March Castalia

We have another fabulous line up for Castalia in March: UW professor David Shields, alum Peter Mountford, first year MFA prose writer Cecilia Kiely, second year MFA poet Matt Muth, and second year MFA poet Zebulon Huset.

WHEN: Tuesday, March 1, 8 pm
WHERE: Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue
FREE and open to the public.
Co-sponsored with Richard Hugo House

More on our readers below:
David Shields’s most recent book, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (Knopf, 2010), was called “mind-bending” (The New York Times) and “the most provocative, brain-rewiring book of 2010” (GQ); it was also named one of the best books of the year by Kirkus Reviews, the Guardian, New Statesman, and two dozen other publications. His previous book, The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead (Knopf, 2008), was a New York Times bestseller; Amazon, Artforum, Salon, TimeOut Chicago, and the Seattle Times named it one of the best books of 2010. He is the author of ten other books, including Black Planet, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Remote, winner of the PEN/Revson Award; and Dead Languages, winner of the PEN/Syndicated Fiction Award. His essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper’s, Salon, and Slate. Shields’s work has been translated into fifteen languages.

Since earning his MFA from the University of Washington in 2006, Peter Mountford's short fiction has appeared in Best New American Voices 2008, Conjunctions, Michigan Quarterly Review, Phoebe, Seattle Review, and Boston Review, where he was the runner-up in the 2007 contest, judged by George Saunders. A 2010-11 writer-in-residence at Seattle Arts and Lectures, he is a two-time fellow of Yaddo and won 2010 grants from the city of Seattle and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Peter’s first novel, A Young Man’s Guide to Late Capitalism, will be published on April 12 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Cecilia Kiely is a first-year MFA student at the UW. She is a New England transplant from the small town of Manchester-by-the-Sea. Her work frequently appears in such places as workshop classes and late-night emails. She serves as the editor of the Pacific Northwest’s premiere sailing club e-newsletter. Receiving national recognition for her work, Cecilia has been awarded several Stafford Loans.

Matt Muth is a narcissist, and often refers to himself in the 3rd person. His activities include being handsome, making Italian hand gestures, and hating on hipsters. Matt was born and raised in Ann Arbor, Michigan, will lecture you freely on why you should buy American automobiles, and is a proud member of UAW Local 4121. His attempts at collective bargaining his thesis requirements have been rebuffed, and he is plotting a sit-in in the graduate lounge as a result. When not preening, he teaches Intro to Poetry at the UW, plays hockey, and wastes time on the internet like there will be no more internet in the near future. Matt's lifelong ambition is to be Mr. Halle Berry.

February Castalia

Come to the February installment of Castalia! This month we're delighted to present Heather McHugh, Johnny Horton, Rachel Welty, and Anca Szilágyi.

WHERE: Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue
WHEN: Tuesday, February 1, 8 pm

As always the Hugo House Cafe offers a variety of drinks to keep you well hydrated throughout the evening. We'll continue to have books for sale — so bring some cash!

The reading is FREE and open to the public. Co-sponsored with Richard Hugo House.

More on this month's readers below:

Heather McHugh is a dual citizen of Canada and the US, and a resident of Washington state. She has been teaching at the UW since 1983, and before that she taught ten years elsewhere. Her most recent collection of poems is Upgraded to Serious, from Copper Canyon; she's done seven or eight poetry collections, a lot of translations; and a collection of essays called Broken English: Poetry and Partiality. In 2000 she was made a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2009 was named a John D and Catherine T MacArthur fellow.

Johnny Horton teaches writing and American Lit at Seattle Central Community College. He's published poems or recently had poems accepted by Indiana Review, Notre Dame Review, Fourteen Hills, The Laurel Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Seattle Review and other magazines. He's been the recipient of a Washington Artist Trust GAP grant and residency fellowships from The Espy Foundation, The Ragdale Foundation, and The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. In 2009 and 2010 he co-directed the University of Washington's summer creative writing program in Rome.

Rachel Welty is a second-year MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Washington. Rachel is one of those girls who is defined by her lovers, among them: King David, George Herbert, William Carlos Williams, Martha Stewart, and NPR's Paula Poundstone. Even though William Carlos Williams once advised her, “no ideas but in things!” old habits die hard; she can't stop writing on abstract ideas, among them: verbing proper nouns, prayer, the midwest, and HOME.

Anca Szilágyi is a Brooklynite living in Seattle. Her stories have appeared in The Massachusetts Review, Western Humanities Review, and The Antigonish Review, among other publications. Chocolate pudding has fueled the writing and rewriting of much of her first novel. She is a second-year MFA candidate in prose.

January Castalia Audio

New year, same fabulous reading series! First year fiction writer Valerie Arvidson kicked off 2011 with a series of short narratives based off of old family photos; first year poet Peter Moench shared with us his love of toasters and Abraham Lincoln; second year fiction writer Ben Wirth showed the audience the ups and downs of the dangerous world of gambling; UW alumna and poet Sierra Nelson invoked Groucho Marx and took the audience on a "choose your own adventure"; and UW creative writing faculty member Maya Sonenberg closed out the evening with two experimental short fiction pieces.

January Castalia

Join us for the first Castalia of 2011! Featuring Maya Sonenberg, Sierra Nelson, Ben Wirth, Peter Moench, and Valerie Marie Arvidson.

