The second event in this year’s Moon City Press Reading Series will take place on Friday, Sept. 22 and will feature an accomplished Missouri State alumna, Alexandra Teague.
Key details
- What: Moon City Press Reading Series featuring Alexandra Teague
- When: 8-10 p.m. Sept. 22
- Where: Plaster Student Union Theatre
- How: Free and open to the public
About Alexandra Teague
After earning her BA in English with a creative writing emphasis from Missouri State in 1996, Teague earned her MFA from the University of Florida. She has since published two acclaimed books of poetry (Mortal Geography and The Wise and Foolish Builders). In 2017, she published the novel The Principles Behind Flotation.
Teague has been the recipient of Stanford University’s Stegner Fellowship, the California Book Award and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
She is an associate professor of poetry at the University of Idaho.
Reflections from her professor
English department head Dr. W. D. Blackmon reflected on Teague’s promise as a student and success as a writer.
Blackmon said, “Alexandra Teague is a terrific role model for our students. She is a very young alumna to be so remarkably accomplished. Her writing in the novel reminds me of her writing in ENG 501, Advanced Writing Fiction, not too long ago, so that should be encouraging to other students who want to write successfully for a national audience.
“Her work as a Stegner Fellow at Stanford and as an associate professor in the MFA program at the University of Idaho illustrate a parallel success in her academic career and her artistic career.
“It is remarkable to publish both a novel and two books of poems, especially at such a high level, and especially at such a young age.”
“The novel is a very realistic coming-of-age story about a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old girl. The book uses a magical realism premise, though, that a mythical northwest Arkansas town (which I take to be modeled on Eureka Springs) has become a tourist Mecca because of the miraculous formation of a great salt water sea (privately owned) being formed in the 1950s by a great flood. The main character, A.Z., aspires to be an oceanographer, so this should be a great place to do field work for her (except that rampant tourist commercialism gets in the way).
“The novel is both poignant and very funny, a great comment on out-of-control tourism and commercialism . . . and religious intolerance.”
“The portrait of family life is very moving, too (even great parents can only do so much to get a teenager through puberty and the crazy social competition in high school).
“The love story and teen anxiety will resonate with almost all readers, yet the fabulous setting is unique (although those who have been to Branson or Lake of the Ozarks can relate).”