Patrick Rosal Reading

The Roberts J. and Catherine Carr Visiting Writing Series presents Patrick Rosal on Thursday April 3, 4:30 pm at the Illini Union Bookstore, Author's Corner/2nd Floor.

Patrick Rosal is the author of Uprock Headspin Scramble and Dive (Persea Books, 2004), finalist for the Asian-American Writers' Workshop Literary Awards and winner of the AAWW Member's Choice Award. His chapbook Uncommon Denominators won the Palanquin Poetry Series Award. His work has appeared in journals such as North American Review, Columbia, Folio, and many anthologies including The NuyorAsian Anthology, Pinoy Poetics, and The Beacon Best. He has been a featured reader at many venues around the country, in Buenos Aires, London, and on the BBC radio program "The World Today". His second full-length collection, My American Kundiman, was published by Persea Books in fall 2006.

Check your water bill

If you loved Eric Vrooman's story "Water Bill" in the Fall/Winter 07-8 issue of 9L, continue the virtual utilities experience here at www.hydratia.com.

Congratulations to Lytton Smith

a former Ninth Letter contributor recently selected as a Poetry Society of American Chapbook Fellow. Lytton's chapbook Monster Theory will be published by PSA in April.

Music Feature Submissions closed

FYI, poets, the March 15 deadline for submitting to our forthcoming Music Feature has passed, so we are no longer accepting submissions for that. We are, however, still accepting general submissions of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction, until April 30, right here: http://www.ninthletter.com/printed_journal/submissions

or through the mail at Ninth Letter, Dept. of English, University of Illinois, 608 S. Wright St., Urbana, IL 61801.

Thanks to everybody who submitted to the music feature--we should have final selections made by early May.

SAFE house/MFA reading in Urbana

Ninth Letter staffers/creative writing grad students Matt Minicucci and Arley McNeney will join writers from the SAFEhouse Writers' Workshop in a public reading of their original works of poetry and fiction. The SAFEhouse Writer's Workshop are a group of adult students currently enrolled in live-in drug/alcohol rehabilitation center in Urbana, Illinois. SAFEhouse is a program run by the Canaan Baptist Church and housed on their campus. The writer's workshop is accompanied by a literary reading group, all made possible by the Office of the Provost, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council.

Tonight (March 13), 7:30, Espresso Royale coffee shop, corner of Goodwin and Oregon, Urbana

Ninth Letter honored for design

Ninth Letter designers have received recent accolades from the Society of Publication Designers, which named our volume 4 nos. 1 and 2 as Merit Winners in their 43rd Annual Competition.

Ninth Letter was also named a Merit Winner in the editorial category in How Magazine's International Design Annual , available on newsstands now.

Congratulations to Arley McNeney

for being nominated for the CommonWealth Foundations Best First Book (Canada & the Caribbean) with her novel POST. The finalists for the prize will be announced on Thursday, March 13th.

The accomplished Ms. McNeney hails from New Westminster, British Columbia. She is a second year MFA graduate student, a member of the Fighting Illini women's wheelchair basketball team, and a former Paralympic Games medalist.

Good-luck Arley.

UIUC Alumna Publishes Poetry Collection

Congratulations to Erin Elizabeth Smith, UIUC MFA poetry alumna and former Ninth Letter staffer, on the publication of her poetry collection, The Fear of Being Found, available now from Three Candles Press.