WHEN: January 4, 8 pm
WHERE: Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue, Seattle, WA 98122

Co-sponsored with the Richard Hugo House.
FREE and open to the public!

As always the Hugo House Cafe offers a variety of drinks to keep you well hydrated throughout the evening. We'll continue to have books for sale by current and former featured readers—so bring some cash!


More info on our readers below:

Maya Sonenberg's first collection of stories, Cartographies, received the Drue Heinz Prize. Her second, Voices from the Blue Hotel, was published by Chiasmus Press in 2007. More recent fiction and nonfiction is appearing in Fairy Tale Review, Web Conjunctions, New Ohio Review, and Hotel Amerika. She teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Washington.

Sierra Nelson earned her MFA from U.W. in 2002 and her poems can be found in Crazyhorse, Poetry Northwest, Fairy Tale Review, Forklift, Thermos, and other locations. Co-founder of the Vis-à-Vis Society and The Typing Explosion, her collaborative graph installations can be found in Cal Anderson Park, and the new Vis-à-Vis Society statistical musical will debut at the NW Film Forum this May. Sierra’s chapbook with artist Loren Erdrich, I Take Back the Sponge Cake, recently won NYU’s Collaboration Award. She hearts typewriters, Icelandic sagas, and cephalopods.

Ben Wirth is a second-year MFA candidate at the University of Washington. He was the recipient of the Joyce Waddell Fund for Talented Writers and runner-up for the Loren D. Milliman Scholarship. His work has received rave reviews from his peers, including: "If Ben's story is the future of fiction, I'm going to cry" and "I feel as though this story hates me." As the Castalia photographer, it has been his honor to shoot so many great readers in our community, and is proud to be invited to read along with them.

Peter Moench was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the Ithaca of the upper Midwest. Like many young men of his generation, his childhood was spent exploring the wooded banks and bluffs of the Mississippi River. He fished for its bounty of catfish, chased the light bulb sun across the birch infested sky, sang with the crickets and mosquitoes. When night fell and he slept at last, the woods blanketed him in oak leaves and wreathed him in holly, while the northern lights bathed his dreams in their Christmas police siren glow. From the whitetail deer he learned to sniff trouble on the wind, the sense to flee at the first sign of anything. The snow taught him its quiet wisdom, the unstirred grace of yogurt. Then, at age six, his father packed the family’s trunks and moved them south in search of their fortunes. There, in the suburbs, Peter learned of books, driveways with their own basketball hoops, and CD-ROMS, but the wilderness of the city always stayed in his heart.

Valerie Marie Arvidson is originally from Massachusetts. She writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and "mixed-fiction"/blurred genres. She is also a print-maker and visual-artist. Her personal essay about childhood and family, titled “Birds Have Eyes”, was the winner of the 2009 Hunger Mountain Creative Non-Fiction Writing Contest, judged by author Robin Hemley. Valerie is currently teaching writing composition and earning her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Washington. Fun fact: she's getting married in 2011!

December Castalia Audio

What a fabulous holiday treat to sit in cozy Hugo House, nursing (or chugging) a glass of wine or a bottle of beer, and enjoying some fine poetry and prose. First year poet Erika Wilder kicked off the night with an abundance of intriguing imagery and wordplay; second year prose writer Lisa Nicholas Ritscher’s essay was accompanied by her own fabulous clarinet music; second year poet Talia Shalev began her performance with a mention of Apollo and then followed it with a few more “geek out, Greek out,” poems; UW alumna and poet Chelsea Jennings taught us about Fado, the weather, and the “old Castalia,” including costumes and Box Wine,among other things; and UW professor and fiction writer Shawn Wong shared an excerpt from his new novel.

December Castalia

Join us for our December reading! This month we're delighted to present UW professor Shawn Wong, author of the novel American Knees which has been made into the film Americanese, distributed by IFC Films, as well as Homebase which won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, as well as the Governor’s Writers Day Award of Washington; alumna Chelsea Jennings whose poems have appeared in Madison Review, Sycamore Review, Poet Lore, Best New Poets 2007, and Black Warrior Review, and who is a recipient of the 2010 Discovery/Boston Review Award; 2nd year MFA fiction writer Lisa Nicholas-Ritscher; 2nd year MFA poet Talia Shalev; and 1st year MFA poet Erika Wilder, whose poems have been published in the online reading series Back Room Live.

WHEN: December 7, 8 pm
WHERE: Richard Hugo House, 1634 11th Avenue
Seattle, WA 98122

Co-sponsored with the Richard Hugo House.
FREE and open to the public!

November Castalia

This month's Castalia fell on Election Day. Luckily, we weren't forced to cast a vote for the best one since they were all so great. First-year prose writer Kristen Millares Young shared the prologue and first few pages of her novel; first-year poet Kori Linn read some old work as well as pieces she's been working on this year; second-year prose writer Rebecca Ainsley read a short fiction piece about one woman's love of deep sea diving; UW alumna Elissa Washuta shared an excerpt from the book she is working on, about her identity as a Cowlitz Indian; and UW poetry professor Andrew Feld read a few pieces from his forthcoming book, centered around the unifying theme of falconry. Happy listening!