8th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness, and the Creative Imagination

8th Annual Symposium on Wildness, Wilderness & the Creative Imagination

Iowa State University

Ames, IA

Sunday, February 26 - Monday, February 27, 2012

 2012 Theme:  Outliers

All Events are Free & Open to the Public

[Printable PDF of the Full Symposium Schedule]

SUNDAY – February 26, 2012

Writing from the Margins: A Conversation with Daniel Woodrell and Aimee Nezhukumatathil

2:00 PM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Daniel Woodrell is the author of Winter’s Bone, whose film adaptation was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Woodrell has set most of his eight novels in the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up and now lives. Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and a father from South India. Her recently published book of poetry, Lucky Fish, moves from India to the Philippines to New York state. She teaches creative writing and environmental literature at the State University of New York-Fredonia.

MFA Program Reception

     3:00 PM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Join us for food and good conversation between Wildness Symposium sessions.

Lucky Fish: A Reading - Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil was born in Chicago to a Filipina mother and a father from South India. Her recently published book of poetry, Lucky Fish, moves from India to the Philippines to New York state to capture a rich life, richly lived. Her other collections include At the Drive-in Volcano, winner of the Balcones Prize, and Miracle Fruit, winner of the Tupelo Press Prize, ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year Award and the Global Filipino Award. Aimee Nezhukumatiathil was a Diane Middlebrook Poetry Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing in Madison and is currently an associate professor of English at State University of New York-Fredonia, where she teaches creative writing and environmental literature.

The Outlaw Album:  A Reading - Daniel Woodrell

     7:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union

Daniel Woodrell is the author of Winter’s Bone, whose film adaptation was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Woodrell has set most of his eight novels in the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up and now lives. Five of them have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West award for the novel in 1999. His second book, Woe to Live On, was adapted for the 1999 film Ride with the Devil. Woodrell dropped out of high school at seventeen to join the Marines. He eventually earned a BA from the University of Kansas and an MFA from the University of Iowa, where he attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was awarded a Michener Fellowship. His latest publication is a collection of short stories, The Outlaw Album. 
 

MONDAY – February 27, 2012

Outliers and Environmental Literary Criticism: Panel Discussion

      10:00 AM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

The following three literary critics will discuss the concept of the environmental imagination in literature.

Brianna Burke,“Reciprocity: What Environmentalists Can Learn from Native American Literature”
Brianna Burke is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Iowa State University. Her academic interests are in the Environmental Humanities, including Ecocriticism and Multicultural Ecologies, but she is particularly invested in Environmental Justice. She is the author of two articles, “Fighting Reds Onscreen and Off-screen: Ronald Reagan as Cold War Politician and Cowboy in Cattle Queen of Montana,” and “The Great American Love Affair: Indians in the Twilight Saga,” both of which examine representations of Native Americans in popular culture. Currently she is working on a book that explores the intersections between environmental ethics and Native American cultural and religious traditions.

Matthew Wynn Sivils, “Of Outliers and Archives: Tracking Paul L. Errington’s Of Men and Marshes”
Formerly a wildlife biologist, Matthew Wynn Sivils is now an Assistant Professor of English at Iowa State University, where he teaches American literature before 1900, as well as courses devoted to American environmental literature from all periods. He has published several scholarly articles on topics in those specializations and has edited three scholarly editions of the writings of Muscogee (Creek) poet and nature writer Alexander Posey,which were published by the University of Nebraska Press. He is founder and co-editor of the award winning scholarly journal, Literature in the Early American Republic and is currently working on a monograph about the origins of American environmental prose. His edition of Paul L. Errington’s nature writing classic, Of Men and Marshes, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press.

Jeremy Withers, “Animals and Warfare in Military Treatises”
Jeremy Withers is a Lecturer in the English Department at Iowa State University. His research focuses on the intersections between warfare and nature as represented in medieval texts, as well as on environmental readings of contemporary American literature and film.

Eco-Voices: Flyway Home Voices reading

     11:00 AM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Writers from the MFA Program in Creative Writing & Environment read from their prize-winning work.  Creative pieces will be published in a forthcoming issue of Flyway: a Journal of Writing and Environment.  The winners were selected by final judge, Linda Hasselstrom, for Flyway's 2011 Home Voices Contest

• First place: Andrew Payton, "You're Not Welcome Here"

• Second place: Tegan Swanson, "Everything Rises on an Atoll"

• Third place: Ian Pisarcik, "Veterans Day"

On Travel Writing: Craft Talk - Anthony Doerr and Rolf Potts

     2:00 PM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Anthony Doerr is the author of four books, The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome, and, most recently, Memory Wall, which takes place on four continents and addresses issues from Alzheimer’s in South Africa to infertility in Wyoming to fishing for endangered sturgeon in Lithuania. Rolf Potts has reported from more than sixty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Slate.com and Outside. He is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel and his book on the subject, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel and, more recently, Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer. 

MFA Program Reception

     3:00 PM @Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Join us for food and good conversation between Wildness symposium sessions.

Stories and Revelations from a Postmodern Travel Writer – Rolf Potts

     4:00 PM @ Campanile Room, Memorial Union

Rolf Potts has reported from more than sixty countries for the likes of National Geographic Traveler, The New Yorker, Slate.com and Outside. His adventures have included piloting a fishing boat 900 miles down the Laotian Mekong, hitchhiking across Eastern Europe, traversing Israel on foot, bicycling across Burma, driving a Land Rover across South America. Potts is perhaps best known for promoting the ethic of independent travel and his book on the subject, Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. His most recent book, Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer, became the first American-authored book to win Italy's prestigious Chatwin Prize. Though he rarely stays in one place for more than a few weeks or months, Potts feels somewhat at home in Bangkok, Cairo, Pusan, New Orleans, and north-central Kansas, where he keeps a small farmhouse on thirty acres near his family. 

 Memory Wall: A Reading - Anthony Doerr

     7:00 PM @ Sun Room, Memorial Union

Anthony Doerr is the author of four books,The Shell Collector, About Grace, Four Seasons in Rome, and, most recently, Memory Wall, which takes place on four continents and addresses issues from Alzheimer’s in South Africa to infertility in Wyoming to fishing for endangered sturgeon in Lithuania. His writing has been recognized with numerous awards, including four O. Henry Prizes, the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and the 2010 Story Prize. Anthony Doerr also writes a regular column on science books for the Boston Globe. He lives in Boise, Idaho. 

 Sponsors

General Information

• All events are free and open to the public.

• No registration required.

• Hotel reservations:  Contact The Iowa House Bed & Breakfast (515-292-2474), the Gateway Hotel (800-For-Ames), or The Memorial Union Hotel (800-433-3449).

• Closest airport to Ames/ISU:  Des Moines International Airport (DSM).

• Ground transportation from Des Moines to Ames/ISU:  Majestic Limousine and ISU Airport Shuttle Service.
• For questions about the symposium:  Contact Benjamin Percy (bpercy@iastate.edu).\
• For information about the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Environment:  Contact Stephen Pett (spett@iastate.edu).