Fiction faculty member Marisa Silver was recently interviewed for Lit Hub regarding her new novel, The Mysteries. Read an excerpt of the interview below:

Marisa Silver Revisits the Golden Dawn of Girlhood: The Author of The Mysteries in Conversation with Jane Ciabattari

Jane Ciabattari: I’m wondering how you’ve been managing during the tumultuous year we’ve had? Where have you been living? Have you been able to write? What have you been doing to maintain some sense of normalcy?

Marisa Silver: I’ve been in Los Angeles and, like everyone, I’ve been riding the waves of everything that’s been coming at us. I’m a person who relies on a certain degree of emotional equilibrium in order to have the mental space to create degrees of emotional unruliness on the page. But this year, equanimity is not the name of the game, is it? I was in a pretty hyper-reactive state for many months as I responded to the daily barrage of pandemic news, the horrific police shootings, the dangers of late-stage Trump, and the anxiety about the election, all of which made writing a challenge.

But at a certain point, I reclaimed some focus and got back into a steady rhythm of work, which created its own kind of solace. Normalcy is an interesting word, and I’ve thought a lot about what it suggests, and what it means to “go back.” I think we all want to go back to patterns we relied on and enjoyed because they were known, but there is also a way in which maybe we should not be looking to recreate a normal that was predicated on intolerance and take-no-prisoners individualism that so much of the upheaval has exposed.

JC: What inspired your new novel, The Mysteries?

MS: My parents are both gone now, and I think a lot about how very little, in the end, I know about their early lives. I think this is true for many people. Parents pass on certain stories but not others—they can’t possibly download their entire experience to their kids, nor should they. I think about what we are trying to communicate about ourselves or the events that formed us through the anecdotes we do tell our kids. Why does one memory feel important enough, even urgent, to relate?

Of the handful of stories my father told me about his childhood, one included an event similar to the one that forms the tragedy at the center of my novel, an event he witnessed as a young boy. He described what happened, but told me nothing about how he felt, or how his mother, who was partially responsible, felt. He did not tell me anything about the aftermath. I understood—not then, but later—that what happened that day was fundamentally important to him because he chose to let me know about it. Writing a novel inspired by what he told me was a way for me to find out why.

Read the rest of the interview here: https://lithub.com/marisa-silver-revisits-the-golden-dawn-of-girlhood

F*ING HOODIE, by Sue Mell. Read the story at the link below.

In a Year of Multiple Pandemics, Finding a Parenting Philosophy in the Idea of Black Enchantment

My son has a cold for the first time in his fifteen months of life. The COVID-19 lockdown in our city has coincided with the length of his existence, creating the sort of bubble that has kept us away from daycare, playgrounds, and all other places where viruses make their way to the tiny bodies of children. For these fifteen months, he has passed through his developmental milestones blissfully uninterrupted—or, as much as possible in the hovering presence of the adults who love him.

But despite our precautions, a cold virus found its way in, first hitting my daughter before spreading to me and my son. Ever since its arrival he has stomped around the house with his face scrunched into a frustrated knot. Multiple times throughout the day he toddles over to where I sit working, demanding to be lifted into my lap. If his father scoops him away he dissolves into pissed-off screams. A stuffy nose, sneezing, and a mild fever have interrupted his formerly uninterrupted self: joyful, ever-smiling, and curious. In love with tumbling on the couch and being tossed into the air. The cold follows him like a shadow, something he can’t shake.  

Read the complete essay at this link: https://www.vogue.com/article/parenting-pandemic?fbclid=IwAR29KN0qyna3ssAnlkIIb8AsH-eQD3VTJRuOw8t5OxK8gzHpvHu4IG7XE_w

EXTRA INNINGS

by Michelle Collins Anderson

Jenna and her brother Boo belted out “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer” in the back seat of the Pontiac station wagon on the way to the Murphy family’s first-ever Cardinal baseball game. Boo — not quite three and unable to count backwards — screamed the chorus at the top of his lungs: Take one down, pass it around! At ninety-one bottles, their dad barked from the driver’s seat: “Put a lid on it, Pork Chop.”

Jenna almost said, “Put a bottle cap on it,” but she could see her dad was already mad about something. His brown eyes were almost black as he glanced from the rearview mirror to her mother, whom he called “Doodle” because she was such a scatterbrain. In Jenna’s family, there were lots of nicknames. Jenna was “Pork Chop,” even though she didn’t like pork chops at all, or even bacon. Her dad made “Pork Chop” sound sweet, but Jenna had the feeling he was making fun of her for something she couldn’t help: she had always been plain and a little pudgy. Meanwhile, her brother “Boo-Boo” or “Boo” (was it possible to have a nickname for a nickname?) had been a “mistake,” according to her dad, although her mother shushed him when he said that. Even the station wagon — a long yellow banana of a car flanked by dark wooden paneling — was dubbed the “Big Bruiser.” Her father was just “Dad” to Jenna and Boo and “Joe” to her mother. But then, Jenna knew he couldn’t be expected to give a nickname to himself. She was only eight, but she knew that wasn’t how things worked.

