From the Desk of the Head COW

Your friendly neighborhood Council of Writers is now entering the blogosphere. Members of COW will be semi-sporadically posting MFA comings and goings, bits of our work, readings we’re digging, and/or a quirky combination of the above, because who knows what’ll actually happen when a bunch of creative writers are given official blog access and allowed to run wild.

What has COW been up to lately, you might ask? We’ve been busy planning a docket of literary events for this semester and next. COW is super excited to join EGO in the annual Book Sale/Bake Sale on Wednesday, October 20 from 9am to 4pm. Cheap books, delicious treats—what could be better? Only if you, Tenants readers, came out and joined us. And, you know, bought stuff.

Next up is the MFA reading, coming to you live from Zenclay at the family-friendly hour of 6pm on Friday, November 12. Come one, come all, to hear some, not all, of the MFAs read their work, and take home a complimentary copy of Joinery, promised this time to be in chapbook form. Rebecca Schwab will delight and amaze with her emcee skills, which are perhaps so delightful and so amazing that I’d see fit to label them skillz. It’s on the blog now, Rebecca. There’s no going back.

We’re also pleased to announce that our Spring Reader is Mike Czyzniejewski (we’ll hold a workshop on pronouncing his name prior to his visit, but for now, let’s just refer to him as Mike). Mike is editor-in-chief of Mid-American Review and author of the book Elephants in Our Bedroom. He’s published fiction in a slew of literary journals and is recipient of a 2010 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Mike teaches at Bowling Green State University, where the campus is very, very flat. Look for Mike’s arrival and subsequent rendezvous with Morgantown’s hills in early April.

In closing, in keeping with the quirky blog post/things we’re reading/things we’re writing trend, my current reading-for-fun book is Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which is science-y and vivid and altogether rad. Plus, Rebecca Skloot signed my book when she visited WVU. And she has an MFA! She has an MFA, and people are reading her very well-written book! Giving Ms. Skloot a run for her money is Sara Pritchard, who also has an MFA, and whose book Crackpots arrived in my mailbox today. I feel some two-timing coming on. As for my stuff, here are links to a not-so-recently-published story and a few poems.

I feel compelled to end on a cow pun, but will spare you since it’s my first blog and the steaks are high.

(Get it? Steaks?)

(Yeah.)