Qais Akbar Omar interviewed by The Economist

June 14, 2013 at 11:23

Qais Akbar Omar (Fiction, 2015) is interviewed today at The Economist’s Prospero literary blog. From the interview:

WHEN the Taliban were forced out of Kabul in 2001, life began once again for Qais Akbar Omar. He helped rebuild the family carpet business, became an interpreter for the United Nations, worked on a Dari-language production of “Love’s Labour’s Lost” and then co-wrote an account of the experience in the 2012 book “Shakespeare in Kabul”.

Mr Omar’s new book, “A Fort Of Nine Towers”, is a poetic, funny and terrifying memoir of life in Kabul between the Soviet Army’s exit and the Taliban’s retreat. He describes his family’s attempts to flee Afghanistan, their time living among Kuchi nomads and in caves by the Bamiyan Buddha statues (which the Taliban famously destroyed in 2001). His family then returns to a Kabul of rockets, capricious snipers and civil war as armed factions fight for power. Mr Omar has written a book of hellish encounters—he recounts meeting predatory Talibs, and a fighter who grows roses in severed heads—and familial love.

[...]

Prospero: The book is so extraordinary, I must ask: is it all true?

Omar: Yes it is, everything. After 9/11 foreigners in Afghanistan wanted to know what it was like during the civil war. When I talked about the past, I felt better because before that I had nightmares. My friends said it worked like therapy, so why not sit and write? Years later I thought I’ll try it, because I still had those dreams. So I sat in my bedroom, started writing, and couldn’t stop for two months.

Omar’s A Fort Of Nine Towers is published by Picador and available in bookstores and online booksellers now.

By zakbos | Posted in Alumni, Interviews, Memoir Publications | Comments (0)

Rebekah Stout in Slate

June 7, 2013 at 16:46

We’re excited to report that Rebekah Stout (Poetry 2010)’s poem “This Horse” has been published on Slate‘s website! You can read the poem and listen to Rebekah read it here.

Rebekah Stout is the assistant poetry editor at Slate and a lecturer in poetry at Boston University. She is the winner of the 2009 Poetry International Prize. She was the poetry editor for issues 4-6 of 236, the Alumni Literary Journal of BU Creative Writing, and her poem “In the Garden” appears in Issue 6. In 2010 she traveled to Greece as a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow in Poetry.

Congratulations, Rebekah!

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A full-length poetry collection for Renee Emerson

May 29, 2013 at 15:32

Renee EmersonWonderful news for Renee Emerson (Poetry 2009): her first full-length poetry collection, Keeping Me Still, is forthcoming from Winter Goose Publishing in March 2014. Congratulations, Renee!

Her publisher writes that she is “an intensely moving writer whose work is not only immersed in human emotion, but also draws power from hope found in the midst of a fallen and broken world.” Become a fan of Renee’s work on Facebook here.

Renee Emerson‘s poetry has been published in 32 Poems, Christianity and Literature, Indiana Review, Literary Mama, Southern Humanities Review, storySouth, and elsewhere (links are to her poems online). Renee teaches creative writing and composition at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her husband and daughter. She is currently great with child.

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New literary honors for Caitlin Doyle

May 29, 2013 at 15:18

We’re thrilled to report that Caitlin Doyle (Poetry 2008) has received a series of exciting literary honors this spring. She has been awarded a 2013 Literary Grant through the John Anson Kittredge Fund. Kittredge Fund grants are awarded to “individuals at an early stage of a promising professional career in the arts, humane letters, and the social sciences.”

Caitlin has also been selected as the recipient of a Tuition Scholarship for the 2013 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference at Middlebury College.

In addition, she has been awarded this year’s WC&C Scholarship in Poetry through AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs). Each year, the WC&C Scholarship Program awards one scholarship to a poet and one to a fiction writer. You can click here to read about the program and to see judge Michelle Seaton’s comments about Caitlin’s work.

