Jillian Jackson Awarded SBCF Emerging Artist Grant

June 19, 2015 at 11:16 AM

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We’re so proud to announce that current MFA candidate Jillian Jackson has received a prestigious St. Botolph’s Club Foundation (SBCF) Emerging Artist Grant!  SBCF is dedicated to promoting artistic and cultural enterprises of New Englanders through generous grants for artists “to whom it can make a difference through the combination of financial support, recognition, and endorsement.”  Some of the Creative Writing Program’s former St. Botolph grant recipients include poet Duy Doan and fiction writers Kimberly Elkins, Mai Wang, and Emma Duffy-Comparone.  We’re so pleased to add Jillian to this great list.

Congratulations, Jill! We’re excited to read your work soon.

Jillian Jackson is an MFA Fiction candidate at Boston University. She has a degree in literature from the University of Massachusetts Boston, and she’s interned for many Boston area publishers, including David R. Godine, Shambhala Publications, and Candlewick Press. She’s the recipient of Boston University’s Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Award. She lives in Allston, MA.

By Coordinator | Posted in Awards, Grad Students | Comments (3)

Ryan Wilson’s recent publications and awards

June 5, 2015 at 12:29 PM

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Ryan Wilson (poetry '08) has had an impressively productive year: he's published work in a slew of places and received a number of prizes, all while being a doctoral candidate.

His original poem, "Beatus Ille," and translation of Horace I.25 appear in the new issue of Measure.  His lecture, “How to Think Like a Poet,” is featured in the new issue of Dappled Things, and his essay, “Rich Refusals: Donald Justice and the New Critics” appeared in the Winter issue of The Sewanee Review.  

His poem “The View on Waking” appeared in the October issue of First Things, while another poem, “Pike County, 1980s, Evening,” appears in the most recent Raintown Review, and his light-verse piece, “An Orwellian Aubade” is in the most recent issue of Light.

In addition, he was named a finalist for the Vassar Miller Book Prize this year, as well as for the Morton Marr Prize from the Southwest Review, and he received an Honorable Mention in the Frost Farm Poetry Prize.

Hearty congratulations, Ryan!

Ryan Wilson was born in Griffin, Georgia. He holds graduate degrees from The Johns Hopkins University and Boston University. His work has appeared in numerous journals, such as 32 Poems, Able Muse, First Things, The Hopkins Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Measure, River Styx, The Sewanee Review, Sewanee Theological Review, and Unsplendid. Currently he is a doctoral candidate at The Catholic University of America, and he lives in Baltimore with his wife. 

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Awards, Poetry Publications | Comments (6)

Christopher Robinson and Gavin Kovite publish novel

May 29, 2015 at 11:49 AM

wotecoverChristopher Robinson (Poetry 2006) and his friend, Gavin Kovite, have written a novel together called War of the Encyclopaedists! The book was published by Scribner on May 19 and has been receiving fantastic press all month, including a review in the New York Times, a profile in the Seattle Times, and an interview in the Wall Street Journal.

The novel, based loosely on the authors' lives, follows two friends from Seattle whose paths diverge when one of them moves to Boston to attend grad school at BU while the other deploys to Baghdad through the National Guard. They keep in touch by editing an absurd Wikipedia article about themselves.

Be sure to catch them at their reading at Harvard Book Store on Friday, June 5th at 7 PM.

You can read more about the book at their website or facebook page.

Congratulations, Chris and Gavin!

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By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Novels, Readings | Comments (0)

Sara Rivera’s latest news

May 21, 2015 at 10:51 AM

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Good news abounds for Sara Rivera (poetry '13)!  Sara has three poems out in Origins: Issue 2, and her poem "baltic sea" was published with an audio recording and is live at DIALOGIST.  She was also recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her poem "Winnowing," published in 2013 by the Loft Anthology.

In addition, Sara is a talented visual artist, and she will be designing a poetry installation for the Paseo Taos fall arts festival!  You also may have admired her work if you saw our Faculty Reading and Ha Jin Visiting Lecturer posters this year, which she designed.

Congratulations, Sara!

SARA D. RIVERA is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Albuquerque, New Mexico, now based in Boston. She holds a BFA in Art Studio and a BA in English from the University of New Mexico, an MFA in Creative Writing (Poetry) from Boston University, and was awarded a 2013 Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship in Poetry for travel in Ireland. Her artistic and literary practice includes visual art, music, performance, poetry, and Spanish/English translation. Her work has appeared in the Loft Anthology's "Lay Bare the Canvas: New England Poets on Art," Origins Literary, and elsewhere, and she works as a teaching and collaborating artist at the Urbano Project and GrubStreet.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Awards, Poetry Publications | Comments (0)

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura published in FRIGG and Mid-American Review

May 12, 2015 at 4:54 PM

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Luisa Caycedo-Kimura has recently published five poems in FRIGG magazine!  Read them here.  And please check out her charming interview with Mid-American Review, in which she talks about writing, regrets, and insects.  Luisa's poem, "Un Jardin en Tolima," was published in the most recent issue of MAR.

Congratulations, Luisa!

Luisa Caycedo-Kimura was the 2014 John K. Walsh Residency Fellow at the Anderson Center at Tower View, the 2014 Adrienne Reiner Hochstadt Fellow at Ragdale, and a 2013 Robert Pinsky Global Fellow in Poetry. Born in Colombia and raised in New York City, Luisa left the legal profession to pursue her passion for writing. She has received numerous awards for her poetry and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Mid-American Review, Nashville Review, Jelly Bucket, Sunken Garden Poetry 1992-2011, and elsewhere.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Poetry Publications | Comments (0)

Tara Skurtu’s poem on the Red Line!

