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.

Just Published: Patricia Engel's It's Not Love, It's Just Paris

MFA alumna Patricia Engel's first novel, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris, debuts August 6th with a launch reading at Books & Books in Coral Gables.  On the summer recommended reading lists of the L.A. Times, Time Out New York, and Flavorwire, It's Not Love, It's Just Paris has been praised in early reviews by the Miami Herald as "a clear-eyed recasting of a classic storyline executed with confidence and just enough city-of-lights magic" and by the Tampa Bay Times as "warm, quirky, and intelligently observed."

Engel's first book, the 2010 story collection Vida, was a  New York Times Notable Book of the Year, finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Fiction Award and Young Lions Fiction Award, won the fiction silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, and was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR and L.A. Weekly.  Her fiction has appered in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, and Guernica. More information about her work and where you can catch up with her on her book tour can be found at her website.

John Dufresne Launches No Regrets, Coyote

John Dufresne's fifth novel No Regrets, Coyote, has been published to critical acclaim. In the New York Times, Marilyn Stasio calls it "a goulishly funny crime novel," and "dazzling, even by the exacting standards of South Florida crime fiction." And Library Journal says it's a "classy and darkly witty thriller." Dufresne's first ventures into crime writing, stories in Miami Noir and Boston Noir, were each chosen for inclusion in Best American Mysteries, but this is his first venture into a full-length mystery.

A large crowd, including many members of the FIU MFA community were on hand Friday, August 2nd, for the book launch at Books & Books in Coral Gables. The reading and q&a were live-streamed online and can be still be viewed.  Or listen to NPR's All Things Considered interview. You can see the schedule for appearances on the No Regrets, Coyote book tour, and find links to more reviews, at JohnDufresne.com.

Laura Valeri's Safe In Your Head Published

FIU MFA alumna Laura Valeri's Safe in Your Head, a novel in stories, has been published by Stephen F. Austin University Press.  Stories from the book have appeared in, among other journals and anthologies, Glimmer Train, Waccamaw, Night Train, Voices in Italian Americana  Valeri drew upon family history for the book, including stories told to her in childbood by her grandmother that "ingrained themselves so vividly in my imagination that they nagged at me from the subconscious for decades."

Valeri's first book, the story collection The Kind of Things Saints Do, won the Iowa/John Simmons Award and the Binghamton University/John Gardner Award.  She is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University.  Learn more about her writing and research on her website.

For Joe Clifford, a Novel, another Novel, and an Award

Joe Clifford, who has been living in the San Francisco area since graduating from the FIU MFA Program, is having a busy year.  As already reported here in January, his story collection Choice Cuts was published by Snubnose Press.  Now his first novel, Junkie Love, was published by Battered Suitcase Press in March, his second novel, Wake the Undertaker, is just out from Snubnose Press, and he has been awarded a San Francisco Acker Award in Fiction.

Junkie Love is an autobiographical novel, of which The Ampersand Review says, "From the first page, everything you experience through Clifford’s graceful yet biting narrative is beautiful and tragic. The journey over a decade of addiction to seek redemption is compelling, daunting, with no easy escape or roadmap home found in track-marred arms." Wake the Undertaker, a noir thriller that harks back to vintage pulp, was originally Clifford's MFA thesis The Lone Palm.  You can read (or hear) interviews with Clifford about his journey to the publication of his three books (in a short time, but years in the making) on his website.

The Acker Awards "for Achievement in the avant garde" are given to artists "who have made outstanding contributions in their discipline in defiance of convention,  or else served their fellow writers and artists in outstanding ways."  The award ceremonies will take place in San Francisco on June 6, 2013.

Joe Clifford is currently Acquisitions Editor at Gutter Books and Managing Editor for the Flash Fiction Offensive. With his wife Justine Clifford he co-produces Lip Service West, a bi-monthly reading series for true stories. A short film/book trailer for Junkie Love is up on You Tube. Rumor has it that Clifford will be in Miami in September to participate the annual alumni reading at Books & Books.

Dennis Lehane Wins Edgar® Award for Best Novel

Dennis Lehane with his award.

Dennis Lehane received the Best Novel Edgar^® Award from for Live By Night at the 67th annual 2013 Edgar Awards banquet in New York City on May 2nd.  The prestigious awards are given by the Mystery Writers of America.

Shelf Awareness reported from that Lehane's acceptance speech, "paid tribute to the librarians who 'offered a light in the darkness for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks.'"

Live By Night, Lehane's tenth book, also received the Gold Medal for Fiction in the Florida Book Awards in March.  Lehane, who received his MFA from Florida International University, is co-director of the Eckerd College Writers In Paradise Conference.