10/17: PEN/Faulkner Hosts VQR Emerging Writers

Here’s an event I won’t be able to attend, but since I love the PEN/Faulkner organization so much, I’m going to post it anyway!  Check out their whole series of upcoming readings at the link below…lots of good writers coming to read.

A Storied Future: Ann Beattie in conversation with emerging writers from the Virginia Quarterly Review

Friday, October 17, 2014

7:30 PM

Lutheran Church of the Reformation (across the street from the Folger Shakespeare Library)

212 East Capitol Street NE

Washington, DC 20003 (map)

Tickets are now on sale for $15. Click here to subscribe to the PEN/Faulkner Reading Series for a discounted rate.

Since 1925, the storied literary and cultural journal, Virginia Quarterly Review, has been publishing thought-provoking works of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and journalism. The fall 2014 issue of VQR has a theme of “Big Breaks,” and this collaborative event between PEN/Faulkner and VQR will feature a moderated conversation between Ann Beattie and four gifted writers — Tope Folarin, Onyinhe Ihezukwu, Greg Jackson, and Brendan McKennedy — at the start of their careers.

Ann Beattie has been included in four O. Henry Award Collections and in John Updike’s Best American Short Stories of the Century. In 2000, she received the PEN/Malamud Award for achievement in the short story form. In 2005, she received the Rea Award for the Short Story. She and her husband, Lincoln Perry, live in Key West, Florida, and Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is Edgar Allan Poe Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.

Tope Folarin won the 2013 Caine Prize for African Writing for his story “Miracles.” In 2014, he was named to the Africa 39 list of the top African writers under 40. He is a graduate of Morehouse College and Oxford University, where he earned two Master’s degrees as a Rhodes Scholar. Tope lives in Washington, DC and is currently at work on his first novel.

Brendan McKennedy, a former fiction editor at the Greensboro Review, has published short stories in Epoch, PANK, and Night Train. He’s at work on a novel set in the American South during the early years of the recording industry. He lives in North Carolina.

Onyinye Ihezukwu was born and raised in Nigeria, where she worked as a journalist and broadcaster. Her work largely explores changing socio-spiritual themes in the urban Nigerian setting. She is a Poe/Faulkner fellow with the MFA program at the University of Virginia, where she received the 2014 Henfield Prize. 

Greg Jackson grew up in Boston and coastal Maine. He has been a Fiction Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center and a Henry Hoyns Fellow at the University of Virginia, where he won the 2012 Henfield Prize. His fiction has appeared in the New Yorker, and his first book is a story collection entitled Prodigals (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016). He has worked for the literary journal n+1 and with investigative journalist Ron Suskind on several bestselling works of political nonfiction.

“Bruce Covey Is in Love with Language”: Poetry Review by Gabrielle Freeman

Bruce Covey, Change Machine

Noemi Press, 2014

122 pages

[ordering information below]

I’m just going to come right out and say it. My favorite poem in Bruce Covey’s new collection Change Machine is a one-liner, in both senses. Here is the entirety of “I’m a Bitty Cupcake”: “But if you fuck with me, I’m gonna kick your fuckin ass, you know what I’m sayin?” This poem makes me laugh out loud. It’s not often enough that humor is used in poetry. But it isn’t just the unexpected hilarity that combining a frosting-topped bit of wonderful with an f-bomb laced threat that makes this poem stand out; it’s also the unexpectedness of the single line. In a book this full of poems that bring in every manner of topic and spit them out in reconfigured pieces, where every line presents a new idea, where each page brings yet another surprise, it would seem unlikely to find something so completely different all the way on page 109. But Covey does it.

The sheer volume of poems that all look different on the page is just one of the things that makes Change Machine a compelling read. The collection begins with “Chunks of Or,” a 24-line free verse poem with no stanza breaks that plays on the words “or” and “ore”; and it moves through prose poems in blocks, prose poems in a series of single sentences, sonnets, numbered lists, poems of unrhymed couplets, of unrhymed quatrains, and the fantastic dialogue poem “A True Account of Talking to the Moon in Atlanta, GA.” The reader is constantly challenged to refocus and to face the poem as a stand-alone piece within the larger whole. Not that there isn’t a thread holding all of these poetic surprises together.

