ANNOUNCEMENTS

CLIFFORD ROYAL JOHNS (POPULAR FICTION, W’18)

Cliff’s wife, Barbara Johns, wanted to share this sad news with the Stonecoast community:

Cliff got ill at the end of April and died of liver cancer June 23. He was never in pain, but he quickly lost over 50 pounds, was weak, and did not want visitors. He was hospitalized most of the time, and then died on his third night at hospice.

Someone dog-sat for us for the final weeks so I could stay with Cliff at the hospital and hospice, only coming home to take showers. One of his brothers came out the last Monday, and Cliff died on a Friday night. His brother and I were holding Cliff’s hands. Cliff did not want a service. His ashes were scattered at his mom’s farm in Pennsylvania. His family wants to pay to publish the rest of Cliff’s novels.

His University of Southern Maine email address will probably be canceled by the university. I’ll be checking his other email addresses occasionally, but if anyone wants to write to me directly, my address is here.

I’m glad he retired ten years ago at age 55. He really enjoyed his post-retirement life as a writing student and as a professional writer. Stonecoast enriched his final years. Your friendship, dinners, classes, feedback, and discussions made him very happy. I’m glad he found such a great group of friends, mentors and peers at Stonecoast. 

BLACK RAM STOPPED! CELEBRATE AND THANK YOU!

Dear Stonecoast Community,

Greatest news! We stopped the horrific Black Ram timber sale in Northwest Montana’s  Yaak Valley. You stopped it! After seven years, we can pause for a moment and be so very grateful. They’ll be back–not until we have it permanently protected as a Climate Refuge can we rest easy–but we can definitely celebrate! Your letters to Representative Pingree and other members of Maine’s delegation helped buy us enough time in Montana to assemble incontrovertible evidence that the U.S. Forest Service was willfully avoiding the best available science. You bought our field crew time to document the agency’s myriad failures at protecting grizzly bears; the judge ruled against the government on six of seven counts. (The seventh count was dismissed on a procedural technicality.) 

Many of you were watching the landmark Children’s Trust court case, also in Montana, which set incredible legal precedent by agreeing that children have a right to a clean environment. Similarly, the Black Ram decision  sets climate precedent, directing the U.S. Forest Service to do an in-depth carbon assessment of any proposed logging project on public land. 

Our work is not done – we still need to designate Black Ram as the nation’s first climate refuge — the first in a circumpolar “Curtain of Green,” to crib from Eudora Welty: a loosely-linked series of climate refuges traveling through the northern latitudes all around the world. Forest defense is climate defense.

Also: on October 15, the Yaak Valley Forest Council, along with The Montana Project and the Maine-based Protect Ancient Forests, will be hosting the inaugural Climate Aid–featuring the sacred Black Ram guitar! Tickets will go on sale September 7 at the Merrill Auditorium. Terry Tempest Williams and Bill McKibben will be speaking, among others, and there will be an incredible music lineup! Tickets will go fast and will be old school in-line!

Earlier this year, poet laureate, Ada Limon (many of you will remember her joyous Zoom reading, back in the heart of the pandemic—Thanks, Justin! ) (For the introduction to Ada, not the pandemic.) She wrote a lovely poem about her walk in Black Ram, which goes live in The Atlantic September 6th!

Political courage and leadership should be rewarded. Please write Representative Pingree expressing your gratitude, and support her on the journey ahead. Thank you all from the heart of the ancient inland rainforests of the Yaak!

https://pingree.house.gov/contact/

Thank you!

For a wild Yaak—

Rick Bass

The Montana Project

and 

Yaak Valley Forest Council 

ALUMS 

Sarah C. Baldwin’s (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) profile of musicologist Christina Linsenmeyer appeared in the summer 2023 issue of Colgate magazine. 

