ANNOUNCEMENTS

The second Mesa Verde Writers Conference opens for registration on March 1st. We have new faculty and it will be held in the same gorgeous location (Harmony Barn) in the mountains. Delicious locally sourced meals are included! This conference fills quickly so interested people are advised to register early. We can only take 26 people. This conference is in the same town as Mesa Verde National Park.

ALUMS 

Frank Ard (Popular Fiction, S’14) is proud to announce an anthology of alien-themed stories, Phantoms from the Sky, launching on Kickstarter on March 27th. The anthology features fourteen riveting tales of extraterrestrial encounters, and thirteen of the stories were written by Stonecoast alumni. The Phantoms from the Sky Kickstarter campaign is a unique opportunity to support publication of the latest anthology from Rogue Owl Press. Backers may choose from a number of Kickstarter-exclusive rewards, such as a deluxe first-edition hardcover with a specially designed dust jacket. Backers may also select a paperback or ebook version, and book bundles featuring multiple fiction anthologies will also be available. Please visit the prelaunch page and click the “Notify Me on Launch” button to follow the project. 

A feature on teaching future doctors how the changing climate affects human health by Sarah C. Baldwin (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) appeared in Medicine@Brown.  

Carina Bissett (Popular Fiction, S’18) is thrilled to announce that her “Words Wielded by Women” (Apex Magazine, May 2023) is currently on the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards® Final Ballot for Superior Achievement in Short Nonfiction!

Shannon Bowring (Fiction, W’22) is grateful to share several bits of good writing news: Her debut novel, The Road to Dalton, has been selected by Jaed Coffin as one of this summer’s Read ME books (the other title is Moon in Full, a memoir by Marpheen Chann). Read ME, facilitated by the Maine Humanities Council, the Maine State Library, and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, is a program that gets Maine adults all reading two books recommended by a well-known Maine author. Hosted by public libraries all across the state, Read ME connects Maine’s adult reading community through shared experiences, supports Maine libraries in their work to provide quality adult summer reading initiatives, and elevates the work of upcoming Maine authors. The Road to Dalton has also been chosen as the April title for Season 4 of Maine Public Radio’s All Books Considered. Shannon will join host Bill Nemitz via Zoom on April 25th at 7:00 p.m. EST to discuss the novel. And finally, Shannon is absolutely thrilled to announce that the sequel to The Road to Dalton, Where The Forest Meets The River, will be published by Europa Editions on September 3rd. Preorder now!

J Brooke’s (Poetry, S’19) short film Roommates (co-written/co-directed with their film partner and spouse, Beatrice Alda) won Best Human Interest Film at the Toronto Documentary Feature and Short Film Festival and can be viewed online this weekend (along with audience reviews—how nice is that?) The film also received Honorable Mention at Blackbird Film Festival.

The Daughters of Block Island by Christa Carmen (Popular Fiction, W’21) is on the final ballot of the Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards™ for Superior Achievement in a First Novel.

Jaq Evans‘ (Popular Fiction, S’20) debut horror novel, What Grows in the Dark, releases from MIRA / HarperCollins on March 5. Publishers Weekly finds it “skin-crawling and unpredictable,” and Booklist calls it “a compelling combination of lies, secrets, and twists.” Any Stonecoasters who find themselves in Seattle on March 7 are welcome to join the launch party at Elliott Bay Book Company at 7:00 p.m., where Jaq will be in conversation with fellow horror and weird fiction author Gordon B. White!

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) will be at PRINT: The Bookstore in Portland on March 12th at 7pm for a conversation and readings with fellow contributors to the anthology Awakenings: Stories of Bodies & Consciousness. If you live in Mid-Coast Maine, mark your calendars for April 17 when Maine Writers Studio‘s Literary Salon & Open Mic will host contributors (several from Stonecoast!) to the hot-off-the-press Maine Character Energy: a Charity Anthology , created & published to support the families of the victims of the Lewiston shootings in 2023.