Change Machine is divided into two sections that echo the title and theme: “Tails” and “Heads.” The idea of a literal change machine, a machine that takes in whole dollars and spits out coins, is present in multiple representations of the idea of currency. “Currency is nickels & dimes & quarters” (“Chunks of Or”); “Change for a 5, a monster caffeine or cherry soda / Hmm I’d rather have the fruit, chocolate” (“Local Box Score”); “I wrote some lines about metal but lost them / Roughly equivalent to losing  a half dollar / Or a dollar coin -- there have been so many different versions” (“It Might Take a Long Time to Partition Googolplex”). This idea is furthered in the concepts of metals becoming currency through physical change, human appropriation of metals through the use of machines, human use of metals as metaphor and symbol, and equivalencies. “Is being worth one’s weight in gold something that one earns? [...] Gold’s atomic mass is roughly 197. The 110 lb. Olympic Barbell Weight Set from Gold’s / Gym costs $104.00 at Walmart, where customers have rated it with four gold stars” (“Earn/Steal”). Language itself becomes a machine which effects change through manipulation of raw materials, of words.

And it is this that is evident throughout this collection: Bruce Covey is in love with language. He is fascinated not only by words themselves, but also by what those words can do when combined in unexpected ways, when the words undergo change. What happens when Covey juxtaposes a list poem with the literary canon? “29 Epiphanies” happens. One of my favorites is number 8: “If someone suggests you sell your children as food for the rich, he’s only kidding.” What happens when Covey butts a deep knowledge of metals up against his experiences with death? “Gilded Elegies” happens. “Rather soft and malleable, copper is a ductile metal, with very high thermal and electrical / conductivity. // An hour before class I received a slip of paper in my departmental mailbox informing me / that one of my students was dead of a suicide, a shotgun blast to his face.” The elegies are gilded, but not in the sense that they are shined up and made pretty. In fact, they are presented plainly. The elegies are gilded in that they are physically surrounded by descriptions of different metals on the page, yet another surprise for the reader.

The poems in Bruce Covey’s Change Machine challenge the reader. They ask us to change our perspectives, our methods of thinking, often with a lovely sense of humor. Expect nothing less from each and every page than a trash-talking cupcake or epiphany number 21: “It sucks to have a big red A.”

Read an excerpt:

http://www.noemipress.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Covey-Excerpt.pdf

Buy the book:

http://www.noemipress.org/catalog/poetry/covey/

More about Bruce Covey: 

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/bruce-covey

Gabrielle Freeman blogs about the use of humor in Covey’s work: http://whythewritingworks.com/2014/09/13/jab-cross-uppercut-humor-in-bruce-coveys-poetry/

Gabrielle Freeman's poetry has been published in many journals including Beecher’s Magazine, Chagrin River Review, The Emerson Review, Gabby, Minetta Review, and Shenandoah. She earned her MFA in poetry through Converse College, and she teaches at East Carolina University. Gabrielle lives with her family in Eastern North Carolina where she blogs about writing and all things random at www.ladyrandom.com.

How to Choose the MFA Program That Is Right for You

Here’s a thoughtful list of twelve things writer Pam Houston suggests you consider when selecting your MFA writing program:

1. Do the professors who teach in this program actually know how to write?
I know, it sounds crazy, but very few first-year grad students have actually read the work of the faculty they are about to study with for the next two-to-three years. Just because somebody got a teaching job at an institute of higher learning does not mean they can write well and, perhaps more importantly, it doesn’t mean they write in a way that is going to make you trust and respect them to evaluate your work, or in a way that is going to inspire you to do your best writing while you are in their company.

