Blue Mesa Review Issue 24 Sneak Peek #1

Our upcoming issue of Blue Mesa Review will feature not only some awesome fiction, creative non-fiction and poetry, Elizabeth Tannen had the opportunity to interview Gary Shteyngart…

You can read an excerpt over on the Blue Mesa Lit blog, and find out about the trailer for his book (the video above) and why Shteyngart thinks he’s illiterate… and much more…  and even MORE in Issue 24!

Five Minutes MAX

BLUE MESA RELEASE PARTY….

Come to RB Winnings (on Harvard just south of Central)

7 pm FRIDAY, OCTOBER 9

for the

BLUE MESA REVIEW RELEASE PARTY

We’re celebrating the release of Issue 22

with Readings from the Blue Mesa Review,

..and..

LIVE MUSIC!

..and..

an open mic (5 MINUTES MAX)

Has Everyone Flipped?

The latest issue of Tin House newsletter announced the Fall Issue:

VOLUME 11, NUMBER 1: Fall 2009—The Hope/Dread Issue

Hope and dread are two sides of the same coin, easily flippable like joy and pain, love and hate, pride and shame, a reversible jacket, or a Brillo pad. Seeing as one cannot exist without the other, our Fall issue comes two-sided, a literary Janus mask….

CHECK IT OUT ONLINE–>

But it got me to thinking….  did they see the Blue Mesa Review at AWP last year?  the famous flipped out issue?

Random Tidbit for you about MFAer, Daniel Darling

S Something to know… Dan Darling, Blue Mesa Review Production Editor and Fiction MFAer, is also a teaching wonder. This summer, he taught a lesson using the Cartoon Network’s Aquateen Hunger Force in his English 102 class. Believe it or not, Ripley, if you have cable, watch it this Saturday night. Apparently, he’s getting a good ole fashioned cartoon network shout out. Stay tuned for more information.

Watch a clip from the random cartoon by clicking on this blog posting…

BMR Announces 2009/10 Editorial Board

Hello folks, I’m happy to announce next year’s BMR Editorial Board!

Editor: Samantha Tetangco (hey! that’s me!)

Production Editor: Daniel Darling

Fiction Editor: Melanie Unruh

Nonfiction Editor:Nari Kirk

Poetry Editor:Tanaya Winder

(stay tuned for news on the new Managing Editor… dun dun dun…)

 

Undergraduate Interns:

Production: Kimberly Keller

Prose: Monet Maloof, Lenore Gusch, Joe D. Byrne

Poetry: Bob Sabatini

 

Also as a brief update, we are digging into the fiction contest–probably as you read this even (if you’re in the english department, head to the lounge and help!). The fiction winner will be the last piece necessary to call the magazine “done.” Well, done like the way a turkey is done in the oven on Thanksgiving morning, but you still have to put it on a platter and adorn it with various accoutrements before you can carve it and put it on your plate. And then you have to add the gravy and the cranberries and the mashed potatoes and the stuffing that wasn’t actually stuffed into the turkey but we all pretend it was so I guess it’s not exactly “done” but it’s close–sorry vegetarians and vegans and fruititarians and bird lovers out there, but an analogy with a tofurkey is just not as beautiful).

All right folks, that’s all from me for now. I look forward to invading your computers for another school year.

Cheers, SAM

 

PS from SAM:  

Also, Production Intern: Kimberly Keller, who is currently working
hard to help us serve this turkey, and will return again next year to
aid Mr. Darling in his production endeavors.

Fall GAships Announced

Creative Writing Program Director Julie Shigekuni writes in:

On behalf of the creative writing faculty, I want to thank everyone who applied for a creative writing program GAship and to announce awards as follows:

Works-in-Progress: Linda Rickert

Blue Mesa Review:
Sam Tetangco, Editor
Melanie Unruh, Associate Editor (f09)
Dan Darling, Associate Editor (sp10)

Program Director’s assistant: Erika Sanchez (f09); Nari Kirk (sp10)

Taos assistant: Jennifer Simpson

In addition, I’m pleased to announce a special award this year to be given to Lisa Gill in recognition of her extraordinary achievements and contribution to the creative writing program via publishing, the organization of events, and mentoring of students. I think we all appreciate Lisa’s talents and efforts. Please join me in congratulating Lisa on receiving this award.

