“Ladies’ Night at the Gun Range” by Lara Markstein

A new story by alumna Lara Markstein (fiction, ’13) appears in Four Way Review:

Ladies’ Night at the Gun Range

The women waited for Olivia. Perched on their lawn chairs beneath the dogwood, which blossomed in leathery white bursts, Nel thought they looked more like they were waiting for their youth. Leanne had slathered on so much foundation she resembled an overripe tangerine, and Connie stank of French perfume. Nel regretted wearing new capris. The white pants had looked effortless on the pretty, child-like model in the catalogue, but they hung limply from her own middle-aged waist. What would Kevin call them if he walked into the backyard now? A gaggle, she thought. A gaggle of women, hoping for some mid-afternoon miracle that would transform them from mere sacks of marriages and motherhood into pristine girls again.

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Continue reading online. 

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“Whether You Win or Lose” by Christine Fadden

A piece by alumna Christine Fadden (fiction, ’09) appears online in Hobart:

Whether You Win or Lose

Uncle Max picked me up for tryouts. I must have been fidgety. I changed the radio station a half dozen times before turning it off.

“The Beach Boys shouldn’t call themselves boys,” I said. “They have mustaches.”

“And sideburns,” my uncle said.

I opened the glove box and looked through his cassettes. His Joni Mitchell tape was busted, so I stuck my pinky in the hole and tried to rewind the loose tape.

“Nervous?” my uncle asked.

I shook my head. “Mom loves this tape,” I said. “I like how Joni Mitchell calls her husband her old man. That’s funny, don’t you think? It’s really weird, isn’t it? I don’t like the way she sings the song though, all up and down like she’s being goosed. But I like the one about drinking a case with somebody. Yeah, Mom and I sing the case song together like we have furry throats.”

“A little nervous is good, you know,” my uncle said.

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Continue reading online. 

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New Work by Peggy Shinner

A new essay by alumna Peggy Shinner (fiction, ’94) appears online at Salon:

Don’t slouch, young lady

(excerpted and adapted  from “You Feel So Mortal/Essays on the Body”)

I was a Dr. Spock baby.  My mother kept “The Pocket Book of Baby and Child Care” in the end table next to the couch in the living room, where I found it once when I was looking through drawers for evidence of family secrets, a favorite childhood pastime, and where it remained until two years after her death, when my father finally decided to sell the house and move to an apartment. Periodically I would take out the book and idly flip through the pages. What did it tell me about my mother, or my mother about her children? My mother, a binge eater, insecure cook, sharp dresser and the family ledger-keeper and handyperson, who often seemed daunted by the rigors of raising children. She died in her mid-50s, a woman about whom you might have predicted an early death, perhaps because she seemed afraid of life and gave off a persistent whiff of unhappiness. “Use the Index at the back when you are troubled,” Dr. Spock suggested, and I imagine her folded in the corner of the couch, legs under her housecoat, a Marlboro in the ashtray on the end table. It was late at night. My father was snoring ballistically from the bedroom. The house seemed to be ticking with worry.

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Nathan Poole Awarded the 2014-15 Joan Beebe Fellowship

nathanpooleCongratulations to Nathan Poole (Fiction, 2011), who has been selected as the 17th recipient of the Joan Beebe Teaching Fellowship at Warren Wilson College.

The recipient of the 2012 Narrative Prize and the 2013 Mary McCarthy Prize, Nathan is currently a Milton Fellow in Seattle, teaching at Seattle Pacific University.  His debut story collection, Father, Brother, Keeper, will be published by Sarabande in 2015.

Undergraduate Creative Writing Director Catherine Reid says that Nathan established a ready rapport with WWC students. “Not only did he impress with his knowledge of literary technique, Nathan connected with students around the value of meaningful work, which suggested a deep and intuitive understanding of the ways our creative writing classrooms are enhanced by all they learn on their crews. We couldn’t ask for a better fit.”

