Submitted by: Mark Spitzer, mspitzer@uca.edu on 09/13/2022
Mark Spitzer, Associate Professor of Creative Writing, recently coordinated an interview with Arkansas poet Paulette Guerin (who received her MA in English from UCA, taught as an instructor here, and is now on the English faculty at Harding University) and six students from his graduate Advanced Forms and Theory of Poetry class last semester. The interview, entitled “You Can’t Carry that Raft on Your Back Forever,” was recently published in Parhelion literary journal. The interviewers include Sydney Austin, Janet Uchendu, Kathy M. Bates, Amber Wagoner, and Savannah Moix-Rogers and can be accessed through the link below.
Spitzer also coordinated an interview between editor Kishor Vaidya and others scholars with students from his dual-listed Teaching Creative Writing course, also taught last semester. The interviewers include graduate students Melanie A. Wilson, Morgan Adams, Amber J. Wagoner, Janet Holmes Uchendu, and Savannah Moix-Rogers; and undergraduates Taylor Conway, Eddy Guinee, Aziza Clerk, Katie Mabry, Ethan Gilbee, Patrick Hackney, CJ Clark, and Tory Potter (whose letter to the editor just appeared in the Sept/Oct 2022 issue of Arkansas Wildlife magazine). This interview, “Playing the Fool in Charge as a Tool for Educational Leadership: An Interview with Dr. Kishor Vaidya and Contributors to Teach Creative Writing with a Sense of Humor,” will be published in Dr. Vaidya’s edited collection Lead with a Sense of Humor: Why (and How to) Be a Funnier and More Effective Educational Leader and Laugh All the Way to Your Institution, forthcoming from The Curious Academic Press in Canberra, Australia, 2023.
Spitzer, who is the editor in chief of Toad Suck Éditions (an imprint of MadHat Press in Cheshire, MA) has also accepted a book of poetry by Chinese poet Xian Ai, which his graduate student Zhihua Wang is currently translating. This collection is scheduled for publication in 2023.
Additionally, research and commentary on neurobiological reactions to fish pain and suffering by UCA biologist Dr. Jeffrey Padberg will be published in Spitzer’s forthcoming book Monster Fishing the World and Back: Towards an Ethics of Fishing for the Grotesque (to be published by Torrey House Press in Salt Lake City, 2023).