Faculty
Deborah Brevoort’s opera Die Fledermaus (aka The Polar Bat) was performed in April by the Anchorage Opera, and her backstage farce, The Velvet Weapon received a reading in the “Rhythm and Rebellion” series at the Wooly Mammoth Theater in Washington DC on April 20th.
Jan Clausen‘s review of Curious Subjects: Women and the Trials of Realism appears in the March/April issue of The Women’s Review of Books. Her lyrical hybrid text “definitive mechanisms for monetizing forests” is in Tupelo Quarterly #2 and her sestina “Pigs Advance as Organ-Transplant Factories for People” appears in Obsession: Sestinas in the Twenty-First Century, just out from University Press of New England. Also, Jan’s poem “The Wave That Is the Motion of the World” has been accepted for publication in Drunken Boat. Her lyric essay “Unhappy Secret” has just come out in the Winter, 2014 issue of Hotel Amerika.
Beatrix Gates‘ poems, “Burying Winter” and “Dear ________,” will be published in Tupelo Quarterly. Bea’s chapbook Dos is out from Finishing Line Press. Gates was WERU’s Writers Forum on April 10th participated in the 12th Annual POETS/ SPEAK on April 23rd at the Bangor Public Library. A Poetry Reading and Book Signing for Gates’ chapbook Dos will be co-sponsored by Blue Hill Books and the Blue Hill Public Library on June 5, 2014.
Bhanu Kapil was part of an amazing evening in Los Angeles on April 23, 2014, at University of Southern California: MEHFIL MASSIVE: an evening of poetry and music in the ecstatic tradition of the ancient Mughal court She collaborated with Gingger Shankar (double violin) and read from BAN.
Michael Klein’s book, The Talking Day is both a Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry and a Lambda Literary Award. His essay, “Risk Delight: Happiness and the ‘I’ at the End of the World” published in POETRY magazine is now online. And, there is a podcast of the issue, where he talks about the essay. This was originally a keynote delivered at a Goddard residency.
Aimee Liu moderated a fiction panel called “Lives in Transition” on April 12th at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, with novelists Natalie Baszile, Gina Frangello, and Michelle Huneven.
Rogelio Martinez’s play, Born in East Berlin had a reading on May 12th at The Lark.
Richard Panek’s 1999 profile of Alan Guth is being newly featured on Esquire.com in recognition of the extraordinary announcement of the detection of gravitational waves, a key prediction in Guth’s interpretation of the Big Bang theory. Also, Richard wrote the cover profile in the Yale Alumni Magazine’s March/April issue.
Rahna Reiko Rizzuto appeared at the PEN World Voices Festival in NYC and spoke on the following panel: “Bad Women”: When Women Break the Rules.
Paul Selig was on the radio show “The Saturday Cafe with Laura Smith” on WABC Radio in New York.
Darcey Steinke’s review of Mona Simpson’s book Casebook was published in the L.A. Times.
Students & Alumni
Mike Alvarez (MFAW ’13 and IMA ’10) received a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans. The Fellowship provides up to $90,000 in tuition support and maintenance grants.
Jacob Bennett’s (MFAW ’09) book, Wysihicken [sic], is being published by Furniture Press Books.
Charlie Bondhus’s (MFAW ’05) book, All The Heat We Could Carry, won the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry given by the Publishing Triangle.
Sarah Cedeno (MFAW ’14) was asked by Beyond the Red Line to judge the winner of their “bodies” issue.
James Ferry (MFAW ’12) was recently interviewed for a website called Pubmission.
Charles Rice-Gonzales (MFAW ’08) received the Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation.
Ron Heacock’s (MFAW ’14 and IBA ’12) story, Bears, was accepted for publication by Rawboned. And his story, The Sand is White in Jamaica, coming out in the next issue of Far Enough East.
Cara Hoffman‘s (MFAW ’09) second novel, Be Safe I Love You, was published in April by Simon and Schuster. She also wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times.
Sarah Kishpaugh’s (MFAW ’14) essay, “Making Believe,” was selected to be appear in the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Recovering from Traumatic Brian Injuries: 101 Stories of Hope, Healing, and Hard Work.
Jill Magi (MFAW ’12) has a book, Labor, just out from Nightboat Books, and will be reading with MFAW faculty member Jan Clausen in June to celebrate her new book as well.
Lisa E Melilli‘s (MFAW ’13) novel The Offering, completed during her MFA, is a semifinalist for the second time in the Pirate Alley Faulkner Society award series.
Tom Park will have an essay published in a forthcoming a collection of essays by community writing teachers: A Beautiful House: Twenty Writers, Twenty Years with InsideOut Literary Arts Project, by the Wayne State University Press (2014).
Cody Pherigo was offered a fall internship by Copper Canyon Press.
Angelisa Russo got cast in the San Francisco show “Listen to Your Mother” with her essay “Caledonia” that she performed in May at Brava Theatre.
Shae Savoy’s poem, “On the Murder of Michelle Tate When We Were Both 16,” was accepted for publication by the Jet Fuel Review.
Keisha Thorpe‘s (MFAW ’13) webseries UNTITLED:The Series was accepted into the LA WebFest. She co wrote, co directed, and co produced and co directed and acted in this series. The series has won 6 awards from this festival including: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Writing in Series, Outstanding Supporting Actor, Outstanding Supporting Actress, Outstanding Guest Actress, Outstanding Guest Actress. All of the episodes were combined into one film and was also accepted into Baltimore Women’s 2nd Annual Filmmaking Event and also the Houston Comedy Fest. Also, Keisha was was just accepted to California Institute of Integral Studies for the Doctor of Philosophy in Transformative Studies for fall of 2014.