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"An empathetic writer who can do justice to simple happiness and complicated love." -- Ms. Magazine

	CURRENT NEWS STAY TUNED for details about my new book, BODY GEOGRAPHIC, forthcoming in the University of Nebraska Press American Lives Series. And look for the debut of my MINNESOTA ORIGINALS segment on KTCA, Minneapolis Public TV, featuring an excerpt of my lyric essay sequence APOCALYPSE, darling. I recently performed at the Aster Cafe, in the Minneapolis version of Todd Zuniga's one-and-only LITERARY DEATH MATCH. I finished the evening as First Runner-Up, scoring well in the reading-with-prop portion, but losing out in a crazy musical chairs finale. Great Fun! A new essay, "Navigating Jazz," from BODY GEOGRAPHIC, appears in the current issue of INDIANA REVIEW, and my reading from the piece, as well as my discussion of the work, is now available via podcast at the Indiana Review blog "Under the Blue Light." My short essay "Dogged" is now available at SWEET: A Literary Confection. My essay "American Doll" was recently awarded the Florida Review Editor's Prize in the Essay and is forthcoming in that journal. My essay, "Where We Bump and Grind It: On Resisting Redemption in Women's Memoir," is featured on the VIDA [Women in the Literary Arts] Web site, where you will also find personal narratives and other great offerings from a vast array of contemporary women writers. Another new piece appears in the current issue of SOUTH LOOP REVIEW, and my prize-winning essay "On a Clear Day Catalina" was recently published in CRAB ORCHARD REVIEW. My craft essay "Lyric of the Unseen: Navigating Shadows in Nonfiction" is available on the dislocate Literary Journal site, and an older craft essay was recently reprinted in Milkweed Edition's new anthology of writings from the Loft Literary Center Views from the Loft: A Portable Writer's Workshop. RECENT NEWS and APPEARANCES: ____________________________ In Washington D.C. at the AWP Conference, February 2-5, 2011. PANEL. Interviewing In My Underwear: Adventures as a Female Memoirist Wendy Sumner-Winter, Barrie Jean Borich, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, Kerry Cohen, Brenda Miller. We've all heard that confession is good for the soul, but how about for a woman living in the real world? Six memoirists discuss the familial, professional, social costs and benefits-and everything in between-of being a woman who writes candidly about her body, her physical life, her sex life, her carnal appetites. We will talk about what it is like to navigate our various social and political worlds having told, literally, the naked truth. and PANEL. BODIES POLITIC Barrie Jean Borich, Judith Barrington, Kekla Magoon, Ann Pancake, Ira Sukrungruang, Brian Teare. The literary body is beloved, is bared, is captive, is container, is hidden, is habitat, is dissenting, is taboo, is pleasure, is change. We make literature out of the body's clashes and communions, and our bodies together create a social mesh we write to maintain and sustain, remake or escape. This panel--a diverse body politic of poets, novelists and essayists, gathering in the political belly of America--will grapple with corporeality, community and claiming the body for the page. and in Minneapolis: READING. TalkingImageConnection: Place Values at the SOAP FACTORY Thursday, September 23rd at 8pm. Location:514 2nd St. SE in Minneapolis (near St. Anthony Main and the Stone Arch Bridge). A reading in connection with A Theory of Values with writers EG Bailey, Barrie Borich, Sha Cage, Tim Nolan, Lynette Reini-Grandell, and Christian Villarroel. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from a short story written by Minnesota-born author Sinclair Lewis, in which the protagonist initially wants not to "rot away in this dull, little town and die unheard of" but instead aspires to transcend his surroundings and "do something in and for the world." In the story, Lewis considers notions of "value" as related to personal and cultural conditions surrounding place and location. The works selected for this exhibition similarly explore place, yet are not bound by regionalism. and in New York City: PANEL. Women in the Literary Arts, Friday, October 1st, 2:00 p.m. Location: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, (between 5th and 6th Avenues). A new organization for women in the literary arts, VIDA seeks to explore critical and cultural perceptions of writing by women through meaningful conversation and the exchange of ideas among existing and emerging literary communities. Featuring nine founding members: poets Erin Belieu, Cate Marvin, Danielle Pafunda, Ann Townsend, and Amy King; fiction writers Susan Steinberg and Cheryl Strayed; children's author Kekla Magoon; and creative nonfiction writer Barrie Jean Borich. Co-sponsored with VIDA. and in Iowa City: The NONFICTIONOW Conference, NOVEMBER 4-6, 2010. Location: University of Iowa I will appear on two panels: PANEL. The Wildness Suite. Barrie Jean Borich, Rigoberto Gonzalez, Paul Lisicky, Cheryl Strayed, Ira Sukrungruang, Lidia Yuknavitch. In this panel-as-segmented-essay, six nonfiction writers ruminate on writing from, to, and on wildness. Whether writing about the actual or figurative wilderness of expansive landscapes, inviting lyric or experimental wildness to break open nonfiction prose form, or essaying from the wilds of the human body, this panel explores the form and content of the uncultivated, uncultured, uninhabited, uncontrolled, and unconstrained. and PANEL.What's in a Genre? States of the Art of the Essay. Mary Cappello, Barrie