Good Things to Come: Highlights of the Fall 2026 Naslund-Mann Residency on Campus
by Kathleen Driskell, Chair
After you see everything planned for your fall residency, it becomes easy to understand what we mean when we say that during residency, the days feel very long, and yet, the week seems to zip by. We have so much to tell you about.
We’re busily putting on the finishing touches of our Fall 2026 residency in Louisville, November 14-21, and we look very much forward to having students, faculty, and alumni back on campus for seven days of workshops, lectures, readings, panels, Spalding Prize celebrations, plus a fun night out at the Kentucky Arts Center as part of ongoing festivities to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Spalding MFA Program. There’s information here needed to be successful during your residency course, so please read through carefully. Necessary times, dates, and descriptions can be found on Canvas in the Residency Card. And remember the full Fall 2026 Residency Schedule is released the Monday before residency, November 9.
A Kick-Off Tradition: Virtual Pre-Residency Faculty Reading, Wednesday, November 11, 7 p.m. Eastern
In addition to our usual readings by faculty and students, we’ll have a pre-residency virtual faculty reading at 7 p.m. Eastern, on Wednesday, November 11. Our readers for this virtual event are Dianne Aprile, Lee Martin, Keith S. Wilson, Larry Brenner, and Danica Novgorodoff.
Students, alumni, and faculty, please join us for what’s become a kick-off tradition for residency and a wonderful virtual gathering of our community. We’ll email a Zoom link for community access to this reading shortly before the event.
Walk the Labyrinth with Us: Another kick-off tradition
Should you arrive on campus early enough and with weather permitting, join new and returning students at 3:45 p.m. at the Interfaith Garden (across from the mansion building) to walk the university’s labyrinth—departing from our ordinary worlds to enter a new creative space in the tradition of the hero’s journey—at least figuratively. (The walk takes about twenty minutes and after we’ll head up to the Brown Hotel for our first event.)
POETRY IS OUR CROSS-GENRE AREA FOR FALL 2026
Required Pre-Lecture: “Four (and More) Ways of Looking at a Poem,” Sunday, October 4, 2-3 p.m. Eastern:
During this hour-long talk, I will use Gregory Orr’s essay “The Four Temperaments and the Forms of Poetry” as a framework to discuss the various ways in which we might better read (and write) poetry. This pre-lecture will help students read our poetry residency book in common for the fall 2026 residency. I look forward to seeing you at my lecture, but for those who have scheduling conflicts, we will record the lecture for your later viewing. A lecture report is required and will be made available to you through your Spalding email account after my talk. It’s not necessary for you to read this short essay by Orr (posted in the residency card in Canvas), but I do find it a wonderful diagnostic approach for all kinds of literary writing and think all students (and those who wish to be teachers of creative writing) can benefit from reading the essay.
West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal wins the 2026 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature.
As poetry is our cross-genre area for fall, I’ve asked each student to read our residency book in common, West: A Translation, winner of our 2026 Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature, by poet, essayist, and teacher, Paisley Rekdal, who visits residency as our Distinguished Visiting Writer. I announced this year’s Spalding Prize earlier on this blog. You can review that post to learn more about her and her work. All students are required to read West: A Translation before coming to residency and to jot down some comments to add to our discussion.
We’ll dive right into our studies on Saturday, November 14, soon after all arrive, with the plenary residency book-in-common discussion. Come to our kick-off session at the Brown Hotel ready to participate with your comments on the book. As I’ve said before, I’ve never read anything quite like it. I’m looking forward to hearing what you think about West.
After our discussion, we’ll have a short amount of time to catch up at our “Cocktails and Coffee” half-hour, before we go to dinner as a community at the Brown.
Our distinguished visiting writer Paisley Rekdal will be here Tuesday, November 17, to receive the Spalding Prize and give a community presentation at the Brown Hotel beginning at 6 p.m. This is a plenary session for students and faculty. Spalding’s Naslund-Mann thanks our community partners the Louisville Free Public Library for their support.
Carmichael’s Bookstore, Louisville’s beloved premier independent bookseller and our official residency bookstore, will be at the Brown to sell Paisley Rekdal’s books.
The next morning, Wednesday, November 18, Paisley Rekdal joins us on campus at 9 a.m. for a plenary Q & A open only to the Naslund-Mann community.
POP-UP Bookstore
Also, on campus Thursday, November 19, Carmichael’s creates a pop-up Naslund-Mann Book Fair during our long lunch hour. If you plan to buy faculty and alumni books, we hope you’ll support Carmichael’s by purchasing them while you’re on campus.
Required Virtual Discussion: FACULTY AND GUEST BOOKS AND SCRIPTS IN COMMON
In addition to reading our residency book in common, West: A Translation by Paisley Rekdal, all students should read the assigned faculty book or script in common in the area that they are workshopping during fall 2026 residency before attending the virtual discussion, immediately following the Intro to Workshop session, on Sunday October 25 from 2-4 p.m. Eastern. Zoom links will be provided by the School of Writing Office just before the sessions begin.
Creative nonfiction. Jason Kyle Howard, A Few Honest Words
Fiction. Tiffany Shaffer (Meg). The Lost Story
Poetry. Jennie Malboef, jump the gun
Writing for Children and Young Adults. Ellen Hagan, Don’t Call Me a Hurricane
Screenwriting. Sam Zalutsky, The Book of Dahlia
Playwriting. Kira Obolensky. TBA.
