Leaving Little Havana by Cecilia Fernandez Published

Leaving Little Havana: a Memoir of Miami's Cuban Ghetto by  Cecilia M. Fernandez has just been published by Beating Windward Press.  First written as Fernandez's MFA thesis, the book was a finalist for the Breadloaf Writers' Conference book competition.

Before receiving her MFA from Florida International University, Fernandez was a reporter for the Stockton Record, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Hollywood Sun-Tatler and worked at WPBT, WSVN, WLTV, and WSC-TV as a reporter, producer, and anchor. Her writing has appeared in Latina Magazine, Accent Miami, Upstairs at the Duroc: The Paris Workshop Journal, Vista Magazine, and Le Siecle de Georges Sand. You can learn more about Fernandez and her book's journey to publication on her blog.

Fernandez will be appearing at Books & Books in Coral Gables tonight, Dec. 7th, 7 PM, for the official book launch of Leaving Little Havana.

FIU MFA Program Well-Represented at Miami Book Fair International

Miami Book Fair International is celebrating its 30th anniversary this week. FIU’s Creative Writing program will be well-represented, with faculty, students, and alumni among the more than 300 authors who’ll be presenting at the Festival of Authors. Here’s a quick listing of those from FIU, the works they’ll be reading from and/or speaking about, with the day time of the presentation.  For rooms and other details, please see the complete Book Fair Schedule online.  (And at the Fair, pick up a printed copy which will be updated with any changes.)

To find out what goes on at the sessions you miss, you can read The Florida Book Review's annual Book Fair blog,  reported this year by a record number of FIU MFA alumni and graduate students, including FBR Editor Lynne Barrett’s Literary Journalism class.

Saturday, Nov. 23:

11:30 AM: Richard Blanco (Looking for the Gulf Motel) and Campbell McGrath (In the Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys)
1 PM: E. Parker Phillips (Panel: Queer Poetry/Queer Differences)

1:30 PM: Nina Romano (She Wouldn’t Sing at My Wedding) and Laura Valeri (Safe in Your Head)

3 PM: Julie Marie Wade (Postage Due)

3:30 PM: Joe Clifford (Junkie Love)

4 PM: Campbell McGrath (Florida Book Awards)

4 PM: The Miami Poetry Collective & Cent Journal, the “How To” issue, including: Annik Adey-Babinski, Marci Calabretta, Paul Christiansen, P. Scott Cunningham, Dawn S. Davies, Yaddyra Peralta, and Nick Vagnoni

Sunday, Nov. 24:

 11 AM: John Dufresne (Knitting Yarns: Writers on Knitting)

11:30: Anjanette Delgado, panel: El mercado del libro en español en Estados Unidos: situación, evolución, y opportunidades

12:30 PM: James W. Hall (Going Dark)

2 PM: John Dufresne (No Regrets, Coyote)

3:30 PM: Patricia Engel (It’s Not Love, It’s Just Paris)

4 PM: Melanie Neale (Boat Kid)

4:30 PM: Richard Blanco (For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey)

4:30 PM: Preston Allen (Every Boy Should Have a Man)

5 PM: Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Sunstruck Matches, a reading, including Elisa Albo, J.J. Colagrande, Andrea Dulanto, Jesse Millner, and Lauren Doyle Owen

5 PM: All that Glitters: Nonfiction from Sliver of Stone, a reading, including Jan Becker, M.J. Fievre, Nicholas Garnett, and Fabienne Sylvia Josaphat

Cover essay on the work of Denise Duhamel in The Hollins Critic

Cover image of Denise Duhamel
by Susan Avishai, The Hollins Critic

The October 2013 issue of The Hollins Critic features a cover essay by Julie Marie Wade, "Survival of the Feminist: The Socially Lived Poetics of Denise Duhamel." In its 50th year, The Hollins Critic "features the first serious surveys of the whole bodies of contemporary writers' work, with complete checklists." An excerpt from the piece can be read on The Hollins Critic's website. In it, Wade writes, "Whether we view her as an avowed feminist whose feminism takes poetic form, or a widely published poet whose poetry embodies feminist ideals, Denise Duhamel is an underdog. She is working in literature's most marginalized genre to illuminate a worldview that three-fourths of Americans purport not to care about or understand. This would appear to be an impossible mission, both formally and ideologically. Fortunately, Duhamel is the perfect person for the job."

