American Fiction Prize

Judge:  The Member-Guest and The Weatherman author and two-time American Fiction Prize winner Clint McCown

• First Prize: $1,000
• Second Prize: $500
• Third Prize: $250

Entry fee: $12

American Fiction will revive this year with its American Fiction Prize
contest, a competition whose past judges include Joyce Carol Oates, Ann Beattie, Raymond Carver, Anne Tyler, Louise Erdrich, Tim O’Brien, and
Tobias Wolff.

This year’s judge, Clint McCown, teaches in the creative writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University and is a recipient of the Associated Press Award for Documentary Excellence for his investigations of organized  crime and corruption in Alabama politics, and the Society of Midland Author 

Award. His novel, War Memorials, was designated for Outstanding Achievement in Literature by the Wisconsin Library Association. McCown’s short stories and poems have appeared widely, and he has published two books of verse. He has worked as a screenwriter for Warner Bros. and as an actor with the National Shakespeare Company. He has edited several literary journals, including the Beloit Fiction Journal, which he founded in 1984.  

Contest winners and finalists will be published by New Rivers Press in Fall 2010 and distributed nationally by The Consortium.

Entries must be postmarked by March 15, 2009. 

Winners and finalists will be announced by September 2009.

Contest Guidelines:

We accept all genres of unpublished literary fiction. 

MFA Student Gets Ink

One of the things that drew me to the UNM MFA program is seeing the successes (publishing, of course) of the MFA students.   

Fellow MFA student Laura Sewell Matter has just been published in Brevity Magazine, a piece titled “A Crab in the Stars.”

You can also read Laura’s thoughts on the essay, the writing and the living behind it, at Brevity’s Blog.

1st Blue Mesa Meeting: this Friday 3pm

Howdy folks!

The first Blue Mesa Review slush pile reading of the semester will be held THIS FRIDAY (yes, in Instant Message speak, I did just yell, “THIS FRIDAY”) in the English Department Lounge.  3pm.   Everyone is welcome!  Come for the first time or the 80th.  Bring a friend or four or five.

Until then, some things you may have wanted to know about BMR but were too afraid to ask:

What is the slush pile?  

The slush pile is the piles and piles of submissions that we as a literary magazine have to weed through to find the proverbial needles in the haystack that are worth publishing, or at least worth discussing.  It is the other side of the literary magazine process.  When you submit your manuscripts, someone somewhere sits in a room and reads it.  

What does slush pile reading involve?  

It’s really quite simple.  You come to the English department lounge during BMR readings.  Someone will place a large pile of manuscripts on a table and you will read through them for an hour (or at least the first page or two of it if it is very bad) and mark it with a “Yes” or a “No.”  Once a manuscript has three yeses, it goes on to the discussion board.  Once it has a two No’s, then it gets sent a “Thank you for submitting to Blue Mesa.  Unfortunately your manuscript doesn’t fit our current needs” note.

What is the discussion board?  

Once we have four or five “Yes” manuscripts, we send out a mailing with the attached manuscripts up for discussion.  You read them before showing up for Fridays meeting and decide which ones you think should go in the magazine.  Then, we fight.  This is, by far, my favorite part of the process and the part that makes slushing through the slush pile worth it.  Friends turn on friends.  Foes become allies.  Tides are LITERALLY turned as we argue over our favorite pieces.  (and, I like to imagine, that ever time I get a rejection letter that at least some sad sucker like myself sat there and made an idiot of herself/himself trying to fight for me.  But unlike me, they lost.  I tend to win.  …kidding.)

Chicken and Salsa- January and Beyond

Thanks to everyone who came out to C & S at Robin’s house.  The fire (thanks Dan!!!), the smores (yummy!), and most of all, the company were all absolutely fantastic!  I had such a great time.  Reading poetry by firelight, talking about teaching, writing, and everything in between was excellent.  The poetry shared was inspiring and I was glad to find representation from nonfiction, fiction, and poetry students.  

I really want to extend a welcome (a BIG WELCOME) out to everyone who has not had a chance to make it to a Chicken & Salsa gathering yet. Or those of you who have only made it once.  You seriously are missing out and WE are missing out from not having you as well.  

