ALUMS 

Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) memoir The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating was noted in The New York Times article by Margaret Roach, “Where to Find Comfort in a World of Invasive Headlines?” and listed as one of Sy Montgomery’s six favorite books for animal lovers in The Book List in The Week. Also, Amit R. Baishya, Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of English, University of Oklahoma, has just published an academic paper on Elisabeth’s book in LIT: Literature Interpretation Theory; the 21-page paper is titled “Gastropods, Viruses, and Deep Time in The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.”

Peter Adrian Behravesh (Popular Fiction, W’18) has joined his coworkers in calling for Seven Seas Entertainment senior management to recognize their union, the United Workers of Seven Seas. If this happens, Seven Seas will become the first unionized publisher of manga and light novels in North America. You can show your support and solidarity by following UW7S on Twitter or by taking any of the other actions on the UW7S website. The union is NOT calling for a strike or a boycott at this time.

In addition to struggling over her novel manuscript, Kathy Briccetti (Creative Nonfiction, W’07) is growing her photography business and specializing in author portraits. Inspired by Beowolf Sheehan’s work on the east coast, she is making portraits in the studio and on location. West Coast writers and visitors are welcome to update their headshots here in sunny, drought-ridden Northern California! Check out what she’s been doing here. 

KT Bryski (Popular Fiction, W’16) has two stories out this month: “What Cats (and Dragons) Do” appears in CatsCast, and “In the Stillness of Bone and Sea” appears in the final issue (for now) of Lackington’s Magazine.

Amy Burroughs (Creative Nonfiction, W’16) has an essay, “Luddites and the Next Frontier,” forthcoming in Solstice.

Brenda Cooper‘s (Fiction, S’17) story “Out of Ash” came out at Slate.com on May 28th. The story was developed in concert with Future Tense and the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination, and edited by Ed Finn. Brenda explores a future where flooding and sea level rise have forced the relocation of a major city, with some unexpected difficulties along the way.

Aimee Degroat (Fiction, S’21) received an honorable mention in L Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future contest under the pseudonym AJ Newsom for her story “Time for a Cut.” Also, Stonecoast Review issue 14—co-edited by Aimee and Katrina Ray-Saulis (Fiction, W’21)—published the poem “To Cigarettes” by Nancy Connors, which they nominated for a Pushcart Prize. It won! This is great news for the writer and the journal!

Elizabeth Garber’s (Creative Nonfiction, W’10) essay “Upstairs-Downstairs on MDI” was recently published in Maine Homes by Down East, describing her life-changing summer of 1976 as a hippie college drop-out “in service” as the upstairs maid and second cook at an old summer estate on “the island.” 

Natalie Harris-Spencer‘s (Fiction, S’21) personal essay “Cracks,” a contemplation on her U.S. visa petition and the “special relationship” between the U.K. and America, has been published in Hobart.

Andrea Lani (Fiction, W’14) was thrilled to have her essay “Stay Together, Learn the Flowers, Go Light” published by The Art of Everyone in May. It’s a meditation on the Gary Snyder poem “For the Children” in the context of long-distance hiking and the current state of the world. She also wrote the From the Editor letter for the May/June issue of Literary Mama, where she’s a senior editor and which is always open to quality submissions. She’ll be reading from her recently published memoir, Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail, at the Stonecoast alumni reading on June 29th.

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) is happy that the teeny-weenie micro piece “Little Peeper” that she read at her first Stonecoast Open Mic in Portland found a home in Vine Leaves Press’s 50 Give or Take.

Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) has opened registration for her 5-week online Zoom class Memoir 101: Writing the Stories of Your Life. Current students report that her classes have enabled them to establish a regular writing practice, find their voice, face their demons, and get out of stuck places in their writing and lives. Murray sees in all of this proof of her conviction that writing heals and empowers. The icing on the cake for her and them is witnessing the dramatic improvement in the quality of their writing over the course of the series, so much so that a number of them have had their writing published for the first time. 

Suri Parmar (Popular Fiction, W’17) recently helped studio-produce and cast the second season of Futurists, a video docu-series for In The Know by Yahoo. The first of the episodes launched in May and the remainder will be released until mid-July this year. Suri was also selected for CineFAM Limitless, a program which provides development support for mid-level media professionals with a feature film concept. Her awarded project is a fantasy script she wrote while being mentored by James Patrick Kelly and Elizabeth Hand at the Stonecoast MFA Program. Additionally, her short story “Up the Rabbit Hole” was published in HASH Journal earlier this year.

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21)has new poems and stories out in Fireside Magazine, PodCastle, Apparition Lit, Wrongdoing Magazine, On Spec, Ligeia Magazine, Pyre Magazine, Eye to the Telescope, Solarpunk Magazine, Tree And Stone, and Scribes *MICRO*. She is thrilled to announce that her debut speculative poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, has been acquired by Android Press to be published in Spring 2023.

The Sonder Press, which publishes an annual Best Small Fictions anthology, has selected sid sibo’s (aka sidney woods, Fiction W’19) story “Permeable” for its 2022 collection. Orca published that story as well as a second sibo submission in its Summer 2021 issue.

