Alumni Bibliography Request

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.

 

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Caroline Mar in As/Us

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.

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“Five (Occupational) Love Poems” by Gary Hawkins

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. 

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Quarterly Digest of Books and Awards

Albedo-webAlumna 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.

coverAlumnus 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.

 

 

 

 

 

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“Dark Kentucky Holler” by Sean Patrick Hill

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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Poems by Matthew Olzmann

Two new poems by alumnus and former Beebe Fellow Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09) appear online in Waxwing:

Carnival Music 

Was it the clown suit that freaked them out?

No. Not the suit.

 

That wouldn’t explain why, at the State Fair,

even the other clowns — who looked like him — avoided him.

Seventeen would tumble from the same miniature car,

and he, alone, would fall from another.

…

Continue reading online. 

 

Consider All the Things You’ve Known but Now Know Differently

— After Steve Orlen

In Michigan, on his seventh birthday,

a boy is given an old toolbox. Thank you,

he says, for the tool box, Thank you,

for the wrench dotted with rust,

Thank you, for the greased screwdrivers,

and the needle-nosed pliers. Just imagine

all the wonders the boy can build

or repair now, right? No siree!

Immediately, he sets out to discover

how the world was made

by unmaking everything the world has made.

…

Continue reading online. 

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Rachel Howard in Arroyo Literary Review

A new piece of non-fiction by alumna Rachel Howard (fiction, ’09) appears online in Arroyo Literary Review:

Frank Black

1.

DIRT CROSSROADS IN the orchard. Green Datsun station
wagon. Plum trees in bloom, but the blossoms are hidden
because Scott has cut the headlights. The windows are down
and the hatchback up to let in the treble-buzz of unseen insects,
no hope of breeze but the heat feels like permission. The smell
of manure drifts to us from the dairy down the road, dust in
our nostrils and in our eyes and on our tongues—always in
the Central Valley, dust. The back of the station wagon is
prepared with blankets.

Eight rows of flowering plum trees between me and the back
fence, but the house might as well be the moon. I can see my
mother’s bedroom light shining from the second story. She is in
bed alone, I know, since she worked too damn hard on kicking
out her second husband to let another man under our roof.

Sometimes I try to imagine that my father can still see me.

Scott nudges a mix-tape into the deck.

…

Read more online. 

 

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Marian Szczepanski in Houston Press

A blog post, “100 Creatives 2014,” featuring alumna Marian Szczepanski (fiction, ’97) appears online in Houston Press. The blog’s author writes:

“It took Marian Szczepanski nine years to write her newly released novel Playing St. Barbara. She says she’ll probably spend another year publicizing and promoting it. “What’s another year, right?” she laughs. “I’ve already spent nine years of my life on this book. What can another year be?”

Her debut novel, Playing St. Barbara, the story of a Depression-era woman and her three daughters, was inspired by two elements of Szczepanski’s real life. The first, a family history tied to coal mines of Pennsylvania. The second, an interest in women’s history. Both of her grandfathers were immigrant coal miners and she had some information about them but she knew very little about her grandmothers’ lives. “I’ve always been interested in social history and women’s history and there’s nothing about the lives of women back in the coal era. I had no idea what women’s lives were like back then.””

…

Continue reading online. 

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New Work by Jamaal May

New poems by alumnus Jamaal May (poetry, ’11) appear online in Poetry:

There Are Birds Here

For Detroit

There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
…

Continue reading online.

Per Fumum

(through smoke)

My mother became an ornithologist
when the grackle tumbled through barbecue smoke
and fell at her feet. Soon she learned
why singers cage birds; it can take weeks
to memorize a melody —
the first days lost as they mope
and warble a friendless note,
the same tone every animal memorizes
hours into breathing.
…

 

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Tracy Winn’s “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry”

A story by alumna Tracy Winn (fiction, ’02) appears online in an audio recording at The Drum. Follow the link to hear “Another Way to Make Cleopatra Cry” in the February 2014 issue.

 

 

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