BU Creative Writing

We are pleased to report that Janet Ruth Young (Fiction 1987) published two young adult novels with Atheneum Books for Young Readers, a division of Simon & Schuster, in November of 2012. My Beautiful Failure tells the story of a teen boy who volunteers at a suicide hotline and falls in love with a troubled caller. Things I Shouldn’t Think is about a babysitter whose obsessive-compulsive disorder causes her to worry about harming the child she cares for. You can learn more about Janet’s work at her website, www.janetruthyoung.com.

Janet Ruth Young graduated from Salem State College and BU. She was a co-editor of the literary magazine stet and a founder of Writers’ Circle, the writing workshop at the Cambridge Women’s Center. She left her job as a textbook editor to focus on writing fiction.

Congratulations, Janet!

Congratulations to Micah Nathan (Fiction 2010), whose short story QUARRY (written in Leslie Epstein's class) has been selected for the 2013 Best American Mystery Stories. The collection will be released by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt this fall.

Micah Nathan has written several novels, some ignored, most well-received. His short stories have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Bellingham Review, Glimmer Train, and others. He Tweets frequently, but not so often as to be annoying. Find him @micahnathan.

Caitlin Doyle (Poetry 2008) is currently the featured poet for the “Identity Theory” Emerging Poet Interview Series. During the interview, she offers brilliant insights about a range of topics including: her writing process, class issues in the literary world, her background in film, the relationship between cinema and poetry, and her experience teaching poetry and screenwriting as the Emerging Writer-In-Residence at Penn State this past fall. She also offers trenchant thoughts about the ages-old “free verse” vs. “formal verse” debate, as well as engaging in an engrossing discussion about approaches to the teaching of prosody (in which she mentions her experiencing studying with BU MFA Professor Derek Walcott).

Click here to read Caitlin’s fascinating and in-depth interview with J. Dee Cochran of “Identity Theory”: http://www.identitytheory.com/caitlin-doyle-emerging-poet-interview/

Caitlin Doyle’s poetry has appeared in The Atlantic, The Threepenny Review, Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, Measure, Best New Poets 2009, and many others. She has received residency fellowships at a variety of artists’ colonies, including the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation. She has taught poetry as the Writer-In-Residence at St. Albans School, as the Emerging Writer-In-Residence at Penn State, Altoona, and as a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Boston University. Her recent honors include the Amy Award in Poetry through Poets & Writers Magazine and a Tennessee Williams Scholarship through the Sewanee Writers Conference.

Congratulations, Caitlin!

"Ostrita," a story by our current MFA in Fiction student Cara Bayles, has been named one of eight finalists in the 5th Annual Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Fiction Contest. For 25 years, the Tennessee Williams Festival has celebrated the rich literary history of New Orleans. This year's fiction contest was  judged by the Pulitzer Prize winning author Michael Cunningham.

Congratulations, Cara!

Cara Bayles is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Boston University, where she worked as a Teaching Fellow last semester. After majoring in Film Studies and English at Wesleyan University, she worked for five years as an award-winning journalist, covering the streets of Boston and the swamps of Louisiana. Her fiction has appeared in Meridian and Trop Magazine.

We are excited to report that Damask Press is publishing a chapbook by Sophie Summertown Grimes (Poetry 2011). The chapbook, titled "City Structures," will be released in late spring or early summer, with a release party and reading to be held in Chicago.

Damask writes that "Sophie’s poems begin with crossings — spatial, linguistic, intellectual — and travel the tangles."

Sophie Summertown Grimes has lived and traveled in China as an Oberlin Shansi Fellow, and as a Robert Pinsky Global Fellow. You can read about her travels as a Global Fellow here. She holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from Oberlin College and graduated from our MFA program in 2011. Her poems have appeared in AGNIonline, 491 Magazine, CRATE, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Second runner-up for the 2011 New Letters Prize for Poetry, she lives and works in Chicago, where she is completing her first full book of poems. She writes poetry reviews for Publishers Weekly and freelance Chicago-centric web content, and she contributes to Chicago’s own experimental journal and blog, ANOBIUM.

Congratulations, Sophie!