Kevin St. Jarre‘s (Popular Fiction, S’10) essay “Don’t Flip the Ployes,” which appears in the anthology Breaking Bread (Beacon Press, May 2022), has been accepted by Le Forum, a Franco-American journal published through the University of Maine.

Jacob Strunk’s (Fiction, W’07) new story “Someday We Will See Each Other for the Last Time” appeared in May’s Flash Fiction Magazine. It is exactly as cheery as you’d expect. 

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam‘s (Popular Fiction, S’13) debut story collection Where You Linger & Other Stories is forthcoming from Vernacular Press in July, and her debut horror novella Glorious Fiends is forthcoming from Underland in September.

Olive L. Sullivan (Fiction/Poetry, S’15) and her band Amanita headlined at the Heartland Pagan Festival over the Memorial Day weekend. Olive performs her poetry with the band, as well as playing various percussion instruments. The group’s videos are available on YouTube and music is on Bandcamp.

The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on in Island in Maine, the first book by Robin Clifford Wood (Creative Nonfiction, S’15), was published a year ago. Last week, The Field House won two Maine Literary Awards: it was the winner in the nonfiction category and a co-recipient of the John N. Cole award for Maine-based nonfiction. So she has a lot to celebrate!

FACULTY  

Faith Adiele’s (Creative Nonfiction) latest art review for Hyperallergic covers the annual showcase of Black womxn visual artists at SOMArts Cultural Center in San Francisco in “Enter the Universe of Black Womxn Artists in the Bay Area.” She also wrote a feature profile for Okay Africa about a globally-acclaimed South Africa photographer in “Lebohang Kganye’s Ever-Evolving Journey Across Memory and Medium.” This summer, she travels to writing residencies at Write On, Door County in Wisconsin and CourCommune in France.

JJ Amaworo Wilson‘s (Fiction, Popular Fiction) novel Nazaré won an Independent Publisher’s award for LGBT+ fiction, has been named a Foreword INDIES finalist, and has been nominated for the William Saroyan International Prize.

Susan Conley’s (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) essay “Norway Pines” appeared in the May issue of Downeast Magazine. Her essay “7-11 Love” appeared in the Breaking Bread anthology published in May be Beacon Press. Susan will appear at the Union Church’s 21st Annual Speaker Series, Biddeford Pool, on August 14th, at 7:00 p.m. And she will lead a mixed-genre Writing Workshop at the Maine Media Workshops September 5-10.

John Florio (Creative Nonfiction, Popular Fiction Faculty | Fiction/Popular Fiction, S’07) has two historical novels, Sugar Pop Moon and Blind Moon Alley, being re-released as crime classics in the coming months. His first YA book, War in the Ring: Joe Louis, Max Schmeling and the Fight Between America and Hitler, is going into its second printing and will be released in paperback. He is also in the midst of a two-book YA deal with Macmillan. The first, DOOMED: Sacco, Vanzetti, and the End of the American Dream, is due out this October. The second, Marked Man: Frank Serpico and the Price of Being an Honest Cop, will be out in 2023. This fall, he’ll begin his doctoral studies in creative writing with the University of Glasgow. His academic research will focus on sports fiction of the 1950s.

Aaron Hamburger‘s short story “I Know Where I’m Going” will be published in Image Art Journal‘s summer issue #113.

Elizabeth Hand’s (Popular Fiction, Fiction) 2016 novel Wylding Hall has been optioned by UK’s Catalyst Media Group for a film.  Her forthcoming novel, Hokuloa Road, received a starred review from Booklist and is on Crimeread’s list of this summer’s most anticipated novels. Her short story “Kronia” appears in the new anthology Someone in Time, and her collection The Best of Elizabeth Hand is a finalist for the Locus Award. Elizabeth’s recent reviews include Vaishnavi Patel’s feminist take on the Ramayana, Kaikeyi, for The Washington Post. She will be an instructor at The Writer’s Hotel (via Zoom) and can’t wait to see everyone in person at Stonecoast’s summer residency!

Elizabeth Searle has more Movie News: A brand new feature film script she wrote, Lock Her Up, made the initial finalist list in the ongoing Stage 32 Female-Driven Script competition. Also, I’ll Show You Mine, the completed feature film she co-wrote, is screening next at the Provincetown International Film Festival on Cape Cod. This film that Elizabeth wrote with David Shields & Tiffany Louquet (produced by Duplass Brothers Productions, starring Poorna Jagannathan & Casey Thomas Brown) is described by the Provincetown Film Festival catalog thus: “This engaging tête-à-tête involves two dynamic characters digging into previously uncharted territory and somehow finding their way out.” Finally, Elizabeth is proud to be one of six writers who have formed Writers For, a fundraising group who were written up in New England Literary News in The Boston Globe on May 27th and whose previous efforts successfully raised funds for the Equal Justice Initiative, Planned Parenthood, and more.

Morgan Talty’s (Fiction Faculty | Fiction, W’19) debut Night of the Living Rez (July 5th, 2022) is continuing to receive pre-publication praise with a Starred Review from Publishers Weekly and has been included on several Best Summer Read lists, most notably The New York Times’ “What Should I Read This Summer?” To pre-order, visit morgantalty.com.