Visiting Writers Series reading to feature poet, fiction writer

Northwest Missouri State University’s Visiting Writers Series will feature a night of readings by a poet as well as a University faculty member who is an award-winning fiction writer.

The event featuring Jenny Yang Cropp and Luke Rolfes is 7 to 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 6, at the Raymond J. Courter College Park Pavilion on the Northwest campus. It is free and open to the public.

The Visiting Writers Series is designed to enrich Northwest’s educational mission while promoting the values of community, civil discourse and self-expression. Kawasaki Motors Manufacturing Corporation, Green Tower Press, and the Department of Language, Literature and Writing sponsor the series.

More information about Cropp and Rolfes is provided below. The 2021-22 Visiting Writers Series will conclude with Threa Almontaser at 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 25.

For information about the Visiting Writers Series, contact Daniel Biegelson, the series director and a senior instructor of English, at dbiegel@nwmissouri.edu or 660.562.1266.

About Jenny Yang Cropp

Cropp is a biracial Korean American poet who grew up in Oklahoma. Her first full-length collection of poems, “String Theory,” was released by Mongrel Empire Press in 2015. She is also the author of one chapbook, “Hanging the Moon” (RockSaw Press, 2010). Her poetry appears in the Nodin Poetry Anthology, and her essay, “Impossible,” is forthcoming in Voices from the Heartland, Vol. 2 (University of Oklahoma Press). Her poems also have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Ecotone, Boxcar Poetry Review, Poetry Southeast, Superstition Review, Eclipse, Literary Mama, Festival Writer, Jelly Bucket, The Fiddleback and other journals.

She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oklahoma in 2005, a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from Minnesota State University-Mankato in 2008, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of South Dakota in 2016. She has served as an editorial assistant for Cimarron Review, poetry editor for Blue Earth Review and managing editor for South Dakota Review.

She lives with her husband and son in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, where she is an assistant professor of English, teaching creative writing and publishing at Southeast Missouri State University and serving as the poetry editor for Big Muddy.

About Luke Rolfes

Rolfes’ first book, “Flyover Country,” won the Georgetown Review Press Short Story Collection Contest, and his second book, “Impossible Naked Life,” won the Acacia Fiction Prize from Kallisto Gaia Press.

His manuscripts have been shortlisted for the Iowa Short Fiction Award (University of Iowa Press), The Spokane Prize (Willow Springs Books), The Flannery O’Connor Award (University of Georgia Press), Pressgang Press Award (Butler University), The Serena McDonald Kennedy Award (Snake Nation Press), New American Fiction Prize (New American Press), and The Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction (Regal House Publishing).

He is a senior instructor of English at Northwest, where he teaches creative writing and composition courses. He also edits the Laurel Review and served as a mentor in the Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ Writer to Writer Mentorship Program.