ATTENTION: ALUMNI

The 2017 Stonecoast Alumni Reunion Committee wants to hear from you! Led by co-chairs Penny Guisinger (Creative Nonfiction, S’13), Frank Ard (Popular Fiction, S’14), Peter Maskaluk (Fiction, ’13), Elli Meeropol (Fiction, W’06), and Mihku Anderson (Fiction, S’10), Stonecoast is excited to celebrate 15 years in the literary community. Please fill out this brief survey with your attendance and preferences: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/86MCNWV

♦

A message from the husband of Christine Tierney (Poetry, S’09), who is currently in need of a kidney.

Dear Family, Friends, and Universe,

Christine is a caring, generous, and beautiful person with probably the best sense of humor on the planet. She has been working with children for the past 23 years as an after school director. She is also a gifted poet, artist, and animal lover. But most of all, she is the absolute love of my life.

Eight years ago Christine was diagnosed with Polycystic Kidney Disease, (PKD). PKD is progressive and incurable. It causes clusters of cysts to grow inside the kidneys. As these cysts enlarge from fluid buildup, kidney failure can result. Unfortunately, Christine’s cysts are rapidly growing and her kidneys are losing function. She is now in need of a kidney transplant.

Christine was placed on the national kidney transplant list in August 2015, and is awaiting a deceased donor kidney, but this list is 80,000 names long, and the wait time for a deceased donor kidney is eight years or more. Christine is hoping for a transplant from a living donor because living donor kidneys have greater success rates than deceased donor kidneys, and nearly double the years of function. Through the living donation program, a healthy person can donate one of their kidneys and return to full health after a brief recovery.

I was tested to see if I am a match for Christine. Unfortunately, I am not. Both of Christine’s parents are now too old for organ donation. Finally, you may have read the article is The Boston Globe about a former Cambridgeport parent who was willing to donate and was a likely match, but has since been diagnosed with a medical condition that makes her an unsuitable donor.

So now we are casting our net wider, in hopes of finding someone who might be interested in donating a kidney to Christine. This would be a great gift to the both of us.

If you cannot do this, we understand perfectly. If you know anyone who might, please forward this letter widely. We are so grateful to you for passing it along to your family, friends, coworkers or classmates, congregation, or any other communities to which you belong. Also, please feel free to post this on all forms of social media.

If you would like to learn more about living kidney donation, please feel free to call me at (857) 334-9794 or email me at ljblanko@yahoo.com.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart,

Luis Julio Blanco

ALUMS

Eric M. Bosarge (Popular Fiction, W ’12) will present a seminar entitled “Archetypes and the Power of Attraction: Creating Dynamic Characters and Conflict in Fiction” to the Maine Romance Writers Association on October 8th.

Karen Bovenmyer (Popular Fiction, S’13) is proud to report she is now an official Affiliate Member of the Horror Writer’s Association (her sale to Gamut last month made her eligible and her application was accepted!). Two of her Halloween recipes “Mummy Calzones” and “Witches Wands” will appear in the next issue of the HWA newsletter with accompanying photos. She’s also excited her undead-grandmother-farm-guardian flash “On Rising One Snowy Evening” originally published in Parsec’s Triangulations: Beneath the Surface will be reprinted in Cosmic Shores and Eldritch Tales this fall. Furthermore, her science fiction romance poem “The Blind Elephants of Io” was selected for performance at Arachnae Press’s Shortest Day: Solstice Shorts Festival 2016 funded by the Arts Council of England, in Greenwich on Wednesday, December 21, and will be published in a subsequent anthology of collected writings accepted by the show—this poem won a Long Form Honorable Mention in the 2016 Science Fiction Poetry Association Contest. A reprint of Karen’s haunted house abduction micro fiction “So Normal and Unwritten” will appear in IronSoap.com’s 200CCs Issue #4 on October 7. Finally, Karen is thrilled to report she’s been asked to write an essay for Pseudopod Horror Podcast’s tenth anniversary Kickstarter.

Amy Burroughs (Creative Nonfiction, W’16) will have an essay published in the Fall issue of The Journal.

Kate Cone (Fiction, ’08) announces the publication of What’s Brewing in New England (Down East Books, Camden, ME), a guide to craft breweries in the six-state region. Kate’s first edition of What’s Brewing was published in 1997. After almost 20 years, Kate revisits the explosive New England beer scene with interviews, stories and descriptions of the beers. Available on Amazon.

For the second year in a row, a Penny Guisinger (Creative Nonfiction, S’13) essay has been named as a Notable in Best American Essays. This year, her piece “The Sound of Galton’s Whistle” (which won a Maine Literary Award and was nominated for a Pushcart) made the notables list; the piece was a Sunday Rumpus Essay in July 2015. Penny’s book, Postcards from Here, just received a glowing review at Tinderbox Poetry Journal. Here is an excerpt from the review: “… the postcards come to the reader as precious objects assembled in a gorgeous yet unruly box. Here, all at once, we experience the lived chaos of mind, marriage, children, body, and place. It is a truth, a difficult representation to achieve, and Guisinger does so with skill and grace. Postcards From Here reminds us that a postcard’s purpose is not memory or story, but to send a small piece of oneself as a memento, rather than a definitive record or missive.”

Andrea Lani‘s (Fiction, W’14) essay “Monarch Summers” appeared in the Spring-Autumn issue of Snowy Egret. She also had two essays published online this month: “The Big Night” at Coffee + Crumbs and “How I Went from Domestic to Wild” at Role Reboot.

