ANNOUNCEMENTS

IOTA SHORT FORMS BEGINS SUNDAY WRITING SESSIONS
Penny Guisinger (Creative Nonfiction, S’13) and Suzanne Strempek Shea (Faculty 2003-2021) are offering free monthly online writing sessions through Iota Short Forms. Led alternately by these two Iota Co-Directors, plus some special guests here and there, the sessions will consist of writing time with or without prompts. You’ll just need to sit back and write! We guarantee you’ll leave with new lines on the page and more than an iota of inspiration to keep writing until the following month’s session. Writers and poets in the Trescott, Maine, area are invited to join Penny in person as she Zooms her sessions from Cobscook Institute in Trescott, Maine. Each session will be held from 4:00 to 5:15 p.m. EST. Registration is necessary to receive the link for each session. The next will be March 23 with Suzanne. 

IOTA SHORT FORMS 2025 CONFERENCE
This year’s Iota Short Forms Conference, featuring workshop leaders Melanie Brooks (Creative Nonfiction, W’15) and Suzanne Strempek Shea (Faculty 2003-2021), will be October 16 to 19, with an optional add-on retreat October 19 to 24. Writers access Iota’s online programs, conferences, and retreats to study all forms of short prose writing, including essays, prose poems, short stories, flash fiction and nonfiction, micro essays, and much more. “Short” is a relative term, of course, and Iota students work on pieces that vary in length from flash to novellas. The conference is generative, and more than a few pieces begun at Iota having grown into much longer projects once the authors got back home. Created by Penny as her third-semester project, Iota and its annual conference are designed to help writers break from questions about genre. When is a piece a micro essay and when is it a prose poem or when does it turn into flash fiction? Iota posits that it doesn’t matter: just write it.

WRITE IN IRELAND THIS MAY WITH DINGLE WRITERS’ WORKSHOP
Suzanne Strempek Shea (Faculty 2003-2021) and fellow former Stonecoast faculty member Ann Hood will lead their second annual Dingle Writers’ Workshop, May 20 to 30, in Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland. The faculty will include beloved former Stonecoast in Ireland Directors Ted Deppe and Annie Deppe, plus Andre Dubus III, Nuala O’Connor, Madeleine Blais, Michael Ruhlman and Tommy Shea. Suzanne began running an annual writing workshop in Dingle in 2015, with past faculty including Paul Muldoon, Dinty W. Moore, Richard Hoffman, Charles Coe, Elinor Lipman and Mia Gallagher. She and Ann are very grateful for the Deppes’ annual participation, and for their example of graciousness and professionalism as they ran their own workshops in Ireland over the decades.

ALUMS 

Bitter & Sweet: Global Flavors from an Iranian-American Kitchen—the debut cookbook/memoir from Omid Roustaei, which Peter Adrian Behravesh (Popular Fiction, W’18) acquired and edited for Weldon Owen—was published on February 4th to critical acclaim. The book, which chronicles Omid’s culinary journey from Iran to the US, received a starred review in Publishers Weekly and was an Amazon Editors’ Pick for Best Cookbooks of February 2025. You can order Bitter & Sweet here.

Kristin W. Davis (Poetry, S’22) has two poems in the current issue of The Southern Review. She has work forthcoming in Lily Poetry Review and Epiphany.

Terri Glass’s (Poetry/Creative Nonfiction, S’13) poem “Fire Season and Blackberry Pie” won an International Merit Award  in Atlanta Review’s 2024 International Poetry Competition and will be published by Gunpowder Press in the 2025 anthology Women of the Golden State.

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez’s (Poetry, W’08) choreopoem In the Name of Forgotten Women will be screened at the Barnyard Cinema in Winthrop, WA, on Monday, March 10, 2025 at 6:30 p.m. The screening will be followed by a conversation between playwright-producer Cindy and First Nations Cultural Consultant Jacquelyne Andrew (Lil’wat). All proceeds benefit FYRE (the Foundation for Youth Resiliency and Engagement) in Omak, WA. Previous screenings have occurred at Stonecoast (Summer 2023) and in Huntington, NY, and Montpelier, VT, in 2024. The film is a recording of the live production which premiered at CoHo Theatre in Portland, Oregon, in 2022. Dramatizing poetry with music, movement, ritual and projection, In the Name of Forgotten Women explores the global oppression and resilience of women and was acclaimed as “a vibrant call to action” by Portland’s Willamette Week.

