ALUMNI

Karen Bovenmyer (Popular Fiction, S’13) is pleased to announce her story “The Scarlet Cloak” will be reprinted in Life After Ashes, an anthology published by Alliteration Ink to benefit a military family who lost everything in a fire.

Jennifer Marie Brissett (Popular Fiction, S ’11) will be on panel at the Astro Blackness 2 Conference, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA.

Julie C. Day‘s (Popular Fiction, S’12) story “Pretty Little Boxes” is now available in the Resurrection House anthology XIII edited by Mark Teppo.

Bruce Pratt (Fiction, S’04) has recently sung the US and Canadian anthems at UMaine men’s and women’s hockey and basketball games, and will sing them again at the opening ceremonies for US National Alpine Skiing Championships next month at Sugarloaf USA. Currently he’s playing the part of Harvey in Harvey’s Dream, a short film based on the Stephen King story of the same name being filmed in Bangor. He will be reading at the Poetry & Science Reading on Sunday, March 22, at 1:00 p.m. at The Rock & Art Shop, 38 Central St. in downtown Bangor, and again at the annual Poet’s Speak on April 4th in Bangor. He would also ask that anyone who has recently published a book that deals with sports—in the broadest sense—consider sending a copy for possible discussion on his weekly Sports Lit 101 segment on the Downtown with Rich Kimball Show heard in Eastern and Central Maine on WZON 620 AM on Wednesday at approximately 4:35 p.m. The station is also available on the web and on the free WZON app.

Tamie Parker Song (Creative Nonfiction, S’12; formerly Tamie Harkins) won second place for her essay “David the Green Dragon Goes to the Opera” in the Literal Latte essay competition. The essay can be read online here.

Gina Troisi (Creative Nonfiction, W’09) is happy to announce that her essay, “The Angle of Flickering Light,” was recently published in Fourth Genre‘s Spring 2015 issue (17.1). Her email is ginatroisi@yahoo.com.

The anthology Dumped: Stories of Women Unfriending Women is now available! This anthology, edited by Nina Gaby, contains the work of twenty-five women writers, including six Stonecoast students, alumnae, and faculty. The book explores “the fragile, sometimes humorous, and often unfathomable nature of lost friendship.” Stonecoasters included in the book are: Penny Guisinger (Creative Nonfiction, S’13), Kristabelle Munson (Fiction), Alexis Paige (Creative Nonfiction, S’14), Judith Podell (Fiction, ’06), Julie L. Vandekreke (Creative Nonfiction, S’10), and faculty member Elizabeth Searle. A selection of the SC contributors to the anthology will participate in a reading at the summer 2015 residency with books available for purchase. To hear editor Nina Gaby interviewed about the book on ListenUP! Talk Radio, click here.

STUDENTS

Kristabelle Munson (Fiction) won the title of The Flash at the Boskone Flash Fiction Slam. Kristabelle took first place and was invited to compete at the New Hampshire Institute of Art for the NH Writers’ Project Three-Minute Fiction Slam.

FACULTY

Blanvalet will publish the German edition of David Anthony Durham‘s (Fiction, Popular Fiction) final Acacia novel, The Sacred Band (Reiche Ernte), on March 16th.

Aaron Hamburger (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Popular Fiction) served as a judge for the Bethesda Magazine Fiction Contest.  Also, his Stonecoast-themed essay “How a Gay Guy from the City Found his Inner Rugged Country Boy in Snowy Maine” appeared on Matador.

On Wednesday, March 4th, at 7:30 p.m., The Provincetown Theater (238 Bradford Street, Provincetown, MA 02657 | 508-487-7487) will present a staged reading of Mike Kimball‘s play Best Enemies, the story two cowboys, lone survivors of a sabotaged rodeo cruise, who are marooned together on a tiny desert island. To preserve their sanity, they’ve invented imaginary geography and instituted a system of laws, but ultimately they go to war over their shared cowboy hat. As they rob each other of food and sleep, and their carefully constructed universe begins to unravel, each man faces his death and, in so doing, each begins examining his life. The Portland Phoenix called it “A sly, haunting, and remarkably fun new existential comedy.”