Duhamel, Professor of English at Florida International University, is the author of more than twenty books and chapbooks and guest-editor of the just-released Best American Poetry 2013.

Denise Duhamel Guest Edits Best American Poetry 2013

FIU Professor Denise Duhamel has guest edited The Best American Poetry 2013, just published by Scribner. The Best American Poetry series has been hailed as “an essential purchase” (The Washington Post) and "a 'best' anthology that really lives up to its title" (Chicago Tribune). In her introduction, Denise talks about her year of reading as many literary magazines as possible. "The task may have strained my eyes to the point where I am a now a certified wearer of reading glasses, but it also made me very much present and engaged. In his lecture at Ohio University’s Spring Literary Festival in 2012, Richard Rodriguez (echoing the syntax of St. Augustine’s “Those who sing pray twice”) said, “Those who write live twice.”  I would add that those who read also live twice. . ."  The anthology includes seventy-fve poems, thirty-four of which were written by newcomers never before anthologized in the series. For the first time a collaborative poem appears in The Best American poetry pages.  On November 15 at 7 pm at The Betsy Hotel on Miami Beach, Denise Duhamel and series editor David Lehman will host The Best American Poetry 2013 reading featuring Florida contributors Campbell McGrath, Jesse Millner, Emma Trelles, and Maureen Seaton.

Just Published: Patricia Engel's It's Not Love, It's Just Paris

MFA alumna Patricia Engel's first novel, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, debuts August 6th with a launch reading at Books & Books in Coral Gables.  On the summer recommended reading lists of the L.A. Times, Time Out New York, and Flavorwire, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris has been praised in early reviews by the Miami Herald as "a clear-eyed recasting of a classic storyline executed with confidence and just enough city-of-lights magic" and by the Tampa Bay Times as "warm, quirky, and intelligently observed."

Engel's first book, the 2010 story collection Vida, was a  New York Times Notable Book of the Year, finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and Young Lions Fiction Award, won the fiction silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and L.A. Weekly.  Her fiction has appered in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, and Guernica. More information about her work and where you can catch up with her on her book tour can be found at her website.

John Dufresne Launches No Regrets, Coyote

John Dufresne's fifth novel No Regrets, Coyote, has been published to critical acclaim. In the New York Times, Marilyn Stasio calls it "a goulishly funny crime novel," and "dazzling, even by the exacting standards of South Florida crime fiction." And Library Journal says it's a "classy and darkly witty thriller." Dufresne's first ventures into crime writing, stories in Miami Noir and Boston Noir, were each chosen for inclusion in Best American Mysteries, but this is his first venture into a full-length mystery.

A large crowd, including many members of the FIU MFA community were on hand Friday, August 2nd, for the book launch at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The reading and q&a were live-streamed online and can be still be viewed.  Or listen to NPR's All Things Considered interview. You can see the schedule for appearances on the No Regrets, Coyote book tour, and find links to more reviews, at JohnDufresne.com.

Laura Valeri's Safe In Your Head Published

FIU MFA alumna Laura Valeri's Safe in Your Head, a novel in stories, has been published by Stephen F. Austin University Press.  Stories from the book have appeared in, among other journals and anthologies, Glimmer Train, Waccamaw, Night Train, Voices in Italian Americana  Valeri drew upon family history for the book, including stories told to her in childbood by her grandmother that "ingrained themselves so vividly in my imagination that they nagged at me from the subconscious for decades."

Valeri's first book, the story collection The Kind of Things Saints Do, won the Iowa/John Simmons Award and the Binghamton University/John Gardner Award.  She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.  Learn more about her writing and research on her website.

For Joe Clifford, a Novel, another Novel, and an Award

Joe Clifford, who has been living in the San Francisco area since graduating from the FIU MFA Program, is having a busy year.  As already reported here in January, his story collection Choice Cuts was published by Snubnose Press.  Now his first novel, Junkie Love, was published by Battered Suitcase Press in March, his second novel, Wake the Undertaker, is just out from Snubnose Press, and he has been awarded a San Francisco Acker Award in Fiction.

Junkie Love is an autobiographical novel, of which The Ampersand Review says, "From the first page, everything you experience through Clifford’s graceful yet biting narrative is beautiful and tragic. The journey over a decade of addiction to seek redemption is compelling, daunting, with no easy escape or roadmap home found in track-marred arms." Wake the Undertaker, a noir thriller that harks back to vintage pulp, was originally Clifford's MFA thesis The Lone Palm.  You can read (or hear) interviews with Clifford about his journey to the publication of his three books (in a short time, but years in the making) on his website.

