Creative Writing at the University of Colorado Denver

Congratulations to Alejandro Lucero, who graduated last week, and whose chapbook Sapello Son (which was just his honors thesis) has been accepted for publication by the excellent Bull City Press!

The winner of the 2022 Frost Place Chapbook Competition, selected by final judge Rajiv Mohabir, is Sky Ladders by Ethan Chua of Brooklyn, NY.

Additionally, the editors at Bull City Press have chosen Sapello Son by Alejandro Lucero of Denver, CO, as the 2022 Editors’ Selection.

Rajiv Mohabir provided this citation about Sky Ladders, which will be published by Bull City Press in the summer of 2023:

"After reading Sky Ladders I came away haunted, thinking about the poems and the world they illuminated for me. Ritual and mystery; history and personal myth kept me reading and rereading the manuscript. I was struck by how much the poems created an archipelago of story, a rhizome of experience that shows how a life is lived in complexity of form and language whose holy places are those interstices created from displacement. Magic thrums in the heart of this collection, a multilingual magic I want to linger in, to get lost in, to find each image that renders the mundane complex. Languages, stories, poetries, and places layer upon one another into diasporic melancholy and memory. Bringing these all together in loose, shimmering lines the closure of the poem “Through a Medium, Feng Daoyou Speaks,” asks, “Faint colors leach / through the blinds. Whoever finds me, / will they handle me with tenderness?” speaking for the entire collection’s bleeding into my own reader’s mind at rest. This is what I want in poems: to wrestle that angel until it blesses me. Here is a blessing, a pilgrimage, an arrival."

The following manuscripts were finalists in this year’s competition:

Ethan Chua, Sky Ladders
Jason Gray, Here is the Ink for Your Holy Book
Benjamin Grossberg, As Are Right Fit
Amanda Hawkins, When I Say the Bones I Mean the Bones
Jacob Lindberg, Shore
Alejandro Lucero, Sapello Son
Michael Pontacoloni, The Last Diving Horse Show in America
Avia Tadmor, In the Tongue I Was Born Into
Janelle Tan, turnstile jumping
Bernardo Wade, Nowhere to Rest

Thank you to everyone who submitted to the competition this year for their patience & for entrusting us with their work. Congratulations to Ethan & Alejandro!

EVENT POSTPONED!!! Krouse will NOT be reading Oct. 4.

Please check back for the new event date--we hope you can join us then!

Congratulations to Associate Professor Nicky Beer on a beautiful book launch for Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes, her new poetry collection. Professor Wayne Miller was her opening act at BookBar last night.

Huge congratulations to Ven Hickenbottom, a graduate of CU Denver's Creative Writing program. He'll be starting the Masters in Narrative Medicine Program at USC this coming fall. Hooray, Ven!

Congratulations to creative writing student J Salazar who will be joining FAU's MFA program in fiction this coming fall!

Big, big congratulations to creative writing student Craig Hartz who will be joining the MFA program at Oregon State University this fall!

Huge congratulations to creative writing student Austin Bolton who will be pursuing his MFA at University of New Hampshire starting this coming fall!

Alumna Jennifer Loyd, has won a Stadler Fellowship—a highly competitive national award for recent MFA graduates facilitated by Bucknell University. In 2020–21, Jenn will edit West Branch magazine and facilitate the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets. Congratulations, Jennifer!

Congratulations to our new 2020-2021 Stadler Fellows, Laura Villareal and Jennifer Loyd! Next year, Jenn & Laura will edit for West Branch, facilitate the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, and serve as integral members of the Stadler Center. We can't wait!

Alumna, Taylor Kirby!

The Obituaries of James Dorner Flash Fiction by Taylor Kirby

Congrats to CU Denver alum Ali Pearl--number #17 on this list!!

25 Modern Love Essays to Read if You Want to Laugh, Cringe and Cry To celebrate the column’s 15th anniversary this month, and the new series on Amazon Prime Video, we pulled together some greatest hits.