And to everyone who has received a GAship, congratulations!

Julie

Blue Mesa Review EXCLUSIVE Interview with Marisa P. Clark

Marisa P. Clark is the faculty advisor for the Blue Mesa Review.  I tracked her down and asked her some questions about the magazine, her teaching and her involvement.  Here’s the results:

Sam: How long have you been teaching at UNM?

Marisa: Since August 1999. I was more than halfway to Atlanta to graduate from Georgia State with my Ph.D. in fiction writing when I learned I’d been hired for a teaching position here at UNM, so I canceled my mortarboard and robe order and turned the car around.

Sam: What is your writing genre of choice? Teaching genre of choice?

Marisa: Emailing is a favorite writing genre; texting is detested. Actually, I’ve written far more fiction than nonfiction, but lately I’ve most enjoyed essay-writing. The truest answer is that when I sit down to work on a short story, I think, “Shouldn’t I write an essay instead? At least I already know what happened.” Then when I try to work on nonfiction, I think, “Why am I not working on a story? It’s so much easier to make things up.” My best publication is a poem, go figure, but trust me, most of my poetry is a prosy affair. As for teaching, I’m more often chosen for nonfiction than fiction, but the real answer is that I just plain love teaching. At UNM I’ve had the opportunity to teach creative writing in every genre, a number of core courses (including ESL), and a handful of literature courses, queer lit in particular.

Sam: How are you involved with the Blue Mesa Review?

Marisa: Last spring I was selected by the students running BMR to be Faculty Advisor. If I were writing this for a c.v., I’d say I act as liaison between the students and the creative writing program, English Department, other administrators, and such, and that I keep in touch with friends in other programs to ask for submissions from them and their students. But in consideration of my reading audience, I need to acknowledge what the BMR staff most often sees me doing. I’ve pestered most of the undergraduate interns to show me how to log submissions. I’ve also stuffed envelopes, filed letters, sent out rejections (while chuckling over the readers’ quick-witted evaluations of the material received), neatened the slush pile, and craned my head in on Fridays to see if there’s a leftover tasty pastry. On occasion, my fellow lecturer and good friend Jack Trujillo and I do brief comedy routines (well, that’s how WE think of them) to offer a sort of commercial break for the readers of the slush pile. As the students have all creative control of BMR, my most creative contribution entails my saying something like “Gettin’ anything good these days?” Back when BMR wasn’t student run, I often volunteered to help read the slush pile and to proofread and copy edit before the issue went to press. And way before that, when I still lived in Atlanta, I had a story rejected by BMR.

Sam: What benefits do you think your students can get out of working for a literary magazine?

Marisa: Not to diminish the importance of what we learn in the classroom, but reading for a literary magazine is a fast-track educational experience in creative writing. Student readers can quickly learn what kind of stories, poems, and essays are being written and submitted, what the most hackneyed subject matter is, and what mistakes writers most commonly make (both in their manuscripts and in their submission methods—on this last note, please do not ever, ever send an unsolicited photo of yourself for your cover letter, or it may end up taped to a cabinet door for a quick giggle). Learning how a magazine is produced from start to finish is also one of the big educational benefits, and certainly it’s rewarding to see your name in print on the masthead. If you’re planning to apply to graduate school or to send out your own writing, it’s good to have this kind of experience. The immediate rewards of working for BMR include getting to know other students who share your interests. I mean, how cool is it to get to hang out with other writers all the time? (I’m getting a little long in the tooth, and I still think it’s really cool to be around other writers and have conversations featuring words like “unreliable narrator,” “psychic distance,” “heroic couplets,” “dactylic meter,” “verisimilitude,” and “Would you pass me a chocolate truffle?”) Basically, you’re working with a community of writers who may well become your friends, readers, and future networking contacts.

Sam: What do you think makes Blue Mesa Review special? Come on, be honest.

Marisa: I think I’m supposed to say Sam Tetangco, right, Sam? And that’s true, but Sam is just one of a terrific team of people who make BMR special. I kid you not. Anyway, if you want to find out for yourself, join the reading sessions; you’ll meet great people, eat great desserts, and on occasion read great stories, essays, and poems. And you’ll read some humdingers, too, that’ll make you laugh and convince you that you’re a much more talented writer than you may currently think you are.