Nylah Lyman (Poetry, S’10) has been invited to attend the 2024 Looking Glass Rock Writers’ Conference, which will take place at Brevard College May 16-19. The annual conference consists of writing workshops for select participants and public readings by the workshop leaders. She has been selected to participate in the poetry workshop, led this year by Dorianne Laux.

Nadja Maril (Fiction, W’20) is pleased to share the cover of her forthcoming chapbook, Recipes From My Garden; Herbs and Memoir, Short Prose and Poetry. The book, to be published by Old Scratch Press, will be released this fall. Anyone interested in receiving an advance copy by pdf for review purposes, please contact Nadja at Nadjamaril21@gmail.com. Nadja will again be CNF guest editor for Instant Noodles Literary Magazine. Short pieces on the theme of “Instant” can be submitted here. The deadline is March 15th.

Ellen Meeropol (Fiction, W’06) is delighted to be introducing Honorée Fannone Jeffers when she accepts the Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award and gives the keynote address at WriteAngles: Straw Dog Writers Guild Conference, on April 6, 2024, at the Northampton Center for the Arts in Northampton, MA. Check out the conference here and join us if you can.

Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) will finish her one-month fellowship at the Ucross Foundation in early March, say goodbye to Wyoming and hello to New Mexico and Arizona as she travels and continues to teach her Memoir 101 classes and the Little Frankensteins classes she has been teaching with Sarah Carson in both live and asynchronous formats. Later in March she will head to Seattle for a month at Vashon Island Artists Residency and a stay at Centrum before she returns to Maine for the summer. At all three residencies, she is working on finishing her second memoir.  

Autumn Newman (Poetry, S’09) has three poems featured in The Rising Phoenix Review throughout the month of March. She would love to connect with you on Instagram: @autumnnewman36.

Kelsey Olesen (Popular Fiction, W’17) will be presenting a paper and moderating a panel at the 45th International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts this month in Orlando, Florida. Her paper examines how the witches of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld universe derive unique power from occupying liminal spaces. She will be moderating a panel on Whimsical Transformations of Folklore. Kelsey looks forward to representing Stonecoast as a graduate and independent scholar at ICFA 45 and hopes to see more Stonecoast members there.

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21) is excited to share that her debut poetry collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, has been nominated for the 2023 Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in Poetry! She is stunned and honored to have made the final ballot, along with fellow alumna Christa Carmen (Popular Fiction, W’21), whose novel The Daughters of Block Island is nominated in the novel category. Marisca also had a fourth poem nominated for this year’s Rhysling Award. This month, she will escape the New England cold for a few days at the 45th International Conference of the Fantastic in the Arts from March 13-16. She hopes to see some fellow Stonecoasters there!

Milena Blue Spruce at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers has acquired The Tear Collector by R.M. Romero (Popular Fiction, S’15), a middle-grade climate fiction fantasy in which two siblings learn to survive on an isolated island in their changed world, where people afflicted by a mysterious illness transform into monsters. Publication is planned for fall 2025.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz (Fiction, S’09) will have six of her blackout poems in a standalone chapter with an introduction about the genre in the spring issue of Peninsula Poets, published by the Poetry Society of Michigan. Linda features writers on her blog in a series titled “What, Why, How.” If you have a new release or would like to be featured, please email her at lindaksienk@live.com. The series can be viewed here. Recent Stonecoast alum features include Jacob Strunk (Fiction, W’07), Lauren M. Davis (Poetry, S’15), Shannon Bowring (Fiction, W’22), Ellen Meeropol (Fiction, W’06), Nylah Lyman (Poetry, S’10), and many others.

Kevin St. Jarre (Popular Fiction, S’10) has been interviewed by Hello Author! and those interested can read it here. 

Olive L. Sullivan (Fiction/Poetry, S’15) has been accepted to the Kansas Arts Council Traveling Artists Roster. She is one of two Pittsburg artists on the roster, and the only one in literary arts (the other is musician and music historian Lem Sheppard). The Touring Artists roster is both a way to help artists get paid for their work and a resource for organizations and schools looking for arts programming; organizations are also eligible for grant funding to host the artists. Olive is also a member of the Pittsburg Arts Council.