The Acker Awards "for Achievement in the avant garde" are given to artists "who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention,  or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways."  The award ceremonies will take place in San Francisco on June 6, 2013.

Joe Clifford is currently Acquisitions Editor at Gutter Books and Managing Editor for the Flash Fiction Offensive. With his wife Justine Clifford he co-produces Lip Service West, a bi-monthly reading series for true stories. A short film/book trailer for Junkie Love is up on You Tube. Rumor has it that Clifford will be in Miami in September to participate the annual alumni reading at Books & Books.

Dennis Lehane Wins Edgar® Award for Best Novel

Dennis Lehane with his award.

Dennis Lehane received the Best Novel Edgar^® Award from for Live By Night at the 67th annual 2013 Edgar Awards banquet in New York City on May 2nd.  The prestigious awards are given by the Mystery Writers of America.

Shelf Awareness reported from that Lehane's acceptance speech, "paid tribute to the librarians who 'offered a light in the darkness for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.'"

Live By Night, Lehane's tenth book, also received the Gold Medal for Fiction in the Florida Book Awards in March.  Lehane, who received his MFA from Florida International University, is co-director of the Eckerd College Writers In Paradise Conference.

Preston L. Allen's Every Boy Should Have a Man Published

Akashic Books has just published Every Boy Should Have a Man, by FIU MFA alumnus Preston L. Allen.  Publishers Weekly says "In a future where primitive 'mans' are considered pets or food by the dominant, giant humanoi 'oafs,' one female man and her daughter become the cherished possessions, then friends, of a young oaf who learns to see them as more than just creatures."  Booklist calls it "Imaginative, versatile, and daring...Allen sharpens our perceptions of class divides, racism, enslavement, and abrupt and devastating climate change to create a delectably adventurous, wily, funny, and wise cautionary parable."

Allen is a professor at Miami-Dade College. His previous widely-praised novels from Akashic are Jesus Boy and All or Nothing, and his story collection (and thesis) Churchboys and Other Sinners won the Sonya H. Stone Prize in Fiction and was published by Carolina Wren Press. He will be reading from his new novel at 7 this evening, May 8, at Books & Books on Miami Beach.

Pain & Gain by Pete Collins, Now a Paramount Film

Pete Collins on the red carpet

Opening this Friday, April 26th, the Paramount Pictures film Pain & Gain is based on the writing of Pete Collins, part of his MFA thesis of creative nonfiction crime stories about South Florida con men. Pain & Gain is drawn from what the Miami Herald calls Collins' "an epic three-part story" that was published by the Miami New Times. Other pieces by Collins (which he refers to as "jailhouse yarns") in his thesis were published in the Herald's Tropic Magazine and then picked up by Sixty Minutes and Dateline.

Director Michael Bay (Transformers) describes Pain & Gain as "a mixture of Fargo and PulpFiction. It's a dark comedy, and it's all true."  Shot entirely in South Florida, Pain & Gain stars  Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony Mackie as members of the Sun Gym gang, bodybuilders who turned, ineptly, to kidnapping, extortion, torture, and murder. Tony Shalhoub plays a victim who survived attempted murder and Ed Harris the detective he turned to for help. Playboy says, "An early candidate for the guy flick of 2013, Pain & Gain is violent, deeply nasty and insanely funny."  The original series can be found online at the New Times, where you can also read Pete Collins' recent (wry and hilarious) essay about his journey from being "broke, jobless, and near bottom" to the red carpet and seeing his name in the movie ads.  More about Pete Collins and his current projects on his website.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/20/3353317/pain-gain-revisits-a-horrific.html#storylink=cp

Marci Calabretta's Debut Chapbook Published by Finishing Line Press

Finishing Line Press has published  Last Train to the Midnight Market by Marci Calabretta.  Of this debut chapbook, Jim Daniels (former Visiting Writer at FIU) says, "This tightly coiled collection has the feel of a novel; her characters are real enough to break your heart."


Calabretta is a second year graduate student and Knight Fellow in the MFA program at Florida International University.

