UW MFA Program to Host Alumni for Public Reading

The University of Wyoming’s Creative Writing Program will host alumni Chelsea Biondolillo and Caleb Johnson for a Guest Author Reading Tuesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m.

The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at Night Heron Books, located at 107 E. Ivinson Ave. in Laramie.

“As part of our ongoing commitment to recent MFA grads, Creative Writing, with generous assistance from the Department of Zoology and Physiology, takes great pride in welcoming Chelsea and Caleb back to Laramie to read from their celebrated debut books,” says Andy Fitch, director of UW’s Creative Writing Program.

Biondolillo will read from her book, “The Skinned Bird,” which is about all the ways we break our own hearts. In lyric, fragmented essays -- full of geological, ornithological and photographic interventions, with landscapes, loss and longing -- Biondolillo travels the terrain of leaving and finding home while keeping her sights fixed firm on the natural world around her. The book includes “How to Skin a Bird,” winner of the Carter Prize for the Essay, and the Best American Essays 2014 notable, “Phrenology.” She earned her Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from UW in 2012.

Johnson’s novel, “Treeborne,” takes readers to Elberta, Ala., a place where conquistadors once walked and where the peaches they left behind now grow. Elberta has seen fierce battles, violent storms and frantic change, and now struggles to survive new threats. Centered on the life and legacy of a third-generation orchardist named Janie Treeborne, the work is a celebration and a reminder of how the past gets mixed up in thoughts of the future and of how home is a story as much as a place. Johnson graduated with his MFA in 2013.

For more information about the event or UW’s MFA Creative Writing Program, call (307) 766-6453 or visit the program’s website at www.uwyo.edu/creativewriting.