Call for Class Proposals for the 2014 Alumni Writing Conference

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.

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Edward Porter’s “A Proposal”

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. 

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Mary Lou Buschi’s “They Set Off Again”

A new poem by alumna Mary Lou Buschi (poetry, ’04) appears online in THRUSH:

They Set Off Again

Still, they know no better―
Quiet, she says, there is a nest
of thistle we must pass
and a shadow gliding over us―
What are we waiting for? 

…

Continue reading online.

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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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