Richard Ford to Receive Sanders Award at FIU April 4th

On April 4th, Richard Ford will receive the 4th annual Lawrence A. Sanders Award for Fiction. Ford is the author of seven novels, including his latest Canada, the Bascombe novels (The Sportswriter, Independence Day—winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN Faulkner Award—, and The Lay of the Land), as well as four collections of short stories, among them Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins. The presentation program will take place at 8 PM on April 4th, on the Biscayne Bay Campus of FIU in the Academic One auditorium, AC I-194, and is open to the public.  This event is part of the FIU Creative Writing Program's Writers on the Bay Series, which gives students and the community access to world-renowned authors.

The Sanders Award is given annually to a writer of fiction, identified by the FIU Creative Writing Program, whose work combines literary excellence with popular appeal. The award is supported by a grant from the Lawrence A. Sanders Foundation of Boca Raton. Sanders, who died in 1998, was the author of well-regarded popular novels, including The First Deadly Sin. The Creative Writing Program also wishes to extend its thanks to The Betsy Hotel and Barnes & Nobles Booksellers for their support of Writers on the Bay.

White Pine Press Issues Postage Due by Julie Marie Wade

Julie Marie Wade's first full-length poetry collection, Postage Due, has been published by White Pine Press.  Selected for the press's Marie Alexander Poetry Series, Postage Due  "is a scrapbook of poetic artifacts documenting an odd girl's coming of age. Interspersed with postcards to a lost past, fan letters to childhood heroes, and inhabited voices as varied as Hester Prynne, Mr. Clean, and Vanna White, this collection pulses with kitsch and candor."

Julie Marie Wade is also the author of the poetry chapbook Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and two collections of lyric nonfiction, Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and Small Fires (Sarabande Books, 2011).  A new nonfiction chapbook, Tremolo, is forthcoming from Bloom Press in Spring 2013.  Wade is the newest member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University.
 
On Sunday, April 7th at 4 PM, FIU's Julie Marie Wade and Denise Duhamel, along with Maureen Seaton of the U. of Miami, will be reading from their new books at Books & Books in Coral Gables More info. on this trio, their books, and this festive occasion, here. Mark you calendars.

Christine Kling's A Circle of Bones Published

Christine Kling's A Circle of Bones, her fifth novel, has been published by Thomas & Mercer.  Circle of Bones, a Caribbean thriller about the race to recover secrets found in the wreck of a World War II submarine, is the first in a three-book series.




Kling's previous novels, the Seychelle Sullivan series, are Surface Tension, Cross Current, Bitter End, and Wrecker's Key. Kling reports that she has retired from teaching at Broward College and is "living the dream of full-time cruising on board my 33-foot Caliber sailboat Talespinner." More about her writing and the nautical life on her website.

Campbell McGrath & Dennis Lehane Win Gold Medals in the Florida Book Awards

Prof. Campbell McGrath and MFA program alumnus Dennis Lehane have each won gold medals in the Florida Book Awards for books published in 2012. The awards are coordinated by the Florida State Libraries and co-sponsored by a number of Florida literary and cultural institutions. The medals will be presented at the Florida Heritage Awards ceremonies in Tallahassee on March 20, 2013.

McGrath's In The Kingdom of the Sea Monkeys won the Gold Medal in Poetry. This is McGrath's third win in the Florida Book Awards.  Shannon won the 2009 Poetry Gold Medal, and Seven Notebooks the 2008 Silver in Poetry.  “It feels great, it’s an honor,” McGrath said. “I love the idea of the Florida Book Awards, they bring attention to Floridian literature, the arts and culture. This is an award unique to our home state, so it’s important.”

The Gold Medal for General Fiction went to Live By Night, Lehane's eleventh book, tenth novel and the second in his historical series that follows Joe Coughlin, the son of a Boston police captain turned mobster during the prohibition era of the 1920s.

Other FIU Creative Writing winners in past years are: Lynne Barrett, Gold Medal, General Fiction 2011, for Magpies; alumna Patricia Engel, Silver Medal, General Fiction 2010, for Vida; Denise Duhamel, Silver Medal, Poetry 2009, for Ka-Ching!; alumnus Jesse Millner, Bronze Medal, Poetry 2009, for Neighborhoods of My Past Sorrow;  John Dufresne, Gold Medal, General Fiction 2008, for Requiem, Mass; James W. Hall, Silver Medal, Genre Fiction 2007 for Magic City; and alumnus Leonard Nash, Silver Medal, General Fiction 2007, for You Can't Get There From Here. The Florida Book Awards were established in 2006 to recognize, honor, and celebrate the best Florida literature published each year.

