“Letting Words Bear Down and Burn”

“Letting Words Bear Down and Burn,” an interview with Dilruba Ahmed (poetry, ’09) appears online at RHINO.

Ahmed_photo_BW_sm(credit Mike Drzal)

…Bengalis hold the Bangla language very dear to them. It’s a very soft, beautiful, expressive, and poetic language—and a matter of regional and cultural pride and political import. Bangla (Bengali) was my first language, English my second. I grew up in a bilingual household in which, over time, my parents spoke Bangla to my sisters and me, and we responded in English. (To this day, this is typically how we communicate.) While my siblings and I have retained our comprehension of Bangla, our spoken Bangla lags behind.

I think that growing up that bi-cultural and bi-lingual environment deeply shaped my cultural identity—my lived experiences spanned more than the small towns where I grew up, and I was keenly aware of my parents’ “ghost homeland” that seemed to exist just out of reach. My bilingual upbringing also heightened my awareness of language, I think—I discovered early that a very funny story relayed by my mother in Bangla sometimes failed to have the same richness and deliciousness in English, for example; or that certain English words had no counterpart in Bangla. I learned, too, that languages could provide access and power as much as they could create barriers to communication and belonging.

[Read More]

/by

Post-MFA Conference Registration Deadline

From Peg Alford and Cass Pursell, your friendly conference co-coordinators:

Hello, everyone,

Here’s your friendly little reminder that the deadline to register for this summer’s 2013 Goddard/Wally Alumni (Post MFA) Conference is quickly approaching. April 30 is the date.

The conference itself is July 28 – Aug. 3 (or shorter stay option of July 31 – Aug. 3) at St. Mary’s in Moraga, CA (SF Bay Area), a beautiful place particularly in the summer (that offers plenty to do, and we’ve got pages of them listed for you).

We’re getting very excited as the registrations come in, from alums all over geographically — and temporally, as in grads of early days to brand spanking new.  Alums who have never attended before, ever, will be there.

The proposals for the classes and panels are varied and delectable, such as (very roughly paraphrased) theater games & improv & writing; writing “away from the self”; getting your mojo back; & more. There will be a fun Shakespeare reading, and of course, YOUR readings of your work.

To your choice of workshops, in addition to poetry & fiction, you may choose creative nonfiction this year.

Really, there’s simply too much to cover in this communiqué! You’ll have to come and see for yourself and from all the tasty offerings select your own smorgasbord.

You can be as involved as you like. Give a class, organize a discussion, participate in a panel. Attend those of your choice. Attend none. Hang out in your room, in the library, in the courtyard (St. Mary’s is gorgeous) and write, sleep, daydream. Hike! Swim!

Dance? Why, yes, if you care to. We’ll have one for sure.

The one thing you need to do, however, is get your registration in — now! Go to the website link and fill in the forms and pay on line, or download the forms, print out and fill and send the paper forms to us at the address listed.

http://www.wwcmfa.org/alumni/conference-information/

You’ve heard it said before and if you haven’t you need to: it doesn’t matter if you don’t know a soul who’s coming to the conference. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t interacted with another alum in years, decades. You belong. Your presence is wanted. You’ll find initial awkwardness will dispel quickly. You’ll see.

Questions? We’ve got answers! Just ask.

 

/by

Four Way Review

Ryan Burden (fiction, ’13) has been named Fiction and Managing Editor of Four Way Review, an electronic literary journal from Four Way Books.  He will be working with the journal’s new Poetry Editor, Victoria Lynne McCoy.

Four Way Review is a biannual journal publishing poetry and fiction by new and established writers.  Past contributors include faculty members Megan Staffel and C. Dale Young, and alumnae Sally Ball (poetry, ’94), Mary Lou Buschi (poetry, ’04) and Muriel Nelson (poetry, ’96).

FWR-issue2

For more information, visit Fourwayreview.com

/by

Poems by Matthew Olzmann

Three new poems by Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09) appear online at Toad.

All of it is Fading From View

Train wrecks, meteors, catastrophe after catastrophe:
when you were a boy you could survive anything. Leaps
from the tree house into small piles of leaves.
The walls you pedaled your bicycle into. Just scrapes.
Just tiny cuts. Just bruises that are already fading.
Hush child—see, you are fine.
But these days, a crawling ache explores
your body, maps uncharted territories,
plants little flags of sadness on all your shores.
Still, life is good. So good. Your brothers, your sisters,
your parents—all of them—are here, but
you’re aware of a certain motion, a pendulum
whose silhouette sweeps the land.
Just for a second, don’t worry. See? Now it’s passed.
Quiet, young man; everything is fine.
Still, you feel everything
changing. The cornstalks along the highway
are never as tall as you remember...[Keep Reading]…

Matthew is the author of Mezzanines, available today from Alice James Books.