Read the rest of the story at this link: https://blogs.wp.missouristate.edu/elder-mountain/

A bright hello to this beloved creative community!


Registration for this summer’s virtual alumni conference is herewith declared open, and we hope to see all of you there. Registration runs from this very minute through Wednesday, June 16. Things you need to know:

1. This year’s conference will kick off Wednesday, July 14, and conclude the evening of Sunday, July 18. We are starting earlier in the week this year to provide greater flexibility for manuscript review and workshop groups, and to give us all a little more breathing room.

2. Speaking of manuscript reviews and workshop groups—please note that you will receive your group assignment June 18 and will need to provide your crew of readers with the necessary materials by ***June 25.*** So now is the time to start polishing.

3. Interested in reading or offering a class or a panel or a bookshop? Please indicate your interest on the registration form. No need to tell us when you’ll be available (because who knows at the this very moment when they’ll be available in July) or what your proposed class topic is. We will hit you up with a follow-up email.

4. The schedule will be sent to all registrants on July 1. 

5. We’re reviving the auction! This year, instead of asking for a registration donation, we are focusing all of our fundraising efforts on Saturday night’s online event. Do you have a pair of small, sparkly earrings you like to claim Dolly Parton once wore on stage . . . but whose provenance is clearly dubious because of that pesky adjective “small”? Are you a master knitter willing to teach someone the basics over Zoom? Then read this description and check the yes button on the registration form:


“Tiny and Intangible” is the theme of our first-ever live auction. The lovely and talented Janet Thornburg will officiate as auctioneer. More information about how and what to donate (a weekend retreat! workshops and manuscript reviews that you and only you can offer! all manner of tiny things!) will be be forthcoming. Email  Annie Kim if you’re already full of ideas and just can’t wait to hear more.


As always, with love and warm regard,
Jen Funk and Ashley Nissler


https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1wm4Xs4zU5r7PJKI7sw_ixjwRp7eWUvvLcrYJKGYGo-M/edit?gxids=7628

Paula Yoo, a 2002 fiction alum, was recently interviewed in the Kirkus Review. Read an excerpt of the interview, in which Yoo discusses her new book, From a Whisper to a Rallying Cry, below:

As you worked on the book, did your impressions of the problem of anti-Asian racism change?

We have always been excluded and erased from the dialogue about racism in this country. Vincent Chin’s case was the first federal civil rights trial for an Asian American, and this was the 1980s. My friends and I joke occasionally about [how] being Asian American is like dying by a thousand cuts, a thousand microaggressions. But I’m realizing now that’s also part of the conversation: Unfortunately, most Americans think of racism in very broad strokes, as wearing a KKK hood or [going] up to someone, [punching] them in the face, and [calling] them a racist slur. Obviously, there’s a higher priority for violent physical crime, but that does not erase the importance and complexities of microaggressions. Trauma happens, whether it’s one shocking, horrifying event or a lifetime of tiny microaggressions that add up. What I am happy about, though, is that we’re finally having this conversation and finally addressing all forms and varying degrees of racism. You cannot have one conversation about racist mass shootings and not have an equally important conversation about microaggressions. For the Asian American and Pacific Islander experience, that is what we know, and the rest of the world is now finally finding out. So I would say my one surprise is that it took me this long to have this conversation.

Read the rest of the interview here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/paula-yoo-whisper-rallying-cry-interview/

2011 poetry graduate Leslie Contreras Schwartz was recently featured in Anomaly. Read an excerpt of “Echolocation with Self and Body Parts” below:

Leslie Contreras Schwartz
NPS photo by Emily Brouwer


Echolocation with Self and Body Parts

It’s the eyes slit into walls, half open lids
that tricks. The lips beneath the eyes blue & frost-bitten. 
Corpse pose. But a crowbar jams against cut and quartered,

clicking tongues to find the jigsaw of other parts.
A foot in the door, a silent wrenching turning beneath the ground.
Nearing exhaustion, slit eyes with lids half closing. Half breathing.

Feeling for the one other body part, a hand, a rib, a foot, 
a labia at a time. Where are you, the inner thigh calls to vastus lateralis.
Furrows of corpse flower, quartered and twinned yet firm against cuts & crowbar.

A jaw’s gotten free and is having dinner with the dandelions. 
Behind the supper party, a knee and a femur knock on the door
with cracked walls, shutters half open. Let us back in.

Read the rest of this poem, as well as another, here: https://anmly.org/ap32/leslie-contreras-schwartz/

Poetry faculty member Matthew Olzmann was recently featured in The Adroit Journal. Read an excerpt of “Best Nightmare Machine,” and find a link to an additional poem, below:


Best Nightmare Machine

Whenever I got too many peaceful nights of sleep,
whenever the vise grip of anxiety failed to apply
the proper pressure to my skull,
I could type Image of a brown recluse spider bite
or How much of Antarctica has already melted?
into the search engine, and that network
of teeth would take care of the rest.

