On Sounds Good, Murray State University Master of Fine Arts Program Director Carrie Jerrell speaks with author Christina Stoddard who will read from her work on July 9 at the Clara Eagle Art Gallery. She will also lead a poetry workshop at Murray State July 8 and 9.
Stoddard's poems have appeared in journals including storySouth, DIAGRAM, and Spoon River Poetry Review. She currently is an Associate Editor at Tupelo Quarterly and a Contributing Editor at Cave Wall. One of the lessons she says she has learned from attending workshops and conferences is not to measure herself against other people. “You get out in the world and it’s easy to feel like the stuff you’re working on is not good enough,” Stoddard said. “That is something that I would definitely encourage other people to keep in mind.”
The goal of Stoddard’s workshop is for attendees to have a couple of rough drafts by the end of the weekend. Participants will also learn strategies for motivating themselves to sit down and write once the workshop is over. “An open Word document with a blinking cursor can be the most terrifying thing in the world. But it doesn’t have to be,” Stoddard says. “So I’ll be talking about some ways that I usually get started putting one word in front of another.”
Stoddard’s poetry collection, Hive, was awarded the 2015 Brittingham Prize in Poetry. The collection is written in the voice of a teenage girl who is questioning everything after learning that not all adults are to be trusted. Stoddard says the book follows her through the crisis of finding herself, figuring out what it means to hold a religious belief, and learning what it costs to claim herself as her own person. Stoddard will read from her work on Sunday, July 9 at 4:30 p.m. in the Clara Eagle Art Gallery at Murray State. For more information about her workshop, click here.