Other Cross-Genre Sessions in Poetry
Other cross-genre sessions include my lecture “What Puts the Literary in Literature? Poetry as a Figurative Lens,” a talk that provides takeaways to enhance style for all writers. At the end of that lecture, I’ll give our cross-genre exercise assignment, which asks each student to write a poem to be submitted and shared with each other at the end of residency.
I’ll also present the literary exploration lecture “1798: Poetry’s Punk Rock Moment,” during which I discuss the publication of Lyrical Ballads and a Few Other Poems by Wordsworth and Coleridge, which launched the Romantic Movement and continues to influence our writing. Pre-readings of selected poems can soon be found on the Preparing for Spring Residency page on the portal.
Announcing Our Distinguished MFA Lecture for Fall 2026
Also, we’re delighted to welcome back James Long (P ’24) who has been invited to present the Distinguished MFA Alumni Lecture in Poetry for this residency. James describes his talk “Talent and the Individual Tradition,” this way:
In his seminal essay “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T. S. Eliot argues that a writer’s true originality springs from the influence of other writers, gained by reading deeply within the literary tradition. This lecture encourages an expansive view to include traditions aligned with cultures, identity groups, and geographic regions. Using essays from poets Gary Snyder and Sandra Beasley as a launching point, we will discuss how a writer might grow through purposeful reading within literature unique to one’s identity. For this lecture, we will explore as an example the poetry of place, specifically Appalachian poetry. Through a close reading of Maggie Anderson’s poem “Long Story,” we will identify craft choices prominent in Appalachian poetry and see how some of these present themselves again, twenty-eight years later, in Jesse Graves’ poem “At the Window.” We will contrast this with the poem “Campesino” by Mexican-American poet Gary Soto to suggest what might be learned from reading outside one’s group of familiar writers. Participants will be encouraged to reflect on their own literary traditions/counter-traditions and develop a plan to nurture their “talents” within them. While the lecture engages poetry, the methods discussed apply to fiction, creative nonfiction, and other genres as well.
RESIDENCY READINGS & WORKSHOP
Welcoming new workshop leader Tiffany Shaffer. Seven Workshops Scheduled for Spring Residency
This residency we welcome a new fiction workshop leader, Tiffany Shaffer (pen name Meg Shaffer), the USA Today bestselling author of The Wishing Game, which was a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist, a Book-of-the-Month finalist for Book of the Year, a # 1 Barnes & Noble bestseller, a Reader’s Digest Best Book of the Year, and one of NPR’s Best Books of the Year.
Her second and third novels, the instant national bestsellers The Lost Story and The Book Witch, are available now from Ballantine. Tiffany Shaffer writes genre-bending fiction that has been described as “wholly moving” (Jodi Picoult) and “magical, emotional, and charming” (Booklist).
Shaffer has penned over three dozen novels under multiple pen names, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages and collectively sold over one million copies worldwide.
She holds an MFA in TV and Screenwriting from Stephens College. Shaffer has taught creative writing to adults in many venues, including at the Carnegie Center for Literacy and Learning in Lexington, Kentucky, and she lives in Kentucky with her husband and two cats.
Rachel Harper also leads a fiction workshop. Our two poetry workshop leaders are Jennie Malboeuf and Douglas Manual; Jason Kyle Howard leads the CNF workshop; Ellen Hagan leads the W4CYA workshop; and Kira Obolensky and Sam Zalutsky team up to co-lead the W4TVSS workshop which includes playwriting and screenwriting students.
In addition to our distinguished visiting writer Paisley Rekdal, our Distinguished MFA Alumni Lecturer Jimmy Long, and residency faculty, faculty members and guests dropping into residency to present sessions include Angela Jackson-Brown, fiction faculty member; Sarah Strickley, fiction and CNF writer and professor at University of Louisville; Erin Keane, poetry and CNF faculty member; John Maclay, playwriting alum specializing in adaptations and children’s plays; and Meg Fister from the Kentucky Film Commission.
Community Creative Writing Workshop
You may see some new faces during the fall semester during lectures and readings. Each day while you’re in graduate workshops, members of our Greater Louisville community will be in a mixed genre workshop with faculty member Lynnell Edwards. From time to time, we offer this workshop to provide service to our community and curious writers who want to experience a little of what we're all about.
Residency Students, PGRAs, and Faculty Attend The Lion King
Our interrelatedness-of-the-arts event calls us to the Kentucky Center for the Arts to see a production of The Lion King on Sunday evening, November 15. On Sunday, after our workshops meet on campus for the first time and after our graduating students give their lectures at the Graduation Lecture Symposium—a big important full day—we’ll all head down to the Kentucky Center for the Arts to see a performance of The Lion King.
Happy preparation for Fall residency at Spalding! Our Naslund-Mann faculty and staff look forward to welcoming you back to campus soon!
Kathleen Driskell, Chair of Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing and Professor of Creative Writing, is an award-winning poet and essayist. In April 2025, she was named the Kentucky State Poet Laureate 2025-26 by Governor Andy Beshear. She was recently awarded a $50,000 Poet Laureate Fellowship by the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, River Teeth, Appalachian Review, Rattle, Southern Review, Shenandoah, and other magazines. She is the author of six poetry collections, most recently Goat-Footed Gods (Carnegie Mellon University Press), as well as The Vine Temple (Carnegie Mellon University Press) and Next Door to the Dead (University Press of Kentucky), winner of the Judy Gaines Young Book Award. Her collection Seed Across Snow (Red Hen Press) was named a Poetry Foundation Bestseller. She served as Chair of the Board of Directors of AWP, the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, from 2019 to 2022.