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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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