Class Notes

After nearly 29 years of service, Mark Madigan took an early retirement from the Department of Defense in 2010 and soon went back to graduate school to pursue a Master of Fine Arts in Writing degree from Spalding University in Louisville, Kentucky.  He selected Spalding University due to the strength of its poetry staff and the fact that its program included residencies every summer in different foreign locations. For the next several years, he headed off to places like Athens, Prague, and Rome to write and work with a small community of like minded writers.  In 2017, he graduated during the summer residency held in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has since been writing full time.  Recently, Finish Line Press accepted the manuscript of his chapbook, Thump and other poems, for publication.  All the poems for the book are set in foreign locations. The chapbook will appear in January 2019, with preordering to beginning in mid-September at finishinglinepress.com.