Read the rest here: https://www.awpwriter.org/magazine_media/writers_notebook_view/21/twelve_questions_you_should_ask_before_you_enroll_in_an_mfa_program

Celebrating Converse Students and Graduates: A List of Online Pubs

Even I am weary of the constant me-me-me of the blogging/social media life, so I thought it would be fun to help spread the word about some of the publications of the fabulous Converse low-residency MFA students and graduates. And to stave off impatience, I decided to focus on online pubs only…so you can check out their fine writing RIGHT NOW, which I urge you to do.

Presented in random order:

Sarah M. Cooper, Poetry

Graduate, 2014

“Grandma’s House”

 “…Your stairs leading down had one loose board where we would hide pebbles from the lake and bird feathers, ingredients we called them for spells….”

http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/sarah_cooper1.html

Philip Belcher, Poetry

Graduate, 2011

“Donnie with Baby and Cows 1999”

“…After a minute under the lamp / on my desk, the Guernsey began to glow…”

http://issuu.com/uidahodigital/docs/fugue44/105?e=2211907/8042525

Lisa M. Hase-Johnson, Poetry

Graduating, June 2015

“Radishes”

“…Grandmother preferred them large and a little tough, / refrigerated with a bit of salt….”

http://www.sugarmule.com/PDFS/41Final4.pdf [Page 212]

Kathleen Nalley, Poetry

Graduate, 2012

“Concentric”

“…Baby John Doe they called you, placed / you, once the janitor blew life /

back into your lungs, in a hospital incubator…”

http://nightowl.owu.edu/2014/06/10/concentric/

Travis Burnham, Fiction

Graduate, 2013

“The Bone Washer”

“On my very first day I’d been forced into the Preparation Chamber, in amongst the beetles, and the stench and the flesh, and the bones….”

http://baddreamentertainment.com/short-story-bone-washer/

Jeffrey R. Schrecongost, Fiction

Graduate, 2011

“Killing Carol”

“…Jett knew Carol was bringing ugly news. It was her voice, how her voice tottered when she called him that Saturday morning.”

http://issuu.com/bloodlotus/docs/bl_24-25_final [Page 32]

 Scott Laughlin, Fiction

Graduating, Winter, 2016

“The Strange Question of Alberto de Lacerda” [essay]

“…I walked into Alberto's class, called ‘Poetry from Symbolism to Surrealism,’ in 1991, the fall of my senior year at Boston University, and here was a man with a wisp of white hair sort of floating above his balding head, his head turned in slight profile, thus displaying his most prominent feature: his nose. Two pillars disrupted the classroom, and after I sat in one of the only empty chairs, which happened to be behind one of these pillars, he exclaimed, aghast, ‘No, not there! I must see everyone!’ He instructed me to move my chair, which I did, blushing as I screeched the chair across the floor while other students cringed….”

http://www.postroadmag.com/25/recommends/laughlin.phtml

Kyler Campbell, Fiction

 Graduate, 2012

“Caretta, Caretta”

 “…Sometimes when I think about those vacations, I think about Mom and how she’d smile at me and act like Dad didn’t exist at all. I think about how after my tenth birthday, she left us for good….”

http://media.wix.com/ugd/d32313_09c73efea9f0469280fa55ba3bec55e8.pdf [Page 13; author interview follows]

 Cinelle Barnes, Creative Nonfiction

Graduating, 2015

“Kamayan”

“We have banana leaves and we have hands.  We eat with them, these forest-green blades and ten digits. We take the time to wrap our rice, wrap our fish, wrap our yellows, greens and reds, in steamy pockets made of folded foliage….”

http://www.hubcity.org/multicultural-spartanburg/kamayan-by-cinelle-barnes#sthash.DhZbOE8r.dpbs

Melissa Dickson, Poetry

Graduate, 2012

“A Poem in Flight: Memory and Truth” [essay]