In other news, Lisa C. Taylor (Poetry, S’04) will have a new short story, “Boa Constrictor,” published in the Irish magazine Crannog in April. Her Irish friends will attend the launch in her stead though she wishes she could be there.

Rhiannon J. Taylor/R. J. Howell (Popular Fiction, S’19) had two stories published in February. On February 1^st, her fantasy novelette “Dance for the Dead” was published by GigaNotoSaurus and can be read (for free!) online. On February 14^th, her historical fantasy short story “Betwixt Sea and Sky” was published in Flame Tree Publishing’s Shadows on the Water, which is available in hardcover at most bookstores. Flame Tree’s blog hosted a Q&A session with the anthology contributors, split between Part 1 and Part 2. In addition, her application to SFWA was also accepted and she is now a full member.

Famished, the second volume of poetry from Christopher Watkins (Poetry, W’08), has been published by Pine Row Press. 

• “Christopher Watkins has the enviable knack of locating within the transient moments and perceptions something that feels—much as in classic Chinese poetry—eternal.” ~Baron Wormser, author of The History Hotel
• “In Famished, Watkins the poet and bluesman lays out a banquet on a blanket to honor all of his muses, drawing inspiration from this world, and beyond, to feed his soul, and slake his thirst for authenticity and transcendent truth. It’s some of his best work.” ~Brad Kuhn, founding board member, The Kerouac Project/Publisher, Shady Lane Press
• “Watkins has a quiver of highly original forms and compelling themes; his voice is like no one else’s.” ~D. Nurkse, author of A Country of Strangers: New and Selected Poems
• “Rich and meaty and overflowing with soul, Watkins’ Famished will leave you anything but.” ~C. M. Tollefson, Cathexis Northwest Press
• “Christopher Watkins unites compassion and fury to bend genres and create four inventive sequences that fuse linked-haiku with the blues. This is a stellar collection.” ~Theodore Deppe, author of Liminal Blue and Riverlight

Visit the publisher’s website to learn more. Signed copies are available directly from the poet’s website.

Creating literary community may be as important as creating literature, and sid sibo (sidney woods, Fiction, W’19) has recently expanded the sense of home to embrace writers living or visiting the Jackson Hole, WY, area, two hours from the homestead cabin. Some are joining the monthly Fourth Friday Fiction Forum, hosted by Jackson Hole Writers and facilitated by sibo, from even farther away—since it is currently held via Zoom. To work with writers in-person, sibo is scheduled to explore the current (literary) Fiction Shift incorporating Earth’s other-than-human characters at a ½ day workshop in Jackson this August. Questions—contact at sibomountain.net.

FACULTY  

With Every Great Breath, the latest book by Rick Bass (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction), was released in February. He was interviewed in The New York Times and Orion Magazine.

Aaron Hamburger (Creative Nonfiction, Fiction) is presenting Hotel Cuba at too many book clubs to count (feel free to reach out at aaronhamburger@gmail.com if you have a book club that would like to read Hotel Cuba and are interested in having him Zoom in!). He’s also going to be talking about the novel at a Cuban-themed lunch in Raleigh, NC, at noon ET on March 5. Aaron is discussing Hotel Cuba online via the Mandel Jewish Community Center in Ohio, with novelist Elizabeth Graver, March 19 at 7:30 p.m. ET. And you can read Aaron’s conversation with novelist Lauren Grodstein about their historical fiction in Bomb Magazine here. 

Elizabeth Searle’s (Fiction, Popular Fiction, Scriptwriting) one-act play, Stolen Girl Song— which was produced onstage at Act One One-Act Play Festival in New York and at Northern Writes New Play Festival in Maine and more— has just been published in script form in Ponder Review. Elizabeth hopes to include this and other short scripts of hers in a project she is putting together: a hybrid collection of scripts and fiction, called The Drama Room: A Collection in Three Acts. In film news, the 10-minute short film FourSided, based on Elizabeth’s feature script, is currently in competition at the 2024 Cannes World Art Festival and will screen in April as an award-winner at the Climax International Film Festival in Madrid. See www.elizabethsearle.net