Controlled Burn Reading Series
Fall 2009 Readings Set
The fall 2009 semester schedule for Kirtland's Controlled Burn Reading
Series will bring three acclaimed poets, fiction or non-fiction writers
to the Kirtland campus.
On Wednesday, September 23, fiction writer Bonnie Jo Campbell will be reading at Kirtland House. Campbell is the author of the novel Q Road and two story collections, Women & Other Animals and the newly-released American
Salvage. She has won the AWP award for short fiction and a Pushcart prize.
Campbell teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University in Oregon. A person of eclectic interests, she holds an MA in mathematics as well as an MFA in creative writing. She is also a student of martial arts and an enemy of invasive weeds.
She lives with her husband and donkeys outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
On Monday, October 19, poet Jack Ridl will present a reading. Ridl's latest collection is Losing Season from CavanKerry Press. The
book explores life during a long, hard winter in a small town that is
obsessed with its high school basketball team's losing season. Ridl's previous full collection,
Broken Symmetry (Wayne State University Press), was co-recipient of The
Society of Midland Authors award for best book of poetry published in 2006.
His Against Elegies was chosen by former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins
for The Center for Book Arts (NYC) Chapbook Award. He is also author of the
chapbook, Outside the Center Ring, a collection of poems based on his
childhood experience with the circus. He is also co-author with Peter
Schakel of Approaching Literature and of Approaching Poetry, both from
Bedford/St. Martin's Press. In 2008, he was named by the Institute for
International Sport as one of the 100 most influential people in sports.
Ridl, professor emeritus at Hope College, has had more than 60 of his
students go on to complete their MFA degrees and to publish nationally. In
1996, he was named by The Carnegie Foundation as Michigan Professor of the Year. Ridl has
given readings throughout the country including being invited to The
Geraldine R. Dodge Festival. In April he will be the keynote reader at
Springfield College in celebration of James Naismith's creating the game of
basketball at the college.
On Monday, November 23, poet and former Kirtland English faculty member Mary Ann Samyn will read from her works. Samyn's new collection of poetry, Beauty Breaks In, will be published by New Issues Press this fall. She is the author of four previous collections of poetry: Purr, Inside the Yellow Dress, Captivity Narrative and Rooms by the Sea. Her poems have appeared in Field, Denver Quarterly, Kenyon Review, The Ohio Review, Virginia
Quarterly Review, Verse, Mississippi Review, The Bitter Oleander, Pleiades, the anthology American Poetry: The Next Generation, and
elsewhere. Samyn has also been awarded the Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Society of America. In addition, she has served as the poetry editor for the national literary magazine Controlled Burn and as poet-in-residence for the COOR Intermediate School district in Michigan. Each summer, she teaches at The Controlled Burn Seminar for
Young Writers. She is also a great fan of Nancy Drew.
The Controlled Burn Reading Series is sponsored by the English and Fine Arts Departments of Kirtland, as well as by support from the Instruction Division of the College. Unless otherwise noted, all readings are held at Kirtland House on College Drive and begin with a reception at 4:30 p.m. followed by the reading at 5:30. All are free and open to the public.
For additional information, contact Carol Finke at 989-275-5000, ext. 386.
The Number of Words in the English Language:
1,000,882.
Estimate as of Monday, June 29, 2009.
Check the latest tally at: The Global Language Monitor
Language Monitor on Twitter
NPR Podcast: "The English Language: 900,000 Words, and Counting"
Ambiguous Headline Award Nominees:
"Hunting Is More Popular in the U.S. Than Thought, 2006 Study Shows"-- Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Feb. 1, 2007
"Young Harp Seal Found Shot in Sandwich"-- WBZ-TV (Boston) Web site, Jan. 31, 2007
"World's Oldest Person Dies for the Second Time in Two Weeks"-- KUSA-TV (Denver) Web site, Jan. 29, 2007
"Amnesia Is Worse Than Thought"-- United Press International, Jan. 16, 2007
"20-Year-Old Missing After Heavy Rains, Flooding in Ark."-- Associated Press, Jan. 15, 2007
"Man Loses Nose in Circumcision Ceremony"-- News.com.au, Jan. 9, 2007
"Another Windy Day in Store"-- Wausau (Wis.) Daily Herald, Jan. 10, 2007
"Police Search for Boyfriend Who Left Girls Alone"-- Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Jan. 4, 2007
"Aquarium Puts Ailing Beluga Whale to Sleep"-- CNN.com, Jan. 2, 2007
SOURCE: "Best of the Web Today", OpinionJournal.com
Want to nominate a badly written headline? E-mail it to us!
