Winter 2021 Newsletter
CREATIVE WRITING DEPARTMENT
Dear Creative Writing Community,
Please breathe into the poem below by our newest faculty member, Marcus Endowed Assistant Professor in Poetry, Tonya M. Foster.
Then read about the myriad activities of other creative writing faculty members, alumni, and students. We are all learning. We are all grieving. We are all wearing masks and taking care of each other as we language our way into the new world. Thank you for all your support and good will. Take good care. Happy winter, healthy days to you and yours and theirs.
Sincerely,
Nona Caspers
Chair, Creative Writing
“In the After” By Tonya Foster
1.
March, like the soldier, through the sonic insistence of breath
Breathe in the minute in the minute in the
moment breathe breathe breathe
Body rest Body wrest away the rest, then breathe breathe
Bodies arrested Body rest body wrested body resting in/as recline
Body rest b ody wrested b odies arrested (those who are loved) body
politic is/as de cline
Body rest in each breath in each breathe in breathing
Body rests in each breath we take
Bodies rest in each breath taken by the body politic’s restless decline
Body rest in the sonic soothing of (y)our saying a tongue
tenderly tending
Body wrested from its resting in the sonic insistence of our isnesswe move through by
moving as an unmarshalled we
2.
But if I love you what we are is of consequence each to the morning,
each to the afternoon, and to the evening’s retire
But if I love you, time is immeasureable and irrelevant. There is no easy
accounting of the train’s arrival, of the ship’s docking
But if I love you, you are not drawn as an easy other, conscripted
in the agonies of marketed and marketing brands
Arrival and its possibility are verdant present joys
Leaving and its possibilities are expansive desert joys
But if I love you, you are not me,
and we dance along our incongruous, broken roadways
But if I love you, I will love many in the multiple that I am and that I love
Faculty News
Dodie Bellamy’s “Mina Harker” was featured in The Paris Review.
Michelle Carter's play HOW TO PRAY will be produced at Connective Theatre in Chicago in the Spring of 2022. Theater critic Lily Janiak wrote a feature on HOW TO PRAY in the Sunday Datebook section of the San Francisco Chronicle. Her play BETTER was published this fall in the anthology FOUR FROM BRIDGE STREET.
Maxine Chernoff had poems in Web Conjunctions, a Blue Light Lit anthology, and Journal of the Plague Year; she was the subject of a chapter on the prose poem in a U of Princeton Press anthology. She read her work for MadHat Press and for an online celebration of the poet Russell Edson. Poems of hers appeared in translation in journals published in Iran and Egypt. Her essay on poet Michael Anania is part of a December celebration in Chicago of a festschrift for his 80th birthday.
Matthew Clark Davison talked about his novel Doubting Thomas along with pariahs with Zyzzyva, sex writing with Himeros.tv and his first writing workshop at Glide Church with the late/great Janice Mirikitani on The Queer Spirit Podcast.
Carolina De Robertis launched her fifth novel The President and the Frog (Knopf). In November her essay “The Art of Queer Liberation,” adapted from her new foreword to a Spanish-language edition of Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman, was published in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Carolina has also been awarded a Fellowship with Baldwin for the Arts, an organization founded by author Jacqueline Woodson. As part of a small cohort of Fellows, she will be gathering the oral histories of queer and trans BIPOC elders in collaboration with the Smithsonian. She will be on leave for all of 2022 to focus on this project, returning to campus for Spring of 2023.
Paul Hoover has published two books of translation this year, The New World Written: Selected Poems of Maria Baranda (Yale University Press, 2021), which he edited and partly translated and The Complete Poems of San Juan de la Cruz (Milkweed Editions, 2021), edited and translated with Maria Baranda. The San Juan de la Cruz work recently received a glowing review in Commentary. His new book, O, and Green: New and Selected Poems (MadHat Press, 2021) will be officially published in October, 2021. It contains selections from seven books published since 2001 as well as a previously unpublished manuscript, "Gravity's Children." Two of his poems, "Admonitions, Afternoons" and "The Windows (shutters shut and open)I-VII," recently appeared in the new online publication Allium.
Andrew Joron’s experimental sci-fi novel Lunagrad was published as an excerpt in the October 2021 issue of The Antonym.
Truong Tran recently co-authored a collection of poems known as 100 Words and was published by Omnidawn. 100 words was also nominated for Omnidawn Golden Poppy Award in Poetry.
Current Creative Writing Students and Alumni News
Richard Arbib’s short story, “One Wish,” appeared in the April/May 2021 Mensa Bulletin.
Laura Atkinson is in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University where she studies poetry. She is also a songwriter and her song "Hell and High Water" received first prize at a West Coast Songwriters' song evaluation.