Poetry faculty members Eléna Rivera and Stephen Motika read in San Francisco March 22, 2015, at 5:00 p.m. at CCA Writers Studio, co-presented by the Poetry Center. The reading is a celebration of the work of Kathleen Fraser on her 80th birthday with participants including Bev Dahlen, Frances Richard, John Sakkis, Brenda Hillman, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Linda Russo, Brian Teare, Latasha Diggs, Eléna Rivera, Lauren Shufran, Stephen Motika, and Susan Gevirtz. Also, Eléna reads in New York on Wednesday, March 25, 2015, as part of “Collection Processed by Poets: Five Writers Respond to the Wagner Labor Archive”; other poets reading are John Keene, Robert Fitterman, Paolo Javier, and Johannah Rodgers. The reading is at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University, Bobst Library, 10th floor. The event is co-sponsored by Nightboat Books.

Mags Riordan, the subject of Suzanne Strempek Shea’s (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction) book This Is Paradise: An Irish Mother’s Grief, an African Village’s Plight and the Medical Clinic That Brought Fresh Hope to Both, is returning to New England in March for two weeks of talks. Riordan, a native of Ireland, ten years ago founded The Billy Riordan Memorial Clinic in Cape Maclear, Malawi, in memory of her son who drowned in Lake Malawi in 1999. The former high school guidance counselor now lives in the African nation and runs the clinic that has served more than 275,000 people in an area that previously had one doctor for 800,000 people. Since its publication last year, This Is Paradise has been featured in publications in the U.S. and Ireland, including the Boston Globe, Yankee magazine and The Irish Times. Copies of This Is Paradise and Shea’s ten other books will be available for sale and signing at all events, which are open to the public free of charge. Crafts from Cape Maclear also will be sold to benefit the clinic. Kelly’s Books to Go will be selling at both Maine events, so stop by and say hi to Kelly, too. The schedule:

March 19, 7:30 p.m., Cheshire United Methodist Church, 205 Academy Road, Cheshire, CT.
March 23, 6:00-7:30 p.m., Centerville Public Library, 585 Main St., Centerville, MA.
March 24, 7:00 p.m., Maine Irish Heritage Center, 34 Gray St., Portland, ME
March 25, 12:00-1:00 p.m., Wells Public Library, Route 1, Wells, ME
March 25, 7:00-8:30 p.m., West Springfield Public Library, 11 Main St., West Springfield, MA.
March 26, 7 p.m., Kingston Public Library, 6 Green St., Kingston, MA. With Marianne Leone.
March 27, dinner event, time TBA, Ludlow Country Club, Ludlow, MA.
March 28, 2:00 p.m., Sandwich Public Library, 142 Main St., Sandwich, MA.

For more information, visit www.suzannestrempekshea.com or write the author at sess7(at)comcast.net

Ted Deppe (Poetry, Coordinator of Stonecoast in Ireland) and Annie Deppe of Co. Galway, Ireland, were the visiting writers last month at Bay Path University in Longmeadow, MA, where Suzanne Strempek Shea is writer in residence. They spoke to and wrote with classes and gave a reading open to the public, and Ted gave a presentation on “Taking It All the Way to Coleman’s: On Abandoning the Good for the Marvelous” at the university’s eleventh Writers’ Day, February 14. Taking second prize for longest distance covered to get to Longmeadow was grad Penny Guisinger, who braved several of the many February snowstorms to drive from Lubec, ME, to present a Writers’ Day talk on “You Should Get a Grant for That! Applying for Funding to Support Your Writing—A Nuts and Bolts Approach.” Suzanne sends many thanks to all the Stonecoasters, past and present and including Stonecoast Ireland alums, who attended the events.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Stonecoast Review, a journal edited and produced by students at the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program, is now accepting submissions of literary fiction, pop fiction, nonfiction and poetry, for their third and fourth issues. Emerging and established writers welcome. (Deadline: APRIL 1st)