Joshua Billings (fiction, ’09): Joshua recently completed a translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Tales of Belkin for Melville House Books’ “Art of the Novella” series.
Visit mhpbooks.com to read more or to purchase a copy.
Tatjana Soli (fiction, ’06) discusses her second novel and the James Tait Black Prize at The Millions:
My interest in the clash and misunderstandings between cultures definitely comes from where I live, and it’s been a huge influence in both books. I think there is the same concern for how one lives in both books. How does one bear witness during war? How does one overcome tragedy in a very personal, private life? Those were issues that compelled the writing.
It’s hugely disconcerting that you work blinkered as a writer — thinking you are on to fresh material — only to realize after the fact that you’ve returned to the same themes. I tell my students that you cannot control what you write, but only how you write and communicate that vision. The vision is out of your control...[Read More]…
Tatjana is the author of The Forgetting Tree
Joanne Dominique Dwyer (poetry ’09): Joanne recently won the 2011 Jerome J. Shestack Poetry Prize from The American Poetry Review. The $1,000 prize is awarded annually for the best poems published in APR during the past year. The announcement was made in the September/October 2012 print issue of the magazine.
Justin Bigos (poetry ’08) recently interviewed fellow alum Matthew Olzmann (poetry, ’09) for The American Literary Review:
I feel like we’re entering an age where, more and more, we as writers are going to be asked to defend what we do. Literary arts organizations are fighting for their lives. Magazines are seeing their funding slashed. Writing programs are being forced to explain why creative writing is important. What Hough says there is as good of an answer as any as to why this is important. I’ve read poems that have offered me the chance to live in different centuries, to walk through hell, to see the traffic moving through blood vessels, and to view the world through the eyes of people of different races, orientations, and religions. Can that save us? Maybe, or maybe not. But it helps us to live deeper, more fulfilling lives. It creates a more understanding planet. It calls on us—as individuals—to be more empathetic and humane. And, ultimately, it helps us—as a society—to be more worthy of the “salvation” that we’re seeking...[Keep Reading]…
Neil Fischer (fiction, ’12): Neil’s story “Yucatan Boy” was chosen as second runner-up in the Ploughshares Emerging Writers Contest.
Cincinnati Magazine recently ran an article on Matt Hart (poetry, ’02) and Eric Appleby’s Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety:
There is a cork sealing shut the most recent edition of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, an independent literary magazine based in Cincinnati. Why, you ask? It’s a wine-themed issue. Each section includes a pairing; there are genuine wine stains on the cover; and jammed through each of the 260 pages is that cork. The issue even comes with a corkscrew, providing the most tactile experience you’ll probably ever have opening a new publication. But then, each biannual issue is made by hand, and it’s that level of craftsmanship that has made Forklift: Ohio one of the more talked about literary magazines in the country.
It started small. Matt Hart and Eric Appleby founded the magazine back in 1994, when they were new in town. The duo had published a lit mag out of their dorm rooms at Ball State University (it was called Nausea Is the Square Root of Muncie), and they, along with fellow Ball State alum Tricia Suit, thought that reviving it under a new name might be a good way to get plugged into the local poetry scene. So they began soliciting poems from friends and fellow poets in the area, creating a local network of supporters and fans. Once each year or so, they’d throw the poems together and print a tabloid-sized collection, interspersed with images from cookbooks or safety manuals that Appleby collected...[Keep Reading]…
Fred Arroyo (fiction, ’97): Fred’s book Western Avenue and Other Fictions
Fred Arroyo Finds Stories in the Land
I find inspiration in the memories that are sources of what I wrote a moment ago. Writing is still exciting, inspiring, and it makes me confront my real losses and imaginary gains.
My greatest inspiration is probably the land. I’m convinced stories are in the land, they exist within a place, and part of what I must do is listen closely to them. The lived, storied earth is more central to me than an idea or an aesthetic aspiration, as are the people who live and work the land. For some reason certain characters and peoples continue to turn to me, speak to me, and I try to tell their stories. In my fiction, I write of peoples rooted in a physical world—workers living, dreaming, and struggling in their place, even if they are often forced to migrate or question their place because of larger social pressures, or say the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These are peoples I admire greatly, even though I know they are often overlooked, and when they are recognized they are more than likely seen as not belonging, or failures. Their stories inspire me to move toward new emotional borders or regions, where fiction has the power to eliminate borders and entangle us in the drama of the human heart.
I don’t feel obliged or responsible in these matters. The land itself has stories that inspire the telling of them...[Keep Reading]…
Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10) has been named a Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship winner for 2012. The $15,000 scholarship is awarded annually to five poets between the ages of 21 and 31, to encourage their further “study and writing of poetry.”
The editors of Poetry magazine selected the winning manuscripts from more than 1,000 submissions. In announcing the winners, Poetry senior editor Don Share said, “When Harriet Monroe founded Poetry one hundred years ago, she excelled at discovering and nurturing young poets. I think she would be very pleased with the 2012 Ruth Lilly Fellows.” Editor Christian Wiman added, “The history of Poetry is filled with some of the best-known names in American poetry; my guess is that these young poets will be among those we’ll be talking about in the years to come.”
Other fellowship recipients are Nicholas Friedman, Richie Hofmann, Rickey Laurentiis, and Jacob Saenz. For more information visit PoetryFoundation.org.
Fiction ’96 alumna Joan Frank‘s new essay collection Because You Have To: A Writing Life
My interest . . . is in the emotional and physical and dream-life of writing (and reading) as an inescapable calling, and in ways of inhabiting that life . . . topics that have often struck me as screened off from the general dialogue, treated as unsavory—like that hidden little back room where the car salesman ducks away, to discuss your proposed purchase price with his “boss.”
Lauren Alwan (Fiction 08): Lauren will be serving as a prose editor for a new online literary journal, The Museum of Americana. The journal is dedicated to fiction, poetry, nonfiction, photography, and visual art that revives or re-purposes forgotten or unknown aspects of Americana.
‘The Museum of Americana…is published purely out of fascination with the big, weird, wildly contradictory collage that is our nation’s cultural history,’ says Justin Hamm, the quarterly’s founder and editor. ‘We live in an era when it is fashionable to express either apathy or outright disdain for all things American. The museum of Americana was founded on two core beliefs. The first is that there is much to love and celebrate in historical American culture. The second is that, while certainly not all aspects of Americana ought to be praised or celebrated, there is still great value in holding even that which is embarrassing or difficult up to the light to see what it is made of — and what could possibly be made of it.’
The journal will appear four times a year, in February/March, June/July, September/October, and December/January. The first reading period is currently open through September 20th.
To learn more, visit the journal’s website.
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