Caitlin has been selected for a residency fellowship this upcoming fall as a Writer-In-Residence at the James Merrill House in Stonington, CT. The James Merrill House provides the resident with time and space to work supported by a fellowship stipend. While in residence, the Fellow engages with the local community through a variety of possible means, such as readings, workshops, and presentations.

This spring, Caitlin has also published two book reviews. Her review of Heidy Steidlmayer’s “Fowling Piece,” which appeared as a Prose Feature at 32 Poems Magazine, can be read here. Her review of Jane Satterfield’s “Her Familiars,” was published in The Common and is also available online. She also has new articles, reviews, and poems forthcoming in a variety of literary venues, including The Cork Literary Review, Blackbird, and Chautauqua Literary Journal.

Congratulations, Caitlin!

 

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Eleanor Goodman has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship

May 29, 2013 at 15:08

We are proud to report that Eleanor Goodman (Poetry 2003) has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to spend this coming year in Beijing as a Visiting Scholar at Beijing University. The grant will support her newest book-length translation of Chinese poetry.

Eleanor Goodman is a writer and a translator from Chinese. Her work appears in journals such as PN Review, Chutzpah 天南, Pleiades, Cha, and The Best American Poetry website. She is a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University. She has held writing residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the American Academy in Rome. Her book of translations, The Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni, is forthcoming from Zephyr Press.

Congratulations, Eleanor!

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Luisa Caycedo-Kimura published in the San Pedro River Review

May 21, 2013 at 13:35

We are proud to report that Luisa Caycedo-Kimura (Poetry 2013)’s poem “Cartagena Sunrise – April, 2009” has been accepted by San Pedro River Review for their Harbors and Harbor Towns-themed issue, which will be going to publication early next month. To see a list of contributors and the cover of the Harbors and Harbor Towns special issue, click here to visit the San Pedro River Review Facebook page.

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura is a current MFA candidate in poetry. As a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow she will travel to Spain in the fall. Luisa was born in Colombia and grew up in New York City. A former attorney, she left the legal profession to pursue her passion for writing. Luisa has received awards for her poetry and was nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. Her poems appear in various publications, including Connecticut Review, Louisiana Literature, PALABRA, San Pedro River Review, and Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011. Her poems have also been included in the writing curricula at colleges and universities.

Congratulations, Luisa!

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Rafael Campo has won the Hippocrates Open International Prize for Poetry and Medicine

May 20, 2013 at 16:36

We are very proud to announce that Rafael Campo (Poetry 1991), a professor at Harvard Medical School, Beth Israel Deaconess, and Lesley University, has won the Hippocrates Open International Prize for Poetry and Medicine. The prize has been awarded in the United Kingdom since 2009 and has quickly become one of the most important international prizes for poetry, as well as a unique place for poetry and medicine to meet.Rafael Campo

On his first prize winning poem, Campo says, “‘Morbidity and mortality rounds’ was conceived some years ago, after I visited a patient of mine in the hospital who was dying of hepatocellular carcinoma and awaiting transfer to a hospice facility.  To my astonishment, he asked my forgiveness for not responding to the treatment, and for causing me so much trouble.  I have long been haunted by the irony of his words, as I had felt so acutely throughout the course of his illness the limitations of the biomedical model and my own personal helplessness, and thus held myself responsible for his death, but didn’t know how I could express my own wish to be forgiven.

“…My head spun with all my conflicting feelings, which finally took shape in the poem’s repetitions, and also became reflected in the poem’s title; though in the end I didn’t attend the M&M conference, I felt that through the poem I was able to address what for me were the most important lessons he taught me, especially the power of empathy to combat the distancing we almost reflexively adopt toward our patients, and the necessity of confronting our own shortcomings.”

Rafael Campo (Poetry 1991), M.A., M.D., D. Litt.(Hon.), is a poet and essayist who teaches and practices general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.  He is also on the faculty of Lesley University’s Creative Writing MFA Program.  He is the recipient of many honors and awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Poetry Series award, and a Lambda Literary Award for his poetry.  His most recent book, The Enemy (Duke University Press, 2007), won the Sheila Motton Book Award from the New England Poetry Club, one of America’s oldest poetry organizations.

