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.

 

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.

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.)

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.

Nina Romano's Latest Chapbook Published

This summer, Flutter Press has published Time's Mirrored Illusion, a chapbook of poetry by MFA alumna Nina Romano. Among Romano's other books are Faraway Confections, a full-length collection that came out from Aldrich Press, an imprint of Kelsay Books, in Fall 2013, and the chapbook Prayer in a Summer of Grace (Flutter Press).

You can read more about Nina's writing and other projects at her website. She will be reading at Liberty Bookstore in West Palm Beach on October 30th at 7 PM.

Denise Duhamel Named a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow

FIU Creative Writing professor Denise Duhamel has been selected as a 2014 Guggenheim Fellow.  The fellowships are awarded to candidates who have demonstrated exceptional ability in scholarship or creative activities.

In an interview with FIU News, Duhamel says that she is currently working on a book of poetry exploring the relationship between men and women, and wants to visit the Galapagos Islands to see nature untouched by progress as she thinks about gender roles, nature, and culture.

Duhamel's most recent collection  of poetry, Blowout, was a finalst for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and she servedd as the guest editor of The Best American Poetry 2013. Duhamel has also received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Puffin Foundation, and Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust for Theater.

Edward Hirsch, president of the Foundation, is enthusiastic about the Fellows in the class of 2014: “It’s exciting to name 178 new Guggenheim Fellows. These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best. Since 1925, the Guggenheim Foundation has always bet everything on the individual, and we’re thrilled to continue the tradition with this wonderfully talented and diverse group. It’s an honor to be able to support these individuals to do the work they were meant to do.” You can read a full list of this year's Guggenheim Fellows here.

Julie Marie Wade's New Chapbook: When I Was Straight

Julie Marie Wade's poetry chapbook When I Was Straight has been published by A Midsummer Night's Press. The book had a pre-publication launch signing at AWP 2014 in Seattle, and is currently a finalist for the Over the Rainbow juried book list of the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table of the American Library Association.

In addition, Wade's Wishbone: A Memoir In Fractures, originally published by Colgate University Press, which sold out its first printing, is being reissued by Bywater Books in November 2014.

You can read an interview with Wade, about her recent and forthcoming publications, at Late Night Library.

Young Widower by John W. Evans Published

MFA alumnus John W. Evans' memoir, Young Widower, winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Prize, has just been published by the University of Nebraska Press. Booklist praises "the unfolding and cathartic grieving process that underpins and elevates this heartbreaking tale." You can read an adapted excerpt from the book published by Slate.


Evans' poetry collection, Consolations, will be published by Trio House Press in March 2014 and he'll be signing advance copies of it at the AWP in Seattle. Since completing his MFA at FIU, Evans has been a Stegner Fellow in Poetry and a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he continues to teach creative writing. More about Evans and his writing on his website.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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."

Jesse Millner's Dispatches from the Department of Supernatural Explanation

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Jesse Millner’s second poetry collection, Dispatches from the Department of Supernatural Explanation, has been published by Kitsune Books. His poems and prose have appeared in River Styx, Pearl, The Prose Poem Project, Tinge, The New Poet, Cider Press Review, and numerous other literary magazines. He has published six poetry chapbooks and his previous full-length collection, The Neighborhoods of My Past Sorrow, won the bronze medal in Poetry in the 2010 Florida Book Awards.

 

Millner, who teaches writing courses at Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers, FL, will be reading from at Books & Books, Coral Gables, at 8 PM Friday, November 2nd.

The 2012 FIU Writer's Conference Approaches

The Biltmore Hotel & Resort in Coral Gables, Florida

This October, FIU's 2012 Writers Conference, put on in partnership with Books & Books, will be held at the Biltmore Hotel and Spa in Coral Gables, FL.

From October 25-27, writers, teachers, editors and agents will be on hand, bringing their expertise to conference attendees.  Here's a quick look at who'll be there and the topics covered:

● novel, Scott Spencer (Endless Love) ● non-fiction/memoir, Ann Hood (Comfort) ● food and fiction writer, Steven Raichlen (Island Apart, The Barbecue Bible) ● fiction, John Dufresne (Requiem, Mass.) ● poetry, Denise Duhamel (Ka-Ching!) ● revision process, Lynne Barrett (Magpies) ● novel, Debra Dean (The Madonnas Of Leningrad) ● screenwriting & structure, Les Standiford (Bringing Adam Home) ● the book concept, Ellen Sussman (DirtyWords, French Lessons) ● memoir, Julie Wade (Small Fires) ● Richard Pine, Inkwell Management Literary Agency ● Jill Bialosky, Editor (W.W. Norton)

Conference director Les Standiford says, "Of course we hope that everyone will want to join us at the legendary Biltmore, with its many amenities, but as always, the heart of the matter is writing. Our program offers intensive, hands-on workshops and discussions intended to help writers at all stages of development."

For more information, the schedule, availability of manuscript conferences, and registration details, visit the conference page at the FIU Creative Writing program website here.

A look back in history.

Alumni Reading at Books & Books

Four recent graduates of FIU's MFA Creative Writing Program read vibrant and thought-provoking works Sept. 9 at our annual alumni Writers on the Bay reading at Books & Books in Coral Gables. Yaddyra Peralta's birthplace, Honduras, came alive in her verse. Ex-military men confronted horrors in a Nazi research facility in postwar Germany in James Elens' novel. A failed psychic set-up shop in Anjanette Delgado's novel to help jilted women navigate divorce court. Poet Guillermo Cancio-Bello tackled the old human mysteries, love and nature. A wonderful Sunday afternoon to celebrate literature!  Many thanks to Fabienne Merritt for photographing the event.

Guests socialize before the reading.

Professor Deborah Dean welcomes the audience.

MFA Program Director, Les Standiford, introduces the readers.

Guillermo Cancio-Bello

Anjanette Delgado

James Elens

Yaddyra Peralta

Professor Lynne Barrett congratulates her former student.

Professor John Dufresne and members of the MFA community catch up.