Alumni Updates

Muriel Nelson (poetry, ’06): Muriel’s poem “Borage” was recently featured in the Producing Poetry blog series at the Seattle Times:

Borage

Odorlessness of oxygen,
cold taste of cucumber,
touch of moth — tender,
barely felt, nearly
soundless in the mouth —
the appearance of borage in the garden is
like a multitude of eyes.

To eat or drink any flower is odd.
But to take this one in wine or salad
not for courage, but for color,
is to take this bloom forgetful
of its lore as it flies
on a breeze whole,
as eyes take eyes
with a glance,

and naturally,
unknowingly,
particle by particle,
swallow
God.

Read the full article

Muriel is the author of the poetry collection Most Wanted (2003, ByLine Press).

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Alumni Updates

RJ Gibson (poetry, ’11): RJ’s chapbook You Could Learn a Lot has been named co-winner the 2012 Editor’s Prize from Seven Kitchens Press.  The book is scheduled for release this winter.

His previous collection, Scavenge, won the 2009 Robin Becker Chapbook Prize, also from Seven Kitchens.

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Alumni Updates

Gabriel Blackwell (fiction, ’09): Gabriel’s story “The Behavior of Pidgeons”  has been reprinted at Alphaville, a Dutch online magazine.  The story was originally published in Conjunctions in 2008.  The newest version includes Gabriel’s illustrations for his forthcoming collection of essays and short fiction, Critique of Pure Reason (November 2012, Noemi Press).

The Behavior of Pidgeons

Methods and Materials

There are seven Walter Pidgeons seated in a waiting room measuring twenty-two feet by twenty-two feet. A picture window (a) takes up most of the wall opposite the door (b). The door, serving as entrance to the waiting room and as exit to the examination rooms, fulfills all of the functions of the “office,” as the sole means for patients to be seen and the doctor(s) to see them. Four groups of chairs (numbered 1–8) paired around four knee-high, magazine-laden tables (c) make up the bulk of the room’s contents. Above a water cooler (d), there is a shelf, painted a dirty off-white to blend with the walls, which holds a bowl of peanuts and a stack of small waxed paper cups with a floral design for the water cooler. Letters in parentheses refer to Figure A, below. Not shown in this drawing are the Walter Pidgeons, whose total bulk narrowly exceeds that of the room’s furnishings. This diagram is not drawn to scale, and should only be referred to when considering the position of Walter Pidgeons in relation to each other...[Keep Reading]…

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Alumni Updates

Rolf Yngve (fiction, ’12): Rolf’s piece “Moonstone” is currently up at The Common, as part of their weekly series, Dispatches.

Moonstone

Three days of dirty weather and everyone saw it on their way home from work. It was dumped onto the Silver Strand State Beach parking lot— the keel naked and scabbed with barnacles, the mast canted. Someone said the park maintenance people must have hauled it up out of the surf. It looked like a forklift had punched two holes in the hull.

Some of us came from our homes across the highway to get a better look. We were the usuals who know each other because we walk our dogs: Butch’s mom, Lilly’s mom, Shamrock’s dad, all of us with our plastic bags tied to the handles of our leashes. Drugs, it must be drugs, someone said. Or immigrants. Illegals...[Keep Reading]…

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Alumni Updates

Michael Jarmer (fiction, ’97): Michael’s first novel, Monster Talk, is now available from iUniverse.  You can keep up with Michael on his blog, at michaeljarmer.com.

 

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Alumni Updates

Natalie Harris (fiction, ’00): Natalie’s short story “How Such a Thing Could Happen” appears in the spring 2012 issue of Witness.  This special subject issue features poetry and prose focused on the theme of “disaster.”

 

 

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Alumni Updates

Mimi Herman (fiction, ’91): Mimi’s poetry chapbook, Logophilia, will be available August 21st from Main Street Rag Publishing.  The book will be released as part of the publisher’s Author’s Choice Chapbook Series.

The Dead Bury the Dead

from Logophilia

The dead are burying the dead
with small abandoned shovels borrowed
from children’s sandcastles.

Remarkably patient, they dig until dawn,
then replace the shovels in time
for the mothers, over breakfast, to remind

the children to bring in their toys.
Boys will, in fact, be boys
and girls will remain girls,

while the dead remake the world as we sleep,
knowing it is their job to keep
grief buried, one small shovelful at a time…[Read more at Main Street Rag]…

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Reginald Dwayne Betts in The Nation

Reginald Dwayne Betts (poetry, ’10) was recently interviewed by Sri Lankan newpaper, The Nation:

I think I just write what I’m focusing on, what is troubling me, what I want to think more about. In the past I haven’t tried to confront certain issues with the justice system directly in poetry – write poems that deal with juvenile certification, or the drug trade. Now though, I feel like for the poems to be true to me they have to work those ideas in, because I know to do that, I’ll end up challenging myself as a writer. I’ll end up figuring out how to be poetic and not dogmatic, or how to be both...[Read the Full Interview]…

Reginald is the author of the poetry collection Shahid Reads His Own Palm (2010, Alice James Books).

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Alumni Updates

Susan Sterling (fiction, ’92): Susan’s novel Dancing in the Kitchen is now available as an ebook from Publerati.  The novel is one of five chosen for the publisher’s initial launch.

Dancing in the Kitchen (then titled “Ashes”) sat around, unfinished and seemingly unfinishable for three years after I graduated, and then I braved my first Post-MFA Conference where Dale Neal (fiction, ’89) urged me to participate the next summer in the novelists’ roundtable. There were many later years I didn’t work on it, but the conference restored my faith in its possibilities, a faith I never quite lost, and gave me invaluable readers and some of my closest friends.

And yes, I’ll be there this summer, excited to see everyone!

~Susan

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Alumni Updates

Bob Ayres (poetry, ‘93):  Bob’s first collection of poems, Shadow of Wings, is just out from Main Street Rag Publishing Company.  Bob’s manuscript was recommend by Gail Peck (poetry, ’87) for the  Author’s Choice Chapbook Series.  Shadow of Wings is available at mainstreetrag.com

Shadow of Wings

What will it be like to open that door
if when I do a folded piece of paper
drops to the floor, and I bend down
to pick it up and see my name?

Remember the first day of junior high
gripping the colorless plastic tray
queasy, uncertain where to sit
in that sea of kids?

Or younger, standing at the porcelain sink
milky-white as a pre-dawn sky
hands cupped to catch the water fall?

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