“Prologue” by Jude Whelchel (fiction, ’13)

A prose poem by Jude Whelchel (fiction, ’13) is a finalist for the R.T. Smith Prize for Narrative Poetry and appears in Cold Mountain Review:

They tread me in waist-high, protective boots, bowing to Linnaeus, naming things binomially, wrapping wire tags etched in carbon, cutting plant flesh with razorblades. Magnolia virginiana. Gordonia lasianthus. Taxodium ascendens. Fingering cypress knees, their eyes follow my timberlines sun high, tongues tasting, noses cocked, sniffing, saliva on the chin. Pulling [. . . continue reading here.]

 

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Attention NorCal Wallies!

Northern California Wallies will hold a get-together on Sunday, September 24 from 5:00-7:00 pm at The Writing Salon, 2042 Balboa Street in San Francisco. We’ll socialize over light snacks and drinks, and hear short readings by a handful of Wallies. We ask for a contribution of $20 per person. All funds collected will be donated to Friends of Writers. Twenty dollars is a suggested donation amount—every Wally is welcome, regardless of ability to pay. Please RSVP to [email protected]. Our space is generously provided by The Writing Salon; for directions, please visit https://www.writingsalons.com/. We hope to see you there!

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Congratulations to Rona Jaffe Award Winner, Tiana Nobile

TIANA NOBILE (poetry ’17) will receive a 2017 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award, which is given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers. Celebrating its 23rd year, the Rona Jaffe Awards have helped many women build successful writing careers by offering encouragement and financial support at a critical time. The Awards are $30,000 each and will be presented to the six recipients on September 14th in New York City.

Tiana Nobile’s first poetry collection, Harlow’s Monkey, explores and grapples with the history of adoption, both her own from South Korea and the broader, collective experience. She says, “As a child I was unable to discuss the complicated nature of how a family like ours was formed, the history left behind and how to negotiate that loss. Through the act of writing my manuscript, I’ve finally given myself permission to explore the complexities of adoption, dislocation, and familial love.” Her nominator writes, “Tiana did the incredibly difficult work of delving deep into her own personal narrative while also challenging herself to find a new and rigorous poetics that would challenge received ideas of accessibility and emotional charge in the poems. It was a tremendous amount to take on and it gave me such a clear vision into her capabilities as a poet and a person.” Ms. Nobile was an elementary teacher in the New Orleans public schools for several years and is now a teaching artist and arts coach in the schools for KID smART. She received her B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College, an M.A.T. from the University of New Orleans in elementary and special education, and her M.F.A. from Warren Wilson College in 2017. Her poems have appeared inAntenna, The Collagist, PHANTOM, among others, and she is a recipient of a Kundiman fellowship. She plans to use her Writer’s Award to return to South Korea for the first time since her adoption and to take time to continue her work on her first collection. She lives in New Orleans, Louisiana.

 

Tiana Nobile (poetry, July 2017) is the eighth alumna of the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College to receive this honor since the Writers’ Awards were established in 1995.  Previous recipients include Karen Whalley (poetry, ’00) and Constance Merritt (poetry, ’00) in 2001, Adrian Blevins (poetry, ’02) in 2002, Joanne Dominique Dwyer (poetry, ’09) in 2008, Heidy Steidlmayer (poetry, ’00) in 2009,  Laura Newbern (poetry, ’94) in 2010, and Margaree Little (poetry,’12) in 2013.

In addition, seven Warren Wilson MFA faculty have been honored with this award:  Mary Szybist in 1996, Karen Bender in 1997, Lan Samantha Chang in 1998, Gabrielle Calvocoressi in 2002, Dana Levin in 2004, Jennifer Grotz in 2007, and Kirstin Valdez Quade in 2013 .

From Tiana:
__________________
I’m honored and humbled to be one of the recipients of the 2017 Rona Jaffe Writers’ Awards. Having just graduated from the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson, receiving this amazing gift could not have come at a better time. My two years in the Program were precious and provided me with the time, space and mentorship I needed to build my craft and work tirelessly on my manuscript.
In my manuscript, I explore the history and complexities of adoption, both my own and the broader collective experience. I’m primarily interested in investigating the impact transnational adoption has on the body, memory and language.
The financial support of the Rona Jaffe Award will not only help as I continue working on my manuscript, it will also provide me with the opportunity to travel to South Korea for the first time since my birth. I’m thrilled to be taking this next step, not only for my personal life, but also for my poems as I continue to push my manuscript forward.
 And from Program Director Debra Allberry:
We’re thrilled that Tiana will have the benefit of this prestigious and generous award to sustain her momentum as she continues the admirable work begun in our program. We’re grateful to The Rona Jaffe Foundation for their invaluable support of emerging women writers–support which has previously benefited several of our graduates and faculty.
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“I Want a Tiny House” by Erick Piller (poetry ’12)

Four Poems by Erick Piller appear in EOAGH

I Want a Tiny House

I want a tiny
house for my tiny
life. I want to sleep
efficiently in
a solar-powered
hole and expend as
little energy
as I can. I want
to breathe less often
so as not to suck
in and kill microbes
who have done nothing
to me and whom I
shall regard as my
models for living.

