BU Creative Writing

Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010)’s first book of poems, BREAD ON RUNNING WATERS, has just been released by Fenway Press. You can order your copy of her remarkable debut here.

In her wonderful introduction to the collection, Rosanna Warren lauds the way that “Gjika has turned English, her adopted language, into a subtle instrument, a beautifully judged voicing that never slides into self-pity or melodrama, never loses its cool…The justness of Gjika’s phrasing has everything to do with her exact and trustworthy weighing of justice, the unspoken norms of decency that stand, immensely implied, in the background of these poems whether set in or out of Albania.”

Born and raised in Albania, Ani Gjika moved to the U.S. at age 18 and studied poetry writing at Simmons College and Boston University. She is the recipient of a 2010 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, which took her to Albania, and winner of a 2010 Robert Fitzgerald Translation Prize. Bread on Running Waters was a finalist for the 2011 Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize and 2011 May Sarton New Hampshire Book Prize. Ani is working on an anthology of poetry in translation by Albanian women.

Congratulations, Ani!

Middle Men, a collection of short stories by Jim Gavin (Fiction 2011), will be released today by Simon & Schuster. In a starred review, Kirkus has called Middle Men “exceptional…the best kind of satire: barbed and hilarious, but suffused with compassion”, and The Los Angeles Times has selected Jim as one of their “Faces to watch in 2013.” (Follow the link and then click “Books.”) The collection includes “Costello,” which appeared previously in the New Yorker.

A story by Alice Lesch Kelly (Fiction 1992), “Good Girl,” has been published in the winter issue of The Quotable, a print and online journal.  Her blog post about the story, “A Man Brings Home a Dog,” appears on the journal’s blog. You can read “Good Girl” online here and buy a copy of the issue here.

Also, Alice’s new book, Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby: The Ultimate Pregnancy Guide (HarperOne, January 29, 2013) has been published and is now available in bookstores. Alice co-wrote the book with Dr. Siobhan Dolan, medical advisor to March of Dimes. The book’s publication kicks off the March of Dimes’ year-long 75th anniversary celebration.

Alice Lesch Kelly is a freelance magazine writer and book collaborator. She teaches undergraduate creative nonfiction workshops at Emerson College.

Congratulations, Alice!

Don Share (Poetry 1988), who is Senior Editor of POETRY magazine, has recently published several new books. Wishbone, his third book of poems, is out now from Black Sparrow; his translations of Miguel Hernández, which earned him the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize, are being issued in March in a revised and expanded edition by the New York Review of Books; his anthology, co-edited with Christian Wiman, The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine, published in October by the University of Chicago Press, has earned a starred review from Library Journal; and finally, his translation of Field Guide, by Colombian poet Dario Jaramilo Agudelo, was just published by Marick Press.

Don’s other books include Squandermania (Salt Publishing), Union (Zoo Press), Seneca in English (Penguin Classics), and Bunting’s Persia (Flood Editions), a 2012 Guardian Book of the Year and Paris Review Editors’ Choice selection; he has also edited a critical edition of Bunting’s work for Faber and Faber. His translations of Miguel Hernández, collected in I Have Lots of Heart (Bloodaxe Books) were awarded the Times Literary Supplement / Society of Authors Translation Prize and Premio Valle Inclán.  He has been Poetry Editor of Harvard Review and Partisan Review, Editor of Literary Imagination, and curator of poetry at Harvard University.  For his work at POETRY he has earned two National Magazine Awards for Editorial Excellence.

Congratulations, Don!

Cara Bayles, one of our current students, has just had a story–titled “Next”–published in Meridian (the semiannual publication from the University of Virginia). You can purchase a copy of the magazine here. Congratulations, Cara!

Cara Bayles is an MFA candidate in fiction at Boston University. As a journalist, she covered the neighborhoods of Boston and the swamps of rural Louisiana.