 “…Fortunately for the poet, facts aren’t essential, and the slanted truth is often preferred to the straight. But who is immune to the alternate realities of another’s memory? Who can still the startling in his bones when a lover says, ‘No, your suit was blue and the sky was gray…’”

http://northamericanreview.wordpress.com/2014/07/07/a-poem-in-flight-memory-and-truth-by-melissa-dickson/

David Colodney, Poetry

Graduating, 2016

“Melaleuca”

“Her cigarette dangles; she uses puffs for punctuation, / Musky breath floating to me, she calls for another drink…”

http://www.musepiepress.com/shotglass/issue12/david_colodney2.html

  

Gabrielle Freeman, Poetry

Graduate, 2013

“The Happily Married Woman Boards the Plane”

“…Please don’t order Maker’s Mark and ask if I’d care for one, too, and then toast to new friends and clink the little bottles and say ‘clink’ and wink at me…”

http://www.gabbyjournal.com/gabrielle-freeman/

  

Matthew McEver, Fiction

Graduate, 2014

“Yonder Comes a Sucker”

“…Henry Lee, the darkly pomaded one, lean and muscled, well-read, fiery-eyed and yet infected with misgivings about himself and considered a nobody in a no-name town—circled his enemy, sidled left, missed with a wild swing and tottered sideways….”

http://steeltoereview.com/2014/04/29/yonder-comes-a-sucker-by-matthew-mcever/

Rhonda Browning White, Fiction

 Graduate, 2013

“Good Friends”

“…Doesn’t seem fair that she’s got a grown son and still has a flat belly and perky… well, you know. I don’t talk like that. No sense in mentioning body parts the Lord told us in the Good Book to keep covered….”

http://steeltoereview.com/2013/09/16/good-friends-by-rhonda-browning-white/

I am so proud of all of our fine students, published and soon-to-be published. What a smart and hard-working bunch.  I raise a glass to you!!  (I mean, of course, that after 5 I will…it’s barely 8AM right now!).

Me-Me-Me! And MY Story in Tahoma Literary Review!

Thanks to Tahoma Literary Review for publishing my story “Gratitude Journal.”  It’s a rather bitter and angry story, so I’m happy to find such a delightful home for it…and it’s always exciting to be published in the inaugural issue of a literary journal, almost like getting to crack the bottle of champagne on a new ship sailing off to the deep blue ocean.

And thanks to Tahoma Literary Review for including these sentences in their mission statement: “We at Tahoma Literary Review are committed to producing a literary journal from the professional writer’s perspective; we feel that writers deserve compensation for the weeks or months it takes to compose a publishable poem or story. A major goal of Tahoma Literary Review is to show that writers and publishers can support each other not only artistically, but also financially.”

To top it all off, work by one of my fabulous spring semester Johns Hopkins students, Stefen Styrsky, also appears in this issue:  “Men in White.”

While print and Kindle copies are available (and I recommend you purchase one!), Tahoma Literary Review also offers free PDF downloads.  Information about getting your copy of the journal is right here. (My story is on page 24.)

Here’s the opening to “Gratitude Journal”…perhaps you will get a teeny-tiny glimpse of that bitterness I alluded to??

I’m grateful that—as of today—I am a fifty-year-old woman in America. I’m grateful that when I express distaste for turning fifty, someone will chuckle and say, “Better than the alternative.” I’m grateful that no one listens when I speak—my opinions, my thoughts, my feelings: all are talked over and dismissed—and I’m grateful that a fifty-year-old woman in America might as well be a cockroach, skulking along the dark corners of the culture, something objectionable, an unseen thing scurrying under sudden and blinding light that might illuminate a crepey neck, raised veins, and crow’s feet. I’m grateful for the phrase “crow’s feet” because it’s preferable to have chosen the ugliest, most obnoxious, nastiest bird to stamp all over our faces, so I’m grateful the phrase is not “mockingbird feet” or “chickadee feet.” I’m grateful for birthday cards that joke about adult diapers and being “over the hill” and that claim to have sex secrets for old folks and then open to a cutout mask of a hot blonde twenty year old girl. I’m grateful for my sense of humor because if I couldn’t laugh I would have to find an alternative and that alternative might involve a gun; I’m grateful there are gun laws in my state that make it difficult for me to get a gun because I don’t know what I would do if I had one.

