the flames engulfed them. He concluded his presentation by playing “Burnt Down House” on his fiddle and even sang a few verses. Waldman offered free bookmarks of some of his poetry, some personalized with a self-portrait of the talented artist. He also sold CDs that had readings of his poetry recorded over his fiddle playing.

This Thursday,  March 15^th, at 7 PM, Windfall is sponsoring a reading  open to all by three creative writing professors, Jamie D’Agostino, Ed Rogers and Joe Benevento.  The reading will take place in the SUB, Georgian Room C.