BU Creative Writing

Laura Marris’ poem, “Still Life,” was recently published in the Winter 2014 issue of DMQ Review.  Last fall, Laura traveled to Brittany, France on a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, where she translated poetry by Paol Keineg.

Congratulations, Laura!

Laura Marris holds an MFA from Boston University. She is a winner of the Daniel Varoujan Prize from the New England Poetry Club, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Meridian, H.O.W., Revue Secousse, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. She teaches poetry at BU.

"Picnic," a poem by Lisa Hiton (Poetry 2011) has been featured in Hayden's Ferry Review along with a Contributor Spotlight and essay by the author. Lisa writes that the poem was inspired by her time with mentor Carolyn Forché in Thessaloniki and the island, Thassos, in Greece:

"Spending time in the plaza where the Jews were gathered and at the Jewish Museum in Salonika, I began to understand the pain of history, which I get to experience because I somehow am alive. Writing this poem and other poems that address Jewish identity and culture—especially as an American Jew traveling around Europe, and perhaps also as a writer contemplating how to reconcile the 20th century—has forced me to a place of nostos, to remembering the fear I had as a child when learning about the Holocaust, and the kind of self-mythologizing and story making I participated in to begin measuring myself against the ideas of that portion of history."

You can read the poem and the corresponding essay here: http://haydensferryreview.blogspot.com/2014/01/contributor-spotlight-lisa-hiton.html

Lisa Hiton is a Chicago native.  She holds an MFA in Poetry from BU and an M.Ed. in Arts in Education from Harvard University.  Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Linebreak, Indiana Review, Guernica and DMQ Review, among others. Her poem “Tuesday” was reprinted in the spring 2013 issue of 236 Magazine, BU’s creative writing alumni journal.  She has received fellowships from the New York State Summer Writers Institute and the MU Writing Workshops in Thassos. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Emma Duffy-Comparone (Fiction 2012) has won a $15K grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation for the completion of her collection.  The Elizabeth George Foundation makes one-time artistic grants to unpublished fiction writers, poets, and emerging playwrights to enable them to live and work for a period of time as a writer.

Congratulations, Emma!

Emma Duffy-Comparone’s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, One Story, The American Scholar, The Southern Review, The Mississippi Review, The Cincinnati Review, and The Sun.  She has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf Writer’s Conferences and a fellow at the MacDowell Colony.  She teaches at Tufts University.

The Sarajevo Writers' Workshop, launched by Stacy Mattingly (Fiction 2011) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, makes its bilingual publication debut in H.O.W. Journal as curated by poet and editor Catherine Pond. The posting includes work by 8 of the workshop poets, appearing in both Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian and in English translation, along with audio links to the poets reading their work. Mirza Puric provides a wonderful Translator's Note about his experience with the group.

Stacy Mattingly traveled to the Balkans on a Leslie Epstein Global Fellowship in Fiction in 2011 to research a novel-in-progress. She stayed for three months, largely in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Having learned from established Bosnian writers that no real precedent existed in BiH for an ongoing creative writing workshop, she made moves to facilitate one. With the encouragement of many generous people, including PEN Centre of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the group started holding meetings in 2012 at the distinguished bookshop/cafe Buybook. They have given public readings/performances. This is their first publication.

Congratulations, Stacy, and congrats to everyone in the Sarajevo Writers' Workshop!

For more information about our MFA program's unique Global Fellowships, click here: http://blogs.bu.edu/world/

This year Sasenarine Persaud (Fiction 2006) has had fiction and poetry published in the Canada, India, the UK and the US. His poetry was shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature for best book of poetry and nominated for the Forward Prize in the UK.

The most recent review of Lantana Strangling Ixora, his award-winning collection of poems, appears in the latest issue of the Caribbean Review of Books. Click here to read the review: http://caribbeanreviewofbooks.com/crb-archive/30-november-2013/gardening-in-the-tropics/

Congratulations, Sase!

Sasenarine Persaud is a Tampa-based essayist, novelist, poet and short story writer, who originated the term Yogic Realism to describe his aesthetics. He was the Leslie Epstein Fellow at Boston University. His work has been included in several anthologies including: Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (TSAR, Toronto, 2012); The Bowling Was Superfine: West Indian Writing and West Indian Cricket (Peepal Tree, Leeds, 2012); A Rainbow Feast: New Asian Short Stories (Marshall-Cavendish, Singapore, 2010); Concert of Voices: An Anthology of World Writing in English (Broadview, Peterborough, 2009); Anthology of Colonial and Post Colonial Short Fiction (Houghton Mifflin, Boston & New York, 2007); The Oxford Book of Caribbean Verse (2005); The Oxford Book of Caribbean Short Stories (2000); and The Journey Prize Anthology: short fiction from the best of Canada’s new writers (McClelland & Stewart, Toronto, 1997).