Lake State's Latest List Has Not "Gone Missing"
2009 "Banished Words" List Announced
Twelve misused, overused, and useless words are the finalists in Lake Superior State University's 34th annual List of Banished Words.
The LSSU list, an annual event since 1976, was chosen this year from more than 2,000 nominations submitted by word aficionados. A university committee screens entries and selects the finalists, which are announced each New Year's Day. The 2009 list:
- GREEN
- CARBON FOOTPRINT
- MAVERICK
- FIRST DUDE
- WALL STREET/MAIN STREET
- ICON or ICONIC
- GAME CHANGER
- STAYCATION
- DESPERATE SEARCH
- NOT SO MUCH
- WINNER OF FIVE NOMINATIONS
- IT'S THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN
Read more at LSSU's 2009 Banished Words site =>
ARTICLE: English majors remain low-paid, but many defect into the business world
Excerpt: Sure, you can write a poem in iambic pentameter and recite the prose of 17th century literary greats.
But can you find a job?
It's the challenge that faces English majors each year, legions of whom enter the work force armed with the communication skills coveted most by corporate America - but little direction on where to turn next.
"The perception is definitely still there (that English grads have trouble settling into a career)," said Ann Carlson, who earned a bachelor's degree in English degree this year from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. "It's a very malleable field and it's not difficult to find a job. You just have to really work to get your foot in the door."
 Read the whole article at CNNMoney =>
Thanks to Detmar Finke for recommending this article!
Young Writers Inspired by Annual Kirtland Seminar on Higgins Lake
Abbey Winant graduated from Harvard University in June with a degree in biochemistry, but the aspiring physician from New Jersey says her life was forever changed by the week she spends each summer at Kirtland Community College's Seminar for Young Writers on the shores of Higgins Lake.
"I always tell my parents, 'This is my favorite week of the year,'" said Winant, who traveled to Roscommon on her own expense this summer from her collegiate home in Cambridge, Mass. After three years as a student, she returned as a resident advisor and teacher's assistant. She was too old to attend as a student this year; the Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers, is designed for youngsters aged 15-20.
Winant learned of the program while attending a poetry reading in her native New Jersey by Gerry LaFemina, the former Kirtland instructor who founded the program six years ago. So inspired was she with the progress in her writing that she is interrupting plans for medical school to acquire a master's degree of fine arts in writing.
Banned Books Week 2009 - Sept. 26 - Oct. 3
Harry Potter Tops List of Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century
 The best-selling Harry Potter series of children's books by J.K. Rowling is holding onto first place in the list of the "Most Challenged Books of the 21st Century", according to the American Library Association's (ALA) Office for Intellectual Freedom. The Potter series topped second-place finisher The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier and the third-place Alice series, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.
