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.

Boat Girl, Melanie Neal's Memoir, Sets Sail

Boat Girl: A Memoir of Youth, Love, and Fiberglass details the coming-of-age-experiences of Melanie Neale, a 2006 FIU MFA Creative Writing program graduate. The memoir began, in part, as her MFA thesis, based on her experiences when her family lived on a boat sailing along the U.S. east coast and the Bahamas in the 1980s and 1990s.

As those who were her classmates know, Neale lived aboard her own 28' sailboat while she was in the MFA program. Boat Girl is published by Orlando-based Beating Windward Press, which specializes in literary fiction and nonfiction.

 At Neale's website, you can learn more about the book as well as the many literary journals and magazines where her work has been published.  She'll be appearing at Miami Book Fair International in November.

Dennis Lehane's 10th Novel Published

FIU MFA program alumnus Dennis Lehane's tenth novel and eleventh book, Live By Night, has just been published.  A follow-up to Lehane's first historical novel The Given Day, Live By Night is set in the Prohibition era in locations ranging from Boston to Tampa.

In her New York Times review, Janet Maslin calls it "Crime Noir 101, as taught by the best of its current practitioners," and Tampa Times book critic Colette Bancroft says, "Live by Night takes on big subjects — race, class, money, religion, friendship, family, violence — by embedding them in irresistible storytelling about a compelling, conflicted and mordantly funny man."

More on the book and Lehane's book tour appearances can be found at his website.

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.

Debra Dean's The Mirrored World Published

Debra Dean’s second novel, The Mirrored World, has just been published by Harper Collins.  In the book Dean reimagines the life of Russia's Saint Xenia, whose journey from a life of privilege to  tending the poor in St. Petersburg's slums is told from the point of view of her younger cousin and friend, Dasha. Learn more about the book by going to Debra Dean's Facebook Author page.

On Thursday, Sept. 6th, at 8 PM, everyone's invited to Dean's launch reading at Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave, Coral Gables.  Readers can learn here where else her book tour is taking her.

The MFA Program Welcomes Julie Marie Wade

Julie Marie Wade is the newest addition to the faculty of the MFA Program in Creative Writing. Wade, who will be teaching memoir/nonfiction, completed her Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Humanities with creative dissertation at the University of Louisville in 2012, after having received a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University and a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh.

She has received the Chicago Literary Award in Poetry, the Gulf Coast Nonfiction Prize, the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize, the Literal Latte Nonfiction Award, two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes, the AWP Intro Journals Award, the American Literary Review Nonfiction Prize (read her prize-winning piece here), the Arts & Letters Nonfiction Prize, an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, the Thomas J. Hruska Nonfiction Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir.  She is the author of two collections of lyric nonfiction, Wishbone:A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010) and Small Fires (Sarabande Books, 2011), and two collections of poetry, Without (Finishing Line Press, 2010) and Postage Due (White Pine Press, forthcoming in 2013). Learn more at www.juliemariewade.com