Lisa Hiton featured on The Casserole Reading Series, among other places

Lisa Hiton recently gave a live poetry reading on The Casserole Reading Series, hosted by west coast poet, Chelsea Kurnick!  Check it out here.

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Two of Lisa’s poems appear in -Anti, and earlier this year, she published this brief and lovely poem in Cellpoems.   In addition, her poem, “Moonchild,” was published in the spring issue of The Journal.

Way to go, Lisa!

Lisa Hiton holds an MFA in poetry from Boston University and an MEd in Arts in Education from Harvard University. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in The Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, and The Cortland Review among others. She has received the Esther B. Kahn Scholarship from 24Pearl Street at the Fine Arts Work Center and a nomination for the Pushcart Prize.

 

Abriana Jette’s Poetry Anthology features BU poets

abeheadshotWe're thrilled to see The Best Emerging Poets of 2013 on sale on Amazon! The book, edited by Abriana "Abe" Jette (poetry alum) features BU poets such as Caitlin Doyle, Bekah Stout, and Dariel Suarez, and is soon to be the number one poetry anthology selling on Amazon. Buy your copy today!

Congrats, Abe!

Abriana Jetté is an internationally published poet, essayist, and educator from Brooklyn, New York. Her work has appeared in dozens of journals, including the Dr. T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Iron Horse Literary Review, The American Literary Review, 491 Magazine, and many others. She earned her M.F.A. in Poetry from Boston University, where she was a Betsey Leonard Fellow and a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow, and her M.A. in Creative Writing and English Literature from Hofstra University, where she graduated with Distinction. In the Fall, she will be pursuing a Doctorate of the Arts in English at St. John's University. She is the editor of the anthology "Best Emerging Poets of 2013", and teaches for St. John's University, and the City University of New York.

Publications Galore for Dariel Suarez

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It's been an impressively productive year for Dariel Suarez, whose fiction and poetry has been published or is forthcoming in a smattering of journals and other places!

His short story, "Lemonade," was published in Superstition Review this week. Another story, "Hope," has been accepted for publication by Michigan Quarterly Review. It will appear this summer in print.

Three of his poems have been published in MiPOsias. The issue is available in these links:

Order the print version.

The free, iTunes version.

Hearty congrats, Dariel!

Dariel Suarez is a Cuban-born writer who came to the United States in 1997. He earned his M.F.A. in fiction at Boston University, where he was a Global Fellow. Dariel is a founding editor of Middle Gray Magazine and has taught creative writing at Boston University, the Boston Arts Academy, and Boston University’s Metropolitan College. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous journals and magazines, including Prairie Schooner, The Florida Review, Southern Humanities Review, Gargoyle, Superstition Review, and Baltimore Review, as well as several anthologies. He’s recently completed a story collection set in his native country, and he’s at work on a novel about a Cuban political prisoner, titled The Playwright’s House. More about Dariel can be found at www.darielsuarez.com.

Mimi Lipson’s story collection available on Amazon and in stores

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Mimi Lipson's book of short stories, The Cloud of Unknowing, is now available on Amazon and in select bookstores nationwide. Hurrah! Published by Yeti Publishing, the book has received enthusiastic reviews from Sigrid Nunez and Ha Jin, among others.

Read an interview with Mimi here, and be sure to check out the stories, which Sigrid Nunez says "reveal again and again not only what's so funny and so sad about human longings and imperfections but also what is beautiful about them."

Congratulations, Mimi!

Mimi Lipson lives in Kingston, NY. She traveled to Italy, Spain, and Morocco in Fall 2012 on a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship and graduated from BU's MFA program in January 2013. Her fiction has appeared in BOMB, Harvard Review, Witness, and elsewhere. She has enjoyed residency fellowships at Yaddo, Ucross, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and she is a 2014 Edward Albee Writing Fellow.

Poets Who Sound Like Spring

Three BU poetry alums--Natasha Hakimi, Mike Brokos, and Sophie Grimes--have been featured in Stay Thirsty magazine!  The quarterly column was written by Abriana Jette, who is a BU alum herself.  Congrats, poets!

 

Happy Friday from BU Creative Writing

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Poet Anne Sexton.

Hello all!

Hope your spring breaks have been lovely.  Despite campus being pretty quiet, we kept busy here in CW preparing for the upcoming Annual Faculty Reading and Global Fellowship voyages.  I also had a chance to go to PoemJazz, Literary Jeopardy/a Steve Almond reading, a Ulysses discussion group, and two live comedy shows. Whew!  Did you go to any literary events over spring break?  We'd love to hear about it--leave a comment below!  Here are some links for your Friday:

 

Woody Allen talks humor writing in The Paris Review.

