Welcome to the Community of Writers Omnium Gatherum & Alumni News. We invite you to find out what our community has been up to recently. You may view by date or by program (see left sidebar). Sign up for monthly updates here.
We also invite alumni and staff to submit your news here. Please note that news must be less than 12 months old, brief and to the point, and may be edited for brevity and/or clarity.
She is the winner of the Fourth River (Chatham University) Folio Contest. Her entry, “Confluence Itself,” consists of a dozen poems to be published online in the fall of 2017. Natalie Diaz judged the competition. Also, Poems2go has published two additional poems.
Denise Emanuel Clemen had essays published in the Fall 2016 (issue#18) Superstition Review; the November 2016 issue of the Beacon, a publication of the American Adoption Congress; the Spring 2016 (issue#14) Serving House Journal; and Chicago Now‘s “Portrait of an Adoption” in November 2016. Short fiction appeared in the 2016 Sand Hill Review, the 2016 (issue #36) Berkeley Fiction Review, and in the Pen Center USA post-election anthology, Only Light Can Do That.
Three of Jeffrey Kingman’s poems appear in the Volume 17, Spring 2017 issue of The Offbeat, a journal affiliated with Michigan State University.
Sandy Yang’s short story, “Inside Joke,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Eleven Eleven, and appears in the Fall 2016 issue.
KB Ballentine’s fourth collection, The Perfume of Leaving, won the 2016 Blue Light Press Poetry Award and was published in late 2016. A few of the poems were written at the Community of Writers. Ballentine’s fifth collection, Almost Everything, Almost Nothing, was accepted for publication by Middle Creek Publishing and will be available May 2017. Several of the poems in this latest collection were conceived and workshopped at Squaw Valley, including the title poem of the book.
Elaine Barnard’s short stories appear in the current issues of Lost River Review, Kyso Flash anthology, Beach Reads-Here Comes the Sun.
Her poem “Dear Jason Robards” appears in The Museum of Americana Issue Twelve.
Anne Ray won the 2016 Danahy Prize for fiction for “Please Repeat My Name,” which appeared in the Tampa Review. Her work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Gettysburg Review, LIT, and Opium. Her story “Reluctantly” is forthcoming in Conduit, and “Guidance & Control” is currently up at The Adirondack Review.
Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, was published by Random House in January 2017. The novel was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Pick, an American Booksellers Association Indie Next Pick, a LibraryReads Pick, a Book of the Month Club Pick, and People Magazine‘s Book of the Week. It was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, and the Chronicle called it “extraordinary, impossibly funny and achingly sad.” The New York Times called it “an alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel” and praised its “compassion, its ability to see the humanity inside even the apparently hopeless person and the shimmering intelligence of its prose.” Lindsey attended the Community of Writers with the assistance of the Stearns Scholarship.
Poet and playwright Patricia Spears Jones is the the 2017 recipient of the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers. The judges praised Jones for her “sophisticated and moving” work. Her books of poems are Painkiller, Femme du Monde and, most recently, A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems. “Patricia Spears Jones’ poems are made of fever, bones, and breath. The fever of eros, the bones of family and friends, and the breath of everyday existence. She is an accessible poet, but never boring,” the citation reads. “More of us should know who she is, and even more should read her.”
Cynthia Robinson’s novel Birds of Wonder will be published by Standing Stone Books in February 2018.
Alison Morse’s collection of very short stories, If You Wave a Chicken Over Your Head, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in February, 2017.
Molly Fisk was named the inaugural Poet Laureate of Nevada County, CA in April. Her latest book is Houston, We Have a Possum, Further Observations from a Working Poet.
Monika Rose is co-editor of the Butte Fire anthology, Out of the Fire, (June 17, 2017) by nonprofit literary publisher Manzanita Writers Press in Calaveras County. Over 150 full-color pages of photography and poignant reflections in prose and poetry of a horrific fire, the seventh most destructive in California history, and one that destroyed a community and charred the landscape and environment of an already bark beetle-infested forest and woodland region. A website will chronicle the history of the event and the aftermath, reflecting the sensibilities of living in the foothill and Sierra region of California, and an eBook and eZine.
A collection of my essays on poetry, A Million MFAs Are Not Enough, was published in 2016 by Red Hen Press.
Joe Bardin’s personal history essay, “Showbiz” appeared in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
Jacqueline Doyle’s flash fiction chapbook The Missing Girl is now available for pre-order from Black Lawrence Press: http://www.blacklawrence.com/the-missing-girl/. Her essay “Saving Trees,” published last summer in Catamaran Literary Reader, has been included in Rooted: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, edited by Josh MacIvor-Anderson (San Francisco: Outpost 19, 2017). She has creative nonfiction forthcoming soon in The Gettysburg Review, Under the Gum Tree, and Superstition Review, fiction forthcoming in Prime Number, and flash forthcoming in Post Road and Hotel Amerika.
Eric Howard’s debut book of poetry, Taliban Beach Party, is now available from Turtle Point Press. The collection binds Los Angeles to Ovid, versifies the last days of a failed pimp, gives a tarot reading to warplanes, and deciphers the hieroglyphics of lost empire.
His new book, A Little Book on Form: An Exploration Into The Formal Imagination of Poetry, was published by Harper Collins in 2017. From the former U.S. Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winner, an illuminating dissection of poetic form, traditional and modern.
Marcelo Castillo is the winner of the sixth annual Drinking Gourd Chapbook Poetry Prize. His manuscript, Dulce, will be published by Northwestern University Press in Fall 2017 with a planned launch party at the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, IL in January 2018.
Max Winter’s debut novel, Exes, was published by Catapult in April. Max attended the workshops with the assistance of a UC Irvine scholarship.
Joshua Ferris’s latest book is The Dinner Party and Other Stories. It was published by Little, Brown & Company in May, 2017.
Kazim’s new novel written in the form of a string quartet, The Secret Room: A String Quartet, has been published by Kaya Press. He also edited a collection of essays, Mad Heart Be Brave: On the Poetry of Agha Shahid Ali, published in April 2017 from the University of Michigan Press.
Dawn McGuire’s fourth book of poetry, American Dream With Exit Wound, is out from IFSF Publishing (San Francisco) April 15, and can be ordered from Amazon and Small Press Distribution.
She reads on the Poetry Stage of the LA Times Festival of books on Saturday, April 22 (12:30 PM), with former California Poet Laureate, Carole Muske-Dukes.
Kim Wyatt’s essay, “The Currency of Moons,” was selected to appear in Best American Travel Writing 2017 by guest editor Lauren Collins of the New Yorker. The anthology will publish in October; the essay first appeared in Creative Nonfiction’s spring 2016 issue.
Heather Altfeld won the 2017 Poetry Society of America Robert H. Winner Award. Two days later, she also won the Iron Horse Literary Review Trifecta Award for a poem, forthcoming in June 2017. Her book, The Disappearing Theatre, was released in Summer of 2016.