Phillip Barron is finishing his dissertation for a PhD in philosophy from the University of Connecticut. Recently, a poem titled "Displacement Activities" appeared in Moss.
Tom Bentley has recently published articles on a range of topics in Popular Mechanics, Scuba Diving magazine, WriterUnboxed, The San Jose Mercury News, WhiskeyWash, Flaviar, The Bold Italic, Airstream Life, Make a Living Writing and others.
Jennifer Berry was a finalist at the 2021 Madrid Film Festival.
Luke Dani Blue was a Tin House Winter Workshop 2021 Scholar and also served on the application committee for Tin House's recent Summer Workshop. Since everything went virtual they've been teaching online again at San Diego Writers Ink and hope to be teaching for Catapult as early as fall 2021.
Rachel Bublitz recent publications include three full-length plays, The Night Witches, The Book Women, and Of Serpents & Sea Spray, as well as a shorts collection, Holly Jolly & Extra Folly. She was named Resident Playwright of Egyptian YouTheatre. Her comedy Funny, Like An Abortion will be produced in PlayGround's 2022 Festival.
Amy Chen is in the MFA program in Creative Writing. Her flash nonfiction was recently published in The Cincinnati Review in the miCRo series (May 12, 2021) and her poem and essay appeared in Transfer Magazine Issue 121, Spring 2021.
Meredith Hobbs Coons was published jointly with CW alum Trinidad Escobar in Shenandoah (Spring 2021).
Dan Coshnear's new story collection SEPARATION ANXIETY was published by Unsolicited Press.
Annie Dawid (MA 86) published her fifth book this spring, PUT OFF MY SACKCLOTH: ESSAYS, with The Humble Essayist Press. Her short story, “Marceline Baldwin Meets Jim Jones: 1949,” was published online in The Jonestown Report.
Trinidad Escobar’s poem-comic "All These Years", published in Abram's Drawing Power, was exhibited in the Women In Comics show in Naples and Rome, Italy. She illustrated Ode to Keisha, written by Jamila Rowser, published by Versal in Amsterdam and Black Josei Press in the USA.
Shoshana Eliahu recently published novel "The Sand Soldiers" from Eloquent Books.
Dean Engle is finishing his first thesis. His work, “In the Ash Heap,” will be published in Transfer Magazine as well as a previous publication in the spring edition, “Virginia Rappe.” He was also able to teach his first college class, Creative Writing 101 over the summer.
Quinn Rennerfeldt Fairchild is a first year M.F.A. candidate at SF State focusing on poetry. Her most recent publication is the prose poem "China Beach" in issue #21 of elsewhere mag
Don Falcone produced two recent Spirits Burning albums. Released January 28, the vinyl musical adaptation of the Michael Moorcock novel “The Hollow Lands” included performances by Moorcock and members of Blue Öyster Cult.
Maya Fink’s poems were published in a poetry collection in Fall 2021.
Nancy K. Fishman’s flash fiction piece, “Stoplight” was a runner-up selected by Joshua Ferris for Symphony Space’s 2021 Stella Kupferberg Memorial Short Story Prize.
Diane Frank's new and selected poems, While Listening to the Enigma Variations, was published by Glass Lyre Press. She is editor of Fog and Light: San Francisco through the Eyes of the Poets Who Live Here (Blue Light Press).
Keith Mark Gaboury’s recent publications include three poems in Ginosko Literary Journal and “Protests Whip Oakland Bones While I Go Hunting For a Bookshelf Online” (poetry) in The Racket. In Oakland, California, Keith hosts poetry workshops and generative writing classes.
Robert Glück’s 2020 novel, Margery Kempe, was a 2021 Paris Review staff pick. Frieze Magazine published an excerpt from another novel, About Ed.
Edward Gunawan was the recipient of 2021-2022 Oakland Neighborhood Voices artist grant. He also is showcasing excerpts from his non-fiction video series as the featured film artist of APAture multidisciplinary arts festival. His poem "The Question Next Time" will appear in Beyond Queer Words anthology and video essay "Here" in Aquifer: Florida Review Online.
Dr. Stephanie Han has launched an online learning platform that is dedicated to empowering women through narrative. Selections from her poetry manuscript Passing in the Middle Kingdom have appeared in “RaisingMothers” (Spring 2021) and the anthology “Nonwhite and Woman” (Fall 2021).
Vinnie Hansen’s “I Want To Be Your Boyfriend” was published in “Gabba Gabba Hey: An Anthology of Fiction Inspired by the Music of the Ramones,” “Ending Things” appeared at Shotgun Honey, “Dead Revival” was showcased at Yellow Mama and “Try Again” came out in the September issue of Mystery Weekly.
