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Book Review: BETTER: A MEMOIR ABOUT WANTING TO DIE by Arianna Rebolini
Arianna Rebolini Better: A Memoir About Wanting to Die HarperCollins / April 2025 / 352 pp / $30 Hardcover Reviewed by Hope...
How to Craft a Big Beginning
August 14, 2025 by Whitney Collins, fiction faculty Back in the 1900s, when my friends and I were growing up relatively unplugged and...
Life of a Writer: August 2025
EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF Students Colleen Alles ’s ...
Announcing the Common Read for Our Study Abroad to Vietnam: The Mountains Sing
by Kathleen Driskell, Chair, Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing In less than two months, Naslund-Mann students and alumni will...
The Hottest Day of the Year, Kyoto, 2018
July 24, 2025 By Greg Pape, poetry faculty On the hottest day of the year, the poetry workshop of the Spalding MFA summer residency...
JAILBREAK OF SPARROWS: Martín Espada’s Book for All Marginalized Beings
Martín Espada Jailbreak of Sparrows Alfred A. Knopf / 2025 / 114 pp / $29 Hardback Reviewed by James Long / June 2025 About a third of...
Life of a Writer: June 2025
EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF Students Colleen Alles (P)...
Who’s the Real Villain? A “Once Upon a Disney” Discussion
June 12, 2025 By Larry Brenner, faculty, writing for TV, screen, and stage In our conversations on the Once Upon a Disney podcast, my...
The Usefulness of Productive Misreadings
May 22, 2025 By John Pipkin, fiction faculty One concern that I often hear about delivering critiques in workshop (especially from...
The Power & Wonder of Revision
May 8, 2025 by Leah Henderson, writing for children and young adults faculty On any given day, I hear or read a new article, blog post,...
Feeding Lots of Birds with One Scone:* How I Launched New Novels, Learned about Another Genre, and Overcame a Childhood Humiliation
April 23, 2025 by Nancy McCabe, creative nonfiction and fiction faculty Over the last year or so, I launched two books: in March 2024...
Stepping out: Musings on the Meaning of Retreat
April 10, 2025 by Dianne Aprile, creative nonfiction faculty On a sunny day last month, I filled the tank of my dusty Subaru and hit...
Welcoming new faculty members to Naslund-Mann at Spalding University
Please join Naslund-Mann in welcoming three new faculty members. We are delighted each will be available to mentor students during the...
A Year on the Trauma Circuit: Taking Your Poetry to New Audiences
April 1, 2025 by Lynnell Edwards, poetry faculty and associate programs director On the eve of the Kentucky Book Festival last...
To Write with Empathy
March 13, 2025 by Lee Martin, fiction and creative nonfiction faculty I was a shy boy who knew the discomfort that came from having...
Call for Proposals: Writing for TV, Screen and Stage, Spalding MFA Alumni, for Fall 2025 Lecture
The Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing invites MFA alumni who graduated in writing for TV, screen and stage—or playwriting or...
Naslund-Mann Announces Books and Scripts in Common for the Spring 2025 Residency on Campus and the Summer Virtual 2025 Residency
Writing for Children and Young Adults is our cross-genre area. Watch Over Me by Nina LaCour is our residency book in common. by...
When the Writing Gets Tough, the Tough Get Writing
February 27, 2025 By Lesléa Newman, faculty, writing for children and young adults Have you come down with a bad case of writer’s block?...
The Best Poem I Ever Read Wasn’t Even Poetry
February 20, 2025 by Douglas Manuel, poetry faculty “[P]oetry may / not change the world but it might change you,” Evie Shockley writes...
Seeds for a New Dream: A review of Marisa Labozzetta’s MEN WHO WALK IN DREAMS
Marisa Labozzetta Men Who Walk in Dreams Guernica World Editions / 2024 / 172 pp / $18.95 Paperback Reviewed by Julie Delegal / February...
Life of a Writer: February 2025
EXCITING NEWS & UPDATES FROM SPALDING'S NASLUND-MANN SCHOOL OF WRITING STUDENTS, ALUMNI, FACULTY & STAFF Students Amanda Byrne (F)...
New Ways to Collect & Discover
January 30, 2025 by Leah Henderson, faculty, writing for children and young adults At the end of each year, I feel this need to get...
Maximum Impact: Scene vs. Summary
January 16, 2025 By Nancy McCabe, fiction and creative nonfiction faculty All instructors have our broken-record comments, the ones we...
Henry Hoke’s OPEN THROAT: The New Cat in Town
Henry Hoke Open Throat: A Novel Picador / 2024 / 176 pp / $17.00 Paperback Reviewed by Delaney Aby Saalman / January 2024 “I’ve never...
Irish Storytelling in 1970s New York
Edward Burns A Kid from Marlboro Road Seven Stories Press / August 2024 / 220 pp / $27.95 Reviewed by Lisa McCormack / December...
On Fearlessness: Writing Truth to Power in Troubling Times
December 5, 2024 by Angela Jackson-Brown, fiction faculty As a fifty-six-year-old Black woman who grew up in the rural south, I have...
With Keats on Machu Picchu
November 14, 2024 by Roy Hoffman, fiction and creative nonfiction faculty How does reading impact our lives? What words frame our...
Three Encounters with Grace
October 31, 2024 by Robin Lippincott, fiction and creative nonfiction faculty In the very first post I wrote for this blog, way back...
Call for Proposals: Writing for Children and Young Adults Spalding MFA Alumni, for Spring 2025 Lecture
The Naslund-Mann School invites MFA alumni who graduated in writing for children and young adults to submit proposals for a...
Travel to Vietnam in 2025
A Naslund-Mann trip to Vietnam in 2025 is open to students, alums and guests. Kathleen Driskell and Katy Yocom lead the trip, Sept. 19-28.
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