Jill Christman and Mark Neely: Authors and MFAs In Person Readings and Q&A

Join authors and academics Jill Christman and Mark Neely at the Main Library on October 28th from 6pm until as they read from our new books, poetry (LATE STAGE) and memoir (THE HEART FOLDS EARLY) respectively, and hang around for a Q&A

Jill Christman and Mark Neely met in the MFA program at the University of Alabama in the late 90s. For over two decades, they have written and taught in the Creative Writing Program at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, where they raised two amazing kids (both of whom grew up to be English majors) and co-edit River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. Between them, they've earned two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and published eight books-four in nonfiction and four in poetry.

Jill Christman is the author of The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir (released March 2026 from the University of Nebraska Press). Christman's other books include If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (2023 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner), Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of AWP Prize for CNF), and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies and in magazines such as Brevity,Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A 2020 NEA Literature Fellow, she teaches at Ball State University and serves as co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro nonfiction). Visit her at jillchristman.com

Mark Neely is the author of Beasts of the Hill and Dirty Bomb, both from Oberlin College Press, and Ticker, which won the Idaho Prize for Poetry and was published by Lost Horse Press. His fourth book, Late Stage, was published by Jacar Press in 2024. His awards include an NEA Literature Fellowship, an Indiana Individual Artist grant, and the FIELD Poetry Prize, and his poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, New England Review, Indiana Review, Poetry Northwest, Pleiades, and elsewhere, He earned his BA from the University of Illinois and his MFA from the University of Alabama. He is a professor of English at Ball State University and co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative. Visit him at markneely.com