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Welcome to the CMW
January 15, 2009Welcome to the brand new Center for Mennonite Writing on the Web. We hope that you will visit us often to explore our features: the CMW Journal with a discussion forum, CMW Encyclopedia, and the CMW Community.
The CMW Journal , guest edited by Ervin Beck, will be published bi-monthly. Each issue will typically focus on a particular theme, author, or genre within Mennonite Writing, and will include poetry, fiction, essays, and criticism.
CMW Journal Discussion , housed in the CMW Community , is a forum feature that allows readers to interact with and respond to articles and literary works …
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Special Issue of CMW Journal on Yorifumi Yaguchi
January 15, 2009The second issue of CMW Journal will be devoted to Yorifumi Yaguchi, acclaimed Japanese poet who is also a Mennonite lay pastor. Disillusioned with Buddhism as a force for peace in Japan, Yaguchi discovered Mennonite missionaries in Japan after World War II and was delighted to find a religion of peace. Subsequently, Yaguchi attended the Associated Mennonite Biblical Seminary in Elkhart, Indiana during the 1960s, and became a Mennonite. While in the United States, he published several chapbooks of poetry with the Pinchpenny Press at Goshen College. Upon returning to Japan, he became an active lay pastor at a Mennonite …
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Call for Papers: Mennonite/s Writing: Manitoba and Beyond
January 14, 2009Mennonite/s Writing: Manitoba and Beyond
Winnipeg, October 1 - 4, 2009Featuring a literary tour of southern Manitoba, and readings by: David Bergen, Sandra Birdsell, Di Brandt, David Elias, Patrick Friesen, Sarah Klassen, David Waltner-Toews, Armin Wiebe, Rudy Wiebe and others to be confirmed.
Writers who have grown up within the Mennonite communities of Manitoba have made a huge contribution to Canadian literature over the course of the last half century. Among those recently nominated for national literary awards are novelists David Bergen, Sandra Birdsell, Miriam Toews, Rudy Wiebe and poets Di Brandt and Patrick Friesen. These and other Mennonite …
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The Body and the Book available in paperback this spring
January 14, 2009Julia Spicher Kasdorf's essay collection, The Body and The Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life, will be released in paperback this spring by Penn State University Press with a new introduction by the author.
From the publisher's website:
“Poetry often arises in unlikely places. This fine book helps us understand why.” —Brian Conniff, Religious Studies Review
Now in paperback, Julia Kasdorf's The Body and the Book: Writing from a Mennonite Life investigates the often difficult relationships among writing, community, and belief. The book examines aspects of Mennonite life from the perspective of family stories and historical documentation as well …
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Helen Alderfer's collected poems published by Cascadia
January 13, 2009Helen Wade Alderfer has long been known in Mennonite publishing, as the editor of Christian Living for 25 years, and On the Line for 14 years, as well as editor of A Farthing in Her Hand . Fewer people know that Alderfer has also been a life-long poet and devoted member of a writing group. Now, for the first time, Helen's poetry has been collected in a single volume, The Mill Grinds Fine , and co-published by Cascadia Publishing House with Herald Press.
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Julia Spicher Kasdorf receives NEA Poetry fellowship in Literature for 2009
December 4, 2008Julia Spicher Kasdorf, author of Sleeping Preacher and Eve's Striptease , has been awarded a Fellowship in Poetry by the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA announced today a list of 42 poets who will be recipients of grants in 2009. Each of the authors will receive $25,000 to support a creative writing fellowship.
2009 Grant Awards: Literature Fellowships (Poetry)
- Allen, William M.
- Bargowski, John
- Black, Rebecca
- Bohince, Paula
- Brown, Nickole
- Candelaria, Xochiquetzal
- Charara, Hayan
- Cole, Henri
- Diaz, Joanne
- Dischell, Stuart
- Freligh, Sarah
- Frost, Helen
- Gibb, Robert
- Goetsch, Douglas
- Graham, Loren
- Green, Samuel
- Hicok, Bob
- Jaffe, Maggie
- Kasdorf, Julia …
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The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews Wins Prize
December 2, 2008The Flying Troutmans , the latest novel by Miriam Toews, published by Knopf Canada in September 2008, won the 2008 Rogers Writer's Trust Fiction Prize.
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School of Writing at CMU announces Spring 2009 faculty
November 24, 2008The School of Writing at Canadian Mennonite University announces Spring 2009 faculty:
Poetry—Barbara Nickel
Intermediate Fiction—David Elias
Advanced Fiction—David Bergen
Creative Nonfiction—Myrna Kostash
Life Writing—Joanne Klassen & Eleanor ChornoboyFor more information & an application, visit http://www.cmu.ca/schoolofwriting or e-mail: SchoolofWriting@cmu.ca
The School of Writing at CMU is a program of CMU Continuing Education and the Department of English. In 2009 it will run from Monday to Friday, May 4-8. The School offers participatory workshops on writing Fiction (Advanced and Intermediate), Poetry, Creative Non-Fiction and Life Writing, along with one-on-one meetings with instructors. Participants will have opportunities to meet and learn …
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Yorifumi Yaguchi Memoir Published
November 15, 2008The Wing-Beaten Air: My Life and My Writing, a memoir by Yorifumi Yaguchi, has just been published by Good Books.
From the publisher:
Acclaimed Japanese poet, Yorifumi Yaguchi, has turned his writing attention to telling baldly what he experienced as a child growing up on the island of Honshu in the late 1930s and '40s.
His piercing and disarming prose takes us to his family's vegetable farm within earshot of the sea. We go with him to his grandfather's Buddhist temple, where Yaguchi discovered ninja stories and where the air was as clear as the temple bell that …
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Mennonite Writers at 2008 Vancouver Festival
October 21, 2008The fall 2008 Vancouver International Readers & Writers Festival (October 21-26) featured performances by Mennonite Writers David Bergen, Barbara Nickel, and Andreas Schroeder.