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.

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

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.

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.

Dan Wakefield Has Edited Kurt Vonnegut: The Letters

FIU's long-time Writer-in-Residence Dan Wakefield has "splendidly assembled and edited" (New York Times) the letters of Kurt Vonnegut. The book is just out from Delacorte Press. A starred review in Publishers Weekly says of Kurt Vonnegut: The Letters,  “Fans will find the collection as spellbinding as Vonnegut’s best novels, and casual readers will discover letters as splendid in their own way as those of Keats.”
 

Dan's many fans in South Florida will be welcoming him back to Miami in November when he'll appear at Miami Book Fair International.  Dan was Writer-in-Residence in the FIU Creative Writing Program from 1994-2010, and received the university's Excellence in Graduate Mentorship Award. He teaches in the Low Residency MFA in Writing Program at Converse College in Spartanburg, S.C.  and leads workshops  in "Spiritual Autobiography" and "Creating from the Spirit" all around the U.S.  Readers can learn more about Dan's novels, books of nonfiction, and many other projects and achievements on 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.

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

FIU Student Literary Award Winners Announced

Congratulations to all the winners of the FIU Student Literary Awards!

POETRY (Judge: John Hodgen)
Graduate Winner: Julio Machado, "Maid Hour"
Graduate Runner-up: Patrick Norris, "Luciferge", "Ohio's Finest", "I Like Fish"
Undergraduate Winner: Valeria Manavallo, "Franz"
Undergraduate Runner-up: Melanie Martinez, "Boondocks"

NONFICTION (Judge: Kat Meads)
Graduate Winners (a tie)
Justin Bendell, "Kurt Cobain Avengers"
Jennifer Maritza McCauley, "New Britain Ghosts"
Graduate Runner-up" Fabienne Josaphat, "When Looking in the Mirror"

FICTION (Judge: M. Evelina Galang)
Graduate Winner: James Elens, "Brothers After the Storm"
Graduate Runner-up: Alexandra Handwerger, "Girl Scouts"
Undergraduate Winner: Brett Kaplan, "Monty"

Academy of American Poets Prize (Judge: Michael Hettich)
Winner: Marci Calabretta
First Runner-up: Parker Phillips
Second Runner-up: Amy Hughes

Writer in Residence Madeleine Blais on WLRN's Under the Sun

Madeleine Blais

 WLRN's Under the Sun features "Loyalty Oath," an essay by our Spring 2011 & Spring 2012 Writer in Residence Madeleine Blais about what Florida required of her before she returned here to teach years after she'd left and why Miami is "not so easy to ditch." Listen live.