Sleep habits of famous writers.

One of my favorite poems that was performed at PoemJazz (scroll down to "Street Music").

Recommendations for how to read Ulysses.

Girls and the word "bossy."

A former student (and huge Dave Eggers fan) shared this story with me.

Have a fun weekend!

Poetry + Jazz

Join us at the BU Playwright's Theatre (949 Comm Ave) for a free evening of poetry and jazz!

Tuesday, March 11 at 7:30

Featuring BU's very own Robert Pinsky!

and Grammy award-winning pianist Laurence Hobgood, saxophonist Stan Strickland, and bassist John Lockwood!

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Kelly Morse published in Brevity

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Great news for Kelly Morse, whose essay, Saigon, was recently published in Brevity: a Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction.

"There’s no room on the sidewalk, never is, no sloped exits. A moat of trash. The man’s breath explodes as he pushes out of potholes, waits for lights amidst the motorbikes; facing forward, his shoulder-blades droop until they seem to rest upon his ribs."

You can read the rest of this poetic and evocative essay here.  Congratulations, Kelly!

Kelly Morse returned to Vietnam in 2012 via a Robert Pinsky Global Poetry Fellowship, which allowed her time to write about her previous experiences there as a university teacher in Hanoi. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Alimentum: A Journal of Literature and Food, Side B Magazine, CAB and elsewhere. She works at the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, where she directs a creative writing and cultural exchange program that brings together students from Russia, the USA, the Middle East and Northern Africa. She is currently working on a cross-genre manuscript that explores linguistic and world-view gaps between Southeast Asian and American cultures.

Qais Akbar Omar interviewed by The Economist

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.

May 15th MFA reading at the Playwright’s Theater

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At 7 PM on May 15, 2012, come to the Boston Playwright's Theater at 949 Commonwealth Avenue, for the final session in the BU MFA poetry reading series, featuring Susan Barba, Mike Brokos, Bryan Coller, Megan Fernandes, L. E. Goldstein, Abriana Jette, Natasha Hakimi, and Kelly Morse. Wine and cheese reception to follow.

Susan Barba is the managing editor at David R. Godine, Publisher/Black Sparrow Books. She has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University, and her writing has appeared in Boston Review, Words Without Borders, and The Yalobusha Review. She has a poem forthcoming in the Hudson Review, and she lives in Cambridge with her husband and two children.

Mike Brokos hails from the mid-Atlantic, growing up outside of Baltimore, earning an undergraduate degree in English from the University of Maryland, and living in the Washington, DC area for several years before coming to Boston to work on his MFA in Poetry.

Bryan Coller grew up in Southern California where he attended UC Irvine. He studies and teaches creative writing at Boston University.

Laura Goldstein is from Niceville, Florida. She finished a creative writing M.A. in August from the University of Southern Mississippi, and is now pursuing her M.F.A in poetry from Boston University.

Natasha Hakimi holds both a B.A. in Spanish and a B.A. in English with a creative writing concentration from the University of California, Los Angeles.She has received several awards for creative writing, including the May Merrill Miller Award for Poetry in 2008 and 2010, the Ruth Brill Award for short fiction in 2010 and the Falling Leaves Award in 2010. Natasha writes for Los Angeles Magazine and Truthdig and is pursuing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing, with an emphasis in Poetry at Boston University.

Megan Fernandes is a PhD candidate in English Literature at UC Santa Barbara. She is the editor of Strangers in Paris (Tightrope Books 2011) and has two forthcoming chapbooks, Organ Speech (Corrupt Press, November 2011) and Some Citrus Makes me Blue (Dancing Girl Press, January 2012). She has also been published in Upstairs at Duroc and Media Fields: Science and Scale.

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Abriana Jette holds an M.A. in Creative Writing and English from Hofstra University. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry at Boston University where she is a Betsey Leonard Fellow. She is a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow, an AWP Intro Journal Project nominee, and teaches at the Boston Academy of Arts.

Kelly Morse grew up in the Pacific Northwest, but has since drifted as far as Spain, South Africa and even the East Coast. Most recently, her work has appeared in PoetsArtists and Strange Roots: Views of Hanoi. Kelly is currently working on a series that explores linguistic and world-view gaps between Eastern and Western cultures after a two-year stay in Vietnam.

For more information please visit: http://www.facebook.com/events/323200821086669.