Whenever the season was too bright,
whenever my table too bountiful,
I could count on my trusty nightmare machine
to produce a door in the sky or earth, and release
one hairless wolf, starving and strange,
to hunt me down, tear off one of my arms,
and whisper something like, Your leader
is a stable genius, and immediately, my nerves
would light up with catastrophe and sulfur.

It doesn’t work like that anymore.
Technology has evolved.
The sophistication of my dread has evolved.

Today, the best nightmare machines understand
the fundamental necessity of delight,
the importance of good fortune.
They now try to make you to cherish, at least a little,
the world, before introducing its demise.

Read the rest of this poem, as well as an additional poem, at The Adroit Journal.

Poetry faculty member Marianne Boruch was recently featured in the New England Review. Read an excerpt of Boruch’s poem, “The Lyrebird, Hidden. His Dance, Hidden. His Wish,” below:

NPS photo by Emily Brouwer


The Lyrebird, Hidden. His Dance, Hidden. His Wish

to dance, also hidden. But he will get the girl.
His featherless, out of the egg pre-wish to dance hidden too.

His hidden hidden. His pre-egg in the nest, hidden. Its yolk and white
not yet yolk and white, equally hidden.

A song the lyrebird steps to and into. By heart and habit.
But hidden. Ditto that wild footloose, the very thing
also hidden from us, the thing famous and forlorn and ecstatic.

His mimic song, an old sound effect record from the ’50s, a camera’s
click then its whirl, a braking truck, a car alarm, a chainsaw

plus twenty other birds screaming. Properly: redoes them.
His sound bites, the more worldly the better
to wow-woo her. Under trees. On the little mound he’s cleared

to dance. The way ahead circled by thorns and, higher up, stars.

Read the rest of this poem, as well as an additional poem and an interview with Boruch, at the New England Review.

Poetry faculty member Alan Shapiro was recently featured in TriQuarterly. Read an excerpt of Shapiro’s “Space That Sees: A Posthumous/Preposthumous Dialogue between C. K. Williams and Alan Shapiro,” below:

Space That Sees: A Posthumous/Preposthumous Dialogue between C. K. Williams and Alan Shapiro – Part 1

This is part one in a three-part essay by Alan Shapiro.

1.

The cell phone rang in the middle of a poetry workshop I was teaching at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. Charlie’s name popped up on the screen. I had heard just days before that his cancer treatment had been discontinued and he’d gone into hospice. I excused myself and went outside to take the call. Though his voice was weak, almost otherworldly with fatigue, Charlie got right down to business as he always did on the phone. He was dying, he said, matter-of-fact-ly, without a trace of self-pity. He was calling to say goodbye. I tried to disguise my shock and sorrow by joking, “But you’re my reader, Charlie, my audient! Who am I going to show my poems to now?” He deadpanned, “Find a younger reader.”  

2.

Since the mid-1980s, my two closest poet friends have been Charlie Williams and Tom Sleigh. In fact, in the thirty-some-odd years we’ve known each other, and until Charlie’s death in 2015, I don’t think I’ve written a single poem that Charlie and Tom haven’t helped with—that wasn’t shaped or influenced by their judgment and imagination. All poets work alone in some ways, but in other, maybe even more important, ways I was never alone when I worked, not just because I showed my early drafts to Tom and Charlie, but because I think I so internalized their different ways of looking at language and at life that I could feel them watching over my shoulder as I wrote. The process of composition was (and with Tom still is) more collaborative than solitary. But here’s the thing: the recognition I received from them (and by “recognition” I don’t mean praise, I mean the respect of serious critical attention) was so much more durable and fortifying than the ersatz recognition of a fancy publication, review, fellowship, or prize, nice as those things are, or so I’ve heard. To a significant degree, having found my ideal audience insulated me from the worst aspects of “fame envy,” which Milton calls “the last infirmity of noble mind.” The respect of their attention gave me just enough protection from the marketplace and the crippling sense of irrelevance I still experience, for instance, when I go on Facebook or when I step foot inside the great hall of the AWP book fair. While it’s hard not to feel sometimes that all we’re doing when we write is sitting in a room talking to ourselves, what a poetry friendship can do, or has done for me at any rate, is connect the practice of the art to its beginnings in a premodern, even pre-agricultural hunter-gatherer, past when agents and publicists did not exist. It has given me a kind of freedom from the expense of spirit in a waste of shame that has accompanied the art’s professionalization —and it has shown me how poetry, even while drenched in a market economy, still has its roots in older, more intimate forms of human belonging. 

Read the piece in its entirety, as well as Part Two, at TriQuarterly.