ANNOUNCEMENTS

THE BOSTON POETRY MARATHON

The Boston Poetry Marathon is back again for 2022, from August 5-7, and this year is a special hybrid event. Saturday and Sunday will be in-person at our 2019 venue, the Community Church of Boston in Copley Square. Friday will be online only. The entire event will be streamed to the Boston Poetry Marathon YouTube and Facebook channels as well. The three-day summertime poetry starts at 5:00 p.m. on Friday night and ends in the evening on Sunday. 

Bridget Eileen (Poetry, Winter ’09) returns as artistic director for the sixth year in a row. Other former Stonecoasters participating include Jessica de Koninck (Poetry, W’11) and Christine Tierney (Poetry, S’09) for alums, and Dennis Nurkse for faculty. 

Over 100 poets will be reading, including Charles Coe, Dorothea Lasky, Lloyd Schwartz, and Stephanie Burt, among many other notable participants. 

Admission is free and open to the public, with a suggested donation of $10+ to the fundraiser. This year’s fundraiser proceeds will go to two local organizations that support abortion access and promote reproductive justice: the Eastern Massachusetts Abortion Fund and The Womxn Project. Any poets interested in participating can contact thebostonpoetrymarathon@gmail.com. We may not have spots left for this year, but we are always happy to receive new people to invite for this annual invite. Please send us a BRIEF email to let us know: 1) more about you as a poet and your interest in the Boston Poetry Marathon (mention that you are a member of the Stonecoast community, too!); 2) how to pronounce your name; 3) your pronouns.

Full details here.

THE STONECOAST REVIEW

Via Editor-in-Chief Caite McNeil (Creative Nonfiction): Stonecoast Review is open for submissions! We encourage current students and alumni to consider submitting their work. We will consider reprinting previously published work of alumni only. Our website is updated weekly and features authors and artists from Issue 17.

Please also consider purchasing our most recent issue from Kelly’s Books to Go and don’t forget to follow us on social media: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook

ALUMS 

Alexandra Basekic (pen name: Alexandra Oliver; Poetry, W’12) successfully defended her Ph.D. dissertation at McMaster University in May of this year. Her third trade collection, Hail, The Invisible Watchman (Biblioasis) was released in April of this year and was recently reviewed in Quill and Quire and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Alexandra will begin teaching at The University of Toronto this fall.

Peter Adrian Behravesh‘s (Popular Fiction, W’18) interactive novel, Heavens’ Revolution: A Lion Among the Cypress (Choice of Games), is now available on Steam for wishlisting. The box art (by Iranian-American illustrator Darya Bajestani) has also been revealed (see below). Heavens’ Revolution will be released in 2023. In addition, Peter is a finalist for the British Fantasy Award for Best Audio for his work as the audio producer of the fantasy-fiction podcast PodCastle, alongside former co-editors C.L. Clark and Jen R. Albert, former assistant editor/host Setsu Uzumé, current co-editors Eleanor R. Wood and Shingai Njeri Kagunda, and all of PodCastle‘s fabulous associate editors. The winners will be announced at FantasyCon in September.

Shannon Bowring (Fiction, W’22) is thrilled to announce that her flash fiction piece “Dirty Shirley” was selected by Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, as one of 25 winners in the Fractured Lit Anthology Prize. Another flash piece, “Cement Mixer,” was featured in the March 2022 edition of Flash Frontier. Shannon would also like to invite any Stonecoaster, past or present, to join the virtual writing workshop she co-hosts every second Tuesday of the month through Patten Free Library. This generative workshop is free to attend, but registration is required.

Jennifer Marie Brissett (Popular Fiction, S’11) will have her story “A Song for You” reprinted in the anthology Terraform: Watch/Worlds/Burn (MCD x FSG Originals) which is now available for preorder. She will also be appearing on a panel for the book launch at P&T Knitwear in NYC on August 26th.

J Brooke (Poetry, S’19) wrote an essay on assignment published in Electric Lit, “My Earliest Self Is a Boy Who Wasn’t Treated Like a Boy.”

Linda Buckmaster‘s (Creative Nonfiction, S’11) essay on the connections between North American salt cod and Caribbean sugar plantations was published in Working Waterfront, a publication of the Island Institute. The essay is excerpted from her new book, Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands, a hybrid of story, essay, and poetry. Linda will be reading from her book on Sunday, August 14, at 7:30 p.m. at the Bayside Community Center (Northport, ME) as part of the Bayside Arts series. She’ll be joined by Elizabeth Garber (Creative Nonfiction, W’10).

Amy Burroughs (Creative Nonfiction, W’16) has a flash nonfiction piece forthcoming in Watershed Review.

Anthony D’Aries’s (Creative Nonfiction, W’09) short story “Girls Night,” which appeared in the summer issue of South 85, was recently nominated for the Best of the Net anthology. Anthony was also awarded tenure and promoted to Associate Professor in the Writing and Literature Department at Western Connecticut State University.

Jennifer Dupree (Fiction, W’15) recently won a Maine Literary Award for her essay “Care and Keeping.” The essay is part of a collection Jen has been working on about her long and beautiful friendship with a man who happens to have Cerebral palsy. The essay was previously published in Solstice and can be read here. And this month, Jen has another essay from the same project, titled “(Re)Creation,” in December. 

Melody Fuller (Creative Nonfiction, S’12) was recently interviewed by Chastity Cooper for Wine Enthusiast Magazine: “‘Without My Integrity, I Am Nothing’: 5 Questions with Melody Fuller.”

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez’s (Poetry, W’08) choreopoem In the Name of Forgotten Women enjoyed a sold-out run at CoHo Productions in Portland, Oregon from March 31-April 17. Dramatizing poetry with live music, movement and projection, this work of activist theatre explores the global oppression and resilience of women in 15 countries. For more information, contact Cindy at cindy@grito-poetry.com.

