A poem by alum Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) appears at Fogged Clarity:
There will be sweat at the back of your neck
seven months out of the year. That’s true,
that and an ugly history too. At least, in the South,
the Ice Age never quite passed through.
I can say that while glaciers scraped the North
clean, here there was only a little winter.
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Three poems and an essay by alum Andy Young (poetry, ’11) appear as a special feature at storySouth:
Far from Her in Egypt under Curfew
We got babysitters
so we could go the Square, cut lemons for our scarves—
the small, thin triangular ones
she said were for people
of the Book. Wearing one,
you could be any one of the three
religions, she said, though
her Egyptian self is seen
as foreign: her clothes,
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A short story entitled “Eat You Up” by alum Nancy J. Allen (fiction ’12) was published in the 2016 Saturday Evening Post’s Best Short Stories. The e-book is available from Amazon.
Alum Laura Van Prooyen (poetry, ’10) received the $1,500 Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award for her five poems published in the Fall 2015 issue, including “Elegy for My Mother’s Mind.”
A poem by alum Mike Puican (poetry, ’09) appears at The Collagist:
One of me replays what he should have said
to the judge at the custody hearing. One of me
walks the shoulder of I-80 while the sumac
bursts into a scatter of sparrows. One of me wades
into a rain-filled rock quarry while another
of me watches from the other side.
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A poem by alum Shadab Zeest Hashmi (poetry, ’09) appears at Knot Magazine:
Qasida of Cat Dreaming the Forbidden Mountain
Daybreak, a mist-filled coin purse
from the Caucasus
Or koh e qaaf— mountain named after the letter
tied to the throat’s sharp rock of death,
rouged floor, golden fleece
hung on the arm of the Greek god of War, gray breath
lifting from a choke-hold between a horned dev
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An interview between alums Natalie Serber (fiction, 2005) and Robin Black (fiction, 2005) appears at Bloom:
Natalie Serber: I met Robin Black in grad school in 2002 and listened with eager ears each time she raise
d a question or offered an opinion in lectures and discussions. I would’ve been a bit intimidated by her intelligence and curiosity if it weren’t for her friendliness…however, I don’t remember her out on the dance floor at Warren Wilson’s famous, blow-off-steam dances! I do remember she made a regular pilgrimage to a fortune teller in the woods. Mysterious things happened at WW.
riting sometimes, but more often about life’s joys and challenges – and the way everything can turn in a moment for better and worse.
RB: We both have new nonfiction books out, after publishing primarily fiction. And both of our books are centered around circumstances traditionally seen as fairly personal, even private. In Community Chest you write vividly and honestly about your experiences with breast cancer, including some decidedly intimate aspects. My new book discusses my struggles with emotional difficulties, including nearly two decades of agoraphobia. My own experience, though, is that in many ways fiction feels more exposing to me, than do essays, even about such personal experiences. With memoir, I have more control over what I reveal than I do with fiction, which in my case is never autobiographical, but always feels to me like showing people my dreams, exposing aspects of myself I don’t even know I am exposing. I was just wondering how all those notions of privacy and disclosure in the two forms play out for you, as you move between the genres.Three poems by alum Carrie Mar (poetry, ’13) appear at Four Way Review:
THE RAY
it lay there, flopping, fish-out-of-water
and my heart trembled on the curb
the usual fisherman’s tales
a woman onlooker upset, that’s animal cruelty
flapping in air, fingers hooked
to its spiracles as its mouth gaped and shut
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Five poems by alum Rachel Brownson (poetry, ’14) appear at Four Way Review:
MARE INCOGNITUM
The slow mineral seep and drip
of groundwater, finding each crevice,
the cold spreading, downward—
the imagined weight of her breast,
spreading to fill my hand
(still and folded in my pocket)—
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A poem by alum Jennifer Givhan (poetry, ’15) appears at The Kenyon Review:
Lieserl is the “illegitimate” lost daughter whom Einstein and his then-fiancé Mileva Maric gave up for adoption and who some believe died of scarlet fever in infancy, though her fate remains a mystery.
I believe in the conservation
of bird wings, in tiny packages of light
and their insistence on shining
in the resurrection of dying things.
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An essay by alum Marian Szczepanski (fiction, ’97) appears at Proximity Magazine:
“Hilary!” I hissed, beckoning to my daughter. With a backward glance and impish smirk, my willful six-year-old took off across the carpets with me in hot pursuit, albeit at what I hoped was a more decorous pace.
It was mid-afternoon on an autumn day in Istanbul, and bright bars of sunlight played across the soft wool beneath my shoeless feet. With intricate designs of muted crimson, sapphire, and amber, each carpet was a work of art, but in that moment I was intent on apprehension, not admiration. Ignoring my stage-whispered entreaties, Hilary skipped from one alcove to the next along the perimeter of the Süleymaniye, the elegant imperial mosque starred as a Must-See in our Fodor’s guidebook. Although the vast expanse was largely empty, aside from a few fellow tourists, I was all too aware that we weren’t Muslim and fearful of giving even unintentional offense.
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