FIU MFA Spotlight: Ashley M. Jones

Since graduating from the FIU MFA program in May 2015, poet Ashley M. Jones has received a 2015 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award, has had her first poetry collection accepted, and has just been named co-editor of PANK Magazine.

The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award is given annually to six women writers who demonstrate excellence and promise in the early stages of their careers.The awards of $30,000 were presented to the six recipients on September 17th in New York City.  You can hear Jones and the other awardees  reading from their work on the foundation website.

Jones' poetry collection Magic City Gospel, which was her MFA thesis, will be published in Fall 2016 by Hub City Books. Currently a faculty member teaching creative writing at Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, AL, Jones recently received a Birmingham Metro Fusion Award.

In early December, PANK Magazine's new publisher John Gosslee announced the latest stage in the life of the magazine, originally founded by M. Bartley Siegel and Roxane Gay in 2006 with the goal of publishing “emerging and innovative poetry and prose, publishing the brightest and most promising writers for the most adventurous readers.” "I want us, as artists, to create wild art with purpose," Jones says in a piece just published in which Jones and fellow editor Chris Campioni discuss PANK's vision and their personal aesthetics.

Jones was a John S. and James L. Knight Foundation Fellow while in FIU's graduate program. She served as Official Poet for the City of Sunrise, FL, and her work was recognized in the 2014 Poets and Writers Maureen Egen Writer's Exchange contest and the 2015 Academy of American Poets competition at FIU. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Night Owl, The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy, pluck!, Valley Voices: New York School Edition, Fjords Review: Black American Edition, PMSPoemMemoirStory, Kinfolks Quarterly, Tough Times in American Anthology, and Lucid Moose Press's Like a Girl. Learn  more about Ashley M. Jones at her website.

 

Nina Romano's First Novel, The Secret Language of Women

FIU MFA alumna Nina Romano's The Secret Language of Women, an historical novel set against the background of the Boxer Rebellion, has recently been published by Turner Publishing. The first of the Wayfarer Trilogy, the novel will be followed by Lemon Blossoms, set in mob-era Sicily, and In America, which moves to in Brooklyn during the Great Depression.

Among Romano's earlier works are the poetry chapbooks Prayer in a Summer of Grace and Time's Mirrored Illusion (both, Flutter Press) and Faraway Confections, a full-length collection from Aldrich Press. You can read more about these and other projects at Romano's website. She will be reading from and discussing her book at Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach along with author D.J. Niko on Nov. 13 at 7 PM, at Miami Book Fair International's Festival of Authors, Sat. Nov. 21st at 2 PM,  and at Books & Books in Coral Gables on December 11th at 6 PM.

Elisa Albo's Each Day More Published

Main Street Rag Press has published Each Day More, a collection of elegies by MFA alumna Elisa Albo. The Potomac Review writes, "The poems in Each Day More are somber, but they are wise . . . The spare, evocative lines also provide their own sense of solace by the sheer artfulness and gentle reflection with which they are written."

Albo's work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Alimentum, Bomb Magazine, Crab Orchard Review, MiPoesias, and Tigertail: a South Florida Annual. Her chapbook Coming to America, originally published by March Street Press and available as an ebook, will soon be reissued by Main Street Rag Press. Born in Havana and raised in Central Florida, Albo teaches English and ESL at Broward College.

Anthony Gagliano's The Emperor's Club Published

MFA alumnus Anthony Gagliano's noir thesis novel, Straits of Fortune, was published by Harper Collins to critical acclaim.  But while he was working on the follow-up, continuing the adventures of Jack Vaughan, Gagliano suffered a stroke and died at 53, leaving The Emperor's Club incomplete.  His professors at FIU, Dan Wakefield and Les Standiford, took on the task of finishing the book, which has now been published by MidTown Publishing.