Melanie Brooks‘ (Creative Nonfiction, W’15) memoir, A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith When HIV/AIDS Changes It All , will be released on September 12, 2023, by Vine Leaves Press and is available for pre-order. Melanie has an exciting book tour schedule planned for the fall, and will be joining “In Conversation” with some current and former Stonecoast faculty members and alums along the way: 

• September 12 at 6:30 p.m. in Nashua, NH, at the Nashua Country Club:  Book Launch Celebration with Suzanne Strempek Shea
• September 21 at 7:00 p.m. in Lovell, ME, at the Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library: In Conversation with Jennifer Dupree (W’15)
• September 28 at 7:00 p.m. in Portland, ME, at Print: A Bookstore: In Conversation with Susan Conley
• October 2 at 7:00 p.m. in Northampton, MA, at Broadside Books: In Conversation with Suzanne Strempek Shea
• October 3 at 5:30 p.m. in Bath, ME, at the Patten Free Library: In Conversation with Susan Conley
• October 5 at 7:00 p.m. in Norwich, VT, at the Norwich Bookstore: In Conversation with Baron Wormser
• October 12 at 6:00 p.m. in Beverly, MA, at Copper Dog Books: In Conversation with Richard Hoffman
• October 18 at 7:00 p.m. in Bethesda, MD, at the Writer’s Center: In Conversation with Aaron Hamburger

Darcy Casey‘s (Fiction, S’19) short story was a finalist for Mississippi Review’s 2023 prize and is available to read in their summer issue. She’s also spending five weeks as a resident this summer at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation, where she is working to unite several mediums into one art form—just as they should have been years ago.

Amy Dempsey’s (Creative Nonfiction, W’21) essay on finding humanity in a digital world was published in Electric Literature.

Thanks to the ingenuity and community-building work of alumna Penny Guisinger (Creative Nonfiction, S’13) and her Iota Short Forms Conference, Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) met award-winning poet Sarah Carson in Lubec last fall. This September Sarah and Catharine will be joining forces to teach Little Frankensteins: A Hybrid Prose/Poetry Online Workshop. This class of ten or fewer students will use the workshop process to mine early-stage work for further growth and exploration, using four different short forms as container and inspiration.

David Healey (Popular Fiction, S’07) completed his fifth year as co-chair of the Purdue Global Literary Festival and is planning for next summer’s event. His creative nonfiction piece “The Haunted Mug” appeared in the summer issue of The Gauge, Purdue Global’s literary journal.

Gail Hovey (Creative Nonfiction, S’11) was pleased to be interviewed for The Third Age, a blog exploring the lives of late middle aged and older women who are reflecting on What’s really important?

Veda Boyd Jones (Fiction, S’17) sold a short mystery to Woman’s World, which will hit checkout stands on September 15th.

Andrea Lani (Fiction, W’14) is delighted to announce that her essay “Faith in a Seed” has been reprinted in the anthology Rooted 2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, published in August by Outpost19.

Alan King (Poetry, W’13) is thrilled to have completed two documentaries this year—one about America’s affordable housing crisis and the other about a DC agency’s three-decade-long lawsuit journey. His award-winning documentary, Sing the Heart of the Magic: A Jennifer L. Nelson Story, is now an Official Selection at the North Beach American Film Festival. It focuses on Jennifer L. Nelson, whose sister is the renowned poet Marilyn Nelson. Marilyn was a visiting faculty member at the 2009 Stonecoast MFA program. You can watch the documentary here. 

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) has an essay, “Belly,” in the forthcoming anthology Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness (October 27, 2023). Pre-order here. Nina’s memoir manuscript, Body: My Life in Parts (where each chapter is named for a body part), is out on submission. “Belly” is one of several adapted chapters published in various journals and anthologies.

Nadja Maril (Fiction, W’20) is pleased to share with the Stonecoast Community that she will be the Creative Nonfiction Guest Editor for the winter edition of the online literary magazine Instant Noodles. The theme for the upcoming Holidays/Winter issue is “Cooold Turkey.” Submissions are currently open through Duosuma and will close on October 15th. Instant Noodles Literary Magazine, part of Devil’s Party Press Ltd., only publishes short work and poetry by writers over the age of forty. (Be prepared to upload your driver’s license) All prose submissions should be related to the theme and less than 500 words. For submission information click here.

Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) will be teaming up with award-winning poet and writing teacher Sarah Carson, author of How to Baptize a Child in Flint, Michigan (2022) to teach Little Frankensteins, a five-week online poetry/prose hybrid workshop on the short form starting September 22nd. Sarah and Catharine met at the 2022 Iota Short Form Writing Conference founded by Stonecoast’s own Penny Guisinger. 

John Christopher Nelson‘s (Fiction, S’15) micro-memoir “Ephemeral Piss & Vinegar on Route 95” will be published in the October issue of The Blotter. 

