Jennifer Wisner Kelly (fiction, ’10): Jennifer’s short story “Sirens” appears in the current issue of the Greensboro Review.
Ross White (poetry, ’08): Ross’ poem “Autobiography” appears in the same issue of the magazine.
New issues of GBR are only available in print.
2012 fiction graduates Virginia Lee Borges and Evan Cleveland have work currently online at Every Day, a Century:
Four-Part Venn Diagram
Virginia Lee BorgesFour-part Venn diagram with jellyfish at the center: strong things, stinging things, vulnerable things, things that glow. A man named Schmidt let seventy-eight varieties of insect sting him because he wanted to know how each burned...[Keep Reading]…
Response
Evan ClevelandAfter 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]…
Agica (Aggie) Zivaljevic (fiction, ’05): Agica won third place in the Summer Literary Seminars 2012 Unified Literary Contest. This year’s fiction contest was judged by Mary Gaitskill. Agica will receive a 60% tuition discount at any one of the SLS-2012 programs and publication in Joyland Magazine.
Hadley Moore (fiction, 2010): Hadley’s story “Stranger Danger” is up on the ASCENT! Magazine website.
Aaron glanced up when the spoon hit the floor, and for that second Katherine’s boy was all Ken: something about the angle of his chin and the blank, unguarded look—not quite surprise, just the neutral face of an involuntary response. Then she bent to pick up the spoon, and when she rose and looked at him again, he was back to himself: some portion of her, some portion of Ken, some portion just his own.
“Hey buddy, your oatmeal’s almost ready,” she told him.
“‘Kay,” he said, and dropped his head to concentrate on the toy cars he was lining up on the counter...[Keep reading]…
Robin Black (fiction, ’05): Robin’s story “The Hunt” is online at Blip Magazine.
The Hunt
by Robin Black
Her point wasn’t that she wanted to kill him. That wasn’t at all what she was trying to say. That wasn’t at all what she had said. Her point wasn’t that she wanted to kill him – but rather that she was afraid she might. And they weren’t the same thing. They weren’t the same thing. She said that to him twice. She may have said it more than twice. Her voice was growing quieter, tighter and quieter, and he was starting to lose track of what she had said. They aren’t even close to the same thing, she said viewing him with a slightly wide-eyed look that might have been taken for pity if it hadn’t been just a little bit tough, a little more heated than pity would imply. Do you even understand the difference? she asked. But then she didn’t pause to breathe, didn’t pause for his response but she asked with a change he couldn’t quite hear — not word for word — but that he nonetheless distinctly felt. An important shift. Don’t you even understand the difference? she asked. And the boy didn’t speak. He just looked at the floor. He stared down at his own sneakers, each precisely filling, end to end, one square of the gray linoleum floor; and he noticed that only one of his shoelaces was tied...[Keep Reading]…
Robin is the author of the story collection, If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This
Edward Porter (fiction, ’07): Edward’s story, “Tough Little Wife,” won one of AWP’s Intro Journals awards, and will be published in an upcoming issue of the Colorado Review.
Justin Bigos (poetry, ’08) recently interviewed poet Patrick Donnelly (poetry, ’03) for the American Literary Review. Donnelly describes his latest book of poems, Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin
The title refers to the Sufi idea of the “tavern of ruin,” a seedy dive in the red-light district that can cause one to lose reputation just from being seen going in or out. Inside is an intimate, dimly-lit space (something like the atmospheric photograph of the Cyprian bathhouse on the cover of my book) where people stay up all night singing and reading poems and telling dreams to one another, and metaphorically, if not actually, getting drunk on the wine of spiritual things. (I’ve actually done all this while spending some time with the Sufis during the 90s.) It’s a place where you may lose the useless burden of your reputation, but in return learn what it’s like to give and receive love, and gain spiritual knowledge by making mistakes, even terrible mistakes.
So the poems explore loneliness, growing older, getting sick, infecting other people with sickness, losing material things, a sense that everything is constantly changing, the ground unstable—not to preach any particular point of view about these things, but to sing about them. It’s always been my thinking that there’s nothing better than a sad song in the right circumstances...[Read the full interview]…
Congratulations to the four Warren Wilson alumni on the 2012 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award Longlist:
Shannon Cain, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors
K.L. Cook, Love Songs for the Quarantined
Krys Lee, Drifting House
Natalie Serber, Shout Her Lovely Name
Alex Pierce (poetry, ’97): Alex was recently interviewed by Open Book: Ontario about “setting up a writing colony, how living in Sable River, Nova Scotia affects her writing and her new poetry collection, Vox Humana
Writers as mentors, especially Don McKay and later Barry Dempster (at Banff) and Eleanor Wilner (in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson) influenced the way I write, though not so much the content or even the style. I met many poets who made a difference at various points along the way, among them Heather McHugh, Robyn Sarah and Jan Zwicky. It is so important to be read and taken seriously, and to be asked the pertinent questions: this attention to detail when I was beginning as a writer had a tremendous influence on me. The reverse is also true: I learned my craft by close reading –making observations and writing annotations on other poets’ work.
Nan Cuba (fiction, ’89): Nan’s personal essay, “Love, Memory,” was published in the February issue of Connotation Press. Her story, “Watching Alice Watch,” appeared in the March issue of storySouth:
Watching Alice Watch
by Nan Cuba
From my upstairs bedroom window, I could look across two yards, through our neighbor’s sliding glass doors into their den. Since the Waverleys watched TV and ate meals there, my private view became a running movie of their lives.
Alice had been my friend and rival since we were babies. Even though she’d tried to steal my Psalm 23 bookmark while my head was bowed during the Sunday School teacher’s prayer, and three days before Christmas, she’d showed me her presents hidden in a coat closet, she said I was lucky to have a happy family, and her advice about boys was way better than a how-to manual...[Keep Reading]…
Nan’s novel, Body and Bread, will be published by Engine Books in May 2013.
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