Instituted in 1997, the Beebe is one-year teaching fellowship at WWC, open only to alumni of the MFA Program for Writers. The Beebe Fellow teaches five courses in the undergraduate creative writing program, supervises the group of undergraduates who attend the January MFA residency, assists with the undergraduate literary magazine, and generally takes part in the life of the College. Application guidelines are posted on the program website and on the Friends of Writers blog each September for the next academic year’s fellowship.

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“Adrift” by Natalie Serber

A new essay by alumna Natalie Serber (fiction, ’05) appears online at The Rumpus:

Adrift

“What a wonderful life I’ve had, if only I’d realized it sooner.”   ~Colette

I’d been screwing around in community college for two years—signing up for classes, quitting midway—retaking the same classes.  It took me three attempts to complete Cultural Anthropology, a class I loved.  My best friend and I were renting a tiny clapboard house 5 blocks from the beach.  Blue hydrangeas flanked our front door.  Tapestry bedspreads billowed from the ceilings. Matisse posters crowded the walls.  We’d bought a set of dishes at K-Mart and a cast iron pan at the flea market.  I worked as an aerobic instructor and as a hostess at Golden West Pancakes.  I made ends meet by collecting food stamps which we once used to throw an extravagant “C” dinner party—crab, cookies, and Chablis—for the rest of that month we survived on top ramen.  I had no five-year plan, no dogged ambition.  I enjoyed writing, stories mostly.  I imagined I’d someday transfer to a university, become an elementary school teacher like my mom.  I liked kids, I liked the idea of college, and nothing else tugged at me.  But, in order for that low-grade ambition to take root, I would actually have to develop some drive beyond throwing a “D” party—dogs, daiquiris, and ding-dongs.

To further unmoor my already free-floating existence, I fell in love.  J was tan, handsome and kind.  He was a sailor with his own business and his own boat and a smart golden retriever who balanced milkbones on her nose and could bark her name, Ru-by.  He played the tuba(!), which was quirky and adorable.  He sold a little pot on the side, which meant there was a party wherever he went.  He was also thirteen years older than me.  He was calm and stable—things my erratic childhood lacked.  You see, by the time I was thirteen, my mother and I had moved ten times.  We’d lived in four cities. I went to five elementary schools.  With J, I felt rooted and that was intoxicating for nineteen-year-old me.  J took me sailing.  He took me to nice restaurants.  We lingered in bed on Sunday mornings watching cooking shows and then went to the market to buy the ingredients for Shrimp Vera Cruz.  He drove me past the sweet house he’d lived in with his ex-wife.  It was plum colored with a walnut tree in front and a picket fence.  I harbored vague wishes of someday living in a cozy house with J and his wonderful dog.

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Read more online at The Rumpus.

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Alumni Conference Scholarship Deadline Extended

As scholarships for this year’s Alumni Writing Conference remain available, the deadline for names to be entered in the drawing has been extended to midnight, Monday, April 21. Those who have been awarded scholarships in the last three years are also invited to enter provisional requests, which will be considered should slots remain as of that deadline. All requests must be submitted electronically to the Conference Coordinator, with contact information available at wwcmfa.org.
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An Interview with Matthew Zanoni Muller

An interview with alumnus Matthew Zanoni Muller (fiction, ’10) about his story “Presence” appears online at NANO Fiction:

Will McCarry: Your piece “Presence” appears in our most recent issue of NANOFiction, 7.1. It’s a really great look at a day in the mundane life of an old woman who has lost her husband. I found it easy to relate to because everyone at some point in their life has known a lonely old person. Does this piece draws from someone you’ve known in real life, or if it is completely fictionalized?

