Alan Cheuse Interview on KQED

This is a bit overdue, but better late than never. I came across an interview with Alan Cheuse on the radio a couple weeks ago and I thought I'd share it here:

Brian Brodeur, Guest Blogger at The Writer's Center

According to my Facebook feed, Brian Brodeur is a guest blogger this week over at the Bethesda Writer's Center blog. He writes about his short-lived career as a plate spinner, sailing around the world in a hot dog, and where the wild things are. And he writes about his new book Other Latitudes. Here's an excerpt from his post:

When an interviewer recently asked if I’d thought the publication of my first book would change my life, I responded with one word: “No.” I then went on to express my gratitude for the trickling of e-mails I’d received from sympathetic strangers who wrote to tell me how much they’d enjoyed my book. How shocked I was that anyone had actually read it. Feeling a little guilty now for not being one-hundred percent honest, I’d like to revise my answer.

Brian Brodeur and Eric Pankey will be reading this Sunday at The Writer's Center. Details at the website. The reading starts at 2:00pm.

Alan's Summer Reads

"My name is Alan and I'm a fiction addict."

Over at NPR's site, Alan has posted his Summer Reading Suggestions. Included in his many picks is Nam Le's The Boat, which has received a lot of attention lately online.

"Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia and educated at the Iowa Writers Workshop, short-story writer Nam Le writes broad, embracing stories featuring a wide range of characters, including Vietnamese émigrés; Australian high school kids; Colombian drug lords and New York intellectuals. The vast scope of his debut collection is matched only by his prodigal talent. A lawyer by training, Le is about to return to Australia, where he plans to continue work on a novel in progress."

Best American Nonrequired Reading

This just in from our department chair:

"I am pleased to let you know that Dave Eggers, editor of  Best American Nonrequired Reading, has selected Helon Habila's story "The Hotel Malogo," which was published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, for the 2008 edition."

Good work to Helon.

Fiction Dinner with Alan Cheuse

Yesterday evening, a bunch of us fiction writers--along with a non-fiction representative--headed over to Alan Cheuse's home. We discussed writing after we graduate the MFA (a popular topic at these dinners), when to finally stop revising a story (when two reliable readers say it's finished), and the distinction, or lack thereof, between modernism and post-modernism. Alan read one of his own stories, Ben in Amboy, which was recently published in Witness, Volume XXI. Our non-fiction representative confirmed that the story was--despite Benjamin Franklin being the title character--not non-fiction. A gigantic thank you to Alan and Kristin for hosting!

Literature Live: 3-Day Book Festival

Two of our own writers, faculty member Helon Habila and third year fiction writer Rion Scott, will be a part of this weekend's Literature Live, a 3 day book festival sponsored by UDC and the Hurston-Wright Foundation. He'll be sitting on a panel called The Young Lions: The New Black Male Writers. Below is a description of the event.

Saturday, March 29th
Busboys and Poets
2021 - 14th Street NW
11:45am to 1:15pm
The Young Lions: The New Black Male Writers

A reading and discussion. Panelists: Helon Habila, author of “Waiting for an Angel” and Creative Writing Professor at George Mason University, James Ocita, pursuing MFA at the University of Maryland, Rion Amilcar Scott, pursuing MFA at George Mason University, and William Henry Lewis, author of “In The Arms of Our Elders” and “I Got Somebody In Staunton.”
Moderated by Patricia Elam

Rion has this to say: "I'd love if you guys could make it out to see me in action. It's a reading and discussion so I'll also be sharing some of my more crackpot opinions on literature and life. It should be a good reading. I can vouch for William Henry Lewis, who will be reading along with me. He's the author of the amazing collection "I Got Somebody in Staunton." (The first story "Shades" is a showstopper.) I've seen him read on more than one occasion and I was blown away, even while hearing the same story twice."

For more info about the festival, check out this pdf.

New Book from Jennifer Atkinson - Spring 08

A few random things for the weekend, but first two faculty related links, and some contest info:

• I don't know how new this news is, but Jennifer Atkinson has a new book coming out with Etruscan Press - Art Taylor wrote up a quick, five minute interview in the The Mason Gazette.
• And a friend of mine pointed out this old radio interview on KCRW's Bookworm, during which Michael Silverblatt talks with Courtney Angela Brkic about her book, The Stone Fields.

Okay, now for the contest links.

• Drama over in the UK: the people running the 2008 Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize (that includes judge Zadie Smith) decided not to give out the award this year. The whole thing is sort of confusing, but basically it starts with Zadie Smith's decision to withhold the award, followed by lots of chatter from contest participants about this and that, then some weird talk of splitting the award among the short-listed authors, and then lots of shit-talking in the comments section. The happy ending? The award money will go to an international charity.
• In other contest news, Playboy is currently reading for their annual College Fiction Contest. For work-safe guidelines go here. To read last year's winner, a story called "Lizard Man" by David James Poissant from the University of Arizona, go here. And yes, MFA students are eligible, and there is no entry fee. But this is coming up soon; the post mark deadline is Feb 15th.
• The L Magazine announces its fourth annual Literary Upstart, The Search for Pocket Fiction competition. Basically, semi-finalists give live readings of their work (no more that 1,500 words) at NYC bars and compete for cash, and the judges' approval. Go here for details.
  

Okay, now for a few random things - click away:

• Luna Park, the popular lit-mag review blog, just launched their first issue. Contents include an article from Gary Percesepe on reading for the Antioch Review, an interview with Plimpton Prize winner Benjamin Percy, and an interesting essay on the latest AWP conference in NYC.
• Writer, Rejected has started a new feature at his blog Literary Rejections on Display: the Rejected Story Corner. Basically, he posts a much rejected story by some anonymous reader, and then everyone comments on it. Afterwards, he posts excerpts from the many rejections it has received so everyone can compare notes.
• An online Times article on Master Eggers.
• Discussion over at Kelly Spitzer's blog about magazines that pay versus magazines that don't and contest fees versus prize money.