Thank you, Marisa, for you thoughtful answers to these questions and all you do for your students and for Blue Mesa Review.

____

Official Bio: Marisa P. Clark was born in Biloxi MS, reared in Ocean Springs MS, and came to fruition in Atlanta GA, where she earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Georgia State University. She has had fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in a variety of literary journals. Winner of the Agnes Scott College Prize in both fiction and nonfiction, Marisa has also served as assistant fiction editor of Five Points and an editorial board member for Blue Mesa Review and Amethyst. She is currently re-completing her novel Hermosa and cobbling together the first draft of a nonfiction work tentatively titled “Nobody Knows About My Man”: Memoir of an Alter Ego. In addition to teaching creative writing, she directs UNM’s ESL Writing Program. Her academic interests include queer studies and multicultural literature. Nonacademic interests include but are in no way limited to travel, dogs, good food, sharks, tattoos, and hurricanes and other disasters both natural and humanmade. When she’s not commenting on student writing or preparing for her classes, Marisa keeps busy at home with her golden retriever Jasper, German shepherd Gideon, and African gray parrot Ruby.

Blue Mesa Review Tabled Chicago

Your Editorial staff has just returned from Chicago where we attended the AWP–The annual Association of Writers and Writing Programs conference that happens yearly, a place where one attends:

1.) Various panels on the writing and publishing world (with titles such as “Writing Memoirs about Mother” and “How to Get Published”); UNM’s own Laura Matter and Jeremy Collins were on a panel discussing their publication in the Georgia Review & Prof. Greg Martin was on a panel on the ethics of publishing nonfiction pieces about your friends and family.  [An aside: can I just say that the best panel I saw was Greg Martin's.  And he didn't even say anything I hadn't heard before.  I flew all the way to Chicago to listen to a man speak about the same things he does every Tuesdays and Thursdays in our Nonfiction genre studies class.  I feel damn lucky.]

2.) Readings by famous writers (this year, Stuart Dybek and Art Spiegelman–yes, that’s right, Art Spiegelman gave a graphic novel reading.  It was illuminating–and not just because it was projected on a very large screen at “The Auditorium,” a site listed as one of the 10 wonders of the world…)

3.) A mammoth four room book fair where we got to hobnob/ignore/flatter various publishing companies, universities, and literary magazines.  I found our table interactions to be the highlight of my time at the conference.  Writers from around the country dropped by and usually asked one question:  ”What are you looking for in your magazine?  That has to be one of the hardest questions, one that by the time I’d answered it the hundreth time, I had fine tuned a small speech that I will post soon.  These conversations sparked many of my ideas on the direction we can take the magazine next year/issue.  (also will be posted soon–I like the suspense.) 

Also, I am happy to say, we sold out of all the BMR copies in ONLY TWO DAYS–people dug Issue 20/21 aka “the flip issue.”  I sold it as the “embodiment of our transition from being a faculty run to student run magazine.”  Issue 20: the last faculty issue; Issue 21: the very first student issue.  Issue 22, the one we are currently reading for, is already turning into an amazing first stand-alone student issue.  In case you didn’t know, BMR is a national STUDENT run publication.  That means Graduate students and undergraduate make it tick (with the help of Marisa P. Clark, our advisor).  So, uh, hey students, come help us run (or jog; walking is okay, but maybe not as happily recommended).

That said.  As always, Slush Pile readings for the Blue Mesa Review will be happening at these days and times:    

Tuesday 3pm

Wednesday 1pm

Friday 3pm

Each day reads for all three genres, and all meetings are held in the English Department lounge.  On many fridays, Adry, our Poetry intern, brings a box of snagged Flying Star pastries.  There is nothing like eating too much sugar and reading through a slush pile on a Friday afternoon, let me tell you.  A warning: reading and silliness may ensue.  Another warning: reading and silliness may not ensue.  Come read slush, come bug us about AWP, come make new writerly friends, come see what other writers out there are doing, come ask Sam about her ideas for the magazine and it’s future.  Whatever your reason, you are always, always welcome.  And needed.  Desperately, jovially, some other adverbially needed.

Stay tuned for another post soon

SAM

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.)

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