It’s that time of the year again — the Solstice MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College, my MFA Alma Mater, will soon hold its summer writing residency. Each residency features a variety of evening readings by Solstice faculty members and guests. Readings are held in the Founder’s Room of Pine Manor College, 400 Heath Street, Chestnut Hill, and are FREE and open to the public. All readings are at 7:30 p.m. unless *otherwise indicated. Author’s books will be available for signing, and there is plenty of parking!
Here’s the list for this summer’s residency, which begins Friday, June 28:
Friday, June 28 at 7:30 p.m.: Iain Haley Pollock (Spit Back A Boy, winner of the 2010 Cave Canem Poetry Prize); David Yoo (The Detention Club & The Choke Artist: Confessions of a Chronic Underachiever); & Steven Huff (The Water We Came From & A Pig In Paris).
Saturday, June 29 at 7:30 p.m.: R. Dwayne Betts (A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison & Shahid Reads His Own Palm) & novelist Sterling Watson (Sweet Dream Baby & Fighting in the Shade).
Sunday, June 30 at 7:30 p.m.: Michael Steinberg (founding editor of Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, author of Still Pitching); Mira Bartók (The Memory Palace, winner of the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography); & Deborah Wiles (author of the Aurora County Trilogy, a fictional account of growing up in the South).
Monday, July 1 at 7:30 p.m.: Graduate Assistant Beth Grosart (published in Eastown Fiction & Somebody’s Child: Stories about Adoption); Assistant Director Tanya Whiton (published in Crazyhorse and American Fiction among other journals); & Laure-Anne Bosselaar (A New Hunger & The Hour Between Dog & Wolf).
*Tuesday, July 2 from 4:30-6:30 p.m.: Graduating Student Readings
Wednesday, July 3 at 7:30 p.m.: Kashmira Sheth (Boys Without Names & Tiger in My Soup); Anne-Marie Oomen (Pulling Down the Barn & An American Map: Essays); & Lee Hope (published in Witness and The North American Review, among other journals).
Thursday, July 4 at 7:30 p.m.: Philip Memmer (The Storehouses of the Snow: Psalms, Parables and Dreams & Lucifer: a Hagiography); Robert Lopez (Asunder & Kamby Bolongo Mean River); & Vievee Francis (Blue-Tail Fly & Horse in the Dark winner of the Cave Canem Northwestern University Poetry Prize for a second collection).
Friday, July 5 at 7:30 p.m.: Lita Judge (Red Hat, Red Sled, & Bird Talk), Program Director Meg Kearney (Home By Now & The Girl in the Mirror); & Laura Williams McCaffrey (Water Shaper & Alia Waking).
Directions to Pine Manor College, complete bios of our authors, and more information about the Solstice MFA Program can be found at www.pmc.edu/mfa.





