Three poems by alum Michael Collins (poetry, ’03) appear at Modern Poetry Quarterly Review:

Pluviophilia
My corpse has awoken from its crusade
in the other world of myth and dream,
where I failed to subject gods and beings
to whatever tenuous totalidoxy

I thought I was seeking. To verify
You exist. I suppose this is all for the best.
Infallible ideas tend to lead to holy wars,
which would end poorly, me having no army.

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Congratulations to Robert Thomas (poetry, ’02) on winning the 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction for his novel Bridge.

From the award ceremony program:

“In Bridge, Robert Thomas constructs, with urgency and crackling, unrelenting energy, a story told with the contradictory self-doubt and wild self-awareness of a bright, sardonic, and potentially self-destructive young woman. Even as we appreciate her tenuous existential dilemma, Alice’s vivid internal construction of an overwhelming worldview in short diaristic episodes seems, in its very creation, to keep her alive. Considering how easily readers might have felt claustrophobic within, or limited by Alice’s point of view—interior, unraveling—it is singularly impressive that Thomas manages—through the beauty of his prose, sophistication of his references, and propulsive energy of Alice’s mind—to connect the reader, and the narrator’s struggle, with the outside world. Although Alice’s beautiful and dangerous estrangement is entirely and selfishly her own, it becomes ours, and teaches us something larger and universal. This novel is an experiential wonder, giddy and joyful reading via the desperate empathy it both demands and models. The digressive, perfectly choreographed role of docent to everyday madness, as played by our heroine, is a brave pleasure in word and sentence, a totally pleasing combination of narrator and authorial, artistic self-control, and vividly evocative self-consciousness.”

Judges’ Statement of Cynthia Sweeney, Melanie Thorne, and Andrew Tonkovich, 2015 PEN Center USA Literary Award for Fiction

An essay by alum Lauren Alwan (fiction, ’08) appears at The Northwest Review of Books:

Most days there are at least fifteen documents open on my laptop. These consist of works in various stages, some newly drafted or in mid-revision, and others that seem close, but remain suspended in a state of near-completion. Generally, the newer works get the attention while the nearly finished are deferred. I have difficulty with that final phase, when the questions narrow and the focus tightens, and as a result, I tend to temporize. This includes looking for answers outside the work—trolling online articles or revisiting well-loved books and essays—though this is nothing more than distraction disguised as research. Yet I do it all the same, squandering time and energy while the work remains undone. “A story can rot,” Jane Hamilton says, and the state of the drop-down list is a stark reminder of how precarious finishing can be. – See more at: http://www.nwreview.com/essays/thoughts-on-finishing.html#full

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A poem by alum Meghan O’Rourke (poetry, ’05) appears at The Poetry Foundation:

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