Julie Bruck Wins Canadian Governor General’s Award

Aluma Julie Bruck (poetry, ’86) has won the 2012 Canada Council for the Arts Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, for her collection Monkey Ranch (Brick Books, 2012).

   

Monkey Ranch by Julie Bruck leaps about the ordinary world with a deft detachment and flexible artistry – guiding us with its offbeat, caring and companionable sensibility. “There’s enough light to see by,” says Julie Bruck, even though the children turn their eyes away. This humane voice, quirky and patient, will see you through a world stripped of miracles.

/by

Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. Wins Chad Walsh Poetry Prize

Alumna Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. (poetry, ’09) has been named winner of Beloit Poetry Journal’s 20th annual Chad Walsh Poetry Prize.  The editors of the BPJ select on the basis of its excellence a poem or group of poems they have published in the calendar year to receive the award. This year’s choice is Elizabeth’s poem “Albania,” which appeared in the Winter 2011/2012 issue.

On Sunday I went to Albania.
No one understood, clearly, at first, why I (or anyone) would go to Albania.
Except my father, who knew at once: “Because, before, you couldn’t go to
     Albania.”

It had never occurred to me, before, to actually go to Albania.
For years it was there, a Mars, the ultimate hole in the atlas: Albania.

Our government said you couldn’t go to Albania.
Passports self-vaporized, I thought, if you went to Albania.
The Middle Ages with Missiles, over there in Albania.
And somehow also China, Albania...[Keep Reading]…

“The Walsh Prize, which this year carries a cash award of $4000, was established in 1993 by Alison Walsh Sackett and her husband Paul in honor of Ms. Sackett’s father, the poet Chad Walsh (1914-1991), a co-founder in 1950 of the Beloit Poetry Journal.”  To find out more, visit the Journal’s website.

/by

Rachel Howard in Tin House

Alumna (fiction, ’09) and 2011-2012 Joan Beebe Teaching Fellow Rachel Howard‘s short story “Do-Over” appears online at Tin House.

Do-Over

Julie found it a nice distraction from death to fixate on her engagement ring.

Max approved.  For one thing, it gave them something to shop for on the weekends when he wasn’t traveling for DVD Kiosk investor pitches.  And for another, he was eager to cover the tracks of his earlier bullet-pointed email proposal, which—now that he was no longer on a kamikaze mission to get Julie back—resurfaced in his memory during coffee breaks as an embarrassment that he must erase.

So when a larger-than-usual unemployment check arrived, with a letter from the unemployment administration stating they were fixing an error, Max did not resist Julie’s pleas to spend the windfall on a ring, right away.  Yes, Max would have preferred to use that $2,100 to repay his brother, or get Wells Fargo off his back about the overdraft (the bank was calling every day now, and Max had to silence his cell phone when he was with Julie so she wouldn’t suspect something was up).  And yes, he still thought Julie would be smarter to wait until DVD Kiosk landed the Series A funding, because then Max could buy her the 1.5 carat, color grade D Ascher cut solitaire at Saks.  But Julie had gone to an estate jeweler and found a half-carat emerald-cut diamond with a cloudy inclusion in the center of the stone, which she protested nobody could possibly see.  And the sooner Max got the ring and got down on his knee, the sooner they would have an acceptable engagement story...[Keep Reading]…

/by

Alumni New Releases

Poetry alumni Adrian Blevins (poetry, 2002) and James Franco (poetry, 2012) and  have just published new chapbooks with Hollyridge Press.

From Adrian Blevins’ Bloodline

[Excerpt from “The Plunge”] “…and the Spartan elderly with their floating picnic debris / of supple infant charges and their toy guns…”

[Excerpt from “Tongue-Tied at Sea”] “And yes, people / were hungry and there were too many cats and trash and yes this is the shame and the dumb trouble // I don’t want to talk about.”

From James Franco’s Strongest of the Litter

[Excerpt from “Patterson Love”] “I’m a raging Kowalski whose / Temper can be measured by // How little I can give. / How abusive my reticence.”

[Excerpt from “Death”] “Then my father passed / And that was a big one. / And I saw that all the motions / Of his life were sucked into his hole.”

For more information, visit the publishers website.

/by

Alumni Updates

Faith S. Holsaert (fiction ’82): Faith has three new poems appearing online at Prairie Wolf Review:

benediction

The littlest sister lies on white rattan

wrapped to her nose in

a woman’s navy shawl

her eyes closed

 

the shag carpet is red

and the wall behind her, too

her closed eye dreams

of green and horses …[Keep Reading]…

/by

Alumni Fiction in Frieght Stories

Alumnae Tatjana Soli (fiction, ’06) and Erin Stalcup (fiction, ’04) both have new stories appearing in the current issue of Freight Stories Magazine.

Love Monkey
Tatjana Soli

The traffic that morning had been nerve-wracking—a long, blue, exhaust-spewing snake winding its way east from Los Angeles into the dilapidated, scrub desert of Riverside County. Farid’s hand rested lightly on the steering wheel, the vents of the air-conditioner all aimed at him so that despite the ninety-degree heat outside, his face was cold and dry as stone. He had just bought the Lexus with a signing bonus from his new engineering job, and had spent the morning under the carport polishing it with a tenderness he had not shown to Caitlin since he returned from his trip. When she asked him to drive her to Scottsdale to visit her parents, he had been displeased, the only saving grace that he could open the car up on the freeway.

