Great Plains Writers’ Tour Creativity Symposium Scheduled for March 6

YANKTON, SD - Mount Marty College (MMC) in Yankton, South Dakota is excited to announce the line-up for The Great Plains Writer’s Tour Creativity Symposium which is scheduled for March 6, 2019, in Marian Auditorium on the College’s Yankton campus. The symposium will feature a poet, a novelist, the editor-in-chief of both The New York Quarterly and NYQ Books and Yankton’s own Bernie Hunhoff who is the editor-at-large of South Dakota Magazine.

Dante Di Stefano is the author of two poetry collections: Love Is a Stone Endlessly in Flight (Brighthorse Books, 2016) and Ill Angels (Etruscan Press, 2019). His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in American Life in Poetry, Best American Poetry 2018, Prairie Schooner, The Sewanee Review, The Writer’s Chronicle, and elsewhere. He has won the Manchester Poetry Prize, the Red Hen Press Poetry Award, the Thayer Fellowship in the Arts, the Ruth Stone Poetry Prize, and the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award, as well as prizes from The Academy of American Poets, The Crab Orchard Review, The Madison Review, and Stone Canoe. Along with María Isabel Alvarez, he co-edited the anthology Misrepresented People: Poetic Responses to Trump’s America (NYQ Books, 2018). He is the poetry editor for the DIALOGIST and serves as a reviewer for the Bellevue Literary Review. He holds a Ph.D. in English Literature from Binghamton University. He teaches high school English in Endicott, NY and resides in Endwell, NY, with his wife, Christina, their daughter, Luciana, and their dog, Sunny.

Kent Meyers has written a memoir, a book of short fiction, and three novels, two of which have been listed as New York Times Notable Books. His work has won numerous awards, including a Society of Midland Authors award and a High Plains Book award. Meyers has published fiction and essays in various literary journals and magazines, including Harper’s and several times in The Georgia Review. He lives in Spearfish, South Dakota and teaches in Pacific Lutheran University’s low-residency MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop.

Raymond P. Hammond is the editor-in-chief of both The New York Quarterly and NYQ Books. He also works as an adjunct instructor at Keystone College and editor of the Keystone College Press. He holds an MA in English Literature from New York University and is the author of Poetic Amusement, a book of literary criticism. He lives near Scranton, PA with his wife, the poet Amanda J. Bradley, and their dog Hank.

Bernie Hunhoff is the editor-at-large of South Dakota Magazine, a publication he founded in 1985 after working as a journalist for dailies in Watertown and Madison. The magazine is now published by his daughter Katie. He has also authored several books on South Dakota. Along with journalism, he has been active in agriculture, economic development, conservation, history and historic preservation, and politics. He represented South Dakota in the state legislature for 14 years. He frequently speaks on South Dakota’s history and culture, and the virtues of life in the prairie state. He and his wife, Myrna, have two children and six grandchildren.  They live along the Missouri River in Yankton.

The event’s schedule is as follows:

10:00 -10:45 a.m.
Dante Di Stefano: "Self-Portraiture in Contemporary American Poetry"

12:00 - 12:50 p.m.
Kent Meyers: "Some Creative Enigmas, or Why Writer's Block is Your Friend"

1:00 -  1:50 p.m.
Raymond Hammond: “Intuition, Trusting Yourself in Writing”

2:00 - 2:50 p.m.
Bernie Hunhoff: "Finding Creativity in Unlikely Places—in our magazine travels, in politics, and on the farm."

7:00 - 8:15 p.m.
A Panel Discussing on Creativity with Dante Di Stefano, Kent Meyers, Raymond Hammond, and Bernie Hunhoff


This one-day event is free and open to the public. For more information about the Great Plains Writers’ Tour visit www.mtmc.edu/academics/arts/creative-writing/great-plains-writers-tour/. For more information about Mount Marty College’s majors and programs visit www.mtmc.edu.