Skip to main content
  • Bluegrass Writers Studio
  • 521 Lancaster Ave
  • Mattox 101
  • Richmond, KY, 40475-3102
  • Phone: 859-622-6263
  • Fax: 859-622-3156
  • r-dean.johnson@eku.edu

Inside Look

Announcing Guests Crowley, Block, and Rosser

By Derek Nikitas, Director, Bluegrass Writers Studio

Want to see a bit more of our Winter Residency 2015 lineup?

Okay, here goes. But I’m saving one or two more for next week…

One of the most profound works of fiction I’ve ever read—right up there with Crime and Punishment, Moby Dick, Madame Bovary—is a hefty tome of semi-historical fantasy called Little, Big by the author JOHN CROWLEY. The book is tough to pin down, a challenge, but also a complete immersion into a world of profound imagination, not unlike Crowley’s Aegypt quartet, a sprawling work that evokes the occult “secret history” of the world.  Or Crowley’s Lord Byron’s Novel, a what-if about the book Byron promised to write that fateful night with the Shelleys, but never did.

Presenting Jason Howard and James S. A. Corey

By Derek Nikitas, Director, Bluegrass Writers Studio

All right, the time has come to reveal the remaining two author guests we have slated for the Bluegrass Writers Studio Winter Residency 2014. Although, technically, it’s three, since one guest is actually two people. Writers can be weird like that.

But first let’s talk about creative nonfiction writer JASON HOWARD. Mr. Howard is a local guy with national acclaim, and he’s also a long-time friend of EKU’s creative writing programs. A few years ago he entertained and edified a group of students and community members as part of our long-running EKU Summer Writers’ Conference. Now we get to share Mr. Howard all over again.

Introducing Parker, Dunnion, and Sallis

By Derek Nikitas, Director, Bluegrass Writers Studio

Time to open some more presents.

Last week, the exciting details about the Bluegrass Writers Studio Winter Residency 2015 began to roll out, with the news that poet Matt Rasmussen would be visiting us on January 9th, and that his collection of poetry, Black Aperture, will be our common book. Here are three more of our special guests:

The first, JEFF PARKER, is no stranger to many of us in the Bluegrass Writers Studio. As director of the Disquiet International Program in Lisbon, Portugal, Parker has been a close friend of ours since we began our Summer Residency partnership two years ago. But Parker’s intense focus on oiling the summer program gears means he never has an opportunity to showcase his own remarkable creative writing.

Jen Parks Writes a Novel, part 2: Lost in a Good Book

By Jen Parks, Bluegrass Writers Studio

            I like to think that I have a good sense of direction. I can usually remember how to get to a place, even if I’ve only been there once, committing to memory tiny details like: turn right at the mailbox with the cardinal picture on it or turn left at the house with the tractor tire on its side in the front yard. Every once in a while, though, despite my memory, I get lost. Really lost.

Welcoming Rasmussen

By Derek Nikitas, Director, Bluegrass Writers Studio

As the weather turns crisp, it’s again that time of year to think ahead to the holidays. Quality time with family, soul-searching, gifts. And for those of us in the Bluegrass Writers Studio community, there’s that second holiday season to anticipate. A time to gather our creative writing family together from all across the country, to fully engage our craft and its meaning, and to share in the gift of time with our visiting writers.

Our seventh annual Bluegrass Writers Studio Winter Residency.

"Suffering With"

c0mpassion.deviantart.com/art/Compassion-260409987

Clips from a conversation with Derek Nikitas, Director, Bluegrass Writers Studio

     The most important thing it takes to be a good fiction writer rarely gets talked about. You have to suffer compassion for people, fellow humans. All of them. In imagination and in life. To a degree that is past responsible or reasonable. If you harden your heart at all, you will fail. You'll fake it or you'll forget it. And I need to hear this again, as much as anyone.

     Compassion differs from empathy in that it is "suffering with," not simply understanding why.

20 Questions: Creative Nonfiction Edition

By Kelley Davidson, Graduate Assistant, Bluegrass Writers Studio

1. “Have you read Eat, Pray, Love?”

2.  “So, you’re a journalist?”

3. “You mean, like David Sedaris?”

4. “You mean, like Susan Orlean?”

5. “Did you have a bad childhood?”

6. “Where do you get your ideas?”

7. “Have you written anything about me?”

8. “Is it anything like Girl, Interrupted?”

9. “Is it anything like In Cold Blood?”

10. “Is it anything like Eat, Pray, Love?”

11. “Is it anything like A Child Called “It”?”

12. “Seriously, have you read Eat, Pray, Love?”

13. “So are you, like, a narcissist or something?”

14. “Do you have depression?”

Feeding the Wraith

By Kelley Davidson, Graduate Assistant, Bluegrass Writers Studio

There are a million ways for a story to die.

You leave your tiny Moleskine notebook in your coat pocket and then have it laundered. Your computer crashes. Your jump drive goes AWOL and you lose months of precious work. You grieve, but there is no funeral.

Sometimes stories die in their infancy. When the creative muse strikes, you write poignant little notes napkins or store receipts: short phrases, an opening sentence or maybe an ending. But you’re so spacey, so forgetful. You forget about your little notes and weeks later when you clean out your purse all that’s left of them is a gray smear. Time and friction killed them off. You say a little prayer as you throw them in the trash.

The Autumn of My Discontent

By Kristen Roach Thompson, Associate Coordinator, Bluegrass Writers Studio

     Recently, as I was getting my thesis manuscript together, I discovered something interesting. I had all of the poems for the manuscript chosen, and wanted to group them into thematic sections. I thought I might move from the most internal poems to the most far-reaching. I could start with personal poems, then personal environment and relationship poems, followed by persona poems, and finally poems that dealt with the broadest human environments.

Uneasy as ABC

By Kelley Davidson, Graduate Assistant, Bluegrass Writers Studio

“I’m getting my MFA in Creative Writing.”

The old woman at table 61 looks up from her coffee and asks me, “Well, what are you going to do with that?”

She’s asked me what I’m studying, an ordinary question. Most of my customers ask me the same thing during our interactions. Sometimes I lie and tell them that I’m going to be a nurse, and they ooh and ahh about what a lucrative profession that is, and that I must be really smart.

But it’s too early in the morning for me to lie today, and I’ve decided that I don’t care what she thinks of me. I don’t want to be waiting tables right now and I don’t have the mental strength to dig up the basal nursing school knowledge I remember from my sister’s time in that degree program. So I tell her the truth.

Open /*deleted href=#openmobile*/

About EKU

Toolbox

Resources

Public Relations

© Copyright Eastern Kentucky University | EO/AA Statement | Privacy Statement | 521 Lancaster Ave, Richmond, KY 40475 | (859) 622-1000 |