True Believer, the newest poetry collection from Jeff Kass (Fiction, S’09) will be officially released on March 25th. The collection, from Dzanc Books, features poems that spin around and through Marvel Comics and the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Poet Nate Marshall says of the collection, “These poems are worth their weight in Vibranium!” Books are available for pre-order here. If you happen to be in Michigan, there will be a festive (hopefully heroic) reading at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, April 3rd, in the Little Theater at Pioneer High School in Ann Arbor. 

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) is thrilled to share the cover and pre-order link for her memoir, Body: My Life in Parts, coming out May 27th by Vine Leaves Press. An early draft of her book was born during her MFA program in 2018-2020 at Stonecoast. Nina also welcomes Stonecoast folks and their friends to the March 26th Maine Writers Studio Literary Salon and Open Mic in Brunswick, ME. Find out more here.

Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) will be at the Easthampton Library in Long Island, NY, on Saturday, March 29th, for a reading from her memoir Now You See the Sky followed by a discussion of using writing as a tool to heal from grief. The event will take place from 2:00-3:30 p.m. Click here for more information and to register. On Sunday, March 30th, Catharine will teach an in-person generative writing workshop from 1:00-4:00 p.m. at The Center in Bridgehampton, Long Island, NY. She will present take-home techniques to develop engaging writing while cultivating the art of self-compassion. Ticket cost includes a donation to The Center, a community-based institution that encourages and empowers East End children. Click here for more information and to register.

Autumn Newman‘s (Poetry, S’09) chapbook, A Flower Burst Open, is now available online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and Finishing Line Press. Here’s what Annie Finch had to say about it: “Autumn Newman, strong, wise survivor and poet par excellence, brings the power of poetry to bear on unbearable truth—for all our sakes. Born from the crucible of domestic violence, the poems of A Flower Burst Open bless everything they touch with ingenious poetic structures, exquisitely calibrated meters, and searingly apt imagery. Here is a book of hard-won words, none of them wasted. It demands to be heard.”

On Saturday, March 22nd from 1:00-3:00 p.m., Jenny O’Connell (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) and outdoor photographer Andy Gagne will premiere of Follow the Water, a short documentary by Maine Mountain Media about their 100-mile source-to-sea kayaking adventure down one of Maine’s most vital watersheds. Hosted at Allagash Brewing, the event is free and includes one complimentary beer brewed with Crooked River water. Check out the details & RSVP! You can watch the trailer here or below. 

Marisca Pichette’s(Popular Fiction, S’21) eco-horror novella, Every Dark Cloud, comes out this month—and her schedule is packed! On March 1, she is returning to Maine for a horror panel to promote the release of Boreal: An Anthology of Taiga Horror. On March 8, she is leading her third and final workshop for new writers with Elegant Lit (also judging the finalists for their short story contest!). Finally, she will be launching Every Dark Cloud at ICFA in mid-March. 

Stonecoast alum Colin Sargent (Fiction, S’04) solicited an article from Bruce Pratt (Fiction, S’04) for Portland Monthly Magazine on the changes to Bangor and Eastern and Central Maine’s radio landscape with the changes at WKIT and its affiliated stations. Owned and subsidized by Stephen King and his family for years, WKIT was sold to area businessmen, which allows WKIT to continue under local ownership. However, with the demise of the AM signal, WZON ended 98 continuous years on the air. The last local show was the final episode of Downtown with Rich Kimball, of which Bruce has been a part for a dozen years. The article is both tribute and memoir and is in the current issue. The magazine included wonderful in-studio photos. In other news, Bruce’s poems, “The Big Ballyard in the Bronx,” “Goliath, “Baseball was Always Enough,” “Southern Syntax,” and “Heater,” are forthcoming in the next two issues of Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. His poem “It’s The Guns” is included in the forthcoming Dirigo Democracy Anthology. His poem “Compulsory Figures” is in the latest issue of Sport Literate, and his poem “Windy Smith Would Not Walk” will appear in the spring summer edition. Bruce’s poem “Martha 1914” is forthcoming from Grays Sporting Journal. His story “Winter Ball,” is forthcoming from Twin Bill.

