Friday, Sept 22, 7pm at The Sheldon Art Gallery: Grace Bauer, Gabriel Gudding & Nathan Bartel

Nathan Bartel grew up in the Colorado Rockies, & recieved his MFA at the University of Montana, where he was a Richard Hugo scholar. Hewas a 2004 Ruth Lilly Fellow, & a 2005-2006 Writing Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA. He has published poems & reviews in Cutbank, The Common Review & Shankpainter. He teaches at his undergraduate alma mater, Bethel College, & lives in Newton, KS.

Grace Bauer’s is the author of Beholding Eye (CustomWords, 2006) and The Women At The Well (Portals Press, 1997), as well as three chapbooks of poems: Where You’ve Seen Her (Pennywhistle Press), The House Where I’ve Never Lived (Anabiosis Press), and Field Guide To The Ineffable: Poems On Marcel Duchamp (Snail’s Pace Press). Her poems, stories, and essays have appeared in numerous anthologies and journals, including: Arts & Letters, Colorado Review, Doubletake, Margie, Poetry, Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, and others. She has received an Academy of American Poets’ Prize, and Individual Artist Grants from the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Nebraska Arts Council, as well as fellowships from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She is co-editor (with Julie Kane) of the anthology, Umpteen Ways Of Looking At A Possum: Creative And Critical Responses To Everette Maddox (Xavier Review Press). In August 2006, her manuscript was chosen by Robert Pack as winner of the Idaho Poetry Prize. The winning manuscript, Retreats & Recognitions, will be published by Lost Horse Press in 2007. She teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Gabriel Gudding is the author of two books, A Defense of Poetry (Pitt Poetry Series, 2002) and rhode island notebook (Dalkey Archive Press, 2008), the latter being a book he wrote entirely in his car during 25 roundtrips on the highways between Providence, RI and Normal, IL. A resident of Normal, Illinois since 2002, he is an Assistant Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Illinois State University. He is a trained mediator for the university and practices Vipassana meditation in the tradition of Sayagyi U Ba Khin. A winner of the Starrett Prize, the Nation Discovery Award, his work appears in such venues as New American Writing, LIT, Fence, American Poetry Review, Sentence, Jacket, and in such anthologies as Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present (Scribner, 2003). He serves on the Board of Directors for the internationalist magazine Mandorla: New Writing from the Americans/ Nueva Escritura de las Américas. He has begun two creative writing programs in prisons and maintains a blog, Conchology. And oh yeah: "Gudding" rhymes with pudding.