The result, says Pamela Akins in The Florida Book Review, is "an action-packed crime tale, preserving Gagliano's sharp, world-weary voice."  How Standiford and Wakefield's approached turning the layered drafts of the unfinished book into the published one is recounted in this article from FIU news.

Dave Landsberger's Poetry Collection Suicide by Jaguar Debuts

Suicide by Jaguar, the first full-length poetry collection by MFA alumnus Dave Landsberger, has just been published by Miami-based Jai-Alai Books.  The book was designed in a bilingual format, also containing Suicido por Jaguar, a Spanish language version of the poems, translated by J.V. Portela.  Landsberger's poems have been described as having the themes of "death, tacos, Egyptian mythology, basketball, motherhood, and beauty.

The collection was launched during Miami Book Fair International, with a Jai-Alai press party at Ball & Chain in Little Havana, and Landsberger, who lives in Chicago, read on Sunday, Nov. 23rd at the Fair. Landsberger's poetry has been profiled in The New Yorker and The Chicago Tribune, and his comic "Beef Jams" is currently being published in serial form by Image Comics. He is a founding member, along with Kathleen Rooney, of Poems While You Wait, a group of public performance typewriter poets. His chapbook, Whoa, Yeah, Baby, is available for free at Floating Wolf Quarterly.  (Dave Landsberger photo, credit Gesi Schilling Photography.)

FIU MFA Authors at Miami Book Fair International 2014

At Miami Book Fair International this week. FIU’s Creative Writing program will be well-represented, with faculty, students, and alumni among the more than 500 authors who’ll be presenting at the Festival of Authors. Below is a quick listing of those from FIU, the books they’ll be speaking about or the special presentations they’re involved in, with the day and time.  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.)

This year, the Book Fair is introducing The Swamp, a pop-up lounge in a big tent at the southeast corner of N.E. 3rd Street and 2nd Ave, that showcases Florida stories, music, dance, film, history, and art.  “All week long, Swamp events will explore the beauty, contradictions, uniqueness, and downright ‘weirdness’ of life in Florida.”  Swamp events are listed separately in the Street Fair part of the schedule.  MFA alumna Emma Trelles is interviewed in this Cultist blog piece in the Miami New Times about one of the Swamp events that includes a number of FIU writers, The Sweat II Broadsheet project.

The O Miami Poetry Festival, directed by MFA alumnus Scott Cunningham, has produced a special Poetry Guide to the Book Fair, highlighting poetry-related events, including special micro-workshops in poetry at the Jai-Alai books booth.

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 two dozen FIU MFA alumni and graduate students, led by faculty member and FBR Editor Lynne Barrett.

Sunday Nov. 16:

7:30 PM O Miami Poetry Karaoke Lounge, Scott Cunningham, O Miami Founder/Director, The Swamp

Wednesday, Nov. 19:

7 PM Launch of Badass—Lip Service True Stories, The Double Album, with Nicholas Garnett and Esther Martinez-Keniff, The Swamp

Thursday, Nov. 20:

5 PM Poem Depot: Poetry on Demand, with Ashley M. Jones and Laura McDermott Matheric, The Swamp

6 PM Fifteen Views of Miami launch, Battle of Literary Short Stories: Miami vs. Orlando, with JJ Colagrande, The Swamp

Saturday, Nov. 22:

10 AM, Elisa Albo, Each Day More

11 AM: James W. Hall, The Big Finish

12:30 Sweat Broadside Project II: Readings and Limited Edition Broadside Giveaway, with Annik Adey-Babinski, Lynne Barrett, Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello,  Cathleen Chambless,  John Dufresne,Yaddyra Peralta, Emma Trelles, and Nick Vagnoni, The Swamp

4:30 PM  Denise Duhamel, Blowout

5:30 PM: John Dufresne, No Regrets, Coyote

6 PM: Julie Marie Wade, When I Was Straight

Sunday, Nov. 23

10 AM: John W. Evans, Young Widower: A Memoir

11 AM: Cecilia M. Fernandez, Leaving Little Havana

11 AM: Parker Phillips, Reading Queer  presents This Is For the Ladies Who Brunch, The Swamp

12 PM: Ran Henry, Spurrier: How the Ball Coach Taught the South to Play Football

1 PM: Anjanette Delgado, The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

2 PM: Richard Blanco,  The Prince of Los Cocuyos, a Miami Childhood

2:30 PM:  Joe Clifford, Lamentation

5:30 PM: Anjanette Delgado, The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho, in Spanish.