The University of Nebraska Press, known for excellent books about the West, will be at booth number 245 in the Tucson Festival of Books, and on Sunday March 16, their general interest imprint Bison Books will host sid sibo (sidney woods, Fiction, W’19) for a signing of The Scent of Distant Family from 1:00-1:30 p.m. Any Stonecoasters in the area are encouraged to stop in.

Jacob Strunk’s (Fiction, W’06) story “Darkness Falls on Carversville”—written whilst writer-in-residence in Mount Holly, Vermont, at the invitation of ex-Stonecoast faculty Joan Connor—appears in the new Tyche Books anthology Hauntings and Hoarfrost, available now. Additionally, his celebrity talk show Grave Conversations—hosted by David Dastmalchian—returns for season two in March, with extended versions of season one episodes also available on the new YouTube channel. 

The Shape of What Remains, Lisa C. Taylor’s (Poetry, S’04) debut novel, released on February 18 and is already a bestseller in its category! She also has an article in SheWrites. Her podcast interview for Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers is here. Beginning in mid-April, she will be going on tour with the book, including Northeast. Please contact Lisa if you’d like her to visit your town/bookstore/group; she will post her stops in a later post. Lisa is so appreciative of all who helped this book along, including those Stonecoaster faculty or former faculty who wrote her blurbs like Richard Hoffman, Elizabeth Searle, and Michael C. White. On another note: The Mesa Verde Writers Conference is filling fast! If you are interested, please sign up soon at www.mesaverdewritersconference.org The dates are July 9-11 and July 12 is a separate all-day literary festival with over 35 visiting writers so plan to stay for that! You can direct questions to mesaverdewriters@gmail.com.

Annie Wenstrup (Poetry, S’22) is pleased to announce the publication of her debut poetry collection, The Museum of Unnatural Histories. It’s available wherever books are sold, but she hopes you’ll order it from Bookshop and support Kelly’s Books to Go. Annie will be launching her book with a series of events in California the week of AWP. Please stop by and say hello, she would love to see you!

• Tuesday, March 25th: Book Launch and Reading at California State Universities, Chico | 7:30 p.m. ARTS 250. 
• Wednesday, March 26th: 9×8 Terrain.org + Writing the Wild Off-Site Reading | 7:00-8:45 p.m. (or so) at Audio Graph Beer Co., located at 1203 S. Olive Street, Los Angeles
• Thursday, March 27th: Panel: Writing Indigenously: Poets on Language Reitalization and Sovereignty | 9:00-10:15 a.m., Room 406AB, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center. Description: Five Indigenous poets will share their creative work, while discussing how reclaiming their ancestral language has affected their personal poetics and healing process. Fluidity within the genre of poetry allows room for the inclusion of Indigenous languages and the decentering of English, rendering the poem a space of active decolonization. Here, the contemporary Indigenous poet writes themselves within the contexts of their own mother tongue and by Indigenizing the colonizer’s language.
• Thursday, March 27th: Panel: Performance and the Presentation of Self: Identity on and Off the Page | 3:20- 4:35 p.m., Room 518, Level Two, Los Angeles Convention Center. Description: Workshop leaders and instructors encourage writers to mimetically recreate voice on the page and strive for authenticity in their representations of self and community. But how can one authentically express themselves when their identity is exoticized or othered, on and off the page? As Indigenous writers and poets, we’ll discuss craft strategies, including form and curation, as methods of deconstructing the concepts of the authentic other in poetry.
• Thursday, March 27th: Storyknife Writers Retreat Reading | 5:00-7:00 p.m. at First Draft DTLA (1230 S. Olive St.)
• Friday, March 28th: 11:00 a.m. Signing at Wesleyan’s Booth 605 | 1:00-2:00 p.m. Signing at Terrain’s Booth 323 | 3:00-4:00 p.m. Signing at Writing the Wild’s Booth 325
• Saturday, March 29th: 9:00-10:00 a.m. Signing at Indigenous Nations Poets’ Booth 904
• Saturday, March 29th: AWP Offsite: Reading with NDN Girls Book Club, 7:00-10:00 p.m., Jr. High LA, 603 S. Brand Blvd., Glendale, CA, 91204

FACULTY  

Tom Coash‘s (Scriptwriting) play Thin Air will be produced by the terrific Bite-Size Productions at the Pleasance Theatre in London, UK, March 5-8 & 12-15.

In February on Reactor, Jonathan Thornton offered an author appreciation of Elizabeth Hand (Popular Fiction, Fiction).