Shelby Hinte's recent publications include: "If God is My Drug of Choice Can I Still Claim Sobriety?" (SmokeLong Quarterly), "i swear i am not a stalker. . .” (HAD), "Making You Come is Like Holding a Firework: The Marital Benefits of Sexting" (Hobart). She was a February Sou’Wester Artist in Residence.
Misha Hoekstra was awarded a three-year fellowship for “continued literary endeavor” by The Danish Arts Foundation. His 2021 publications include translations of books by Dorthe Nors, Rikke Villadsen and Hans Christian Andersen and of stories in n+1, Harper’s, Five Points and Wet Cement Press.
Richard Holeton's hypertext novel Figurski at Findhorn on Acid has been republished in a 20th-anniversary edition, re-conceptualized for the modern web by Washington State University's Electronic Literature Lab.
Katie Hunter's recent publications include "New York City 1998" in The ANA Issue 6 (Creative Nonfiction), "Spring Wedding" in Hecate Magazine (Poetry), and "Missing Woman" in Porridge Magazine (Creative Nonfiction). Her forthcoming publications this year include "No One's Mother" in Lucent Dreaming (Fiction) and "Growing Season" in Janus Literary (Poetry).
Matthew Iribarne's short story "Ice Giants" appears in the autumn 2021 issue of The Southern Review.
Judy Juanita's debut poetry collection, Manhattan my ass, you're in Oakland, won the American Book Award 2021 from the Before Columbus Foundation. Her short story collection, The High Price of Freeways, won the 2021 Tartt Fiction Award at the University of West Alabama. The university's press, Livingston Press, will publish the book in 2022.
Dustin Katz’s recent and forthcoming publications are "To My (Final) Girl" in Fantasy Magazine (short fiction, July 2021 issue) and "If You Want Me" in Lost Contact, an anthology from Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing (short fiction, forthcoming November 2021).
Amanda Mei Kim's epistolary essay "Dear Sosobo" about erasures in her family history will appear in the winter issue of Brick Literary Magazine.
Marina Rosove Javor, MNA is a global human rights storyteller and fundraising hunter-gatherer at American Jewish World Service, an international grantmaking organization serving 18 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.
Colette Lafia recently published her third book The Divine Heart: Seven Ways to Live in God’s Love (Monkfish, May 2021).
Kait Leonard’s recent fiction publications include “Living in the Shadows” in Six Sentences, “Library Books” in Every Day Fiction and “The Danger of Greeting” in Flash Fiction Magazine. She published “Online Community for Seniors” in Today’s Caregiver and “The Gift of My Diagnosis, Adult ADHD” will appear in Seniors Guide.
Bob Levin's recent publications include "The Top 5 Underground Cartoonists (Not Including Robert Crumb" a feature article in FULL BLEED; "It's All Yours, Lestrade," on Josiah Thompson's "Last Second in Dallas" in First of the Month and "Joke Book," on Tim Fielder's "Infinitum."
Michael Lopez recently finished his M.F.A. in Writing in 2020, from USF. In 2021 his poem, “At The Edge of Green Mountain” was published in Door Is A Jar Magazine, and another poem, “Deafening” won 3rd place in The League of Writer’s love/loss poetry competition and was later included in their anthology Shadowed Hourglass. Over the summer of 2021 he created a literary column, Driftwood, with the Richmond Review/Sunset Beacon.
E. S. O. Martin published their first novel, Candid Family Portrait, from Snow Goose Press
Asher Marron's recent publications include a chapbook, "We were alone together. I forget the rest," which was published by Ramblr; a poem, "Queer Genesis" in 14 Hills Literary Magazine; and a poem, "The Days of Awe," published by enfleshed (Dec. 2021).
Scott McCourtney is in the master's program for English Literature at CSULB to advance their knowledge and be a better teacher. After working for 10 years as a journalist he became a teacher. He currently teaches English lit and writing as well as History and Economics.
Marabet Morales is Chapter 510's new Program and Community Manager. Her most recent publication is an article with The Oaklandside, "‘The sweetest escape.’ She is also the editor and founder of an online literary journal called Diaspora Baby Blues that aims to publish Millennial and Gen-X writers from the various diasporas of the world.
Aífe Murray is co-executive producer of The Slave Is Gone, the new podcast that talks back to DICKINSON Jericho Brown and Brionne Janae, with Aífe, break down what's historically and emotionally true in DICKINSON.
Supported by Massachusetts Humanities Grant
Charlotte Muse's new book of selected poems, In Which I Forgive the River, was pub-lished this year by Broadstone Books May 2021.
Wendi Olson, Storytelling prof. at Academy of Art in San Francisco, in 2021 added a second Writing Retreat location in Vermont.
