ANNOUNCEMENTS

Independent producer Mike Jacoby is looking to partner with a writer on a nonfiction book based on the dramatic life story of Mel Dwork, the first World War II veteran to have his discharge upgraded from “dishonorable” (initially given on the basis of his being gay) to “honorable.” Mike has audio interviews and other primary materials and is seeking a writing partner to discuss this potential project. For more information, contact Amy Burroughs (Creative Nonfiction, W’16) at amyeburroughs@gmail.com.

The Writers Conference of Northern Appalachia (WCoNA®), happening live in the Paris of Appalachia, Pittsburgh, PA, March 11-13, 2022, is accepting submissions for presentation proposals until November 9. The event features keynote speakers Lee Gutkind, Vanity Fair’s “Godfather behind creative nonfiction,” and Edgar Award-winning novelist Kathleen George. Participants will explore opportunities, challenges, and trends specific to writers of northern Appalachia through presentations, readings, craft sessions, and panel discussions. Founded by Stonecoast alum PJ Piccirillo (Fiction, S’04), WCoNA ’22 will take place at Duquesne University offering writers a place to gather for inspiration, further their craft, find support, and network.

ALUMS 

Peter Adrian Behravesh (Popular Fiction, W’18) appeared as part of Escape Artists first-ever audio drama, The Witching Hour. You can read all about it here, and listen to it on any of the Escape Artists podcasts.

Carina Bissett (Popular Fiction, S’18) is excited to announce Shadow Atlas: Dark Landscapes of the Americas, co-edited with Hillary Dodge and Joshua Viola and scheduled for release from Hex Publishers on November 30, 2021—buy from the publisher, eBook (Amazon), laminate hardcover (Amazon) and special edition hardcover (Barnes & Noble). This high-concept anthology (dark fantasy/horror) features the diverse voices of some of today’s most respected poets, writers, and artists. “There is an old saying that wisdom sits in places. Open an atlas across the Americas, and you will soon discover this knowledge hidden in fragments of shared memory marked on maps. The ancient peoples knew which areas to avoid, which spirits to appease. Later, invasive superstitions from far-flung countries seeded into the landscape. In order to survive, newcomers learned the cautionary tales and secret lore linked to the terrain. But not all paid heed to superstitions. These are their stories, each tale a new entry in the field guide to dark landscapes.” The paperback will be available March 2022. For more information, review requests, or interviews, please contact shadowatlas@hexpublishers.com.

J Brooke’s (Poetry, S’19) poem “Self-Portrait at Age 9 as Albert Cashier” was a finalist for the 2021 Gival Press Oscar Wilde award and is published in issue 153 of the Arlington Literary Journal (ArLiJo). J developed the poem while working with Cate Marvin (who suggested the poem’s title) while at Stonecoast.

A selection from Linda Buckmaster‘s (Creative Nonfiction, S’11) flash short story collection, Short Shorts. Boomer Women Tell Stories, was recently performed in a staged reading at the Footlights Theater in Falmouth, Maine, as part of the Littoraly Alive Series. The stories are monologues of a diverse group of American baby boomer women. The selection was published in the anthology North by Northeast 2 by Littoral Press earlier in the year. 

Elizabeth Garber (Creative Nonfiction, W’10) had an essay published by Salon adapted from her new book, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year, that she is currently pitching. Another chapter from Elizabeth’s new memoir titled “Brand New Roller Skates” (Remember Melanie’s 1971 hit song “Brand New Key”?) appeared in a debut issue of the literary journal kerning: the space between words, published by Toad Hall Editions in Northport, Maine. 

The second book in Eboni A. Harris’s (pen name E. Ardell; Popular Fiction, S’08) YA Science Fiction series Order’s Last Play will be released on Tuesday, November 2, 2021, by 48Fourteen Publishing. The Third Gambit can be purchased on Amazon in eBook format for $3.99. A print release date is soon to come and the third book in the series is underway. 

Natalie Harris-Spencer (Fiction, S’21) has three flash pieces forthcoming: “From Home,” which will appear in Bright Flash Literary Review; “Porch Swing,” selected for the Winter 2021 issue of The Dark Sire; and “The Art of Ironing,” which won the 2021 Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize and will appear in the Winter 2021 issue of Pulp Literature. These stories are connected by the theme of home and feature ghosts, cats, and mothers. More details to follow.

Rebecca Kightlinger‘s (Fiction, W’14) second novel, The Lady of the Cliffs, Book Two of The Bury Down Chronicles, was named a Distinguished Favorite by the Independent Press NYC Big Book Awards in two categories: historical fiction and cover art.

Andrea Lani (Fiction, W’14) is delighted to share the cover design for her forthcoming book, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking Toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail, which will be released by Bison Books in March 2022. To keep up with the latest publication news from Andrea and be entered in a monthly contest to win a print of artwork from the book, subscribe to Andrea’s newsletter here.

Alison McMahan (Popular Fiction, W’10) will be on the YA panel at Crimebake on November 13, 2021, at 10:30 a.m. in Dedham, MA. The panel title is YA Fiction: How Darling Are They Really? and will be moderated by agent and author Paula Munier, along with Beth Kanell, Emily Aresenault, and Dave Pasquantino. The full schedule is here. 