Will Ludwigsen’s (Popular Fiction, W’11) story “The Leaning Lincoln” is appearing in the October/November 2016 double issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction; he describes the story as “an autobiographical journey into the psyche of a boy coming to terms with the absence of magical justice in the world.” He also sold his story “Night Fever” to Asimov’s, too, and it’s likely to appear later in 2017.

Alexis Paige‘s (Creative Nonfiction, S’14) essay “The Right to Remain,” published in The Rumpus in 2015, has been named a Best American Essays Notable in the 2016 anthology. In addition, Paige’s first book, Not a Place on Any Map, which won the 2016 Vine Leaves Press Vignette Collection Award, will be published December 5th by Vine Leaves Press. The book, a collection of lyric essays, will be available for pre-order in early November.

Lisa Romeo (Creative Nonfiction, S’08) was honored to learn that one of her essays was selected for the Notables Essays section of Best American Essays 2016. (The piece, “Not Quite Meet Cute,” originally appeared in the Spring 2015 issue of Blue Lyra Review.) Lisa’s essay, “On the Near Side of the Tracks,” appears in the current (Fall 2016) issue of Brevity.

Beyond Rain Man by Anne K. Ross (pen name for Creative Nonfiction, Winter ’07 graduate) is reviewed by Bunny Goodjohn (Poetry, W’07) in the current issue of Mom Egg Review; the book review can be found here. Also, Anne will be on a LitQuake “Politics of Parenting” panel in the San Francisco Bay Area on October 9. Other events listed at www.beyondrainman.com.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz‘s (Fiction, S’09) novel, In the Context of Love, is a 2016 Readers’ Favorite Book Award Finalist. That marks the third award for the book she worked on while at Stonecoast.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam‘s (Popular Fiction, S’13) short story “Everything Beneath You” has been reprinted in The Best of Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Year Seven. “He Came From a Place of Openness and Truth,” originally in Lightspeed, has been reprinted in Wilde Stories 2016.

Ashley K. Warren‘s (Fiction, S ’12) poem “Symptoms of a Brain Injury” was nominated by Easy Street for the 2016 Best of the Net anthology. Also, Ashley will serve as an artist in residence at the Billings Public Library in Billings, Montana, beginning in October. During her residency she will work with teen writers on the Letters to the Next President project, an initiative hosted by the National Writing Project, KQED, public media, and Educator Innovator partners.

Lindsey Wells (publishes as Lindsey Kemp; Creative Nonfiction, S’15) won the Empire Award (second place) in the New York Screenplay Contest for her New Girl spec script, “B.C.,” which she wrote as part of her third semester project under the guidance of the amazing Mike Kimball.

FACULTY

Jeanne Marie Beaumont’s (Poetry) new book of poetry, Letters from Limbo, will be launching this month from CavanKerry Press. Additional information can be found on Jeanne Marie’s website.

Aaron Hamburger‘s (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Popular Fiction) short story “Guiltless Pleasures” has been accepted for publication in Crazyhorse Magazine. Aaron’s essay “Edward Albee Was My Mailman,” a tribute to the late playwright who wrote Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and many others, is in The Millions. In other news, Aaron will be delivering a presentation on Drown by Junot Diaz for Hispanic Heritage Month at the DC Public Library. And last but not least, if you’re in the DC area and having trouble with writer’s block, come to Aaron’s two-session class at Politics & Prose Bookstore, Breaking Through Writer’s Block.

Elizabeth Hand (Fiction, Popular Fiction) just returned from a book tour in Sweden, where her novels Generation Loss and Available Dark (briefly) topped the bestseller list at #1 and #3 (the new Harry Potter was #4). In September, she’ll be featured at the National Book festival in Washington, DC, where she’ll be interviewed by NPR’s Maureen Corrigan, and will also appear at the Fall for the Book festival in Fairfax, Virginia. Recent reviews include Tama Janowitz’s memoir Scream for The Los Angeles Times and Nisi Shawl’s novel Everfair for The Washington Post.

As noted in a previous Community blog, October 1 will see the debut of two new works by Jim Kelly (Popular Fiction). His short play “Glitch” premieres as part of the Paragon Science Fiction and Fantasy Theater festival at the The Public House Theatre in Chicago. And his novelette “One Sister, Two Sisters, Three” will be published in the Tenth Anniversary Issue of Clarkesworld Magazine.

Mike Kimball’s (Popular Fiction, Scriptwriting) play The Secret of Comedy runs October 20-30 (Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30 p.m.; Sundays at 2:00 p.m.) at Mayo Street Arts, Mayo Street, Portland, ME. For more information and reservations, click here.

Debra Marquart’s (Creative Nonfiction, Poetry) lyric essay “Some Things About that Day” was featured in Becoming a Great Essayist, a twenty-four part online “Great Courses” lecture series taught by the literary scholar Jennifer Cognard-Black (2016). Her essay “The Microphone Erotic” was published in the anthology From Curlers to Chainsaws: Women Writers and Their Machines (Michigan State University Press, 2016), and her essay “When the Band Broke Up” was awarded the 2016 Alligator Juniper Nonfiction Prize and was published in Alligator Juniper, Issue XX, 2016. In July and August 2016, Debra was invited to complete a month long artist residency at Le Moulin à Nef, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts location in Auvillar, France. Working with the painter Thomas Rice, Debra worked on a collaborative research nonfiction project about the oil boom in her home state of North Dakota, entitled “The Future Eaters.”

Tickets are now on sale for the six-week Chicago run of Elizabeth Searle’s (Fiction, Popular Fiction, Scriptwriting) Tonya & Nancy: The Rock Opera; recent media coverage has included a Chicago Tribune piece that included the show on a Theater Preview list of “Tuneful Treats.” For ticket info, visit Theater Wit.