Read the rest of this poem and three more on EAOGH

Erick Piller received an MFA in poetry from Warren Wilson College in 2012. His writing has appeared in Best New Poets 2016, TriQuarterly, DIAGRAM, Journal of Creative Writing Studies, and elsewhere. He lives in Northeast Connecticut and is pursuing a Ph.D. in rhetoric and composition and creative writing pedagogy at the University of Connecticut

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“What Does it Mean When We Call a Key a “Slave”?” by Peggy Shinner

Peggy Shinner (fiction ’94) has a new essay available on the LITHUB website.

What Does it Mean When We Call A Key a “Slave?”

Part of the business of tyranny is to bankrupt certain words of meaning so that they become, in the process, destitute. –Michael Chabon, adapted

Language and its expectations
teaches us
about the relationship
we would have had. –Solmaz Sharif

*

I am in possession of what is known, apparently, as a slave key. The more common, more polite, less charged, and more obfuscating term is valet key. It was handed over in the last in a series of transactions at the car dealership, where Ann and I traded in our old Subaru and bought a new one. This is a moment of ritual, a keenly American scene: the smiling representative of commerce and industry, both smug and deferential, and the giddy new owners, awash in our good fortune. The parties sit opposite, on either side of the desk, which feels like territory successfully traversed; we are in this together (sort of) but adversarial as well: each side out to milk the other for the best terms. The business manager offers up congratulations, not only for the car, gleaming in the lot, but also for the other, unspoken triumph: that with this purchase we have reconfirmed our place in the middle class.

Read the rest of the essay here:  What Does it Mean…

Peggy Shinner is the author of You Feel So Mortal, a collection of essays on the body (University of Chicago Press), which was long-listed for the 2015 PEN-Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. Currently, she is at work on a book about speech and silence.

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Synchronized Swim by Lucy Anderton (poetry ’05)

A new poem by Lucy Anderton (poetry ’05) appears in BOSTON REVIEW.

Synchronized Swim

Read the rest of the poem here:  Synchronized Swim

Lucy Anderton’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Crazyhorse, Fence, The Iowa Review, Tin House, and Verse Daily, and her collection The Flung You was published by New Michigan Press in 2012. She and her partner are raising their daughter Ophélia in the south of France in a 500-year-old structure that has been a hospital, a brothel, and a wartime hiding place.

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“Mirrors” by Rick Bursky (poetry ’03)

An essay from Rick Bursky (poetry, ’03) appears in AGNI Blog:

Mirrors

Someone once wrote, “everything I ever learned about myself I learned while looking in a mirror.” Hmmm, interesting. For years I thought it arrogant. Followed by a couple of years thinking it was stupid. For the last few days I’ve thought about it and now I might actually understand. Every morning I brush my teeth while looking at myself in a mirror. Then I shave. Looking in a mirror. Occasionally, I think about what I see. Occasionally, I write about it.

The mirror was invented by accident, or so the story goes. [. . . continue reading here.]

 

Rick Bursky (poetry, ’03)

Rick Bursky (poetry, ’03) teaches poetry for the Writer’s Program at UCLA Extension. His most recent book, I’m No Longer Troubled By the Extravagance, is out from BOA Editions; the previous book Death Obscura, was published by Sarabande Books. Find out what he’s published in AGNI here.

 

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“The Walled-In Wild” by Boyce Upholt (fiction, ’16)

An essay from Boyce Upholt (fiction, ’16) appears in Roads and Kingdoms:

As soon as we paddled out of Memphis, everything turned green. I had been told it would be like this—wild and quiet and verdant—but still, I was surprised. I thought I knew the local geography; after all, I’ve been driving up and down the nearby stretch of Highway 61 for more than eight years. But when you’re accustomed to tawdry highway gas stations and strip malls, it’s hard to imagine that this kind of quiet, undisciplined greenery persists. [ . . . continue reading here.]

 

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Two Poems by Victoria Chang (poetry, ’05)

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Dear P.

Please       forage    please do not    achieve please

stay    mischievous even    if        others are deviously

perfect    your previous hair color will always be    black

black isn’t      absence [. . . continue reading here.]

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Dear P.

Please       forage    please do not    achieve please

stay    mischievous even    if        others are deviously

perfect    your previous hair color will always be    black

black isn’t      absence [. . . continue reading here.]

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Victoria Chang     (poetry, ’05)

 

 

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Victoria Chang‘s fourth book of poems, Barbie Chang, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press this fall.  Her prior book, The Boss (McSweeney’s) won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award.  Other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle.  She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017 and teaches at Chapman University and the Orange County School of the Arts.  She lives in Southern California with her family.  You can find her at www.victoriachangpoet.com.

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