Jean Borich, Judith Kitchen, David Lazar, Patrick Madden. This panel is inspired by current vogues in nonfiction (especially essay writing) ...Rather than work as a corrective to the current categories that govern the field's literary journals, pedagogy, and books, our approach is meant to foster conversation--in fact, to beef up the conversation by offering a view of nonfiction?s influences, generic kin, and still un-tapped possibilities. and in Los Angeles: The MLA Conference, January 6-9, 2011. PANEL. The Currency of the Category "Creative Nonfiction" Lynn Z. Bloom, Barrie Jean Borich, Steve Heller, Janet Lyon, Donald Morrill, Brian Norman. A roundtable discussion on the role of creative nonfiction in academic departments and in the world--in print and online journalism, and in book publishing--and why the category "creative nonfiction" has such currency (even urgency) in creative writing programs and circles these days. I was very active at last year's AWP Conference in Denver, last April 2010. Events included: --READING: WILLA [now VIDA] Goes Live: A Benefit Evening of Burlesque, Literature and Roller Derby. --PANEL: Body as Landscape. Place as Blood. (Barrie Jean Borich, Achy Obejas, Ann Pancake, Brian Teare, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, Ira Sukrungruang) --PANEL: Writing Intimacy, Writing Sex. (Mary Cappello, Alexander Chee, Barrie Jean Borich, Peter Covino, James Morrison) --AT THE BOOKFAIR: New work in current or recent issues of: SENECA REVIEW, special double issue "On the Lyric Body," ECOTONE; SEATTLE REVIEW; NEW OHIO REVIEW: HOTEL AMERIKA. *** I spoke at the Riggio Forum: Women in Letters and Literary Arts March 1, 2010, 6:30 p.m. at THE NEW SCHOOL in New York City. WILLA (now VIDA--Women in Literary Arts) merged the creative and critical by presenting several brief readings along with a panel discussion on the state of women's literature today. WILLA was founded in August 2009 to address the need for female writers of literature to engage in conversations regarding women's work as well as the critical reception of women's creative writing in our current culture. Participants of this launch event, all of whom are integrally involved in the development of the organization, were: poet Cate Marvin, co-director of WILLA; poets Ann Townsend, Amy King, and Natalie Bryant Rizzieri; creative nonfiction writer Barrie Jean Borich; children's literature authors Laurel Snyder and Kekla Magoon; and fiction writer Susan Steinberg. My essay THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE appears in the Winter 2010 issue of THE SEATTLE REVEW: Issues with Death, #1. An excerpt of my essella APOCALYPSE, darling appears in the March issue of the SENECA REVIEW, in their special issue On the Lyric Body. [The term essella is my designation for the novella-length lyric essay sequence.] My essay "Geographical Solutions. [A map of the Middle West with insets, past and current]" appears in the the Fall 2009 issue of Ecotone. My essay "On A Clear Day, Catalina" recently won the Crab Orchard Review John Guyon Literary Nonfiction Prize. New essays also appeared in the the Spring 2010 issues of New Ohio Review, and Hotel Amerika . Have I already told you my worst-bookstore-reading-ever saga? If not, or if you'd like to experience the story again in print, please check out Robin Hemley's book tour disaster collection on the blog for his new book DO OVER.. I have just been named a CONTRIBUTING EDITOR for the AWP WRITER'S CHRONICLE. I will present a session entitled The Art of Autogeography as part of THE LOFT MEMOIR WRITING FESTIVAL running Saturday & Sunday, May 16 & 17 2009 at Open Book in Minneapolis. FEATURED PRESENTER at AWP CHICAGO, FEBRUARY 2009 AWP Reading:THE LOFT MENTOR SERIES 30TH ANNIVERSARY READING. Charles Baxter, Barrie Jean Borich, C.J. Hribal, Scott Russell Sanders, Sun Yung Shin, Wang Ping, AWP Bookfair: RIDING SHOTGUN BOOK SIGNING FEATURING: Barrie Jean Borich --Heid Erdrich --Diane Glancy--Kathryn Kysar--Sheila O'Connor --Shannon Olson--Carrie Pomeroy--Sun Yung Shin --Morgan Grayce Willow, AWP Panel: MIDWEST CONFIDENTIAL Barrie Jean Borich, Ed Bok Lee, Ander Monson, Andre Perry, Ira Sukrungruang, Cheryl Strayed. Who writes from the actual, gritty, blistering, contradictory middle of America, and how do writers working from an un-sentimentalized Midwest engage with home terrain? What do Midwestern writers writing about race, class, sexuality, migration, environment, identity, and the body have to say about the push-pull between urban and rural, the stacked and the spacious, history and reinvention, industry and technology, anti-stereotype and stereotype? --- I was a Spring 2008 featured author and mentor in the 2007-08 Mentor Series at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. I presented at the 2008 AWP Conference in NYC. I joined nonfiction writers Gretchen Legler (On the Ice), Mary Cappello (Awkward), Amy Hoffman (An Army of Ex-Lovers), Catherine Reid (Coyote) and Lori Soderlind (Chasing Montana) on a panel entitled We Will Be Citizens: The Insistent Voice of Lesbian Nonfiction. In November 2007 I read in Iowa City at the Graywolf Press Reading, along with Sven Birkerts, Albert Goldbarth, Robin Hemley, Paul Lisicky and Ander Monson at the NonfictioNOW Conference on the campus of the University of Iowa. I also moderated, as well as contributed to, a panel at NonfictioNow entitled Bodies, Spaces, Memories. The panel included Suzanne Antonetta, David Shields, Paul Lisicky and Mary Cappello. --- CONTACT BARRIE: barrie[AT]barriejeanborich[DOT]net

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