In the introduction to his stunning book of essays, Known and Strange Things, Teju Cole comments on how his journalism and essay writing have allowed him to explore his passions. He says, “Through the act of writing, I was able to find out what I knew…, what I was able to know, and where the limits of knowing lay”(xv). This UGP2/BFAW residency’s theme, “Knowing/Power/Knowledge,” resonated with Cole’s words, suggesting the generative tensions shared by thought, writing, and action. This fall residency heightened our sensitivity to the origins, politics, and possibilities of knowledge and the ways that creativity transmutes it into the forms of writing.
Our Beloved Graduating Students
Congratulations to Catherine Chambers, Casey Falk, Garuda Love, Cassie Selleck, and Amy Sterne. Thank you for the wonderful work you’ve done while in the program. You’re a part of the BFAW family and always will be!
Our Much-Anticipated New Students
A big welcome to Leah Beckhoff, Anne Hindes (returning after four years), Robert Hunsberger, Katy Kempton, Anita Koester, Shannon McDermott, Jed Munson, Sue Stroud-Speyers, and Millie Szilagyi, We can’t wait to get to know you!
What Everybody’s Been Up To
Students
Catherine Chambers has poems recently published or forthcoming in Gulf Stream magazine, Third Point Press, and Indianola Review. She recently completed an internship at Melville House Publishing and attended the Writer’s Hotel Conference in New York City, where she worked with Roger Bonair-Agard and Marie Howe. She also studied with Jericho Brown at the Tin House Writer’s Workshop. On August 17th, she read with Cynthia Manick and Erik Stinson at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.
Garuda Love had a poem published in South 85 ‘s June 15th issue.
Katherine Michalak’s essay, “Engagements,” was published in Concho River Review, vol. 30, number 1, spring 2016.
Cassie Selleck’s novel, The Pecan Man, was chosen by the State of Arkansas for their 2016 common reader program, called If All Arkansas Read the Same Book. She’ll be touring several cities in Arkansas in early spring 2017.
Cara Sexton’s book, Soul Bare: Stories of Redemption, was released on August 5th by InterVarsity Press and will be carried at Barnes and Noble and online outlets like Amazon.
Jay Sheets won the Poetry Society of New Hampshire’s College Poetry Contest, judged by Nicole Terez Dutton. He was paid for his poetry for the first time.
Tyler Woodsmall’s short horror story, “Pesticide,” was published by Sanitarium in hard copy and digital. This is his first publication.
Faculty & Director
Jocelyn Cullity, who has returned to BFAW for one more semester, is working on revisions of her first novel, The Red Year, which will be published by Inanna Press (Toronto) in 2017.
Laurie Foos’s short story, “The Glass Girl,” was published in the Spring issue of Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices. An essay, “My Kid Does That, Too,” about her son’s autism diagnosis, will appear in the anthology, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real About Motherhood, due this September. Her latest novel, The Blue Girl, was named one of the 100 Must-Read Strange and Unusual Novels by Book Riot.
Arisa White’s third collection of poetry, You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, will be released in October by Augury books. White’s newest collection takes its titles from words used internationally as hate speech against gays and lesbians, reworking, re-envisioning, and re-embodying language as a conduit for art, love, and understanding. In collaboration with Laura Atkins, Arisa is writing a children’s book in verse on the life of Biddy Mason, who was born a slave in Georgia. It will be a part of the Fighting for Justice series. The book will be released in 2018 by Heyday Books.
Michael Vizsolyi is in the arduous process of moving from Brooklyn, NY, to Santa Barbara, CA, where his wife will begin PhD work.
Janet Sylvester (director) will be on a panel at AWP in Washington DC in February 2017: “Mentoring, Mansplaining, Mothering: Directing Creative Writing Programs while Female.” On November 17th she will read at BookCourt in Brooklyn with Vivian Gornick, Wayne Koestenbaum, Rosanna Warren and John D’Agata to celebrate the posthumous publication of Deborah Tall’s (MFA 1978) final book of poetry.
News from Duende
Those of you interested in Duende, whether as readers, current staff, or future editors, will be happy to know that the journal is doing very well. Michael Vizsolyi, faculty advisor to its staff, gathered the following statistics from Square Space, its online platform:
- Avg. page views per day: ~180, per month ~5000
- Our approximate audience (equivalent to subscribers) is ~ 16,500.
- It’s hard to find the total number of page views, but we get about 80,000 per year.
Check out Issue #4: http://www.duendeliterary.org/issue-4-spring-16/