The ALA has also announced the "Top Ten Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2008," which are:
1. And Tango Makes Three by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell, Reasons: anti-ethnic, anti-family, homosexuality, religious viewpoint, and unsuited to age group;
2. His Dark Materials trilogy, by Philip Pullman
Reasons: political viewpoint, religious viewpoint, and violence
3. TTYL; TTFN; L8R, G8R (series), by Lauren Myracle
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
4. Scary Stories (series), by Alvin Schwartz
Reasons: occult/satanism, religious viewpoint, and violence
5. Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya
Reasons: occult/satanism, offensive language, religious viewpoint, sexually explicit, and violence
6. The Perks of Being a Wallflower, by Stephen Chbosky
Reasons: drugs, homosexuality, nudity, offensive language, sexually explicit, suicide, and unsuited to age group
7. Gossip Girl (series), by Cecily von Ziegesar
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
8. Uncle Bobby's Wedding, by Sarah S. Brannen
Reasons: homosexuality and unsuited to age group
9. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
Reasons: offensive language, sexually explicit, and unsuited to age group
10. Flashcards of My Life, by Charise Mericle Harper
Reasons: sexually explicit and unsuited to age group
Winter 2010
Upcoming DEV, English, Language, Philosophy, and Speech Courses
Here's an early look (subject to change) at the courses the Kirtland Communication & World Languages division will be offering in the winter 2010 semester:
Winter 2010
DEV-08601 Basic Reading Skills
DEV 08807 Writing Mechanics
DEV 09000 Fundamentals of English
DEV-09601 College Reading Skills
ENG-10000 Writing Lab
ENG-10000-60, 61, 62 Writing Lab (Online)
ENG-10303 Eng Comp I w/Comp
ENG-10303-60, 61 Eng Comp I (Online)
ENG-10403 Eng Comp II w/Comp
ENG-10403-60, 61 Eng Comp II (Online)
ENG-10602-60, 61 Technical Writing (Online)
ENG-12000 Journalism I
ENG-12100 Journalism II
ENG-12500 Journalism Practicum
ENG-21500 Creative Writing
ENG-23100 American Literature After 1865
ENG-251XX-60 Topics in Literature (to be determined) (Online)
ENG-29100-00 Poetry Workshop I
ENG-29200-00 Fiction Workshop I
ENG-29300-00 Poetry Workshop II
ENG-29400-00 Fiction Workshop II
FRE-11000-00 French I
PHL-21000 Introduction to Ethics
SGN 10200 Fingerspelling
SGN 11000 American Sign Language I
SGN 12000 American Sign Language II
SPE-10500 Fundamentals of Speech
SPE-11400 Introduction to Interpersonal and Public Communication
Consult the Kirtland Class Schedule for days, times, and instructors.
Bestselling Books of the 20th Century
Curious to know which book was the top seller in America in 1927?
Publishers Weekly has compiled a list of the top-selling books of the Twentieth Century. The list spans the years from 1900-1998.
The top-selling book of 1927? Elmer Gantry, by Sinclair Lewis.
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KCC/L.A.N.D. Contest Winners Announced
 Kirtland Community College has announced the winners of its 2008 KCC/LAND Writing Competition. Prizes of $100, $50 and $25 were awarded in each of three categories--short fiction, essay and poetry. The winners of first and second prize in each category were submitted to the statewide L .A.N.D.competition.
The contest is held each year at Kirtland in November. Watch for an announcement with details about the 2009 contest during the fall semester.
The 2008 winners:
In essay --
1st Place -- Hilary Salvas for "History Denied"
2nd Place -- Sharon Nuttall for "Second-Class
Citizen"
3rd Place -- Ashleigh Raguso for "Not a Place,
But a Moment"
In poetry --
1st Place -- Erin Denley for "Foie Gras"
2nd Place -- Storm Shriver for "Septic of Lost
Dreams"
3rd Place -- Keith Sowulewski for "Indifference-Edged Sword"
In fiction --
1st Place -- Matthew Keeton for "Quietus"
2nd Place -- Sharon Nuttall for "Breasts Too Small
for Tassels"
3rd Place -- Kristin Gormong for "Endless"
Come to the KCC Student Readings!
Each December and April at Kirtland House
Watch this space for announcements of the KCC Student Readings held every semester at Kirtland House. The December and April events include a 5:00 pm reception with food and the reading at 5:30.
Plan to partcipate as a reader, or come simply to listen and enjoy.
"With all due respect, at the end of the day, I personally shouldn't of."
Oxford Names Top Ten Irritating Phrases
Oxford University researchers have compiled a list of what they call "the top ten most irritating phrases."
