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Mary Cross

Associate Professor, Adjunct

Contact

Professional Site

Bio

Associate Professor, Adjunct (1999) Education: BA, 1981, Iowa State University; MFA, 1985, Iowa Writers' Workshop. Books: Rooms, Which Were People (Ohio State UP). Publications: Crazyhorse; Hotel Amerika; The Sun; Ploughshares; Southern Poetry Review; American Poetry Review, and others. Online: Center for Humans and Nature; Minding Nature; featherproof press mini-book Radio: Eight Forty-Eight program; WBEZ Chicago Matters Series. Anthologized Work: City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Poems about Chicago (U of Iowa Press); City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness (U of Chicago Press). Exhibitions: Faculty Projects, Sullivan Gallery, SAIC. Awards: Finalist in Mason Jar Press 1729 Book Prize in Prose; Finalist in Stillhouse Press Book-Length Fiction Contest; Helen Hooven Santmyer Poetry Fund.

Current Interests

Text and image. Hybrid forms. Video essay/motion poem.
My current project is a hybrid memoir.

Personal Statement

I am a poet and short prose writer. I have advised with writers and studio artists from many departments who use text as a component in their work. My approach is student-centered and built upon active listening, as well as formulating questions and responses that inspire an important ongoing conversation. I welcome students at any point in their creative process, from intuitive impulses toward generating new work to developing and refining work-in-progress. Together we explore ways to identify and discover work that is uniquely theirs.

Courses

Title Department Catalog Term

Description

This seminar is designed for writers/artists interested in concentrating on place as an active participant or suggestive backdrop in fiction, essay, poetry or hybrid forms. Through generative exercises and group-led discussions on selected readings, students will explore the many dimensions of creating a real or imagined place. Some questions we'll use as a stepping off point include the following: What defines place? What are the elements that construct or suggest a world? How do references to climate, architecture, street names, objects, and landscape reach toward a larger significance? How does the physical environment have the potential to disclose the emotional atmosphere? How is setting achieved through language?

Some readings will come from Dorothy Allison, James Baldwin, Georges Perec, Jamaica Kincaid, Chitra Banaerjee Divakaruni, Lucille Clifton, Lorca, Flannery O'Connor, Amy Hempel, Charles Simic, among others.

In addition to a varied reading list, we will supplement our study with occasional field trips. Other expectations include a collaborative presentation on a required reading and a final creative project.

Class Number

2122

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

1711

Credits

3

Description

Taken every semester, the Graduate Projects courses allow students to focus in private sessions on the development of their work. Students register for 6 hours of Graduate Project credit in each semester of study.

Class Number

1949

Credits

3 - 6