Nadja Maril’s (Fiction, W’20) flash fiction piece “Freedom” has been accepted for December 2lst publication in Sledgehammer Lit and her memoir piece “Love in the Kitchen” will be published by Pareidolia Literary in their November 19th issue. Read her compressed short story “Red Roses” in Thimble Literary Magazine’s Winter edition coming out in December.

John Christopher Nelson (Fiction, S’15) has two forthcoming pieces: a flash CNF work, titled “Epithalamium as Eulogy,” will be featured in Issue No. 7 of DUM DUM Zine; and John’s first Popular Fiction publication, “Russet,” will be in the forthcoming issue of BE ABOUT IT Zine. John and Jordan Robson’s new literary journal con(text) quarterly—with the help of Brady Thomas Kamphenkel (Poetry, S’15)—is currently reviewing submissions for its inaugural issue, themed “Endings.” They hope to have Issue 1 published by early ’22, when they will open the submission window for their second issue.   

Tarver Nova‘s (Popular Fiction, S’11) short story “Sentinel Crows” was published in the Autumn issue of Kaleidotrope.

Cristina Perachio (Fiction, S’14) has two recently published short stories. Her story “Green” has been published by Narrative Magazine and is currently available for a nominal donation as part of Narrative Backstage here. It will be available on Narrative Mainstage in the coming weeks. Cristina’s story “How to Be a Nanny” has been published in the Family Issue of Zyzzyva; it is available at your local bookstore or for online order here.

Bruce Pratt‘s (Fiction, S’04) poems “Sugarloaf December,” “Evening and Evening Again,” “Sugarloaf at Season’s End,” “Turning the Corner at the Brown Farm,” “Skating with the Eagle,” and “Cloud Skating” will appear in the next issue of Aethlon The Journal of the Sport Literature Association.

Patricia Smith (Poetry, S’08) won the $100,000 Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation of Chicago. Previous recipients include Joy Harjo, Lucille Clifton, Yusef Komunyakaa, Philip Levine, Marilyn Nelson and Adrienne Rich. [RS note: Such good news I had to share it twice]

Tamra Wilson (Fiction, S’11) is publishing a collection of essays from her local newspaper column, “A Ford in the Road,” written over the past six-plus years. Going Plaid in a Solid Gray World will be released by Red Hawk Press, an initiative of Catawba Valley Community College, in late October 2021. The book offers humorous looks at everyday life. Proceeds will benefit The Corner Table, a local soup kitchen/school backpack program, in Catawba County, NC.

FACULTY  

Faith Adiele’s (Creative Nonfiction) review of the new art exhibition, “Mothership: Voyage Into Afrofuturism,” that marks the reopening of the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA), was published in Hyperallergic. She also participated in a panel, “Should I get an MFA?,” as part of the annual Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival and served as the judge for the 2021 Hal Prize in Nonfiction for the Peninsula Pulse and Write On, Door County in Wisconsin. 

Aaron Hamburger (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) was awarded a Humanities Fellowship Award from the DC Commission for the Arts on the basis of a selection from his novel Nirvana Is Here.

Elizabeth Hand (Popular Fiction, Fiction) appeared at the Library of Congress’s (virtual) National Book Festival, in conversation with novelist Alex Michaelides and NPR’s Petra Mayer. She has joined the masthead of literary magazine Conjunctions as Contributing Editor. A new short story, “Fo Sale by Owner,” appears in the just-published Shirley Jackson tribute anthology When Things Get Dark.  Her 2015 novel Wylding Hall was featured in The Wall Street Journal and Jezebel.  Forthcoming reviews include Little Sister: My Investigation into the Mysterious Death of Natalie Wood, for The Washington Post.

Debra Marquart (Creative Nonfiction, Poetry) has been awarded a Poets Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poetry for her work at the Poet Laureate of the state of Iowa. The 2021 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowships are $50,000 awards given to honor poets of literary merit appointed to serve in civic positions and to enable them to undertake meaningful, impactful, and innovative projects that engage their fellow residents, including youth, with poetry, helping to address issues important to their communities. On Sunday, September 12, Debra and Mark Vinz joined Pulitzer-prize winning writer Louise Erdrich for a moderated conversation about how a sense of place inspires their work. The online event, hosted by Humanities North Dakota, was free and open to the public. In other news, NDSU Press has published Debra Marquart’s recent book, The Night We Landed on the Moon.

Advance Praise: Fans of Debra Marquart’s landmark memoir, The Horizontal World, will rejoice over the publication of The Night We Landed on the Moon—shapeshifting essays that travel from the blizzardy Midwest to sweltering Siberia, from a flooding Michigan basement to the panic-inducing Paris Catacombs, from her life as a rebellious farmer’s daughter to hard rock musician to professor and poet laureate. Every page is full of story and insight, laced with wit, as Marquart meditates on the hungers of home and wanderlust, the way her Germans-from-Russia family is “preserved in their hyphenations,” the poetic strangeness of basketball, the insidiousness of fracking boomtowns, and the ironies of a nostalgia called heimat. The individual essays are astonishing, the collection as a whole profound.” ~K. L. Cook, author of Marrying Kind and The Art of Disobedience

Morgan Talty‘s (Fiction Faculty | Fiction, W’19) essay “Belongings” has been published by Decor Maine and can be read here.