Join us on October 6, from 5:30 to 7:00 at the Kennedy Library in Muncie, IN, as we learn more about the creative nonfiction process with writer Abby Manzella! Attendees should come with questions for Abby about her process, her work, and her residency experience at PlySpace.

You can RSVP for the event through facebook!

Abigail G. H. Manzella is a resident at PlySpace, an artist-in-residence program located in downtown Muncie, Indiana. She will talk about her process as a writer of creative nonfiction, specifically addressing her work while in Muncie. Her current book project Burning Through History combines elements of the personal essay via her life growing up in Pennsylvania with historically researched information about major fires in the United States to uncover what are the stories we tell and what are the stories we bury as we try to define who we are as individuals and a country. Her talk will be about the creative and the research process from ideas to execution. She may also read some work in progress.

Manzella is a writer and scholar who has taught and written on contemporary American literature and culture particularly as they relate to issues of race and gender, at the University of Missouri, Yeshiva University, Centre College, Tufts, and the University of Virginia. She has published pieces published with places including The Rumpus, The Millions, Bust, Middlebury Magazine, Frontiers, Feminist Studies, and The Kenyon Review. Her scholarly book Migrating Fictions: Gender, Race, and Citizenship in U.S. Internal Migrations was released in January from The Ohio State University Press.

While at PlySpace, Manzella will be pursuing a variety of community collaborative projects including a curatorial project at Minnetrista utilizing documents and photos from the Ball Family Archives, a PechaKucha presentation at Final Friday on September 28th at the David Owsley Museum of Art on Ball State’s campus, and visits to creative writing classes in the English Department at Ball State.