Matthew Müller: I do not know the old woman in this story though I have seen her. She lives on a road near where I work during the summers. The description of her trailer and property are all relatively faithful to the actual place where she lives. I noticed her because I became interested in something I began to notice on my drives to and from work or to pick up supplies (I paint houses during the summer). It was that people would sit out in front of their houses to watch the traffic going by just to be close to the action, no matter how limited. There was a couple who set up lawn chairs in their driveway and would park themselves there with a cooler. Other times I’d see people out on their porches or front lawns, just sitting and watching. I know this seems pretty obvious and normal, but what I began to think about was how people in general still want to be connected to the life that’s going on around them outside of their home, some version of the life of their community. I think that television has to some extent taken this away from us. We watch shows about people we do not know, and our community with these people takes place on a much larger national scale. In essence, anyone, anywhere in the country can tune in and see these same people. What is more difficult nowadays, I believe, is to get closer to a sense of connectedness or relationship with the people that actually live near us and in a sense share our lives. This is something that television can’t replace, so people will still come and sit in their driveways, their front lawns, or their porches. Her little place of connection was to my mind one of the saddest ones. She was down a slight incline inside of this glassed-in porch, a mud room really, where she had to look up at the road. But this was still better than being cooped up or hidden somewhere in her kitchen or shadowy living room.

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Listen to a recording of “Presence” and finish reading the interview online at NANO Fiction.

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“Berenice’s Hair” by Peggy Shinner

A new essay by alumna Peggy Shinner (fiction, ’94) appears online in BOMB Magazine: 

Berenice’s Hair

The Tantrics said the forces of creation and destruction lay in the binding and unbinding of a woman’s hair. The Syrians said a woman who combed her hair on the Eve of Holy Sunday consorted with werewolves. The Slavs said the vili, or female spirits, hid in the water and made rain by combing their hair. The Scots said women should refrain from combing their hair at night when their brothers were at sea, because that could raise a storm and sink the boats. In Laos, the wife of an elephant hunter was forbidden to cut her hair in order not to sever the ropes restraining the elephant. The Navajo prohibited a woman from washing her hair while her husband was out hunting lest he come home empty-handed. The Punjabi said a woman should not wash her hair on Thursday or Sunday, because “the house would lose money and people would tell us lies.” The Romans said that strands of a woman’s hair made fine strings for bows against the Gauls. Berenice, wife of Egyptian king Ptolemy III, made an offering of her hair to Aphrodite, for her husband’s safe return from war. Upon his homecoming, her hair appeared in the sky as the constellation Coma Berenice, Berenice’s Hair. One of the stars is named Al Dafirah, “the curl.”

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Continue reading online at BOMB Magazine. 

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“Guts, Gleam” by Rose McLarney

A new poem by alumna Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) appears online in Valparaiso Poetry Review:

Guts, Gleam

Gutting the deer, down among the blasts
of fallen leaves, golden and red against
the gray of winter pending, and the red,
of course, of blood, and the more various
shades of insides—the yellows and purples
and pure, resistant whites you don’t think of
until you’re doing the work—is not what
strummed, beat in, certainly not what
set to singing, my senses.

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Finish reading online.

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“Ten Minutes” by Amy Minton

A new work by alumna Amy Minton (fiction, ’09) appears online in Gravel:

Ten Minutes

Seated by the window and looking toward the hospital bed, I notice the bag of my stepdad’s urine. It’s at eye level, hard to miss. Yellow liquid travels slowly through a clear tube into a plastic measuring hold, which is recorded every fifteen minutes and dumped into a larger pouch by a nurse with an Aryan demeanor whom we call Herr Dreyer. Herr Dreyer also records numbers on the LCD screen behind my stepdad’s head, which is steep with mountains of bandages.

“It does look like a turban, but why call yourself Osama bin Laden?” I ask. “It’s too obvious. Go for the little teapot, short and stout.”

My stepdad giggles and does the teapot dance the best he can while in the clutches of a fussy hydra of narrow tubes sprouting from the top of his turban. The tubes drain fluid accumulating in the space between his brain and skull. Each tube ends in its own separate pouch with measuring marks. The drained fluid looks like blood, but it could be something else. It’s creamier-looking and not as thick. While sleeping, if he rolls over on the pouches then alarms will go off. He has already burst one pouch under the weight of his shoulder. The accumulated liquid leaked, and had to be discarded. “I had to start over,” he said, flicking a newer pouch with less liquid than the others.

This is what we do while we are waiting for God.

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Continue reading online.

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