A new poem by alumna Caroline Mar (poetry, ’13) appears online at The Collagist:
Ritual
In the woods, the air is cool, damp.
I love the way the earth smells, decay
of old redwoods, soft hush
of some prehistoric morning. I remember
waking as a kid at camp after outside
overnights, those most exciting nights, how
my nose would itch with the dust
of the dirt beneath my sleeping bag.
…
Finish reading online at The Collagist.
An excerpt from a novel-in-progress by alumna Christine Fadden (fiction, ’09) appears online in The American Literary Review:
The Geometry of Changing Course
Driving to work one day in 2009, I heard Kalas’ voice on the radio.
I heard people talking about his voice.
It was a radio tribute.
Kalas had collapsed due to heart failure, before the Phillies vs. Nationals game, in the broadcasters’ box. He was rushed to the hospital, and he died.
It took just two words, two of Kalas’ words, to throw me back to June of 1980 at the Jersey shore—to the summer my sister and I would stay with our grandmother for the entire three months without our parents.
The summer of great wins and great losses.
The summer of men–
the sort a girl can look up to,
the sort a girl should never be alone with,
and the kind that really lets a girl down.
You just have to know how it feels to have spent every summer of your girlhood under the spell of Harry Kalas’ “Outta here!” How with everything else going on, that man’s voice always did, and always will, fill you with more goodness than watermelon in July.
…
Finish reading online at The American Literary Review.
The dates are set and registration is open for this year’s Alumni Writing Conference in South Hadley, MA.
Details, deadlines, and scholarship information are available at the MFA website, but it’s definitely not too early to begin thinking about teaching a class: have you been reading or rereading a poet or writer who knocks your socks off? Been considering a new angle on craft or form? We’ve also had Panel and Caucus discussions on matters such as conducting research, structuring collections, maintaining novel-writing momentum, and much more.
These will be the smartest, most engaged peers you’ll find, so start jotting those notes and secure a class slot when you register.
For more information, please visit www.wwcmfa.org.
A new story by alumnus Edward Porter (fiction, ’07) appears online in Printer’s Devil Review:
A Proposal
She was late. She was always late, and he was used to waiting for her like this, in a stupor of nerves and fever. Gerald sat in a Windsor chair, looking down from the window on the descending terraces of formal gardens outside the hotel room. The Virginia hills resort swam in flowers: crocuses in the gardens, tulips in vases, rose-pattern drapes and bedspread. It was stuffy; it stank of old money. All the better, he felt, for secret fucking.
He had driven down the day before from New Jersey. She was arriving by plane today. They had picked out the resort on the internet, at her house in the suburbs, while her husband was at Columbia Presybterian renovating a forty-nine-year-old socialite’s face. Something special, Grace said, for their two-year anniversary. He wore tight jeans and a white sleeveless tee shirt – that was how Grace wanted him to dress for her. When he could no longer bear sitting, he went into the bathroom to reexamine his shave and touch it up with a dry razor. Then he flung himself on the bed face down, giving himself at least the pressure of his body against the rose-covered tessellation of the quilt – the large squares were softly resistant, like breasts.
…
Finish reading online.
It’s that time of year again: we’ll be adding updates to the Alumni Bibliography (which currently lists 600+ alum publications!), so please email Patrick Donnelly at [email protected] about any of your recent book publications.
Include, in this order please:
your full name,
the genre and year in which you graduated,
the name of your book,
the name of your publisher,
year of publication, and
specify poems, novel, short fiction, nonfiction, essays, translations, etc. (You may also include books such as anthologies that you have edited or co-edited.)
Again, please send updates to [email protected], and put ALUMNI BIBLIOGRAPHY in the subject line. If you know of publications by alumni who are not on the list, please encourage them to get in touch with Patrick, or send on what information you have.
The alumni bibliography (currently updated twice a year) is accessible from a link on the WWC MFA website: http://www.wwcmfa.org/alumni/alumni-bibliography/
If you are unsure whether your new publication is already included in the bibliography, please check it before sending me the information. If your book is “forthcoming” in more than six months, please hold the info until the book is out—solicitation requests are sent twice a year.
A new poem and recording by alumna Caroline Mar (poetry, ’13) appears online is As/Us:
Blazer
Rana Plaza Factory collapse, April 24, 2013
It was the place that made me. It was the place
where I came stitched and sewn, seam
to perfect seam. I am precisely
what I was made to be. I hang straight, the sheen
of my tuxedo-edged lapel shining
in the slightest dusty light of your closed closet.
…
Continue reading online.
A new poem by alumnus Gary Hawkins (poetry, ’95) appears online in The Collagist:
Five (Occupational) Love Poems
I.
I was a short order cook just beginning to dismantle
my mise en place at the end of my shift
when the bell on the front doors jingled
and a quick, cold wind blew in the pass-through window.
And you were a famished traveller
stamping off your boots
under the fluorescent lights
wanting a plain burger and fries, and the check.
II.
I was a tangle of wires in the attic
twisted together with fingers and black tape,
running to an old fuse box.
And you were the licensed electrician
bending graceful curves of conduit around the rafters,
tucking a corsage of wire nuts behind a faceplate.
…
Continue reading online.
Alumna Kathleen Jesme‘s (poetry, ’00) collection of poems, Albedo, is now available from Ahsahta Press.
Alumna Jayne Benjulian (poetry, ’13) is published in the Winter 2014 issues of Barrow Street.
Alumna Diana Lueptow (poetry, ’11) has won the 2013 Wick Poetry Chapbook competition from Kent State University. Her manuscript, Little Nest, was selected by Peter Campion and will be published by KSU Press in January 2015.
Alumnus Don Colburn‘s (poetry, ’92) newest collection of poems, Tomorrow Too: The Brenda Monologues, is now available from Finishing Line Press.
Alumna Beverly Bie Brahic‘s (poetry, ’06) book, The Little Auto, a translation of Apollinaire’s poems, has been awarded the Scott Moncrieff Prize.
Queen Sugar, the debut novel by alumna Natalie Baszile (fiction, 2007), and winner of a Hurston Wright Foundation Writers’ award, is now available from Penguin Books.
A new poem by alumnus Sean Patrick Hill (poetry, ’13) appears online in The Collagist:
Dark Kentucky Holler
To the side
of the interstate, a few lights
by the barn,
dim house, dim star,
wavering beacon in the aftermath
of day
and of history,
but who’s to stop the piping
in of culture,
shrill news that penetrates
the purple curtain
and the telephone, smart phone,
information’s preternatural cough
flickering whatever it was
Emerson thought
a candle
to be—
…
Continue reading online.
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