Feb. 12, 2019
NORTH ADAMS, MASS. —Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ (MCLA) Department of English/Communications announces this semester’s creative writing series, Spring 19, will begin on Tuesday, Feb. 26, when writers Anna Maria Hong and Julianna Spallholz present readings from their recent works.
This event, which will take place at 7 p.m. in MCLA’s Gallery 51, 51 Main St., is free and open to the public. Spring 19 is being coordinated by Dr. Zack Finch, assistant professor of English, and Dr. Caren Beilin, also an assistant professor of English at MCLA.
Finch said because the northern Berkshire region is home to numerous writers, he and Beilin want this reading series to draw attention to and make connections with these local poets and authors, as they share their work with MCLA students and the greater community.
“Anna Maria Hong is an astonishingly dynamic poet, while Julianna Spallholz is a legendary, lapidary master of the short fiction form. We’re excited to bring these writers and their work into dialogue,” Finch said.
Hong, who joined the Bennington College faculty last fall, is the author of three forthcoming books. Her first poetry collection, “Age of Glass,” won the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s 2017 First Book Competition, and will be published in March. Her novella, “H & G,” won the A Room of Her Own Foundation’s inaugural Clarissa Dalloway Prize, and will be published by Sidebrow Books in April. Her second poetry collection, “Fablesque,” won Tupelo Press’s Berkshire Prize, and is forthcoming in early 2020.
A former Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Hong also is an editor of “Growing Up Asian,” an anthology of fiction and memoir. She has published poetry and fiction in more than 50 journals and anthologies.
Spallholz, an associate professor of English at Berkshire Community College, is the author of “The State of Kansas,” published by GenPop Books. Her short fiction and prose has appeared in Caketrain, Denver Quarterly, NOO Weekly, Tarpaulin Sky, both print and audio issues of Gargoyle, and elsewhere.
Spallholz has collaborated with musicians, visual artists, a disc jockey, and a chef. She is at work on a second collection of short fictions.
Spring 19 is sponsored by MCLA’s English/Communications Department. The series will continue on Wednesday, March 6, at 7:30 p.m. in MCLA Gallery 51, with Spring 19 Writer-in-Residence Joanna Ruocco, an assistant professor of English in creative writing at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and the co-director of that university’s Dillon Johnston Writers Reading Series.
Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA) is the Commonwealth’s public liberal arts college and a campus of the Massachusetts state university system. MCLA promotes excellence in learning and teaching, innovative scholarship, intellectual creativity, public service, applied knowledge, and active and responsible citizenship. MCLA graduates are prepared to be practical problem solvers and engaged, resilient global citizens.
For more information, go to www.mcla.edu.
