Radical \ : / Magical

The Word I Couldn’t Leave

I didn’t know how obsessed I was with the world – with the actual word world – until I went through my last book of poems and saw that I used the word at least 30 times.  Actually, another poet told me I used it 30 times but of course I went back and counted the words myself (because they were my words) to see if this was true.  I’d never done anything like that – count how many times a word got…

LWC&R Request for Workshop Proposals

Lighthouse Writers’ Conference and Retreat Request for Workshop Proposals

  Photo: John Loo

We seek a diverse range of genres, voices, and experiences on the conference’s theme of urgency. How do we build momentum in our writing? What is it that needs to be said and how do we communicate in a form that resonates with readers? What makes a piece of writing feel pressing, urgent, important, and what…

MFAW-VT Alumni Joe Ricker and His 5-Book Deal

MFAW-VT alumni Joe Ricker just got a 5-Book deal with Down & Out Books.  Below is their press release.

Author Joe Ricker Signs Five-Book Publishing Contract with Down & Out Books

“I read several of Joe’s stories and was taken in by the depth of character and plot,” said Eric Campbell, publisher of Down & Out Books. “It will be a real pleasure to introduce him to a new audience of readers.””I’d…

MFAW-WA Faculty Member Beatrix Gates Has Poems Coming in HUMMINGBIRD

MFAW-WA faculty member Beatrix Gates has two poems, “Dear Half,”  and “Chaco Canyon” coming out in November’s HUMMINGBIRD.

MFAW-VT Alumna Jennifer Judge / Jenny Holzer Collaboration

MFAW-VT alumna Jennifer Judge’s  poem. “81 North,” was recently selected to appear in a Jenny Holzer art installation in the Comcast Technology Center lobby in Philadelphia.  This is the text was originally sent when she was asked if her work could be included (and it provides a clearer explanation of the project):

Jenny was commissioned a few years ago to create a large LED artwork for…

ELECTION DAY!! And an MFAW Faculty Discount Thanks to Reiko Rizzuto

SALE! This election day, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto’s SHADOW CHILD will be the Kindle Daily Deal, which means you can get the ebook for $2.99 – cheaper than a cup of Brooklyn coffee. If you have not yet experienced Shadow Child for yourself, it’s a haunting literary novel, a “beautifully woven historical saga wrapped in a page-turning mystery” set in1970s New York City and World War II-era Japan,…

MFAW-VT Faculty Member Sherri L. Smith’s “Who Were the Tuskegee Airmen” Published

MFAW-VT faculty member Sherri L. Smith’s new nonfiction middle grade book, Who Were the Tuskegee Airmen? has been published.  Part of the New York Times bestselling series about important figures and events, this installment chronicles the history of the first African American pilots in the US military.  In August, Sherri spoke at the Tuskegee Airmen Convention in Las Vegas, NV this month to…

Imaginative Literature in Dark Times–A Re-Post

Bulgakov, when faced with the prison-like conditions of Stalin’s reign of terror closing around his country wrote his masterpiece in private, for no money or fame. His only wish, according to a note he left in his journal in 1931 was: “Lord, help me to finish my novel.” He died in 1940, long before the atrocities became known and condemned by the world.

Since the national election in November…

MFAW-VT Faculty Member Kenny Fries Has a Monthly Column

MFAW-VT faculty member’s Kenny Fries’ “The Stories We Tell About Disability,” his first monthly column on the Disability “Beat” for How We Get To Next, is up.  You can sign up for the How We Get To Next newsletter so you don’t miss a “Beat”: https://us7.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=ac3c63206e0226f0b2c43f01d&id=f18977f495

Learning to Write Without Writing

I either learned or re-learned these things about dramatic writing without writing:  Action is King.  Conflict is King #1-A. 

I didn’t learn English until I was 6 years old, when my young and aspiring immigrant parents moved us from a Polish neighborhood in Chicago to the heavily Irish northwest suburbs.  As the new runt on the block who didn’t know the language, I thought the quickest way to…

MFAW Faculty Member Victoria Nelson Gets Listed

MFAW-WA faculty member Victoria Nelson’s New York Review Books edition of Robert Aickman’s story collection COMPULSORY GAMES, with reviews in the New Yorker, Washington Post, and elsewhere, made the Lit Hub/Bookmarks “Best Reviewed Books of the Week“.  It should be noted that anything Victoria Nelson turns her impeccable attention towards is always worth reading.

A note about the author:

Robert…

MFAW-VT Faculty Member Deborah Brevoort’s BLUE MOON OVER MEMPHIS, a Noh Drama

MFAW-VT Faculty Member Deborah Brevoort’s Noh Drama about Elvis Presley, BLUE MOON OVER MEMPHIS, which is currently touring internationally with Theatre Nohgaku of Japan,  had two USA performances in October.  On Friday, October 12th  it was performed at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor in the Power Center for the Performing Arts and on Monday, October 15 it was at UCLA’s Glorya Kaufman Hall.

MFAW Faculty Member Kennan Norris Has a New Book of Short Stories

MFAW-WA faculty member Keenan Norris has a new book–a pocket-sized collection of short stories called The Lemon Tree (Nomadic Press). From the website: “Set in the Central California countryside and the Southern California desert, By the Lemon Tree’s old school stories chronicle the collision of wide-eyed childhood with the end of lives human and animal. In “Twice Good” a downtrodden city…

MFAW Faculty Member Deborah Brevoort’s Staged Reading in November

MFAW-VT faculty member Deborah Brevoort’s new play MY LORD, WHAT A NIGHT, about Marian Anderson and Albert Einstein, has been chosen for Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s PLAYFEST festival.  It will be presented in a staged reading in Orlando on November 11, 2019.

From the Press Release:

In 1937, legendary singer Marian Anderson gave a concert in Princeton, NJ and was refused a room at the Nassau Inn…

Writer’s Diary:  St. George’s Fields, London

Here I am again enjoying  my five-month writer’s colony, tenants covering the mortgage and the cat back home, 5000 miles away from all the other mundane cares.  One of the great paradoxes of our troubled times is that it’s cheaper for me to live in London than in the San Francisco Bay Area. This stripped-down life allows me to focus hard on my writing and enjoy the pleasures of a great city in my…

MFAW-VT Rahna Reiko Rizzuto Interview Posts at THE RUMPUS

A lengthy interview at The Rumpus website with MFAW-VT faculty Rahna Reiko Rizzuto has been posted.    Here’s an excerpt: “Shadow Child has lots of monsters, hauntings, ghosts. But that is not where the real peril comes from. My monsters are the guilt and sorrow kind. They rise out of despair, helplessness. They are a manifestation of “dis-ease”; and they are invisible. Hidden.”