Congratulations, Rafael!

Photo ©Hippocrates Prize

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Three poetry alumni in Redivider

May 20, 2013 at 16:09

Lisa Hiton is a Chicago native.  Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, The Cortland Review, Indiana Review, and DMQ Review among others.  She has received fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the MU Writing Workshops in Greece.  She is a current nominee for the Pushcart Prize and master’s candidate in Arts in Education at Harvard University.

Daniel Kraines teaches at West Nottingham Academy in Maryland and is a candidate for an MA in Social Thought and Modernism at NYU.

Megan Fernandes is a PhD candidate in English Literature and the founder of the Poetry/Poetics Hub at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Boston University. She is the co-editor of Strangers in Paris (Tightrope Books) and the author of two chapbooks entitled Organ Speech (Corrupt Press) and Some Citrus Makes me Blue (Dancing Girl Press). Her dissertation research draws on science and technology studies, media philosophy, critical theory, and 20th/21st century comparative poetics and literature.

Congratulations, Meg, Dan, and Lisa!

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Three of our poets to read at the Gallery Benoit this Thursday

May 14, 2013 at 13:24

Mark your calendars for an evening of art and poetry at the Gallery Benoit, this Friday, May 17! Three of our current students, Sara Rivera, Sarah Huener, and Patrick Connolly (all Poetry 2013) will read their work alongside artist Craig Stockwell’s minimalism and not.

What: GALLERY BENOIT PRESENTS Art and Poetry at Gallery Benoit
When: Thursday May 16, 7-8 pm
Where: Gallery Benoit, 4 Clarendon Street, Boston, MA 02116
info@gallerybenoit.com
(617) 309-7902

Sara Rivera is a writer and artist from Albuquerque, New Mexico and an MFA candidate in Poetry at Boston University. She is active in the visual arts, theater, and music and currently works as an intern at Gallery Benoit.

Sarah Huener is a poet and musician from North Carolina. She is in the MFA program at Boston University, and reads for AGNI. She plays with the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra here in Boston. Sarah likes whiskey, bass lines, and line breaks.

Patrick Connolly is in the poetry MFA program at Boston University. He is from Medford, Mass. He likes basketball and gardening.

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SIGHT READING and an article in Poets & Writers, both by Daphne Kalotay

May 2, 2013 at 16:01

We’re excited to announce that a new novel by Daphne Kalotay (Fiction 1994), will be released by Harper on May 21, 2013. Sight Reading “chronicles the collateral damage three classical musicians inflict on the people who love them” (Kirkus). In a starred review for Booklist, Michele Leber writes that “Kalotay celebrates art in general, even considering what it is and isn’t, in prose that is brisk and concise as well as sensuous and sumptuous.” Sight Reading is now available for pre-order.

This month’s Poets & Writers also features an article by Daphne titled “The Calm Before the Calm: Silence and the Creative Writer.” You can find the article, in which she praises quietude even after publication, in the May/June issue on newsstands now.

For those in the Boston area, Daphne will be giving two readings later this month: May 28 at Harvard Bookstore, and May 29 at Newtonville Books.

Daphne Kalotay (Fiction 1994) is the author of the novel Russian Winter, which won the Writers’ League of Texas Fiction Award and has been published in twenty languages, and the fiction collection Calamity and Other Stories, which was short-listed for the Story Prize. A MacDowell fellow, Daphne holds a PhD in modern and contemporary literature and an MA in creative writing, both from Boston University, and has received fellowships from the Christopher Isherwood Foundation, Yaddo, and the Bogliasco Foundation. She has taught literature and creative writing at Boston University, Skidmore College, Middlebury College, and Grub Street. Copresident of the Boston chapter of the Women’s National Book Association, she lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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