Alumni Updates

Laurie Saurborn Young (poetry, ’08): Laurie was recently interviewed in The Collagist:

“Draught” was the product of cabin fever and fantasies of rain, during a long, hot Texas summer. There are no day trips out of the heat—no way to escape—so I spent much of those four months inside. It’s like deep winter but in a bright and sunny hell. Rain was a memory. What it sounded like on the roof, I no longer knew. All I could hear were bells. Though that may have been an air-conditioning-induced hallucination.

As well, the poem is about dreaming—it could be read as an Ode to Dreams I Would Rather Have. Most of my dreams are about falling from nervous heights. I’d rather dream about Nietzsche and rabbits and leaves. And water...[Keep Reading]…

Laurie is the author of Carnavoria (2012, H_NGM_N Books).

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Alumni Updates

Scott Challener (poetry, ’08): Scott’s poem “Leaving” was recently selected to be part of the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston’s “Words from the Walk” program. It was mounted on a glass plaque and installed on Boston’s Harborwalk, where it will remain on display until Spring 2013.

Leaving

Dazzling, the whiteness of the harbor
the masts appearing
first in the sun-spray like needles

of ghostly metronomes: bodiless larghettos
in their own time emerging
a nocturne of hidden snows

that landscape the sea…
and if you sit long enough on a rock
late into the afternoon growing

cold under the awning
of a dream, staring, hearing them,
your mind may begin

to glide and you find you
are standing, beginning the walk
home, moving among open sounds.

The plaque also credits Grub Street, a Boston writing center directed by faculty member Christopher Castellani, for its role in selecting the poem.

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Jasmine Beach-Ferrara on Chick-fil-A

Alumna Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara (fiction, ’01), current director of the Campaign for Southern Equality, gets at the real issues behind the recent Chick-fil-A controversy in a recent article for the Huffington Post.

Still, as gay minister in the South, I’ve been puzzled by the national media frenzy surrounding this story. Here in the South we are, sadly, used to hearing anti-LGBT rhetoric — from business leaders, politicians and preachers. It’s hardly news, it’s hardly surprising and it’s hardly ever the whole story.

As a CEO and private citizen, Mr. Cathy has the right to voice his beliefs on gay marriage (or any topic). And people have the right to disagree or agree and make consumer choices accordingly. Chick-fil-A is not the issue here. The real issue is that in 29 states, Mr. Cathy, or any employer, has the right to fire employees simply for being gay or lesbian. In 34 states, employers can fire people because of their gender identity...[Keep Reading]…

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Alumni Updates

Lucy Anderton (poetry, ’05): Lucy’s poems “I’m sorry I have to put it this way, but,” and “Toward the single point of slipping” appear in the fall 2012 issue of Beloit Poetry Journal.

You can also listen to Lucy reading some of her poems online at Spoken Word Redux.

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Alumni Updates

R. Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10): Dwayne’s poem “Post Racial, or Why My Timberlands Are Still Unlaced” appears in the latest issue of TriQuarterly:

Post Racial, or Why My Timberlands Are Still Unlaced

troubled by
news reports
about what Obama’s
candidacy means,
his sleight
of hand mastery
of invisibility, a skill
that lets him be
black and post black
on the same stage—
…[Keep Reading]…

Dwayne is the author of A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (2010, Avery Trade) and the poetry collection Shahid Reads His Own Palm (2010, Alice James).

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Alumni Updates

Joe Schuster (fiction ’91): Joe will be attending the Sewanee Writers Conference as a Walter E. Dakin Fellow.  He is the author of The Might Have Been: A Novel (2012, Ballantine).

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Alumni Updates

Bryan Furuness fiction, ’08): Bryan’s short story “Evolution” appears online at Used Furniture Review:

Evolution

Deciphered from cuneiform, this is the earliest known example of a break-up letter.

Dear Lucy,

What’s up? Not much here. You’re probably wondering why I’m writing a letter. If I know you—and after sharing your cave for a month, I think I do—you’re probably scratching your cute temple like what the heck? Ock LAUGHS at letter-writers, then says something witty like, “Make yourself useful,” before tearing off their arms and carving the wristbones into spearheads.

Well, that was Old Ock. New Ock has a different perspective. No doubt you’ve noticed that I’ve been standing more upright lately. Those few vertical inches have changed my worldview. Literally. Instead of looking at cracked mud and mammoth scat and your breasts, my view soars over treetops, stars, and your breasts.

New sights put New Ock in mind of big and distant things. The horizon. The future. The whole deal between men and women.

Ah, but listen to me go on. If Dr. Ur was looking over my shoulder, he’d say I was “practicing avoidance.”  Then again, if Dr. Ur was looking over my shoulder, he’d find himself suddenly armless. Ha!  …[Keep Reading]…

Bryan is the author of The Lost Episodes of Revie Bryson (2012, Black Lawrence Press).

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Alumni Updates

Mike Puican (poetry, ’09): Mike’s poem “The Lawyer Objects to Metaphoric Language” appears in the summer/fall 2012 issue of TriQuarterly.

The Lawyer Objects to Metaphoric Language

Show me the fireball of desire, the scarlet carpet of untamed horses,
the roar of stone lions. Present the evidence! he says,

That fish spawn in tree trunks, that starlings
fly through the sleep of schoolchildren! 

The judge glances at her watch. She thinks of her lover’s body
touched by the morning’s sun. She could use a cigarette...[Keep Reading]…

You can listen to Mike read his poem aloud at TriQuarterly Online.

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Alumni Updates

Beverley Bie Brahic (poetry, ’06): Beverley’s poetry collection White Sheets (2012, CBEditions, UK; Fitzhenry & Whitefield, NA) is one of five collections on the shortlist for the 2012 Forward Prize. The £10,000 award is one of the UK’s top poetry prizes.  Previously winners include poets Don Paterson, Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy and Ted Hughes.  You can read more about this year’s finalists in The Guardian.

Poems from White Sheets have appeared in Poetry, The Southern Review, Field, Literary Imagination, Notre Dame Review, The TLS and elsewhere.

WHITE SHEETS

Airstrike hits wedding party—breaking news

The empty laundry basket
fills with molecules of light.
She stands beside it, arms falling
into the aftermath of the task.
Gesture is a proto-language
researchers say: the same circuits
light the brain when a chimp
signals help me please (hand
outstretched, palm up) as when
human beings process speech.
In the cave the hunter figure
mirrors his spear’s trajectory
towards the deer it will never,
of course, attain. The woman
sees nothing untoward. Her body
bars the spattered something
in the middle distance, though all
of this is right up close: the shed
they’ll use to dress the meat, the plane
geometry of white sheets
on a line. The world is beautiful,
she thinks, or feels, as deer
sense something coming
and move out of range. Beautiful,
the woman thinks, and lifts
the laundry basket to her arms—
beautiful, and orderly.

Beverley’s translation of Apollinaire’s poems, The Little Auto is also available from CBEditions.

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Alumni Updates

Laurie Saurborn Young (poetry, ’08): Laurie’s poem “Draught” appears in the latest issue of The Collagist:

Draught

Much happens every day until it disappears.

I dream I am the sound of a hand
pulling a bell. Get me to the water

Nietzsche said, but every
one thought it a joke...[Keep Reading]…

Laurie is the author of Carnavoria (2012, H_NGM_N Books).

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