Jenny O’Connell (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) is thrilled to be teaching Writing the Creative Magazine Feature at Maine Media College, September 25-29th! Join her in mid-coast Maine for a deep dive into the heart of crafting enthralling prose for magazine publication. Compelling features are driven by passion, character, and action. They engage the senses, dropping the reader boldly into the story. They have a tight angle and a strong hook. And they tap into something bigger than all of us. In this generative workshop, writers will develop an idea into a full-blown piece, polish it with peer and instructor feedback, and leave with an understanding of the craft of magazine writing and next steps for pitching a publication.

Anne Britting Oleson‘s (Poetry, W’05) novel Aventurine on the Bailgate will be published by Encircle Publications on September 20th. This is the second in the Aventurine Morrow series, and Anne’s seventh novel; her sixth, a Maine novel entitled The Springs, came out in March. Anne will be reading from and discussing her books on Saturday, September 30th, at the Southport Memorial Library.  

Alexandra Oliver (Poetry, Winter 2012) received her PhD in English from McMaster University in November, 2022. She begins teaching in OCAD University’s Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program in Toronto this September.

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21) will be paneling and signing her collection at Can*Con next month (October 13-15) in Ottawa! She hopes to see many fellow Stonecoast alumni there. In November, she will be participating in the Virtual International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts as an invited creative.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz (Fiction, S’09) has three poems—“The Second Worst Thing,” “After Ten Years My Late Son Visits,” and “Solo Suite”—along with an interview appearing in a special section on suicide in the Summer 2023 issue of Dunes Review.  

Olive L. Sullivan (Fiction/Poetry, S’15) finished a successful run of her play The Pocket Guide to Desert Survival on July 30. She immediately left for a writers’ retreat in Ireland. A limited number of T-shirts from the play are available for sale. The graphic was designed by Stonecoast alum Emily Knowles. In September, Olive will read at the Writers Place Yearbook 2022 release party in Kansas City. The anthology is available on Amazon.com. She is also scheduled as the keynote speaker for the Missouri State Poetry Society annual conference, where she will talk about artistic collaboration.

Lisa C. Taylor (Poetry, S’04) has a new story in the latest edition of Live Encounters, an international online magazine. She is also happy to announce that she will continue as the co-director of the Mesa Verde Writers Conference. The dates for 2024 are July 11-14, 2024. It will be held again at Harmony Barn in gorgeous Mancos, Colorado. Visit the web site for updates as they happen. Lisa is also a presenter at the upcoming Write on the Sound in October in Edmonds, Washington, and she will be reading in Wellfleet, MA, with poet and naturalist Elizabeth Bradfield on Wednesday, September 13th at 7:00 p.m.

Anne Witty (Poetry, W’12) has her piece “Wild Beach Plums” forthcoming in Deep Water on September 17th. This poetry feature of the Portland (Maine) Sunday Telegram is chosen and introduced by Megan Grumbling.

FACULTY  

In her latest DETOUR monthly travel column, Faith Adiele (Creative Nonfiction) explores deep connections and makes delightful new friends as she experiences “How Morocco’s Only Black Female Hotelier Has Created an Oasis of Luxury that Facilitates Magical Connections.” 

Aaron Hamburger (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction) will present Hotel Cuba at the 2023 History Book Festival in Lewes, DE. He is also teaching an online four-session workshop on Telling Your Story: Fiction and Nonfiction Personal Narratives for Maine Media Workshops, starting September 11. Finally, Aaron (along with Suzanne Strempek Shea) will be at the Iota Short Forms Conference, run by Stonecoast alum Penny Guisinger. Come write with us! October 12-15.

Elizabeth Searle (Fiction, Popular Fiction, Scriptwriting) has film news. Her feature film script, A Four-Sided Bed, as well as the short film based on it, Four-Sided, are both Official Selections at the Paris Awards Film Festival, 2023. The film Four-Sided is an Award-winner at the Tokyo-based Sensei Film Festival, 2023 and the film is also an official selection for 2023 at Magic of Cinema Festival in Barcelona and at the longstanding 2023 Sydney World Film Festival. Elizabeth’s new thriller script, Lock Her Up, is a Finalist at the PageTurner Film Festival, 2023 and at the Lonely Seal Script and Music Festival, 2023. Four-Sided has now screened at over a dozen film festivals.  For updates on the feature film Elizabeth co-wrote—I’ll Show You Mine (now widely available via VOD on home screens)—see www.elizabethsearle.net