Read more!  And send in your work…Tahoma Literary Review is reading until September 30.

Why I Love the Converse Low-Residency MFA Program

October 1 is the deadline for joining us in the next semester at Converse for the low-residency MFA program.  We would love to have you learn more about our program, and if it feels right to you, to apply and start up with us in January. You can get all the important details on the website, here. 

But here’s what the website can’t tell you:

--How personal this program is, how welcoming our students are to everyone, no matter your age, or where you’re from, or what your writing background is, how our students form tight and lasting and forever bonds with one another, how supportive our students are.

--How much the faculty members care, about the art and craft of the written word, about the program, about helping students become better writers.

--How our students succeed—yes, with the expected and exciting book and journal publications and awards—but also in the moments that aren’t listed with a line on a c.v.  I’ve seen major breakthroughs during the course of a semester, and during the course of the program; writing lives have been transformed.  I’ve been inspired by students who have worked harder than I could imagine anyone working to get it right—that ending, the structure of that critical paper—and I have been brought to tears when someone tackles “the” story they know they need to write but have been afraid of, until now, until they find the courage or permission they need.  I’ve read works of precision that started as fast, 15-minute exercises in workshop.  I’ve seen students accomplish amazing things in their work, impossible things, things that have thrilled me as a teacher and a writer and a reader.

--How much we pack into those days of residency, how we forget about the outer world because we’re alive in the world of the word, how each craft talk and lecture and reading and discussion over dinner feels in direct dialogue with the others, how much a head can spin with new ideas and inspiration, how joyful it is to sit with a group of writers past one, two, three in the morning, talking books and beer, telling stories, laughing at jokes where the punchline is “Kafka.”

--How lucky it feels to belong to this vibrant community of writers.

There are lots of writing programs, and I can’t say which one is “best” or even “best for you.”  All I can say is that this program is something special.  Every time I jump in my car to start the drive down south, chills snake my spine, and I push hard on the gas so I get there faster.

Follow Writing Advice--Except When You Shouldn't

As a teacher of writing, I’ve offered much advice and have said many things about writing.  Some of them are even on the following list, “Writing Advice No One Needs Again, Ever,” composed by one of my former students [excerpt below]. (Note:  I am NOT the “inspiration” teacher!) And yet, I try to always add into the mix this piece of advice:  The only rule in writing is there are no rules. (I would like to take credit for this bit of wisdom, but I stole it from one of my teachers.)

What this means to me is that there are lots of guidelines, and plenty of writers before us have come up with general principles and shortcuts and “best practices” that tend to make for a better book/story.  But eventually, writers have to feel free to break those rules as needed.

Of course, the corollary to breaking the rules is that then you also have to find your way to creating the book/story/whatever that succeeds despite ignoring these “best practices”; you have to “make it work” (to quote Tim Gunn on my beloved “Project Runway”).  Sometimes that means you have to experiment and study and fail for years until you get it right.  Or it means you have to be a genius or accidentally stumble into a moment of genius.  Or it means others in the mainstream don’t understand (or appreciate) what you’re doing. It requires immense confidence yet also immense humility.

In the end, though, art is always about knowing the rules and yet knowing how to bend them and when to utterly break them.  Listen to your teacher, but also listen to yourself. 

*****

From the article:

1.  Write what you know. Imagine applying this advice to other areas of life. “Where should I go on vacation?” Stick with what you know, stay home. “Where should I study in college?” Study what you know, that way it’ll be easy. “Who should I marry?” Pick someone whose personality is just like yours. If it’s so obviously stupid in every other facet of life, why would it work for writing?

Read more.