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Chair: Kent Baxter
Notes compiled by: Kate Haake
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Announcements:
The entire CSUN creative writing community invites you to join us in celebrating Martin Pousson’s new book, Black Sheep Boy, with a reading on campus. The reading will take place next Tuesday, November 1st, at 4:30p.m., in our LNJ Room (JR 319). Hope to see you there!
Today, on this very night — October 27th! — the Northridge Creative Writing Circle will be having a costume party and reading event at Menchie’s, in Chatsworth: 9201 Winnetka Ave. Unit E (by the Winnetka Pacific Theaters). The event takes place from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. and is a fundraiser, so grab a flyer in the main English department office, ST 708, before you go, and the NCWC will receive 20% of the evening’s profits. Don’t forget to wear a fun costume and bring something brief (five minutes, or less) to read. Fundraising continues through October 30, so bring another flyer and enjoy.
Speaking of the NCWC, two additional upcoming events include a Submit Yo’self Publishing Seminar on November 2, at 7:30 p.m., in JR 352, and a November 17 reading by Natashia Deon & Dana Johnson, at 7:30 p.m., in the Whitsett Room.
The all new, online
, Northridge Review is a literary and arts journal of the present, produced by students in the creative writing program at California State University, Northridge. Founded in 1962 as a campus publication of student work, Northridge Review now seeks to broaden its scope and join the larger literary community by moving to an online format and publishing exceptional student work alongside established and emerging writers from across the globe. We encourage submissions of timely, provocative, and innovative Prose, Poetry, Drama, and Art that pushes boundaries in subversive, disruptive, or other challenging ways. To submit visit:
https://thenorthridgereview.submittable.com/submit. Submissions for the inaugural online edition (to be published in the spring) will close November 23, 2016.
On Friday, November 28, the Graduate Reading Series will be holding an event, featuring student readers: Eric Perez, drama; Starlon Hithe, writing; and Eric Smith, prose. Come join in the fun and support our fabulous writing students. The reading begins at 7:00 p.m. in our LNJ Room (JR 319), and is free and open to all, including children under five, with free snacks.
Every year the Dean of the College of Humanities asks that we solicit from our students a few lines of poetry or prose that would be suitable for the holiday card that the College sends out. It’s a lovely honor — the card includes the lines, plus a bio of the student author (and bragging rights, of course). Typically the Dean is interested in free verse that captures something of the season in fresh language, so please let your students know, and if you see something they have written that might be appropriate, please send to along to Dorothy Barresi (
dorothy.barresi@csun.edu), who is generously overseeing the selection process.
Reminders:
As part of CSUN’s strong commitment to reducing our carbon footprint, addressing our parking issues, and exploring the best environmentally-sensitive solutions for an environmentally sustainable future, President Harrison recently sent you a link to our annual transportation survey. Please fill it out. Maybe we’ll get more parking (and maybe less), but your data is vital data. (Also, I think, participation is required.)
Opportunities:
Provision 20.37 of the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the California Faculty Association and the Board of Trustee of the California State University (2014-17) designates the awarding of assigned time (in the form of Weighted Teaching Units, WTU), on a competitive basis, to Unit 3 faculty employees “who are engaged in exceptional levels of service that support the CSU’s priorities, but who are not otherwise receiving an adjustment in workload to reflect their effort.” Awards are designated for workload beyond the requirements of regular faculty assignment in enhancing the student learning environment. Don’t be shy–this could be you. The application deadline is Friday, November 4, 2016. For more information, including application forms, please see the Office of Faculty Affairs webpage:
http://www.csun.edu/faculty-affairs.
Here’s one for our budding children’s lit authors: the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators is currently accepting application from full-time university students in an English or Creative Writing Program for scholarships to its 2017 SCBWI Winter Conference in New York, February 10-12, 2017. The scholarships feature: full tuition to main conference events including keynotes and breakout sessions, exclusive exposure to industry professionals at the conference, and a SCBWI Conference advisor to help navigate the jammed-packed weekend. The deadline is coming up soon — November 2, 2016–so check out the details at http://www.scbwi.org/awards/grants/student-writer-scholarship/. One graduate student and one undergraduate student will be selected for this conference, and one of each will also be selected for a conference next summer.
Achievements:
On Saturday, October 22nd, Irene Clark presented a paper at the Western States Rhetoric and Literacy Conference in San Diego. The conference theme was “Rhetoric and Literacy on the Border,” and her paper was titled “Border Crossing Between First Year Writing and Writing in Upper Division Courses.”
LA’s 2016 Lit Crawl — and fourth annual participation in this now global celebration of writing — took place last night, November 26, in North Hollywood, and CSUN’s writing community was, as ever, well represented. Various readings and events featured CSUN faculty, students, and alum, including: Kate Haake and Sean Pessin, with the Interstitial Arts Organization, hosted by Susana Marcelo; Mona Houghton, with What Books; alum, Gina Alexander, with the New Short Fiction Series; and our very own graduate students taking on pressing issues of racial inequality, gender identity, and political upheaval through poetry, fiction, music, manifestos, spoken-word, and everything in between. Presenters included Alvaro Castillo, Jesse Clemens, Lu Chukhadarian as reader, and members of the Vocal Artillery doing their thing. As they put it themselves, “Maybe literature can’t change the world, but we can sure as hell try.”
Kate Haake has published a quartet of micro fictions, “Some Time After That,” in the newly released fall 2016 issue of Chicago Quarterly Review. The stories — “A Festival of Fish,” “Not Here,” “How We Started,” and “Assumptions We Might Make About the Postworld,” are accompanied by art work by Los Angeles writer, Lisa Bloomfield. 
