Mile-High MFA

Posted • In Dizzy, author Rachel Weaver shares her experiences of simultaneously navigating a debilitating, frightening health condition and a healthcare system that can sometimes be more stressful than helpful. Dizzy appears in WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE: MILE-HIGH WRITERS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE, co-published by and , and now available wherever books are sold.

Rachel Weaver is the author of the novel, Point of Direction, which Oprah Magazine named a Top Ten Book to Pick Up Now. Point of Direction was chosen by the American Booksellers Association as a Top Ten Debut for Spring 2014, and won the 2015 Willa Cather Award for Fiction. She teaches at Regis University’s low residency MFA program, and at Lighthouse Writers Workshop where she won the Beacon Award for Teaching Excellence in 2018. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Gettysburg Review, Blue Mesa Review, River Teeth, Alaska Women Speak and Fly Fishing New England.

CONGRATS to Danielle Jackson for a successful MFA Thesis Defense!!! with Jenny Shank .shank and Erika Krouse 🎓
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Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program at Regis University Summer 2024 Residency
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CONGRATS to Melissa Griggs for a successful MFA Thesis Defense!!! with Rachel Weaver and TaraShea Nesbit 🎓
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Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program at Regis University Summer 2024 Residency
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A Compelling CRAFT SEMINAR • It Was a Dark and Stormy Night • A Class on Writing Setting • with Rachel Weaver • at Summer 2024 Residency
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CONGRATS to Confidence Omenai for a successful MFA Thesis Defense!!! with Lori Ostlund and Suzi Q. Smith at the Regis University Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program! 🎓✍️
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CONGRATS to Jordan Cissell-Wyberneit for a successful MFA Thesis Defense!!! with Suzi Q. Smith at the Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program!
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Craft Seminar “So Near, So Far” with gets into Point of View (POV) and Narrative Distance—a room filled with lively discussion, compelling examples, and generative writing! ✍️
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CONGRATS to Andrew Koch for a successful Thesis Defense!!! with Lori Ostlund and Rachel Weaver at Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program! 🎓

CONGRATS to Lauren Dennis for a successful Thesis Defense!!! with Rachel Weaver and Suzi Q. Smith at Mile-High MFA Creative Writing Program! 🎓

Eric Baus leads a generative process workshop for his Craft Seminar, “Prose Trajectories: The Prose Poem, Short Fiction, and The Segmented Narrative” at the second day of Mile-High MFA Summer 2024 Residency. Students hear multimedia performances by established writers and share their own in-class writing explorations ✍️📖🎤

STUDENT OPEN MIC with such an astonishing range of styles, language, and voices!!! What a privilege to hear writing from everyone at the Mile-High MFA Summer 2024 Residency!

WELCOME to the Mile-High MFA Summer 2024 Residency!! gestures before getting into process and practice of Braided Narratives for the first Craft Seminar of the residency ✍️📚✍️📚✍️

Posted • I wrote a book! And, as always, my community showed up hard. Thank you to all these beautiful beloveds for making this day so special. Full of poetry and q***r beer and cake and donuts and laughing and smiling and everything a party should be.

Before yesterday, the last party I had intentionally thrown for myself was my wedding reception. Thinking of that day still sometimes fills me with such anxiety that I almost canceled my book launch. I really really thought about it. But this party wasn’t for me. It was for a book that took a huge ass village to bring to life. Workshops, feedback, editing, open mics, friends/family who supported me, a community of people who might care to read it one day. Yesterday was for everyone.

Raising funds for was also important to me. One of my dearest, sweetest, most generous mentors throughout this process is a Palestinian-Cuban poetry goddess. Beyond that, I can’t imagine calling myself a poet, a writer, an artist, a human being if I ignored the rest of the world. How could we dream of a better future and do nothing to work toward it? Yesterday we sent $3 of each book sale, along with some extra donations, to fund medical aid in Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and other countries. I’ll continue doing this with every book purchased directly thru me. You can also donate at a link in my bio. (My book is also available on my website, linked in my bio. But I can’t donate those sales bc they don’t go to me — reach out if you want to buy directly 😘)

Sincerest thanks again to everyone who showed out yesterday. I’ve got more events coming up in Denver, Indianapolis, and Fort Wayne — stay tuned and check my website for more deets! 💋

Posted • In “A Brief History of Banned Books,” playwright Steven Cole Hughes explores a horrifying future where all reading and discussion of books is forbidden when a future America is ruled by a megalomaniac dictator. Hughes’ play is included in We Can See into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice, copublished by and , and available wherever books are sold.

Steven Cole Hughes is an Assistant Professor and Director of Theatre at Western Colorado University. He has also taught scriptwriting at Regis Univeristy’s Mile-High MFA. His full-length plays include: Indiana, The Bad Man, Billy Hell, Slabtown, cowboyily, Arabia, Battleground State, Dogs by Seven, and Poor Devils. His plays for young audiences are: The Presidents!, The Wright Stuff, and The Geography of Adventure. His plays have been produced by the Bloomington Playwrights Project, the Coterie Theatre, Creede Repertory Theatre, Curious Theatre Company, Denver Center for the Performing Arts and Western Colorado University. He is the winner of the Denver Post Ovation Award for Best New Work for Billy Hell, and the Ovation Award for Special Achievement for The Billy Trilogy. He has a BA in theatre from Indiana University and an MFA from the National Theatre Conservatory.

Posted • In “Hockey Forever, or As Long As It Lasts,” author Jenny Shank explores the frustrations and triumphs of shepherding a child with neurodiversity through today’s competitive world of childhood sports. The essay is featured in the newly released WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE: MILE-HIGH WRITERS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE copublished by and .

