The Midwestern Friendlies is an initiative to build strong community and networks across writers in graduate creative writing programs in the Midwest. This event matches University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee writers Mollie Boutell, Sherri H. Hoffman & Soham Patel with Northern Michigan University writers Cory Ferrer, Robin McCarthy & Rebecca Pelky.

The term “Friendly” comes from the colloquial name for exhibition matches in soccer leagues, which have no competitive value and serve to better the skills of all participants.

This event will be held in UWM’s Union Art Gallery on November 7th, 2014 at 7pm. It is free and open to the public. Come celebrate UWM’s first Friendlies exchange reading!

Visit  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/285327418332863/

Mollie Boutell is a second year Ph.D. student in fiction and a co-fiction editor for ‘cream city review’. She lives in Shorewood with one husband, two kids, and five goldfish. Her work (both fiction and nonfiction) has appeared in ‘failbetter’, ‘theNewer Yorker’, ‘American Book Review’, ‘The AV Club’, online at ‘Ploughshares’, and elsewhere, and she is the author of ‘Wisconsin: An Explorer’s Guide’.

Cory Ferrer grew up around Traverse City, Michigan. He writes nonfiction and poetry, and studied English at the University of Michigan. He teaches composition and creative writing at Northern Michigan University, where he is working on an MFA in nonfiction.

Sherri H. Hoffman is a Ph.D. student in Creative Writing at UWM, sports fanatic, and graphic designer. Some of her work appears in ‘December magazine’, ‘Etchings’, ‘PANK’, and ‘Brave On the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft’, and other online publications. She is one of the fiction editors for ‘cream city review’, and a co-editor of a recent collection of place-based essays, stories and poetry, ‘Utah Reflections: Stories from the Wasatch Front’ (2014). Sherri has an MFA from Pacific University. She loves birds, her family, and a good cuppa coffee.

Robin McCarthy writes, teaches, and studies in Marquette, Michigan. She is a managing editor for the literary journal ‘Passages North’ and a counter for VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. Her work has been published by ‘NPR’, ‘The Rumpus’, ‘Green Mountains Review’, and on blogs for ‘PANK’ and ‘Ploughshares’.

Soham Patel is a Kundiman fellow. Two of her chapbooks, ‘and nevermind the storm’ (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), and ‘Riva: A Chapter’ (kitchen-shy press) came out in 2013. Her work has been included or is forthcoming on ‘Banango Street’, ‘Fact-Simile Editions’, ‘Denver Quarterly’ and various other places.  She has an MA from Western Washington University’s English Department, an MFA from the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh, and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

Rebecca Pelky is in her third year of the MFA program at Northern Michigan University, where she is also an associate poetry editor for ‘Passages North’. She is currently writing a hiking guide to the Upper Peninsula, and she likes to tell stories about her past life as a zookeeper. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in ‘Calliope’, ‘The Chattahoochee Review’, ‘Yellow Medicine Review’, ‘Dunes Review’, ‘Stone Highway Review’, among others.