6 PM: Dave Landsberger, Suicide by Jaguar

Just Published: Ran Henry's Spurrier

Lyons Press has just published Spurrier: How the Ball Coach Taught the South to Play Football by FIU MFA alumnus Ran Henry.  Publishers Weekly says, "Committed to piercing the media-hyped myth of Spurrier, Henry has written a wise and honest biography of a man who has revamped the strategy of college football, making it more exciting for players and fans alike."

Henry has written for the Florida Times-Union, the St. Petersburg Times, and Tropic, the Miami Herald Sunday magazine, and has taught writing at FIU and Virginia Commonwealth University. He currently teaches at the University of Virginia and teaches football writing for the Honors College at the University of South Carolina. He first interviewed Steve Spurrier in 1986 and began writing Spurrier when the coach led the Florida Gators to their first-ever national championship in 1997. Henry divides his time between Charlottesville, VA, Columbia, SC, and a home in the mountains of West Virginia.

Henry's extensive book tour will bring him to Florida, including a game day reading at the University of Florida Bookstore in Gainesville on Saturday, Nov. 15th. On Sunday, Nov. 16th, he will be presenting at Miami Book Fair International at noon.

Just Published: Joe Clifford's Lamentation

Joe Clifford’s third novel, Lamentation, has just been published by Oceanview Publishing. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly says Clifford, “understands human potential for moral collapse and redemption, and his lean, gritty prose never lets characters or readers off the hook.”  Revolt Daily’s Renee Asher Pickup writes, "Crime writers are known for getting down to the grit of real life, but not all of them can pull off the heart Clifford works into his writing. Through the story you will roll your eyes at the protagonist one moment, cheer for him the next, and find your heart breaking by the end."

Since graduating from the MFA program, Clifford has published a collection of short stories, Choice Cuts,  his thesis novel, Wake the Undertaker, (both, Snubnose Press), and an autobiographical novel, Junkie Love (Battered Suitcase Press).  While in the MFA program, he was editor of Gulf Stream Magazine, and since graduating he has pursued editing as well as writing. He is co-editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive.  In December, Out of the Gutter and Zelmer Pulp will bring out Trouble in the Heartland, a collection of crime stories inspired by the songs of Bruce Springsteen that Clifford has edited. 

Clifford's book tour will bring him to Murder on the Beach in Delray Beach on Wednesday, Nov. 19th, and he’ll be among the presenters at Miami Book Fair International Sunday Nov. 23rd.  He discusses his time in the MFA program and his path to publication in an interview with MFA student Justin Bendell in Sliver of Stone Magazine's latest issue.  More info. at Clifford's blog, Candy and Cigarettes.

MFA Program 25th Anniversary Celebration Nov. 1st Featuring Richard Blanco

On Saturday, November 1, a celebration of  25 years of the MFA program in Creative Writing at FIU will feature special guest, Richard Blanco, 2013 Inaugural Poet and MFA alumnus. The event will be held at 8 PM at the Coral Cables Congregational Church (across the street from the Biltmore Hotel, and will be free and open to the public. For information and to reserve a place at this event, please go to our website.

