Alumni Updates

Katie Runde (fiction, ’12): Katie’s new piece “Extra Lives” appears in the latest issue of the Foundling Review:

 I want to grow up moving from town to town.

I’ll always be the new girl, and the third grade teacher will spell my name wrong, “Chrissy” instead of “Christy,” and the eighth-grade guidance counselor will give me someone else’s schedule by accident, so I’ll have to go around and return all the books I got on the first day, except the Earth Science book Mrs. Meinhardt gave me since Mrs. Meinhardt happens to still be my teacher in my real schedule just like she was in the wrong one. I’ll lose one irreplaceable thing every time we pack and unpack again: my adjustable ruby-colored birth stone ring in Tallahassee, my cat Gonzo in Phoenix, the Eiffel Tower keychain my Aunt Susan brought back for me when we leave Spokane. I’ll ride in the middle seat of the U-Haul, the vinyl and soaked-in-smoke smell of the front seat making me sick. I’ll listen for the radio to turn to static and for the pop in my ears as the U-Haul struggles up the hills...[Keep Reading]…

/by

Alumni Reading

Patricia Eakins (fiction, ’77) will read July 20 with Mikhail Horowitz at the Liberty Free Theatre in Liberty, NY, as part of their First Hearings Series.  The reading will take place at 7:30 pm, and reservations are encouraged.  Visit the theatre’s website for more information, or contact them directly.

Liberty Free Theatre
109 S. Main Street,
Liberty, NY 12754
(845) 292-3788

Patricia is the author of The Marvelous Adventures of Pierre Baptiste: Father and Mother, First and Last (1999, NYU Press).

/by

Alumni Updates

Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09): Matthew’s poem “‘Nothing Gets Through to You, Jackass'” is currently online at Body:

“NOTHING GETS THROUGH TO YOU, JACKASS”

When Catullus says it,
it sounds more eloquent
than when I say it:
Nothing gets through to you, jackass...[Keep Reading]…

/by

Rachel Howard’s “Losing Things”

Rachel Howard’s (fiction, ’09) personal essay, “Losing Things” is online at Berfrois:

My problem is that I don’t care about losing things.

Last month, at a restaurant, I left a rough grey scarf that my husband gave me on a rainy evening shortly after we began sleeping with each other, shortly after we fell in love—the scarf that, even after warm spring days arrived, I’d worn everywhere like a child’s blanket. Oh well, I immediately thought when I realized it was gone. I’ll always remember that scarf...[Keep Reading]…

/by

Alumni Updates

Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09): Gabriel’s new pieces, “5 Things You Should Read” and “Napolean Bonaparte” are online at Treehouse Magazine.

       5 Things You Should Read

  1. The Mirror: A History, Sabine Melchior-Bonnet: Just what it sounds like; at times, just as dry. Still, there’s a lot in here. The mirror set in our salvaged $5 bathroom cabinet would have cost the equivalent of tens of thousands of dollars not so long ago. Did you know that? Me neither. Some people never saw themselves.
  2. Only Revolutions, Mark Z. Danielewski: Yeah, it’s not House of Leaves (and House of Leaves isn’t really House of Leaves either, really, let’s face it), but how many books have two narratives written opposite each other and turned 180º, meeting in the middle at page 180? Not many, huh?  …{Keep Reading]…
/by

Evan Cleveland’s “Response”

Evan Cleveland’s (fiction, ’12) new piece “Response” is online at Sara Slaughter (poetry, ’11) and Jessica Chong’s curated writing project, Every Day a Century:

Response

After the harmless black boy was murdered, the mayor relieved all police of nighttime shifts, hiring adjunct professors from the community college. Domestic disputes paralyzed them: She should release that knife. But he threatened her autonomy. Have you worked 12-hour shifts? Have you read existential feminist theory?…[Keep Reading]…

 

/by

Alumni Updates

Natalie Serber (fiction, ’05): Natalie’s article “Care Package” is up at The Rumpus:

Across the continent my sweet girl has been crying herself to sleep at night.  She told me this in a mouse voice—small and deflated.  I heard the scrape of hangers on her end of the line.  She, in Brooklyn, shopping at a thrift store for a sheepskin coat, preparing for her first New York winter; me, in Portland, shopping for mascara to send in a care package to her college address.  I put down the tiny pot of eye cream that had distracted me with its promise of miracles—taut, bright skin, Spanx for the eye zone—and listened to my daughter talk of her loneliness, a spidery agitation growing in my chest.  I know her nighttime sorrow.  I know it is a perfectly normal, even character building experience for a plucky young woman embarking upon the next phase of her life, surprised by a bout of homesickness and too far away to hop in the car for a weekend in her childhood bed.  But moments like this, remote from her, unable to wrap her in my arms, fill me with a faint floating sadness.  No one wants to feel alone.  “Oh Lovely, what can I do?” …[Keep Reading]…

Natalie is the author of Shout Her Lovely Name (2012, Houghton Mifflin).

/by

Alumni Updates

Glenis Redmond (poetry, ’11): Glenis’ poem “We Stored Up” is part of the 75 Artful Days of Summer at N.C. Arts Everyday:

We Stored Up

Honeysuckle’s perfumed song
is a real head turner, a whiplashing beauty.
When she come ‘round everybody
wants a chance to dance with that yellow gal.

Her dress-ripple and smell good ways
made a body want to shake loose
from winter’s cage. We fit summer
into Saturdays and Sundays.

All we had back then seemed like plenty.
Good eatin: Garden greens plenty,
blackberries, plums and cantaloupe.
We burst watermelons right in the field...[Keep Reading]…

Glenis is the author of Under the Sun (2008, Main Street Rag) and Backbone (2000, Underground Epics).

/by

Alumni Updates

Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. (poetry, ’09): Elizabeth’s seven poem sequence “Bamiyan” appeared in summer 2012 issue of the New Haven Review.  The poems were influenced by the 2001 destruction of the Bamiyan great Buddha statues by Taliban forces.  Elizabeth lived in the region during the winter of 1972.

AL MUHAYMIN [“The Guardian”]

December 1972

Before sleep, wrapped against the cold,
reliving the way in:

++++++++++++++++ that turn,
below the Shebar Pass, where the road
grew thin, uneven, where the wild dog
staggered at us, blind,
rabid, ravenous.
How Qadir, the driver’s friend,
opened the door and shot him.

/by

Alumni Updates

Mike Puican (poetry, ’09): Mike’s poems appear online at the Jet Fuel Literary Review.

Through Slender Branches
Storm Clouds Scatter to Reveal
a New Winter Moon

Three men in black wool
winter coats—ankle-length, waist-
tied and buttoned down—

stand holding hand rails
while staring at transit signs,
their phones, the woman

who is sitting and
gazing out the window. She’s
also dressed in black.

The windows darken
as the train descends into
the subway tunnel.

Overhead a sky-
blue bank ad in which a boy
in yellow shorts beams.

…[Read All]…

/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