The list is based on an analysis of what is called "the Oxford University Corpus," a database of current books, newspapers, magazines, broadcast media , the Internet and other sources.
The number-one annoying phase, according to the group: "At the end of the day".
The full list:
1 - At the end of the day
2 - Fairly unique
3 - I personally
4 - At this moment in time
5 - With all due respect
6 - Absolutely
7 - It's a nightmare
8 - Shouldn't of (for shouldn't have)
9 - 24/7
10 - It's not rocket science
Also on the Web
"National Grammar Day" Provokes Lively Debate
A group which calls itself The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG) has declared March 4 each year National Grammar Day, setting off a lively debate about the contexts and limits of language correctness.
The day is the brainchild of Martha Brockenbrough, who writes a column called "Grumpy Martha's Guide to Grammar and Usage" for Microsoft's Encarta Web site. Brockenbrough urges Americans, "Speak well! Write well! And on March 4, march forth and spread the word. If you see a sign with a catastrophic apostrophe, send a kind note to the storekeeper. If your local newscaster says "Between you and I," set him straight with a friendly e-mail."
Brockenbrough asserts, "If we don't respect and honor the rules of English, we lose our ability to communicate clearly and well. In short, we invite mayhem, misery, madness, and inevitably even more bad things that start with letters other than M."
Such grammar activism has provoked contrary opinions. "I can't join the witch hunt," writes Nathan Bierma in a Chicago Tribune column "Don't get carried away on National Grammar Day". Grammar corrections of the type urged by Brockenbrough, he declares, "are seldom friendly, welcome or necessary. They are usually self-righteous, irritating and misinformed." Bierma takes Brockenbrough to task for worrying about, among other things, pop song lyrics such as Bryan Adams' "If she ever found out about you and I" and Elvis Presley's "I'm all shook up."
"Just when you think the soi-disant grammar sourpusses can't get much dopier, there they go again," adds Geoffrey K. Pullum in a column on the Language Log blog. On the same site, Arnold Zwicky analyzes SPOGG's faulty assumptions in "National (omigod) Grammar Day".
Join the debate!
Kudos Given for Controlled Burn Young Writers Seminar!
 The Controlled Burn Seminar for Young Writers, held in July at the Ralph MacMullen Center, marked the tenth anniversary of what has become one of Kirtland's signature academic events (see event announcement below). Controlled Burn editor and Kirtland English faculty member Carol Finke acknowledges those who contributed to the seminar's success:
Many thanks to all who helped make the 10th annual Controlled Burn
Young Writers Seminar a success and to all who attended some of the
events and readings, including Kirtland's new president, Dr. Thomas Quinn; trustee Richard Silverman; dean of instruction Kathy Marsh; and associate deans Karen Brown and Jerry Boerema.
This is the tenth year of the Controlled Burn Seminar - we should thank
Kirtland for its support and Gerry LaFemina for all his hard work and
imagination, both for creating the seminar and for sustaining it.
In addition, I'd like to be sure to thank the following folks whose contributions are not always noticed:
Jerry Boerema made contributions of time and of snacks, both of which
were greatly appreciated - and he also gave the faculty members a
much-needed after-dinner break on Wednesday.
Shawn Kaniewski made sure that forms for the teachers and presenters were
handled quickly and correctly.
Karen Sessions handled so much paperwork for us all, making sure that
student applications and foundation donations were sorted and
delivered. (And we hope to see Karen's son as a student at the
seminar next summer!)
Kathy Graham, Luann Beilfuss, TonyaOuillette and Kim Ruddy and their colleagues in registration, admissions and accounting were, as usual, tolerant of the kind of last-minuteness that is so characteristic of young students who are also "artistic types."
Wini Sharpe and her e-services cohorts set up a computer lab (and it held up
to almost 24-hour-a-day usage by the students, who are nothing if not
dedicated), then whisked it all away again at the end.
Mark Allen and the folks at the bookstore ordered the textbooks and the
authors' books to be sold at the readings.