May 11, 2015 at 10:30 AM

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We're thrilled to see Tara Skurtu's (poetry '13) poem on the MBTA Red Line! Thanks to Mass Poetry's Poetry on the T contest and the public's vote, Tara's poem will be featured on the T for the month of May.  It's called "Anyone's Son" and was written for the family of Trayvon Martin.

About seeing her poem on the train, Tara says, "It was unlike any experience I've ever had. I sat below it and watched people's faces as they read it. I could see their eyes going across the lines, could see the poem being processed real-time. It was amazing to see. I felt like I was the page of a book, in a sense. "

Congratulations Tara!

Tara Skurtu teaches incarcerated college students through Boston University’s Prison Education Program. She is the recipient of a 2015-16 Fulbright, a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, and two Academy of American Poets prizes. Tara’s poems have been translated into Romanian and Hungarian, and her recent work appears or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, Plume, Memorious, DMQ Review, The Common, and Tahoma Literary Review.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Poetry Publications | Comments (0)

Nina Palisano finalist for Raynes Prize

April 27, 2015 at 11:20 AM

habitat (1)Great news from Nina Palisano (poetry '15) whose poetry has recently been published in a slew of places!

"On Horror" appears in the Washington Square Review, "Dear Girl" in the Bellevue Literary Review, and "Letter After An Illness" in Winter Tangerine Review -- all in the spring issues of these journals.

In addition, Nina's poem "Daniel Dreams" has been named a finalist for the Jewish Currents' Raynes Poetry Prize, and will be featured in an anthology from the Jewish Currents publishing imprint later this year.

Congratulations, Nina!

Antonina Palisano holds a degree in religion and creative writing from Hampshire College, and is most of the way through an MFA in poetry at Boston University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the publications listed, as well as the Massachusetts Review, Potluck Magazine, Electric Cereal, and many others. She is an Elizabeth Leonard Teaching Fellow at BU, and lives in Medford, MA.

By Coordinator | Posted in Awards, Poetry Publications | Comments (0)

Mike Brokos published in Cimarron Review and Poet Lore

April 16, 2015 at 11:44 AM

brokos_photo_altWe're happy to share Mike Brokos' (poetry 2012) recent publications!   Mike has published two poems in the current issue of Cimarron Review (Winter 2015, “Indigenous” and “November View”) and another in the current issue of Poet Lore (Spring/Summer 2015,“The Leash”).

 

 

 

 

Here are some excerpts from his work:

from "The Leash":
I’d feel my body start to sink with yours

into a silent intuition, since it was too dark
for anything but whispering, too dark
to navigate the cliff of clay that broke the trail

by anything but memory...

from "November View":
But for the two or three months that the vision
dimmed for the two of you, communing
across such distance; and when your parents
decided on their own list of your would-be wives;
and when you withdrew from everyone—
in the midst of that eclipse, what dawned on you...

Congratulations, Mike!

Mike Brokos (Poetry 2012) was a Bread Loaf Camargo Fellow in Cassis, France in 2014 and has also received a scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont.  His poems appear in Salamander, Little Patuxent Review, Hobart, and elsewhere.  He lives in Baltimore.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Poetry Publications | Comments (0)

Shubha Sunder’s latest publications

March 27, 2015 at 5:21 PM

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Great news from Shubha Sunder (fiction 2012), who has had not one, but two short stories published in journals recently!  "The Footbridge" appears in the winter issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review, and "Second Language" can be read online at The Bangalore Review.

Congratulations, Shubha!  And we're looking forward to reading your novel when it comes out.

Shubha Sunder (Fiction 2012) is currently at work on her first novel, titled Boomtown Girl. Her stories have most recently appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review, The Bangalore Review, and Narrative Magazine, where she was a winner of the 2012 "30 Below" contest. At BU she won the Robert Fitzgerald Prize and the Shmuel Traum Prize for her translation of Marcel Proust. She also won the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Award, and a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship, which took her to Russia. She lives in Jamaica Plain, Boston.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Short Story Publications | Comments (1)

Jordan Zandi’s first poetry collection forthcoming in 2016

March 25, 2015 at 11:35 AM

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We're excited to announce that Jordan Zandi's (poetry 2010) first book of poems is forthcoming by Sarabande books next February!  You can read the title poem here.  Below, Jordan shares a bit about the making of Solarium.

Many poems from Solarium - and, probably more importantly, the process by which I worked on them - took root in the workshops at Boston University, though only pieces might remain recognizable from those earlier drafts.  I was doing a lot of collage-style generation and revision with that work, and some of the final poems came from two, three, even five, separate poems being grafted onto one another.  Others - and here I think of the title poem in particular, which took around two years start to finish - went through dozens of re-drafts, shedding portions that themselves turned into poems, or that proved to be the missing piece to another poem, or that added to what eventually became a 12-page compost-heap.  I love what's fragmentary, what's left out, but I also love the intuited shape, the impression that it might be whole; and it's hard to make those fragments make a whole.

Thanks for these thoughts, Jordan, and congratulations!

Jordan Zandi holds an MFA from Boston University, where he was the recipient of an Elizabeth Leonard Fellowship and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship.  His work has appeared inThe New Republic, Little Star, and elsewhere.  He is co-founder and poetry editor of Prodigal, a forthcoming literary magazine of poetry and essays.  His first poetry collection, Solarium, won the Kathryn A. Morton Prize and will be published by Sarabande Books in February of 2016.

By Coordinator | Posted in Alumni, Poetry Publications | Comments (1)