Description:

We are thrilled to host a special MA in Writing and MFA in Prose and Poetry Graduate Reading in concert with NU's 15th annual Summer Writers' Conference.

LINEUP TO INCLUDE --
NU Faculty: Paula Carter, Simone Muench, and Christine Sneed
Graduates: J-L Deher-Lesaint, Vincent Francone, Marssie Mencotti, Jeremy T Wilson

Mixer (drinks, snacks, and mingling) at 4:45 p.m.
Reading at 5:30 p.m.

SPS Wieboldt Hall
339 E. Chicago Ave., Chicago 60611
Free Admission -- Open to the Public

For information on NU's MA in Writing program, visit:
https://sps.northwestern.edu/masters/writing/index.php

For information on NU's MFA in Prose and Poetry program, visit:
https://sps.northwestern.edu/masters/prose-and-poetry/index.php

Faculty Bios:

Paula Carter is the author of the flash memoir No Relation. Her works have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, TriQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Based in Chicago, she is a company member with the storytelling series 2nd Story and teaches writing at Northwestern University.

Simone Muench is the author of six full-length books including Orange Crush and Wolf Centos. Her recent, Suture, is a collection of sonnets written with Dean Rader. She and Rader also edited They Said: A Multi-Genre Anthology of Contemporary Collaborative Writing. She is Professor of English at Lewis University where she teaches creative writing and film studies. Currently, she serves as faculty advisor for Jet Fuel Review, as a poetry editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and as host of the HB Sunday Reading Series.​

Christine Sneed is the author of the novels Paris, He Said and Little Known Facts and the story collections Portraits of a Few of the People I've Made Cry and The Virginity of Famous Men. Her stories or essays have been included in The Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize Stories, New Stories from the Midwest, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, New England Review, The Southern Review, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, Greensboro Review, and a number of other periodicals. Her books have received AWP’s Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction, Ploughshares' Zacharis prize, the Society of Midland Authors Award, the Chicago Public Library’s 21st Century Award, and Book of the Year from the Chicago Writers Association. She is the faculty director for the MFA program at Northwestern University’s MA/MFA program in creative writing; she is also on the fiction faculty of the Regis University low-residency MFA program.

Graduate Bios:

Born and raised in Guadeloupe (French West Indies), J-L Deher-Lesaint has lived in the United States since 1995. He holds degrees from Harold Washington College, Loyola University Chicago, the University of Virginia and Northwestern University. His feature interviews with Edmund White and Edward P. Jones have appeared in Meridian: The Semi-Annual from the University of Virginia, where he also served as fiction editor; and his book reviews have appeared in New City and the Virginia Quarterly Review. He has taught creative writing and advanced freshman composition at the University of Virginia. Since 2004, he has taught developmental, intermediate and advanced composition courses, contemporary American literature, introduction to literature, Queer literature, and seminars in fiction writing and in cinema at Harold Washington College, where he served as Department Co-Chairperson for the English, Speech, Theatre and Journalism Department from January 2015 to August 2019. His cinema seminars have focused on themes ranging from “The Cinema of Alfred Hitchcock,” “Noir, Neo-Noir, Dreams and Nightmares,” “Undoing The Male Gaze,” “Women in Noir,” and “In The Realms of Terror: The Monstrous Feminine.”

Vincent Francone's work has appeared in New City Magazine, Rain Taxi Review of Books, Rhino and other journals. He won the State of Illinois’ Gwendolyn Brooks Award for poetry and is the author of the memoir Like a Dog (2015) and the essay collection The Soft Lunacy (2018). He lives in the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago with his wife and a feisty dog.

Marssie Mencotti began studying theatre at Northwestern University. Before graduating she moved to Pennsylvania, then returned to Chicago and finished her B.A. in Theatre at UIC. Resulting from a career in radio at multiple station she was selected to teach at Columbia College Chicago, where she developed the voiceover minor and received tenure. She continues to teach VO there as adjunct faculty. In 2012, she entered NU’s School of Professional Studies and received an M.A. in Creative Writing. Under the pseudonym, Marcella Bernard, she self-published (2018) a novel of creative non-fiction entitled Pro Patria - The Story of an American Who Fought for Italy in World War I. marssie is an actor on non-equity stages around Chicago. She was nominated for two Jeff awards in 2019. She is represented by NV Talent for voice and Big Mouth for on camera. She begins rehearsals in September for a new musical, “TRU.”

Jeremy T. Wilson is the author of the short story collection Adult Teeth. He is a former winner of the Chicago Tribune’s Nelson Algren Award for short fiction, and his work has appeared in literary magazines such as The Carolina Quarterly, The Florida Review, Hobart, RHINO, Sonora Review, Third Coast and other publications. He holds an MFA from Northwestern University and teaches creative writing at The Chicago High School for the Arts. He lives in Evanston, Illinois with his wife and daughter.