J'Lyn Chapman

Assistant Professor | Core Candidate | Director, MFA in Creative Writing
Core Faculty

Programs

BA in Creative Writing and Literature - Core Faculty
MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics - Core Faculty
MFA in Creative Writing (Low-Res) - Core Faculty

Education

PhD in Literature, University of Denver
MFA in English, University of Central Florida
BA in English, Colorado Christian University

From the heart

Naropa attracts curious and innovative thinkers, who are especially concerned with improving both themselves and their communities. My most satisfying teaching experiences have occurred in the Naropa classroom, where, as a faculty member, I also have the freedom, even the expectation, to experiment, question, and challenge. All of this occurs within an atmosphere that assumes that an academic education coincides with a growing self- and other-awareness.

Honors/Awards

At the University of Denver, I received the Evan Frankel Fellowship. My manuscript, Our Last Days, was a finalist for the Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and the Burnside Review Chapbook contest. A Thing of Shreds and Patches was the winner of the Essay Press Digital Chapbook Contest.

Recent Publications

Calamari Archive published, Beastlife (2016). The digital chapbooks, The Form Our Curiosity Takes: A Pedagogy of Conversation and A Thing of Shreds and Patches were recently published by Essay Press.

Creative activity summary

I am currently working on an essay that uses the grid as a writing and a devotional tool.

Courses taught

Writing Workshop: Creative Nonfiction
Writing Workshop: Somatic Forms
Poetics Seminar: Introduction to Critical Theory
Multigenre Workshop: Text and Image
Poetics Seminar: Contemporary Trends
Poetics Seminar: Women Writers, Open Texts
Poetry Workshop: Documentary Poetics

What book do you find yourself regularly pressing into the hands of students?

I encourage students to read Cixous, Irigaray, and Kristeva. I've been lately heralding all of Maggie Nelson's books, especially The Argonauts and Bluets, as well as Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely and Citizen.