Award-winning poet Richard Blanco has turned to prose for his memoir The Prince of Los Cocuyos, just published by Ecco Press. In a starred review, Publishers Weekly says, “Blanco has a natural, unforced style that allows his characters’ vibrancy and humor to shine through.”  O Magazine adds, “In this vibrant memoir, Obama-inaugural poet Richard Blanco tenderly, exhilaratingly chronicles his Miami childhood amid a colorful, if suffocating, family of Cuban exiles, as well as his quest to find his artistic voice and the courage to accept himself as a gay man.” You can listen to Blanco discuss the book in this NPR interview and learn about appearances on his book tour on his website.

Julie Marie Wade Awarded 2014 To The Lighthouse Prize

Julie Marie Wade's poetry manuscript SIX has been selected as the winner of the A Room of Her Own (AROHO) Foundation's To The Lighthouse Prize by final judge C.D. Wright.

Wright wrote, “I chose SIX not in spite of but because of its discursiveness, its willingness to wander through the poem with technique at hand, but also a permit to allow both substantive and ephemeral material to wander into the field of the poem and exit without a conclusive goal in mind. It’s an accumulative project, inclusive, and busy about the business of sifting and sorting through this thing we call life that we carry out in this creation we call a body on this tumultuous blue orb we call earth.”

Wade, an Assistant Professor teaching in the Creative Writing Program at F.I.U. is the author of Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press); Small Fires; Essays (Sarabande Books) ; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize; When I Was Straight: Poems (A Midsummer Night’s Press); and the forthcoming Catechism: A Love Story (Noctuary Press, 2016).  Her 2010 book Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures, winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; was first published in 2010 by Colgate University Press, and has just been reissued by Bywater Books.  You can learn more about her work and upcoming events on her website.

Dennis Lehane Short Story Becomes a Film and a Novel

FIU MFA alumnus Dennis Lehane's The Drop, now out as both a novel from William Morrow and a film from Fox Searchlight Pictures, began as the short story "Animal Rescue," first published in Akashic Books' Boston Noir and chosen for Best American Mystery Stories 2010. Lehane wrote the screenplay for the film, in which the action moves to New York City, but the novel stays in Boston's Dorchester.  Publisher's Weekly calls the novel a "gritty gem," and The Guardian says, "“He has reworked [the story] into a smart, grubby and thoroughly enjoyable novel to coincide with the film's release.”

Photo: Radio Boston

What is it like to write both the screenplay and the novel? Lehane discusses the differences in an interview with Boston Magazine. You can watch the trailer for the film which co-stars Tom Hardy and James Galdolfini, here.

Just Published: Anjanette Delgado's The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho

MFA alumna Anjanette Delgado's second novel The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho has just been published by Kensington Books. In their advance review, Publisher's Weekly says, "It doesn't take a psychic to predict this fun novel will be a hit." The Spanish language edition, La Clarividente de Calle Ocho, will be released in September in the U.S. and Mexico by Suma de Letras, an imprint of Penguin Random House.

 Delgado began her career as a journalist for NBC, CBS, Univision and Telemoundo, among others, and  covered presidential coups, elections, the Olympics, both Iraq wars and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. She has written for NPR, Vogue, NBC, and created, wrote, and developed the sitcom Great in Bed for HBO Latin America. She won an Emmy for her series "Madres en la Lehanía" about the plight of mothers who leave their children to come to the U.S. to work as undocumented nannies.

While she was a student in the MFA program, Delgado's first novel, The Heartbreak Pill, was published in English and, as Píldora de Mal Amor, in Spanish.  It won first prize at the Latino International Book Award for Best Romance in English, among other awards. Delgado, who received her degree in 2012, wrote The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho as her MFA thesis.

You can read Shelf Awareness Book Brahmin's interview with Delgado, and an excerpt from The Clairvoyant of Calle Ocho is online at Squarespace.  You can learn more at her website. She will be among those reading at the FIU alumni Writers on the Bay celebration at Books and Books in Coral Gables, Sunday, September 14th at 4 PM, and will return to the bookstore for a book launch on Oct. 17th. Store owner Mitchell Kaplan should be on hand to explain how he feels about his role as a character in the novel.