Alan King (Poetry, W’13) wrote and directed his first mini-documentary, Sing the Heart of the Magic: A Jennifer L. Nelson Story. This commission—which came from Marilyn Nelson, 2009 Stonecoast MFA visiting faculty—was initially supposed to be an oral history project to preserve and share her sister’s legacy. Jennifer is a two-time Helen Hayes Award-winner who empowered people in the margins and transformed a coalition of artists into a full-producing theater company. She also launched careers while being a pioneer in hip-hop theater. Alan thanks Marilyn for trusting him to tell Jennifer’s story and for allowing him to expand the project to a mini-documentary that features actors, directors, and theater runners talking about Jennifer’s impact on the DC theater scene. Watch the mini-documentary here.  

Andrea Lani (Fiction, W’14) is delighted to share that her essay “Alligator Pear” appeared in issue 5 of Stonecrop Review in June and her essay “Five Hundred Miles” was reprinted in Volume 4 of Deep Wild: Writing from the Backcountry in July. She was also interviewed for a profile titled “There’s Always a Way through: A Conversation with Andrea Lani” for the July/August issue of Literary Mama. Finally, she had a trio of articles celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Clean Water Act published in this year’s Green & Healthy Maine Summer Guide.

Nadja Maril’s (Fiction, W’20) flash creative nonfiction essay, “The Joy of Baking a Cake” has been selected by guest editor Debra Stone for publication in the “Follow Your Joy” themed issue in Random Sample Review, release date mid-August. Another piece of Creative Nonfiction flash, “Growing Cilantro,” will be appearing in the August issue of Anti-Heroin Chic.

Laura Navarre (Popular Fiction, W’11) released her steamy MMMMF dark witch academy reverse harem standalone Gemini Queen on July 26 for Ascendant Press. The book hit #1 on the Amazon category bestseller list during its debut week and launches a new series of sexy witchy standalones that tie into Laura’s award-winning Astral Heat Romance Series.

Tarver Nova (Popular Fiction, S’11) had his fantasy flash “The Tempest in the Glasswork” published in Daily Science Fiction on July 28.

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21)has new poems out in Star*Line, Kaleidotrope, Coffin Bell, and Utopia SF. She recently returned from the Once and Future Fantasies Conference in Glasgow, where she presented on Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. On August 10, she will be reading her story “Void’s Mouth” (Fusion Fragment #11) on Story Hour.

Jacob Strunk’s (Fiction, W’07) short story “Judgment”—a cheerful ode to self-care by way of arcana in the era of puritanical late capitalism—appears in the latest Coffin Bell [vol. 5 no. 3]. Read it under a warm light in a dark room; share it with someone you used to love. Find it here and follow @sevenmileswest on the socials.

Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam‘s (Popular fiction, S’13) debut story collection, Where You Linger & Other Stories, came out from Vernacular Press in July.

Olive L. Sullivan (Fiction/Poetry, S’15) has a new book of poetry, Skiving Down the Bones, forthcoming from Meadowlark Books. The date of publication has not yet been set, but should be some time in 2023. She has also been performing her poetry with her band, Amanita, most notably headlining at the Heartland Pagan Festival near Kansas City over Memorial Day weekend. Her short dramatic monologue, “The Pocket Guide to Desert Survival,” was performed in October of 2021 at the Power of Words Conference in Santa Fe (online), and she is currently at work expanding it into a full-length performance piece. Olive’s essay “Souvenirs for My Father” was published in issue #2 of 105 Meadowlark Reader in Fall 2021.

Malissa (Kent) Webber (Popular Fiction, S’12) was recently profiled on her employer’s intranet and external blog. She was the 100th employee featured in the “Cool Jobs, Cool People” series about Weyerhaeuser employees and is normally the one spotlighting other employees, not being spotlighted! Her Stonecoast education was a big part of why she was hired as Internal News Editor five years ago. 

FACULTY  

Aaron Hamburger‘s (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) short story is now available to read online in Image. Titled “I Know Where I’m Going,” it’s about a victim of American gun violence traveling in Morocco, and it explores the question of what it means to be Jewish, as well as what it means to be human during these fraught days.

Robert Levy (Popular Fiction) has two new stories out: “The Closet Game” in the July 2022 issue of Nightmare Magazine (you can read it online here), as well as “Ceremonials” in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.

Elizabeth Searle (Fiction, Popular Fiction, Scriptwriting) has a new short story—“The Mask of the Red Death”—in the Summer 2022 Woven Tale Press. She is co-teaching, with the wonderful Suzanne Strempek Shea, an intensive workshop on FLASH/short-form writing—in which students will be guided through writing first drafts of Flash pieces in several genres, including fiction and script—on September 9th at Breena Clarke’s Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers (contact the Hobart Festival here). In Movie News: I’ll Show You Mine, the feature film Elizabeth co-wrote, which screened at three film festivals in June, was featured in an article in Imagine Magazine, a magazine for the New England film community, and also was reviewed in The Art Fuse, which wrote, “You can’t look away, and no one in the audience did, as the leads flirt and feint, drink and toke, battle to hide their own wellsprings of shame while strip-mining for the other’s most desperate secrets.”

Morgan Talty’s (Fiction Faculty | Fiction, W’19) highly anticipated debut Night of the Living Rez (A New York Times, The Boston Globe, Vulture, Boston.com, Daily Beast, Esquire, Cosmopolitan, and Good Housekeeping Best Book of Summer and a Most Anticipated Book of the Year at LitHub, Book Riot, and Paste) is a finalist for The New England Book Award as well as a New York Times Editors Choice selection.