/by

The Next Scott Nadelson

The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress, a new collection of autobiographical essays by Scott Nadelson (poetry, ’11) is available from Hawthorne Books.

next_nadelson_243_400_80

From the publisher:

Beginning in the summer of 2004, Scott Nadelson’s life fell apart. His fiancée left him a month before their planned wedding. He moved into a drafty attic. His car’s brakes went out. He learned that his cat was dying. Over the next two years, he’d struggle, with equivocal and sometimes humiliating results, to get back on his feet, in the process re-examining his past to understand his present circumstances.

More than a collection of autobiographical essays, The Next Scott Nadelson: A Life in Progress is a literary self-portrait that revolves around the dissolution of a relationship but encompasses the long process of a young man’s halting self-discovery. Exploring episodes from the life of its author/narrator marked by failure, suffering, and hope, as well as literary and cultural influence, the book weighs the things that make us want to give up against the things that keep us going. Though many of the pieces are comic and self-deprecating – some self-lacerating – they are above all meditations on the nature of the self and the way it can be constructed through memory, desire, and the imagination. Together they form a larger narrative, a search for fulfillment and identity in a life often governed by fear.

Read an interview with Scott at Miami Book Radio.

/by

Beverley Bie Brahic Finalist for Northern California Book Awards

The Little Auto, a translation of work by Guillaume Apollinaire  by Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry ’06), is a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards in the poetry translation category. The awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, May 19th at the San Francisco Library.

Apollinairenew

Read excerpts from the book at cbeditions.com.

/by

Angela Narciso Torres Wins Willow Books Award

Congratulations to Angela Narciso Torres (poetry, ’09), grand prize winner of the 2013 Willow Books Literature Award in Poetry. Angela won $1,000 and a Willow Books publishing contract.

734411_554072994624039_1677621839_n

The Willow Books Literature Awards recognize literary excellence in prose and poetry by writers from culturally diverse backgrounds. Willow Books is an imprint of Aquarius Press.

Read more at Willow Books.

/by

Reading Announcement

Jayne Benjulian (Poetry ’13) and Rebecca Foust (Poetry ’10) will read at Why There Are Words in Sausalito Thursday, April 11, at 7 PM.

jayne-benjulian

Jayne Benjulian

becky_c

Rebecca Foust

The Why There Are Words Series is curated by Peg Alford Pursell (Fiction ’96).  For details visit whytherearewords.com

/by

Rose McLarney Receives George Garrett Award

Rose McLarney (poetry, ’10) has been named winner of the 2013 George Garrett New Writing Award for Poetry. She is the author of the book of poetry, The Always Broken Plates of Mountains, published by Four Way Books.

e66ffe7244b444dc8e9d4a73beb09954

She will receive the Garrett Award during the Celebration of Southern Literature, produced by the Southern Lit Alliance.  The event will take place April 18 to 20 in the Tivoli Theatre in downtown Chattanooga.

“We are pleased to present Rose McLarney with the 2013 George Garrett New Writing Award for Poetry,” said Allen Wier, FSW Chancellor. “Giving awards to and recognizing distinction in literary writing is central to the Fellowship’s purpose.” Founded in 1987, the Fellowship of Southern Writers recognizes and encourages excellence in Southern literature.

DOMESTIC

from The Always Broken Plates of Mountains

The sows are in heat, squealing and pink.
The wild boar comes from the forest
to batter at their pen.

I go out and smash the ice
on the trough. The water
breaks free. This takes
a pick ax. Wielding it, I feel wild.

But the only strength in this story
is the fences’. Not even boars are wild –
imported for hunting a hundred years ago,
crossing the sea in a rich man’s crate.

When I hang up the pick ax
it freezes to the nail, clinging as I do,
making my living elsewhere and

returning to farms after sunset,
the barns symbols
just discernable in the dark.

/by

Hum for the Bolt

“Hum for the Bolt,” a poem by Jamaal May (poetry, ’11) appears online at Poetry.

Other-Author-Jamaal

It could of course be silk. Fifty yards or so
of the next closest thing to water to the touch,
or it could just as easily be a shaft of  woodcrumpling a man struck between spaulder and helm.
But now, with the rain making a noisy erasure
of this town, it is the flash that arrives

and leaves at nearly the same moment.  …[Keep Reading]…

Jamaal is the author of Hum (2013, Alice James Books).

/by

FOW FORUM

Subscribe to the Friends of Writers Forum and receive notifications of new posts by email.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

VIEW ALL POSTS  |  SUBMIT YOUR WORK