I swear something special happens, at least in my mind, to be able to get together with other MFA students and artists outside of the classroom.  I am reminded of my experiences in an Indigenous Identity in the Diaspora course with Cherrie Moraga my final spring quarter at Stanford.  Twenty artists (from all disciplines, music, dance, poetry, fiction, etc) were accepted into the course and we gathered each week to discuss our art practices, our inspirations, and I left each gathering learning something new, respecting my art even more, and inspired by seeing and hearing how much everyone loved (and struggled with) their own art as well.  I remember thinking (since I had already decided on coming to UNM for my MFA) that THIS…. THIS feeling, THIS community, THIS energy – this is what I hope I can get from my MFA program, or what I will try to start. 

Seeing the connections writing and art brings between people from all walks of life, reminds me why I am here: as a person, as a writer.  This is my vision for Chicken and Salsa.  We all have so much to learn, especially from each other. 

There are only FOUR more gatherings left so I encourage you all to come out. 

February: The 1st Saturday in February (7th) will be held at Sneakerz bar and grill at 4100 San Mateo NE.

March: hosted by Chris Boat?

April: hosted by Sam and Erika?

May: hosted by Felicia Chavez

 

SPECIAL NOTICE ON FEBRUARY’S GATHERING:

Saturday night at Sneakerz is Karaoke night!  Yes, yes Yes!!!  The focus of this gathering will be on stage presence and overcoming any stage fright!  It will be about working on confidence….. don’t worry if you “don’t sing” it is great fun, there’s usually a pretty good crowd there, and if all else you can come share a pizza and some beer (or non-alcoholic beverages) with us and watch the rest of us make fools of ourselves.  And the more of us who come, the more we can cheer for each other.  

Finally, I’d like to draw from one of the writers who inspires me.  Cherrie Moraga writes in her “Loving in the War Years”:

“And if this play doesn’t satisfy my hunger for La Llorona’s story, maybe another later work will.  Maybe it’s a story I’ll work on for the rest of my life in many shapes and voices and styles.  Maybe, as James Baldwin once said, we each have just one story to tell and every writing effort is just an attempt to say it better this time.  Maybe somewhere in me I believe that if I could get to the heart of Llorona, I could get to the heart of the mexicanaprison and in the naming I could free us…if only just a little.  Maybe the effort is a life well spent”

 

To borrow from her words, for me: maybe somewhere deep within me, I believe that we are all trying to get at the heart of something (with our writing), maybe the heart of a people, a movement, voice, or simply the heart of ourselves.  Working towards getting there – is freeing- but it is a difficult and at times, lonely, struggle; traveling this path with others who are brave enough to share the burden of “the gift” is (for me) a life well spent.  

Roundtable Discussion with Robert Hass

Many of my writer friends ask if getting an MFA is worth it.  One friend in particular, a published fiction writer (who is half way through a two book deal and a holds a few rejection letters from MFA programs) advised me that if I really wanted to write a book I could just sit my butt down in a chair and write over the next three years and have a book…  While that is true one of the benefits of an MFA program is having access to (and I don’t just mean sitting in the audience, but the opportunity to interact with) visting writers* many who are the superstars of their genre.  

I and several of my colleagues availed myself of one such opportunitythis past Thursday when former US Poet Laureate Robert Hass met with graduate students for a roundtable discussion.

Bob (he said to call him Bob) shared a lot of wisdom with us and though I didn’t manage to write it all down, I will pass along a few pearls that really shined for me:

Be always writing

on the page
on the computer screen
or even in your head….

Be always writing
(does this blog post count?)

 Read writers that make you want to write.

Explore different Forms
Bob told us how he was fascinated with the paragraph as a form then advised that like Monet did with haystacks “Find a form you like and explore it fully.”

“You can do anything– but not everyone can do everything well,” he said.
In post-workshop discussions, Anastasia told me she liked the first clause and not the second. I on the other hand liked the entire sentence. To me, the first clause gives you permission to try anything, and the second clause gives you permission to fail. So much of art is about stretching boundaries and having the guts to fail, and so to me the whole sentence has impact. I may just print it out and tape it up on my wall in big bold, purple letters….

When fellow MFAer and poet Erika L. Sanchez asked about the current trend of poetry that is gimmicky and overly intellectual, Bob noted that “New art gets made out of what you love… and what you’re impatient with that’s out there.”

And with that, I know I felt inspired to write… to be always writing…

 

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* Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz visited last Fall. And this is in addition to the well-published faculty that will mentor you on developing your craft and not just tell you how wonderful you are. (That’s what my family and friends are for).

