CONWAY — As part of the city of Conway’s annual ArtsFest Festival, the editorial staff of the University of Central Arkansas’s award-winning Toad Suck Review, will host a reading on Saturday, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m. at The Locals coffee shop in downtown Conway.
The “Scintillating Six,” comprising the incoming class of UCA’s MFA program in creative writing, will read from original works for 10 to 15 minutes each as a service to the community.
“This is an extremely talented clutch of students who are incredibly diverse in background, age, genre and poetic sensibilities,” said Mark Spitzer, associate professor and editor in chief of the Toad Suck Review. “They will wow the crowd with powerful insights and vivid visions, but not for more than an hour and 10 minutes. Any reading that lasts longer than that is too long.”
Though the Toad Suck Review is going into its fifth year as a nationally recognized literary journal celebrated for its innovative spirit, UCA’s fledgling MFA degree in creative writing has only been in existence for two years. As the cornerstone of the Arkansas Writers MFA Workshop, the Toad’s editorial staff occupies a unique niche in the art-scape of the region, and the masthead changes every year.
This year’s crop includes playwright Shua Miller, who practices fiction in a myriad of media; future YA novelist Briget Laskowski, a collector of books and cats; Heather Steadham, a writer of creative nonfiction who has just arrived from expatriate Italy; Devon Norris, an avid reader and cinephile who focuses on creative nonfiction and fiction via travel and pop culture; Benjamin C. Roy Cory, “a lying poet with a fraudulent memory and a dream for tomorrow that he believes too beautiful not to share;” and Mark Lager, “a graveyard poet, ancestral wanderer, and nocturnal vagabond searching for a sacred space.”
The Locals coffee shop is located at 1024 Von Ronkle in downtown Conway. This performance is free and open to the public and is appropriate for all audiences. Copies of the Toad Suck Review will be available for purchase. For more information, contact Spitzer at mspitzer@uca.edu or (501) 450-3339.
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