Terrain.org Online Reading: Maurice Carlos Ruffin, Jennifer K. Sweeney, Melina Walling + Sean Sam
Join us online for Terrain.org’s March 2022 reading!
Our first 2022 reading and Q+A in Terrain.org’s online reading series is Monday, March 28, at 5 p.m. PT / 6 MT / 7 CE / 8 ET. Hosted by Terrain.org nonfiction editor Elizabeth Dodd, this reading features Terrain.org 12th Annual Contest winners Jennifer K. Sweeney, Melina Walling, and Sean Sam, as well as fiction contest judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
This reading is sponsored by the Michael Donnelly Faculty Award at Kansas State University, with Zoom hosting provided by the University of Arizona.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, a New York Times Editor’s Choice that was also longlisted for the Story Prize, and We Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. Maurice served as the judge for the Terrain.org 12th Annual Contest in Fiction.
Jennifer K. Sweeney is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Foxlogic, Fireweed, winner of the Backwaters Prize from Backwaters Press/University of Nebraska. Her other collections are Little Spells, How to Live on Bread and Music, and Salt Memory. She is the recipient of many awards, including the James Laughlin Award and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches poetry workshops privately and at the University of Redlands in California. Her poems “Orb Weaver” and “Perseid” won the Terrain.org 12th Annual Contest in Poetry, selected by Ellen Bass.
Melina Walling is a writer, photographer and storyteller from Wayne, Pennsylvania. She earned a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Environmental Communication at Stanford University and spent the summer of 2021 as the Mary Withers Rural Writing Fellow at Boyd’s Station in Boyd, Kentucky. Her work has appeared in several publications including The Cincinnati Enquirer, The Bucks County Courier Times, Stanford Magazine, and Forbes.com, and she is currently a bioscience reporter for The Arizona Republic, where she covers health, technology, and the environment. Her essay “The Snake and the Sanctuary” won the Terrain.org 12th Annual Contest in Nonfiction, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil.
Sean Sam’s writing has appeared in Salt Hill, The Malahat Review, The Westchester Review, ellipsis… literature and art, and Potomac Review—among other places. He is a member of the Navajo tribe and has taught at the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute program. He is a founder of Ligeia Magazine, a literary website based out of Baltimore. His story “The Frontier” won the Terrain.org 12th Annual Contest in Fiction, selected by Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