That's all. Go to Candid Yak. Go to the Fiction Dinner.

Wednesday Reading - Kyoko and Susan

Two of our favorites (and faculty members to boot), Susan Richards Shreve and Kyoko Mori, will be reading at the George Washington University Visitor Center, at 22nd and H Streets NW. The reading begins at 5 PM, this Wednesday, Dec. 12. I haven't seen it publicized anywhere, so keep it quiet...shhhhh...

Now that the semester's over...

...you need something to read over the break, right? Alan presents his holiday reading list over at NPR. Put down the required reading and move away - the semester is over.

NEA Grants Fellowship to Courtney Brkic

My wife showed me the latest announcement from NEA - and it so happens that Courtney Brkic has been awarded a Literature Fellowship in Prose.

Unless, of course, there is another writer named Courtney A. Brkic living in Arlington.

If you see Courtney, congratulate her.

Cheuse on Mailer's passing

If you haven't heard by now, Norman Mailer passed away on Friday. Alan is quoted in the Miami Herald on Mailer's passing.

Dinner with Courtney - February 10, 2008

It's a long way off, but Courtney has signed up to have dinner with us on February 10th. More details to come, but I thought I would get this on your calendars, since we all live such glamorous lives...

How to go from a story to a novel

From Susan, regarding the October 28 dinner:

"As to what I'd do on the 28th.... i'm at the beginning of a new novel, from which i'd read, but also talk about process--such things as where to start, etc. pacing, etc. all that stuff. And when to move from the small arena where you begin to the larger one of, for lack of a better idea, why bother doing a book in the first place, unless...?"

Exactly what most of us need!

Reminder about The Fires

We've just mentioned Alan Cheuse's new book, The Fires, which The Santa Fe Writers Project will officially release on September 1st, but I want to talk about it again because Alan has been out west on a book tour for a while (I think), and he returns home this coming week to read at Politics&Prose on the 8th of September at 7pm (then he's back on the road).

In a way, this is how we show that we miss him.

For the Mason writers out there, I believe there's a party after the reading...if anyone has the details in an email, let me know.

Some links for you:

• Alan's page dedicated to the new book



• The Politics&Prose event calender



• To order the book, you can go here

The Fires: Two Novellas - the Barnes & Noble Discussion Page

Barnes & Noble online now offers book discussion pages for readers to share thoughts and opinions with each other and with the author. This month, they are featuring Alan's latest work. It looks like readers are a little hesitant to begin posting - definitely check it out and maybe help get the conversation started.

The Fires discussion here.

And here's what Alan says in his Welcome message to online readers/posters at the B&N site:

"It's a pleasure to become part of this good enterprise, both as a writerand a reader. For as long as I can remember, I've been a reader, and a certain point in my adolescent years tried to become a writer. But as good as I was as the former, the latter goal eluded me for decades. It wasn't until I was approaching my fortieth birthday that I sold my first story, and I've had some success at it ever since. But I've always been a successful reader, and that's just as important to me as writing. Borges, in his poem "The Reader", says that he's not as proud of the books he has written as he is of the books he has read. I agree. I haven't written Shakespeare's Tragedies, no one else has, but we bask in the warmth of that triumph, and in the triumph of every good book we approach and take in, dwell in, and become part of.

I hope these novellas--always an orphan form--will have some good effect for you. Not a story, not a short novel, the novella is something I have written at during the past decade. I published half a dozen of them, in several little magazines, from The Idaho Review to the Reading Room. Here are two of them in "The Fires".

What are they about? Human beings under stress, in torment, in love, and misery, and triumphant, somehow, at the end. Or perhaps you'll see these in another light. I always remember what my dear late friend Bernard Malamud used to say. After he finishes the work, the writer becomes only just another reader."

Susan Shreve's Latest: A Memoir

Before the rush of the beginning of the semester, I wanted to send out some information about faculty member Susan Shreve, who recently had her memoir published by Houghton Mifflin. The book, called Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven, has been getting some very good reviews this summer, though I haven't had much time to read all of them. This follows after the publication of her most recent novel, A Student Of Living Things, which came out more than a year ago with Viking.

And this should be no surprise to everyone, but Susan is right back at work on, not one, but two novels.


Some links:

Review by Carolyn See at The Washington Post

Review by Gail Caldwell at The Boston Globe

Brief Review by Amanda Miller at The Washington City Paper

Review by Abbot Combes at The New York Times

MFA fiction alumni, Colleen Kearney Rich and Art Taylor, have an interview piece with Susan online in The Mason Gazette as well.

Susan's son, Porter Shreve, has a few more links and such at his website. He will probably know more than I know, so you should visit him there.


Good day.

Somewhat Recent Faculty Publications

Anyone interested in reading some faculty work? We've got a few publications that we can list from this past year. I've been meaning to put this up for a while, but I keep forgetting:

• A not-as-recent publication: Courtney Brkic has a story in the Winter 2006 issue of The Missouri Review. I'm not quite sure if they get this in the library; I checked the online database, but nothing came up, and I'm too lazy to walk over there right now.
  
• Helon Habila has a story in the Spring 2007 issue of The Virginia Quarterly Review. You can read it online here.
• The most recent publication I found is from Alan Cheuse, who has a short story in the Summer 2007 issue of The Southern Review.