The Wheels are taking over Read.Write.Repeat! They are the graduating cohort in OSUC’s MFA program. You don’t want to miss what they have planned for their episode, which will air May 13th. In the meantime, read more about their project and the upcoming episodes here. Each of the Wheels responded to our Proustish Questionnaire, which will post every day between now and the 13th.
Their bios appear in the order they will appear on the show!
Meet Rachel Wiley-Bard
Rachel Wiley-Bard is a coffee-stained, star-obsessed, armor-wearing writer who has a love-hate relationship with adjectives, the hyphenate, and her name. She writes fantasy from low to high and stubbornly insists on a wider range of representation in a genre boxed in by tradition. A strong proponent of fluid sexuality and gender no matter the landscape, she thinks fantasy can stand to be queerer.
Rachel has lots of opinions on tropes, the nature of escapism, and the difficulties and pleasures of world building. She cultivates them amongst lavender bushes, strawberries plants, and honeycombs in the garden. Sometimes the bees help.
(Painting by Stefanie Crowe. Find more of Stefanie’s work at ascrowesfly.com)
Connect with Rachel:
Check out Rachel’s website, Rachel Wiley-Bard, for more information on her upcoming work.
You can also connect with her on your favorite social media platform:
- Spotify: chapstickaddict
- Twitter: @rachelwileybard
- Instagram: @rachelwileybard
Meet Kelsey Stone
Before launching her writing career, Kelsey dabbled in law enforcement and teaching, finding both simultaneously rewarding and devastating and she continues to be passionate about both. At 0200 hours on Wednesday, August 26th, 2015, she woke up in the midst of a panic attack because she realized she wasn’t getting any younger. The fear that she would never realize her dreams drove her into a frenzy of creation that has lead to countless paper cuts, one concussion, the loss of her beloved Spock necklace, and her husband nearly declaring her missing.
Since that moment, Kelsey has been on a journey of discovery. After a flurry of rejection letters told her that her manuscript might not be quite ready, she realized she needed more tools, and turned in a new direction. Kelsey applied to OSU-Cascades and is now working through their Low Residency Masters of Fine Art program as the seventh member of the Wheels cohort. Unable to decide which lane she wanted to drive in, she declared her focus as hybrid and thrills at writing both fiction and creative nonfiction. She’s even trying her wheels out in poetry. Her writing keeps rolling forward and that manuscript that wasn’t quite ready is now being reviewed by two agents.
Connect with Kelsey:
Check out Kelsey’s website, www.tibetanlemon.com, for writing tips, articles on the writer’s life, and original creative pieces from her and a slew of guest authors.
You can also connect with her on your favorite social media platform:
- Facebook: @authorkelseystone
- Twitter: @scifistone
- Instagram: @scifistone
Meet Tiffany McFee
McFee is a fiction writer currently living in Corvallis Oregon. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing through Oregon State University’s low-residency program and a founding editor of Townsend, a literary journal for long-form fiction.
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTDCates/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tiffany-mcfee-31b600120/
Juxtaposed
Bendrix Marshal is a man of meticulous nature whose life is turned upside down when he meets Eve Townsend while working for a traveling theatre group out of Glasgow. She struggles with addiction, a sense of belonging and has a hidden history of trauma that frequently makes her appear uninvested in doing what is ‘right’. As they both advertently and inadvertently cause destruction upon one another’s lives, Bendrix’s reality begins to unravel.
Bloody and holding the gun after Eve is found shot in her London home, Bendrix must help the Metropolitan Police piece together the last moments of her life. A web of lies and half-truths emerges so fully that none are left untouched, including the Chief Inspector.
Self-inflicted or not, of enormous consequences or mundane ones, as the lies are stripped away, one is forced to ask if the love of anything can exist amongst the truths that remain. Juxtaposed is written as a three-part narrative that shifts the reader from the investigation, to the mind of the suspect, to the sordid past and deepest fears of its victim.
Purchase your copy here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/juxtaposed-t-d-cates/1123541706?ean=9781530531776
Meet Pamela Krueger
Pamela Krueger is a member of the Wheels of Fortune cohort in the OSU-Cascades MFA in Creative Writing program. After decades as a writer of a more technical variety, i.e., writing legal briefs as an environmental lawyer, she began a career transition as a writer after her near adult son faced a life-threatening condition that had her by his bedside. So the meaning of being a Wheel of Fortune is close to her heart and experience, i.e., how little control we have over our life. She writes in multiple genres, depending on the mood of the piece, and invites you to travel along with her from genre to genre.
Connect with Pamela Krueger:
Check out www.pamelaleekrueger.com in the future — it is just a shell at the moment.
You can also connect with her on your favorite social media platform:
- Facebook: Pamela Krueger
- Twitter: @PamelaLKrueger
- LinkedIn: Pamela Krueger
- Instagram: pamela.l.krueger
Don’t forget to check out Pamela’s OSU-Cascades MFA Wheels Capstone Podcast!
In this podcast, Pamela shares her views on the theme of the writing life as seen through her multi-genre lens. She shares a short excerpt from a fiction piece called “Always in Transit,” now in its fifth draft that was started with her fellow Wheels and Visiting Faculty Nick Dybek during the June 2017 OSU-Cascades MFA Residency at Caldera. Then she shares a poem in sonnet form relating to her time traversing many Washington State forests with biologists and foresters. Finally, she shares a short excerpt from her upcoming thesis, from the central essay called “Permutations of Pain.” The podcast concludes with a short interview of her first reader / editor of Tsunami Island, a young adult adventure novella she wrote to commemorate her triplet nieces and nephew’s B’nai Mitzvah.
Meet Cheliss Thayer
Cheliss Thayer is known for her short fictions that get at the heart of familial (dys)function. Both heartbreaking and strikingly honest.
Connect with Cheliss:
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/cheliss.thayer
- Instagram: @chelissthayer
- Website: www.chillyphotography.com
Meet Hannah O’Leary
Small town practicality meets creative. Hannah is a photographer and writer, sharing stories both in image and word.
Connect with Hannah:
Check out Hannah’s website, www.hannaholearyphotography.com, or if you’d like to see more of her visual voice and storytelling style her Instagram stories with @hannaholeary.
You can also connect with her on your favorite social media platform:
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/olearyh
- Instagram: @hannaholeary
Meet Karen Jorgensen
Karen writes lyrical prose with an imaginative spoken quality. A fiction poet, who tackles big ideas with rhythm and imagery, she writes from a musical place, located between the heart and the mind: quite literally, this place would be the voice. Karen is fluent in metaphor and simile–these are the predominant languages spoken in her texts, as well. She writes rhyming kids’ books, short fictions, poetry, songs, and is working on her first (multi-genre, split perspective) novel. She lives and loves, all things Oregon.
Tibetan Lemonade 
Good to see you blogging Kelsey – Hope the manuscripts and yourself are well 🙂
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[…] giveaway is inspired by OSU-Cascades’ Wheel of Fortune cohort and their capstone project. This month we have sevem prizes to give away, each inspired by […]
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