Eminent writer in residence Maggie Nelson has been working with
UW’s MFA in Creative Writing program. During the spring semester, Nelson served as a committee member for two thesis defenses for the Creative Writing Program.
Maggie Nelson will be delivering a public reading Friday at the UW Art Museum. Nelson is a professor at the School of Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts and the author of four nonfiction books and four books of poetry that critics have given glowing reviews.
Her latest book, “The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning” was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and an Editor’s Choice. Her poetry also has been widely anthologized and was featured in the Best American Poetry series.
“Poetry tends to come to me naturally or not at all,” Nelson said in an interview with About Creativity. “I spent years trying out different exercises and forms like most everyone, but the truth is that I don’t do that anymore. It may sound mystical or retro or simply depressing, but I increasingly feel myself to be a hostage to poetic impulse. I usually have to wait until a poem comes along, or until I see what’s there to be written, as Robert Creely once put it.”
Every semester, the UW’s MFA in Creative Writing hosts an Eminent Writer in Residence. Nelson came in the fall; however, the reading was rescheduled for the spring. While in residence during the fall semester, Nelson consulted with MFA students on their manuscripts and held a question and answer session for them. During this trip, she served as a committee member for two thesis defenses.
Students and faculty are looking forward to Nelson’s presence on campus this week.
“We’re excited to have Maggie Nelson at UW because she is one of the most innovative and original voices emerging in America today,” said Alyson Hagy, Co-Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. “She is fearless and beautifully lyrical on the page, and young writers can learn a lot from how she transforms painful family history and other concerns into art.”
Nelson taught at Wesleyan University and Pratt Institute before moving to Los Angeles to teach at CalArts in the MFA writing program. She continued teaching at the Tinhouse Summer Writers Workshop and the Community Arts Partnership Summer Arts Program. In addition to these credentials, she also has been awarded the Arts Writers grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Nonfiction. In 2011, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.
Nelson’s public reading will be at 7 p.m. Friday at the UW Art Museum. Second Story Books will be at the event to provide refreshments and sell books the author will sign after the reading.
For more information about the reading, contact Gwynn Lemler at cw@uwyo.edu.