“Why don’t you just fly? I’ll take you to the airport,” he had said.

“Because they want to meet you.”  …[Keep Reading]…

Population 51, Elevation 15
Erin Stalcup

He steps off the dock as if he expects to set his foot on glass.

He sinks.

She doesn’t know this man she’s been watching but takes her hands out of her pockets and runs towards him, kicking up dust on the path, clattering across the dock, which is not wet, not slippery.

She gets on her belly and stretches down but her fingertips don’t touch the water. She reaches. She tries to get to him. She’s too small, too young, but she wants to be strong enough to find him and grab him and pull him out, yank him up, help him back to land.

There’s a roiled place in the water but no thrashing man, no one swimming, no one trying to save himself. She stands and throws her jacket to the dock. She pulls her sweater over her head. She readies herself to dive, but the water is smooth.

No one reaches up. …[Keep Reading]…

/by

What Hangs on Trees

Alumna Glenis Redmond (poetry, ’11) discusses poetry and the southern landscape in Orion Magazine.

I AM SIMULTANEOUSLY enchanted and haunted by trees.

As a child, I was a tomboyish tree-climbing tree lover—a daydreamer held in mahogany arms. If I went missing, my family knew where to find me: perched on a branch, peering up into the sky or speculating about the world below. Then, I did not know the word sacred, but I sensed the meaning, especially sheltered from the world by a dome of emerald leaves. It was the one place where I felt the most whole. I experienced an inexplicable kinship with trees, which is probably why I developed an insatiable curiosity to learn their names: maple, pine, birch, willow . . . Live oaks were my trees of choice.

At that time, there was no way for me to grasp the shadow side, to investigate the tangled depths of my psyche in regard to trees, especially those gnarled live oaks. My dual consciousness was related to the land, especially land below the Mason-Dixon line. But I didn’t realize just how severe the dichotomy was until graduate school, when I was asked to write a pastoral poem, a poem that regales the bucolic aspects of nature. When I attempted to write the poem, I hit a wall, a psychological and historical one. It wasn’t until my last semester, when I studied a poem from Lucille Clifton’s book Mercy that I began to understand why the pastoral poem was causing me so much deep-seated angst. Clifton’s untitled poem begins:

surely I am able to write poems
celebrating grass           ….[Keep Reading]…

/by

Alumni Updates

Alison Moore (fiction, ’90): Alison’s new novel Riders on the Orphan Train is now available from Roadworthy Press.

Fourteen years ago I “jumped the tenure track for the orphan train.” I’ve never regretted the decision. I left my assistant professor post at the University of Arizona MFA creative writing program to become an itinerant performer in collaboration with my husband, songwriter Phil Lancaster.  Since 1998 we have been presenting a multi-media program about the Orphan Trains in museums, libraries, and universities. Between 1854 and 1929, over 250,000 orphans and half-orphans were put on trains in New York and sent to every state in the US to be given away at train stations. I met many survivors at national reunions when I first started; now there are so few left. The historical novel is the result of research, travel, encounters, and a continuing passion for this little-known part of American history.

/by

Interview with Matt Hart

Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) recently interviewed Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) for the American Literary Review.

JB:  And so then I feel torn: I want to keep reading your poems, but part of me wants to throw your book off the balcony and go write my own poems.  I don’t have a question here, I suppose.  But you can respond however you like.

MH: Well, as with the first question, I’m really flattered that you would say this.  If somehow the poems make you want to throw them off the balcony and do your own writing that’s perfect.  That’s a necessary part of all this.  Writing for me is always an extension of reading/listening, and the idea that something I’ve written might, even in some small way, spur someone to do his or her own work is incredibly gratifying.  I would say that that’s true of my intentions for this book in particular: Sermons and Lectures is my call for your response.  I mean, my actual address is even written out in one of the poems in hopes that someone might write back, thus making their own response a call that I would then respond to, etc...[Keep Reading]…
Matt’s book Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless is available from Typecast Publishing.

/by

Alumni Updates

Joanne Green (fiction, ’93): Joanne’s new book Peach is coming soon from Gemma Open Door.

Everyone has a prom story – the culmination of the vibrant and painful years of high school.

Throw in the sexual revolution, a stuttering cousin for a date, and a parking valet dressed like Abraham Lincoln, and looking cool is an impossible dream. Edith, the fierce and vibrant narrator, tries to leave nuns snapping prom pictures and her painful past behind, and find a way to be both the free spirit her friends require and to be herself.
You can also check out Joanne’s blog, including:
S**t Peach Says

“Everything my mother says would look good printed on a dishtowel.”
“We have a big fight about wearing a bra.  My mother is the Jean Paul Sartre of underwear.”
“Albert Camus wouldn’t laugh at an exploited worker with underwear caught in his ass crack, I know it. “
“All the guys look like Easter eggs.  All the chicks look like toaster dolls. “
“The bathrooms are labeled ‘Abes’ and ‘Babes.’”
“He can do it for one hour forty-five.  Which is really beautiful, but pretty uncomfortable.”

/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