John W. Evans Wins River Teeth Book Award

River Teeth has announced that FIU MFA alumnus John W. Evans is the winner of the 2013 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Award, for his manuscript Young Widower. The book will be published in 2014 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Evans is the author of two poetry chapbooks, No Season (FWQ) and Zugzwang (RockSaw). Since completing his MFA, he has been a Stegner Fellow in Poetry and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he continues to teach creative writing. You can learn more about Evans and his writing at his website.

Denise Duhamel's Blowout Published

The University of Pittsburgh Press has just published Denise Duhamel's poetry collection Blowout. "Blowout is both a celebration and mourning of romantic love—the blowout of a party, as well as the sudden rupture of a front tire."  Booklist says Blowout, "presents the miracle of how serious a life embedded in humdrum and commercialized reality can be...'Worst Case Scenario'—a solid block of successive personal disasters—negatively apotheosizes just such embeddedness. It takes your breath away."

 

Sunday April 7th at 4 PM,  FIU's Denise Duhamel and Julie Marie Wade, along with U.M.'s Maureen Seaton, will be reading from their new books at Books and Books in Coral Gables, FL. Mark your calendars for this trio now.

FIU Video Profile of John Dufresne

FIU profiles Professor and Guggenheim recipient John Dufresne, who discusses teaching, writing, and the relationship between the two. "Every story should be a plunge into reality, not an escape from it."

Julie Marie Wade Receives Deming Fund Grant

Julie Marie Wade has received a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund for her new creative nonfiction collection in progress, Other People's Mothers.   Wade is among nine awardees recently announced.  Her project is a collection of 12 autobiographical stories.

The Money For Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund is the oldest ongoing feminist granting agency. The fund gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers, and visual artists). Information about upcoming deadlines and application forms are available on the fund's website.

Joe Clifford's Short Story Collection: Choice Cuts

Joe Clifford's first book is out.  His story collection, Choice Cuts, has been published by Snubnose Press.  Of Choice Cuts, the Ampersand Review says, "What brings the collection together is the raw, no-holds-barred writing style, intense characterizations, and beyond twisted plotlines."

Snubnose Press will also be publishing Clifford's hardboiled novel, Wake the Undertaker, and Vagabondage Press will be bringing out his novel Junkie Love, both books scheduled for later in 2013.

After completing his MFA, Clifford moved to the San Francisco area, where he is the producer of Lip Service West, a "gritty, real, raw" reading series. He is also editor of the Flash Fiction Offensive. His work has appeared in Big Bridge, the Bryant Review, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Opium, and Word Riot, and many other journals. More info. on Joe's work can be found at www.joeclifford.com and his blog Candy & Cigarettes.

Julie Marie Wade's "Tremolo" Wins BLOOM Chapbook Award

Julie Marie Wade's "Tremolo" has been chosen by judge Bernard Cooper as the winner of the 2012 BLOOM Chapbook Prize for Nonfiction.  The chapbook will be published in Spring 2013.

In the award announcement, Cooper says, "It seems almost impossible that a writer could combine the candor of a memoir with the insight and engagement of a literary essay, but 'Tremolo' seamlessly weaves together the writer's search for sexual self-knowledge with insights into the poetry of Galway Kinnell and the fiction of Jane Austen. The prose here is both exact and inventive, the sensibility as restlessly probing as it is concise. These eighteen pages convey the sense of an entire lifetime, and the impact is as power as any reader could hope for.

Richard Blanco Chosen 2013 Inaugural Poet

FIU MFA program alumnus Richard Blanco has been chosen to be the 2013 inaugural poet. He will be reading a new poem composed for the occasion when President Obama takes the oath of office on the steps of the Capitol on January 21st. The New York Times reports: "Addie Whisenant, the inaugural committee’s spokeswoman, said Mr. Obama picked Mr. Blanco because the poet’s 'deeply personal poems are rooted in the idea of what it means to be an American.'”

Blanco's MFA thesis collection developed into his first book, City of a Hundred Fires, which won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize in 1997.  His most recent book,  Looking for the Gulf Motel, was published last year.  In an NPR interview airing Jan. 9th, Blanco discusses how being "made in Cuba, assembled in Spain, and imported to the United States" (as he has wryly described himself) has informed his work: "This whole idea of place and identity and what's home and what's not home, and which is in some ways such an American question that we've been asking since, you know, since [Walt] Whitman, trying to put that finger on America."