Jenny Shank’s story collection Mixed Company won the George Garrett Fiction prize and the
Colorado Book Award in General Fiction, and her novel The Ringer won the High Plains Book
Award and was a finalist for the Reading the West Award. Her stories, essays, satire, and book
reviews have appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times,
Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Toast, Barrelhouse, The McSweeney’s Book of
Politics and Musicals, Dear McSweeney’s, and Love in the Time of Time’s Up. Her work has
been honorably mentioned by The Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize anthology, and her
mother. She is a longtime book critic, member of the National Book Critics Circle, and
participant on the NBCC John Leonard Prize committee for first best first book. She teaches in
Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver and has taught Fiction and CNF at the Mile-High MFA.

Posted • Today’s new post features an interview with editor & publisher about a new, multifaceted literary anthology, WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE (The Bookies Press, publisher).

Reading on Sat, June 8 at LitFest, 5:30-6:30 PM, 3844 York St., Denver!

https://christinesneed.substack.com/p/the-art-of-the-literary-anthology?r=9g0yg

Our first celebration of We Can See into Another Place will take place Saturday JUNE 8 from 5-6pm LitFest with featured readers: Kristen Iversen, Jenny Shank, Suzi Q. Smith, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, and Erika T. Wurth. .shank

Posted • Addie Tsai’s WRITING AS A VESSEL FOR CHAOS: A LETTER TO HIGH SCHOOLERS will be featured in the upcoming WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE: MILE-HIGH WRITERS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE, co-published by Bower House Books and BookBar Press and releasing on June 4, 2024.

In Writing as a Vessel for Chaos, Addie explores the way domestic violence and abuse can silence a voice, and how writing helped her to reclaim it.

Addie Tsai (any/all) is a q***r nonbinary artist and writer of color who teaches creative writing at William & Mary. They have also taught in Goddard College’s MFA Program in Interdisciplinary Arts and Regis University’s Mile High MFA Program in Creative Writing. Addie collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. They earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a Ph.D. in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. Addie is the author of Dear Twin and Unwieldy Creatures. She is the Fiction co-Editor and Editor of Features & Reviews at Anomaly, contributing writer at Spectrum South, and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme dandy.

Pre-Orders are live!

"We Can See into Another Place" can be ordered through The Bookies Bookstore or wherever books are sold. We encourage you to purchase from your favorite indie bookstore!

Contributors include: Olivia Abtahi, R. Alan Brooks, Steven Dunn, Carolina Ebeid, Steven Cole Hughes, Kristen Iversen, Traci L. Jones, Tarashea Nesbit, Lori Ostlund, Khadijah Queen, Jenny Shank, Suzi Q. Smith, Christine Sneed, Mathangi Subramanian, Addie Tsai, Denise Vega, Rachel Weaver, Erika T. Wurth, David Heska Wanbli

https://www.thebookies.com/item/VmjHMF4Mg64FPqmYzHVKJg?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1-9300a5qULBwb_ltLiivlAg1pOPL38AydpNYq1w5GTyTYZ0mFnVktLEc_aem_AZYniC7Z_EeaZAiRmgLPm0pDZyi1sCKyMRhccB62wnJJpKYTfey3kOfLE1C19cDaL31O1Koft2ts5tnpmeto_tQ6

We Can See into Another Place Mile-High Writers on Social Justice

Our MFA alums are amazing!

Featuring MileHigh MFA alum: and current student Meg Vlaun!

Posted • Check out my CNF essay, Dandelion, in the 28th edition of Sonoma State’s Zaum Magazine! Get your copy at zaum.sonoma.edu

Thanks for the opportunity,

Posted • BookBar Press and Bower House Books are excited to join forces to co-publish WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE: MILE-HIGH WRITERS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE, releasing on June 4, 2024! This powerful multi-genre collection is filled with some of the most inspiring literary voices in today, and we’ll be sharing a little about each of the incredible contributors over the next couple weeks.

Meet Andrea Rexilius, anthology editor extraordinaire, poet, and program director for Regis University’s Mile High MFA in Creative Writing! Andrea is the author of Sister Urn (2019), New Organism: Essais (2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (2011), as well as the chapbooks, Séance (2014), To Be Human (2010), and Afterworld (2020). She earned an MFA in Poetry from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), and a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2010). She also teaches in the Poetry Collective at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.

IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Headline reads We Can See into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice. Quote reads, “We Can See into Another Place...examines inequity while keeping an ever-growing light burning in the face of that strife, one that glows toward the possibility of newly imagined futures, futures that encourage empathy, compassion, and the fight toward a more just society. -Andrea Rexilius, Introduction.” Accompanying photo of the writer.

Posted • After a small delay, we’re thrilled to share that our upcoming anthology, WE CAN SEE INTO ANOTHER PLACE: MILE-HIGH WRITERS ON SOCIAL JUSTICE, co-published with , will debut on June 4, 2024! We promise it will be worth the wait!

This is an incredibly powerful collection of some of Denver’s most exciting literary voices, including: .shank

But, don’t just take our word for it...the phenomenal author has this to say about it: “This book is lovely, instructive, thought-provoking, and occasionally hard to read for all the right reasons. These stories, poems, plays, and graphic artwork are deeply important. Study these works, and you can learn an enormous amount of beneficial knowledge. I also loved the introductory essay and the questions at the end about how to create the best possible future we can make going forward.” –HELEN THORPE, author of The Newcomers, Soldier Girls and Just Like Us



IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Headline reads Coming June 2024. Quote reads, ““[L]ovely, instructive, thought-provoking, and occasionally hard to read for all the right reasons.” –Helen Thorpe, author of The Newcomers, Soldier Girls and Just Like Us

Mile-High MFA alum, Cyrus Smith will be reading May 3rd, from 7:00-9:00 pm at East Window Gallery in North Boulder. He'll be reading his short story that recently got published in North American Review.