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Feel free to post in the comments anything that resonated with you.

Who is Paul Bogard?

You may have missed it, the November post about a visiting writer, Paul Bogard. You may have even shrugged and said, hmmm, name sounds familiar….  in fact, Paul Bogard graduated from UNM with an MA in Creative Writing back in ‘03.  Since then, he’s done well:

Paul Bogard is the editor of Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (U of Nevada P, 2008). 

His creative nonfiction has appeared in such places as Creative Nonfiction, River Teeth, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has written more than fifty articles for publications such as Outside, Audubon, Backpacker, and the Albuquerque Journal. 

Paul graduated from Carleton College and eventually made his way to Albuquerque, where he lived for eight years, and in 2003 earned his MA in Creative Writing at UNM. 

In 2007, he earned his PhD in Literature and Environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Northland College on the shores of Lake Superior in Ashland, Wisconsin.

So don’t miss Paul Bogard’s reading on February 18, and any graduate students interested in attending the dinner, contact Julie S.

Levi Romero at Bookworks

Thursday, January 15 at 7 p.m. – Levi Romero reads from and signs his new book, A Poetry of Remembrance: New and Rejected Works (University of New Mexico Press)

“Levi performs his poetry beautifully–don’t miss seeing him!”
-Nancy, owner of Bookworks

“Levi Romero is a strange kind of wizard. He can walk up a New Mexico arroyo and come back with a mysterious object full of quotidian magic. Like a rusted tobacco can the grand-fathers used to roll their smokes. And when you pry open the lid, you can hear their laughter and gossip coming out. That’s what he does in poem after poem. I read his work and I learn again how to love this life.”
–Luis Alberto Urrea

Through familiar details–leaking faucets and lowriders, chicharrones and chicken coops–Levi Romero remembers familia, comunidad, and tradiciones from his upbringing in northern New Mexico’s Embudo Valley. Alongside his training and jobs in the building trades and the architectural profession, and now a teacher, his writing has maintained and nurtured his connection to the unique people and land he knows so well and that have seldom been represented in American poetry.

Blue Mesa Fiction Contest – $1,000 prize deadline March 1, 2009

2009 Fiction Contest

$1000 Prize

All unpublished fiction manuscripts of 7000 words or fewer will be considered.

The winner will receive $1000 and publication in Blue Mesa Review Issue 22.

Judges TBA

Please mail submissions with $15 entry fee to:

Fiction Contest
Blue Mesa Review
Creative Writing Program
University of New Mexico
MSC 03-2170
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001

Checks should be made payable to UNM-BMR

ENTRY DEADLINE: POSTMARKED BY MARCH 1, 2009

MFA Students on winter break

I’d like to think I would spend the entire break writing 8 hours a day, but the truth is I was first innundated (in a good way) with family for Christmas.  First came my sister who came early to help me get ready:  trim the tree, clean the house, shop…  Then came the rest of the family.  

Now that the holidays are over, I have been getting back to writing, but also working as well.  And reading!  It’s so wonderful to be able to read books purely for pleasure.

I started with a mystery by one of my favorites, Sue Grafton.  I know she’s not the most literary authors out there, but I’ve been reading the Kinsey Milhone mysteries since A is for Alibi.  It’s been fun to see how Grafton has improved as a writer.  In this last book, T is for Trespass, Grafton actually writes some chapters in third person, switching point of view. I’m not sure I like the third person for these mysteries, but I did enjoy the fact that Grafton is trying new things and expanding her literary toolbox.

Next up was a book that I won at the end-of-semester book swap and pot luck party for our Creative Non Fiction workshop.  I gave up Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi and in return got Truth & Beauty: A Friendship by Ann Patchett.  This book is about the friendship between Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy (author: Autobiography of a Face). They became friends while attending the Iowa Writers Workshop. The book is a brutally honest (and not always flattering) portrayal of Grealy, and an examination of their love and friendship.  Read it with a box of tissues handy.

I’m currently reading Joan Didion’s Where I Was From.  It’s an interesting exploration of the contradictions that are California (where I am from).  I’m not sure I love this book, but I am respecting and paying close attention to the techniques Didion employs in the writing…. the repitition of images and phrases and the layering of the history of the state with her personal family story.

Wondering how other MFA students are spending their winter break…  what are you reading?