Our Word: Writer-in-Residence

For the Spring 2012 semester, Our Word is proud to welcome Roger Reeves as its Writer in Residence!

Reeves' poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, and the Indiana Review, among others. Kim Addonizio selected “Kletic of Walt Whitman” for the Best New Poets 2009 anthology. He was awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. Recently, he earned his MFA from the James A. Michener Center for Creative Writing at the University of Texas. Currently, he is a Ph.D. student in the English Department at the University of Texas and an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His first book of poems, King Me, will come out from Copper Canyon Press in 2013.

One of the cornerstones of Our Word’s mission is to provide opportunities for students to have mentorship with writers of color currently working in fiction, poetry or non-fiction. In an effort to bring a more diverse perspective to the MFA Program, we invite one artist to be our Writer-in-Residence each semester. This artist gives one-on-one workshops to students from the program, providing not only an additional source of feedback, but personal experience and understanding of the unique challenges of writers of minority backgrounds. Our Word and its members also host a dinner with each Writer-in-Residence where we engage in further discussions of the artist’s work.

Past Writers-in-Residence include:

James Canon
Colson Whitehead
Victor LaValle ('98SOA and Assistant Professor)
Hari Kunzru
Monica de la Torre ('95SOA)
Monica Ferrell ('02SOA)

And many more…

(l-r) James, Canon, Monica Ferrell ('02SOA)

Hari Kunzru, Colson Whitehead