Alumna Krys Lee (fiction, ’08) has won the first annual Story Prize Spotlight Award, for her story collection Drifting House
The award “provides $1,000 to the author of a book submitted for The Story Prize that the judges believe deserves further attention.” For more information, visit thestoryprize.blogspot.com
Alumna Nan Cuba (fiction, ’89) recently visited Austin Community College to discuss writing and read from her new novel Body and Bread
Fiction ’09 alumna Vicky Mlyniec’s story “This I Am Allowed” appears in the January issue of Brevity.
I hold my heavy carry-on in front of me so as not to bump people, brushing shoulders and rustling newspapers as I make my way down the narrow aisle. I’ll be out of the way soon. I see my seat now, row 24, on the aisle. A well-coiffed silver-haired woman is settled in the window seat. Good. Women are best.
I balance my bag on the armrest a moment and, unaided, hoist it into the overhead with quivering arms. I think of the silver-haired woman as I tuck my raincoat into the bin and wonder how it will go this time...[Keep Reading]…
“Song of the Sea with Three Lines from Carlos Drummond de Andrade,” a poem by alumna Angela Narciso Torres (poetry, ’09) appears in the latest issue of Drunken Boat:
Why does the deep seem deeper, the sea
wilder this morning? Next to it, life
is a static sun without warmth or light.
Our backs, not bent over papers at a desk, uncoil.
Lungs fill with air. Freed from leather, our feet
leave blurred, disappearing shapes
on the wave-swept bed. Friendships, birthdays,
personal matters don’t count. Everything is relative, …[Keep Reading]…
Alumni RJ Gibson (poetry, ’11) reads three poems, including his own, “Agnosticism” at One Pause Poetry:
RJ Gibson
RJ Gibson holds an MFA in Poetry from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He is the author of the chapbooks Scavenge
(co-winner of the 2009 Robin Becker Prize) and You Could Learn a Lot...[Listen Here]…
Corey Campbell (fiction, ’12): Corey’s short story “The Meteor” is this week’s feature at Necessary Fiction:
Mr. Tibberly found a meteorite on his hike in the desert. He knew straight off it had once been a meteor, but he hadn’t studied geology in school, so he decided to take it to the university meteorite lab to be sure.
His life had become very lonely lately. His failures disappointed him. Possibilities flooded his mind like mudslides.
Feels like everything is potential, he thought, but nothing has become.
If he were a robot, he would have shut himself off.
Mr. Tibberly held the meteorite closely. Everything is potential. But not this...[Keep Reading]…
Christine Hale (fiction, ’96): Christine’s short story “Milk” appears in the latest issue of Spry:
I held on tight to my baby bottle right up to four years old. Black-and-white photos from the old Kodak Brownie attest to this: my lanky self lolling on the glossy-waxed linoleum of the kitchen floor, eyes glazed with bliss, head cradled on a favorite plaid-cased pillow, one knee cocked and the other balanced atop its fulcrum, free foot bouncing like Mitch Miller’s sing-along ball.
My father liked milk, too. He drank more than his share according to my mother, and, worse, he raided the butterfat that topped the un-homogenized milk, using a spoon or even his finger to pop the cream coin from the bottle’s mouth to his. I’d seen him do it, and imagined the greasy bite as repulsive, but what really gave the act its charge was my mother’s response. Control of the milk, especially the cream, made a flashpoint in their mostly cold war...[Keep Reading]…
Christine is the author of the novel Basil’s Dream
“What Was Missing,” a poem by alumna Margaree Little (poetry, ’12) is this week’s feature at The Missouri Review.
What Was Missing
The undersidesof the hands. The hair.
The eyes. The chin,the spot where the chin
becomes the neck.Both of the arms.…[Keep Reading]…
“Valentine’s Day,” a poem by Jeremy Bass (poetry, ’10) appears in the December issue of The Collagist.
This Sunday evening at 7:30pm, Mike O’Malley
Will drive his twenty-foot cherry-red monster truck
Over the blue discarded shells of 1980s Fords
From one end of a pitted sandy arena
To the other, each car beneath his ten-foot rubber wheels
Emptying like the failed hope of a former love
In a spray of glass and sand as the polished scrim
Of each flat roof folds to meet the stacked grid
Of chassis, axle, blown tires and frames beneath...[Keep Reading]…
Dawn Abeita (fiction, ’96): Dawn’s short story “Mom” appears online at Superstition Review:
Two boys are following as Nina and Mae walk the two palm-lined blocks from the middle school to Mae’s house. One is skinny and his blonde hair hangs limp as Saran Wrap over his head. The other one is dark and shaggy. Nina knows this because she and Mae take turns looking behind them without being too obvious. The girls giggle, and Nina tugs at her pink hip huggers. The boys are flirting with them. “Dogs!” they say, and hurricanes of laughter leave them staggering past as Nina and Mae cut up through the burnt smelling grass to Mae’s door.
The girls scrounge up all the stuff they need – the needle and thread, ice and alcohol – and put it where they can on the crowded dresser Mae shares with her sister, Julie. Mae picks the bald ice cube out of its bowl and squeezes it to Nina’s ear. Nina jerks away and the ice cube clunks on the floor. “Just do it. It couldn’t hurt worse than that.” There is the sound of Mae’s mother, Mrs. C., coming home, the jalousies in the door lift and rattle and fall, the sharp tread of her walk down the hall into her own room, the door shutting...[Keep Reading]…
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