BU Creative Writing

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.

We are pleased to share a recently published poem in Alimentum Journal by Kelly Morse (Poetry 2012). Her poem "Phở bò Hà Nội" was inspired by a pho shop in Hanoi, Vietnam named Phở Thìn 13 Lò Đúc. Kelly lived in Hanoi, Vietnam for two years, and recently returned there on a Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship.

Kelly Morse graduated from our MFA program in poetry in 2012. Her work has appeared in Side B Magazine, PoetsArtists, Conversations Across Borders and elsewhere. Currently, she is working on a series of poems that explores linguistic and world-view gaps between Eastern and Western cultures.

Congratulations, Kelly!

Patricia Park has written another thoughtful piece for The Guardian, this time focusing on second and third generation Americans and the assumption that, for them, somewhere else is "home." You can read the article online here.

Patricia Park (Fiction 2009) teaches writing at Boston University and is at work on a modern day rewrite of Jane Eyre, which explores themes of home, otherness and identity. She lives in New York City and Boston and blogs at koreanbodega.com. Follow her on Twitter: @patriciapark718

Congratulations, Patricia!

Boston alumni and friends, please join us this Tuesday night for the year's first installment of Writers at the Black Box, our student-run reading series. Readers will include Stephanie Brownell (Playwriting 2013), Danyele Brickner (Playwriting 2013), Margot Miller (Fiction 2013), Sara Rivera (Poet 2013), and the alumna Lisa Hiton (Poetry 2011).

The reading is open to the public and will take place at BU's Black Box theatre, 949 Commonwealth Avenue, Tuesday, April 16, 2013 at 7:30pm. We hope to see you there!

Today we're happy to share a lovely Pif Magazine article in which our alumna Ani Gjika (Poetry 2010) is interviewed by Derek Alger. In the interview, Ani says the following about her experience at BU:

"For the first time in my life I was workshopping poems in a group of highly talented people. I felt ambitious at first, then pretty ordinary, then realized that the strengths everyone had were a testament to the high expectations and strengths of the program. I learned a little later into the program that being there with those other 7 poets and our incredibly talented faculty (Robert Pinsky, Louise Glück and Rosanna Warren in poetry), it was never about whose work was better than whose, but about what each of us could learn from one another."

Ani’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.

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 and thank you, Ani!