“In Celebration of Hybridity” by Erin Stalcup

The first of a three part essay by alumna Erin Stalcup (fiction, ’04) appears at Bending Genre:

I am bitextual.

I write fiction and nonfiction. But mostly fiction. So I enter into Bending Genre wondering how to apply its lessons and conundrums to my own writing, how my fiction can get bent.

There are lots of facts in my fiction. Did you know that Einstein had a daughter? He never saw her after she was two years old, and none of us know what happened to her. So I speculate. Did you know that Isaac Newton didn’t only name gravity (I claim you can’t discover what is already there, and yes I apply that logic to the continent I live on), he also invented calculus? Did you know Isaac Newton believed counterfeiters should be hanged?

Continue reading online…

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Two Poems by Rebecca Foust

Two poems by alumna Rebecca Foust (poetry, ’10) appear at the Cortland Review:

Blazon

—In the Syntax of Heraldry

Azure, a bend Or, sunset against sky.
Party per pale argent and vert, a tree
counterchanged by twilight. Cyan,
the sea-flooded dune, tincture of silver,
the sand your hair combed by ebb tide.

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A Poem by Patrick Donnelly

The poem “Five Queer Spells Written on Black Oil Sunflower Seeds, during a Time When Many Spells Were Being Inscribed on Unusual Objects” by alumni Patrick Donnelly (poetry, ’03) appears at the Cortland Review:

1.
seed of love
clot of blood
swell & split
your hard hood

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“Praise Dave” by Glenis Redmond

A poem by alumna Glenis Redmond (poetry, ’11) appears at Drunken Boat:

First time I see a jar rise up,
I be midwifed into life.

Understood how these pots and I be kin
— dismissed to what’s under foot.

I learned to turn and turn —
people the world with pots.

Continue reading or watch a video of Glenis Redmond’s reading online…

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“Seeing Sky” by Christine Hale

A nonfiction piece by alumna Christine Hale (fiction, ’96) appears at Watershed Review:

The sky, my Buddhist teacher says.

Those two words, no more. Her shoulders and the up-thrust of her chin provide the verb, her gaze the preposition. The pain she lives with and never mentions—a hip damaged decades ago in a break-neck horseback escape from a Chinese prison—supplies caught-breath emphasis.

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Three Stories by Leslie Blanco

Three stories by alumna Leslie Blanco (fiction, ’07) appear at Pank Magazine:

Divorce for Cuban Dummies

Once—very seriously—Sylvia considered that predictable thing: smashing the windows of his car. He’d refused all her offers of settlement, refused to get a lawyer, asked for half of her frequent flyer miles, lied to the mediator’s face, called her lawyer just to run up her bills. By then all she wanted was out, but still—two years later—he refused to sign the last piece of paper, said he’d re-open the mediation to investigate her finances. Her finances! Pennies between the couch cushions. Stipends spent before they came in. Student loan contracts piling up like promesas to San Lazaro.

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Laura Saurborn Young Awarded a NEA Fellowship in Poetry

Friends of Writers would like to congratulate alumna Laura Saurborn Young (poetry, ’08) on receiving a 2014 NEA Fellowship in Poetry.

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Two Poems by Luljeta Lleshanaku

Two poems by alumna Luljeta Lleshanaku (poetry, ’12) appear at World Literature Today:

Negative Space

I

I was born on a Tuesday in April.
I didn’t cry. Not because I was stunned. I wasn’t even mad.
I was the lucky egg, trained for gratitude
inside the belly for nine months straight.

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“The Chevra” by Goldie Goldbloom

A creative nonfiction piece by alumna Goldie Goldbloom (fiction, ’11) appears at Hunger Mountain:

Chevra kadisha (Hevra kadishah) (Aramaic קדישא חברא, Ḥebh’ra Qaddisha

Jewish “holy society” for the preparation of the dead for burial

1.

I want to write about my mother’s life as if she is alive again, as if she never died. But I have not seen her in over twenty years. I have forgotten the way she used to hold her lips, the way she bent to retrieve small items from the floor, the way she looked at me when I had done something wrong. She’s been dead a long time.

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Andy Young and Sara Slaughter Interview Each Other

Alumni Andy Young (poetry, ’11) and Sara Slaughter (poetry, ’11) interview each other at Press Street:

Sara Slaughter: Peter Cooley called All Night It Is Morning your “fearless addition to the poetry of disaster.” How do you feel about your work being described as “poetry of disaster”?

Andy Young: We must play the hand we are given—whether or not we write about our lives directly, it impacts the work. Disasters have been in my sphere of influence in different forms in major ways, especially for the last decade. Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill both changed the actual landscape of what I’ve called home for most of my adult life. Then, as part of an Egyptian-American family, we are profoundly impacted by what goes on in Egypt. I wouldn’t call the revolution a disaster, though the fallout of it, in terms of human rights and basic infrastructure of the country, could be described as disastrous. Then there is my Appalachian background riddled with stories of mining disasters. There’s the slow disaster of what has been happening to the land there in the years since I left it. This isn’t what you asked, exactly. I’m just pointing out that disaster has not been some abstract thing I’ve sought out as a locus of meditation, but something I’ve felt I had to address to process my world.

Continue reading online…

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