Amy Payne's publishing news is that "Chaff and Grain Together," a creative nonfiction piece, was published in the Alaska Quarterly Review in 2020 and her short story "Item Seven" will appear in the upcoming issue of CALYX. She has moved to Vermont for (at least) a year to write.
Jenny Pritchett, writing as Jenny True, published You Look Tired: An Excruciatingly Honest Guide to New Parenthood (Running Press, 2021), an inclusive "anti-guide" for pregnant people and new parents. Jenny is the pregnancy and parenting columnist for Romper and the new copy editor for KQED News.
Carlos Quinteros III recently won the 2021 Harold P. Taylor award and has had recent publications on the Academy of American Poets website for his poem called “Dreams” and an essay, “Sanctioned Sanctuaries,” in the literary journal Fourteen Hills (May 28, 2021).
Allie Rigby is in her second year of the MA program for poetry. Poems published this year include "Walking, Ruminating" in Issue 40 of Postscript Magazine, "Late March" in Parentheses Journal, and "To the Listener // Whose Listening" in Beehouse Journal. She has also been editing for Elyssar Press.
Stephen Rosenshein recently published a full length translation of "Upper Volta" by Chilean poet Yanko González with Ugly Duckling Presse (June 2021).
John Sakkis’ poem “Phenomena” appeared in The Canary #7.
Mona Lisa Saloy, Ph.D. (M.A. 1982, Creative Writing) has just become the Louisiana Poet Laureate and will serve a two year term. Her recent publications of verse: “New Orleans, a Neighborhood Nation.” I am New Orleans, anthology. Kalamu ya Salaam, editor. University of New Orleans Press, 2021 and in the newest Chicago Quarterly Review, Vol. 33, Anthology of Black American Literature.
Barbara Sapienza’s recent publications: “An Ode to Gravitas” shortlisted in Coverstory Books - New Context: 2 (poetry); “Pink Bromeliads and Yellow Curry” Rea650, Voices of Hope (personal essay); “Bedtime Stories” in The Sitting Room Anthology, Home (creative nonfiction); The Laundress, A Novel received a starred Kirkus Review.
Karl (K.M.) Soehnlein’s recent publications are San Francisco Chronicle (“The Pride That Wasn’t, ”June 2020) and Queerty (interview with author Sarah Schulman, July 2021).
Sylvia Sommer graduated from the M.F.A. program in Creative Nonfiction and recently completed her memoir, Gold Paper Cranes. Her poem, “Rearview Mirror,” was selected to appear in Pink Plastic House: a tiny journal on October 17th.
Cole Swensen’s recent publications are One book: Art in Time (Nightboat) review in the Boston Review, LIT Magazine and elsewhere and translations into French of two earlier books, Poémes à pied (José Corti) and Gave (Nuit Myrtide). Additionally, he hosts a monthly series at the Brooklyn Rail on editors and organizations, "Publishing in Transit."
Susan St. Aubin (M.A 1980; Administrative Support Coordinator,1980-2004) has two new stories on the Simily website “The Left Handed Gardener” and “In Heaven there are No Safe Words.”
Andrew Touhy’s chapbook Designs for a Magician’s Top Hat, which was published by Yemassee Journal.
Seth Brady Tucker’s most recent prose and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming from the Louisville Review, Poetry Northwest, Birmingham Poetry Review, Forge, Copper Nickel and Driftwood.
Marissa Vidales is in the M.F.A program in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University where she works on creating and establishing a space for student writers with disabilities. Her recent publications are “At the End of the World’s Road” in Malposition Magazine (poetry) and “a sorrowful reminder” in The Ana (poetry.)
Dorothy Wall has poems in Midway Journal, April 2021 and the anthology Pandemic Puzzle Poems (Blue Light Press, Fall 2021). She has an article in the AMA Journal of Ethics, July 2021 and a review on Health Rising August 16, 2021.
Sandra Wassilie's poem "Affliction" appeared in the anthology, Essential Truths: The Bay Area in Color, produced by Write Now! SF Bay. Her work “Self Meeting Self in the Shadow” was selected to be the January 26th SF Poem of the Day sponsored by the San Francisco Public Library.
Lenore Weiss attended the 2021 Bread Loaf Writers' Conference on scholarship.
Danielle Wolffe’s “Hair Care As An Act of Resistance” (poem) was published in Black Earth Institute’s About Place journal. “A Prayer for the Girls Turned into Women Finally Being Released from Their Prisons” (poem) was published in Northeastern University’s Pensive.
Creative Writing Associates
Toni Mirosevich's new book of short stories, Spell Heaven, will be out this spring from Counterpoint Press. The stories-- inspired by an overlooked community at the sea's edge--have appeared recently in Catapult.com and elsewhere.