Susie Allen provided wonderful Kirtland "goodies" as prizes for the
poetry slam.
Kathy Koch kept track of the foundation donations.
Last but not least, Marj Esch kept the seminar web site updated, and Terry Fasbender and the folks in the Kirtland print shop made sure all our materials looked great.
To all of you - thank you for your contributions to what has proved
to be a positive and life-changing week for many of the seminar's
students over the years.
Carol Finke
Appalling Opening Wins Annual Bad Writing Contest
The winner of the 2008 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for horrible writing has been announced. It's Garrison Spik, a communications director from Washington, D.C. The contest judges at San Jose State University decided that Spik's entry--one of thousands received --committed a "syntactic atrocity."
Spik's winning sentence was: Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped "Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J."
The judges also named winners in specific genres. The winner in Detective Fiction:
Mike Hummer had been a private detective so long he could remember Preparation A, his hair reminded everyone of a rat who'd bitten into an electrical cord, but he could still run faster than greased owl snot when he was on a bad guy's trail, and they said his friskings were a lot like getting a vasectomy at Sears.
The annual contest, which seeks the worst opening to an imaginary novel, is named after Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, the British novelist whose 1830 novel Paul Clifford begins with the cliché, "It was a dark and stormy night ..."
ARTICLE: Why Johnny Won't Read
A National Endowment for the Arts survey, Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America, shows "a serious decline in both literary reading and book reading in general by adults of all ages, races, incomes, education levels and regions," but especially among boys and young men.
Excerpts: ...for the gap to have grown so much in so short a time suggests that what was formerly a moderate difference is fast becoming a decided marker of gender identity: Girls read; boys don't...
Although one might expect the schools to be trying hard to make reading appealing to boys, the K-12 literature curriculum may in fact be contributing to the problem...Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.
At the middle school level, the kind of quality literature that might appeal to boys has been replaced by Young Adult Literature, that is, easy-to-read, short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying. Older literary fare has also been replaced by something called "culturally relevant" literature...
There is no evidence whatsoever that either of these types of reading fare has turned boys into lifelong readers or learners. On the contrary, the evidence is accumulating that by the time they go on to high school, boys have lost their interest in reading...
Read the whole article at Washingtonpost.com =>
Beware of Phony Writing Contests
"There are hundreds of literary contests, online and off. Most are real; some are even prestigious. But many are fake. And of the legitimate ones, few are important enough to provide a meaningful addition to your writing resume."
So warns the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, Inc.on their Web page Warnings and Cautions for Writers - Writing Contests and Vanity Anthologies
"Fake contests come in many different guises, but they all have a common goal--to take your money," according to the site. To avoid the fakery, the SFFWA offers some questions to ask when evaluating a writing contest. Among them are:
- Who's conducting the contest?
- Is there an entry fee?
- How frequently does the organization conduct contests?
- Are the contest guidelines clearly stated?
- Who'll be doing the judging?
The site offers a list of links to other useful sites for the prospective contest entrant.
Kirtland Student Center
Contest Winner Named!
The last Can You Name the Author? contest brought a single winning entry:
Carol Finke of Kirtland's own Department of English.
Congratulations to Carol, who correctly identified the mystery author as John Millington Synge!
And now for a new Can You Name the Author? contest:
He originally hoped for a career as a painter of portraits and historical scenes but couldn't afford the necessary classical training. Disappointed, he attended college for two years and then, at the urging of friends, moved to the hinterlands in hope of obtaining some portrait commissions. Having achieved a modest living as a painter, he began to write character sketches and humorous tales about his adopted region for newspapers, on the basis of whose popularity he launched a second career as a journalist which grew into the editorship of several newspapers, as well as modest national fame. Although he was to write on a wide range of subjects, his lasting literary achievement remained his boisterous comic tales of rural life. His characteristic story was framed by a gentlemanly narrator who reported the vernacular diction and comic exaggeration of decidely unrefined rural characters.
Send your answer.
Answer and names of the winners will be posted here.
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