I hung back in the doorway frightened. Then the warm spring sun washed over me, because the porch blocked off the wind. I turned my face up to the bright sun—the first one, after a long winter. There was a single cloud, like a dab from a white paintbrush, at the highest point of the sky. In the instant I glanced at it, the cloud melted into nothing, and the wide arc became perfectly, intensely blue.
Orpheus ascending, I said to myself. Here I go.

-Nuala O’Faolain

Of Interest: May 23, 2008
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Greetings Everyone,

And yet another passing with the death of [former faculty member] Nuala O’Faolain. Such sadness and loss.

And the residency is nearly upon us. Preparations are in place: http://www.bennington.edu/alum_writing_residcy.asp.

Thank you for sending updates regarding contact information and publications.

Continue to email your news, announcements, updated contact information, opportunities, recommended readings, inspirational quotes, favorite lines and sentences, sightings (natural and otherwise), strategies for surviving the post-Bennington literary life, and declarations of intentions or manifestos.

When you send information, please let me know what variation of your name you would like used in print. Thanks.

Please contact me at EMCFERRON@Bennington.edu.  

I look forward to hearing from you.

With warm wishes,

Elaine

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ALUMNI NEWS and ANNOUNCEMENTS

MATT DEBENHAM’s (’05) story “Kate the Destroyer” will appear in the fall 2008 issue of The Pinch (formerly known as River City): http://cas.memphis.edu/english/pinch/home/home.htm.  

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ALICE DEBERRY KANE ’99 sends the following:

“After teaching composition for 1-1/2 years at Southern Utah University, I've moved to Idaho to join my husband who took a new position here. I hope to get a job at Idaho State University. I've got great evaluations and a couple of letters of recommendations in hand.

Also, I have a piece, a 25-page book excerpt, being published in the latest edition of Western Humanities Review, University of Utah Press, titled ‘Blog.’ I placed runner-up in the contest which gives me publication.”

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EUGENIA KIM ’01 sends the following:

“I've been swimming in buckets of champagne since the end of January, hence this delayed report. My novel was sold to Henry Holt & Company and will be published as their lead title in April 2009. Everything PHILLIP LOPATE says in his essay, ‘Waiting for the Book to Come Out’ (AGAINST JOIE DE VIVRE), is true: witness my current state of megalomania...”

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ALEXA MARTIN (PRUIT) ’01 sends the following:

“My young adult novel, Ski Season, was bought last week by Hyperion. I'm still in shock. I think it's due out in fall 2010. When I graduated from Bennington in Nonfiction, I never suspected I'd be writing fiction for teens...but it's been a perfect fit, really. One of life's many interesting twists.”

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LESLIE MCGRATH ’05 is now Submissions Editor for Drunken Boat. She and Ravi Shankar are also editing the poetry manuscript of poet Reetika Vazirani.

Leslie’s poems have recently appeared in Agni online, Helix, and Alimentum. A number of her poems are being translated into Tamil for inclusion in an anthology of contemporary American poetry to appear in university libraries across India. She's also co-curator of The Handprint Identity Project, a large scale collaborative (ten poets and ten artists) project on the theme of the handprint and American identity, which will be touring the US in 2009. Former Bennington Writing Seminars faculty member E.ETHELBERT MILLER is also part of this project.

Leslie recently recorded a "This I Believe" piece on the subject of the history of slavery in Rhode Island for Rhode Island public radio. She also was commissioned by Cabot Creamery (a VT dairy farmer cooperative) to write the poem, “Butter Taps,” which will be printed on a couple of million pounds of Cabot butter during the holiday season.

After an intensive year of training at The Institute for Integrative Nutrition, she's working as an integrative health counselor. Her business, Health By Wellness, LLC, focuses on the optimization of creativity through wellness: www.healthbywellness.com.

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JULES NYQUIST ’07 has a poem forthcoming in the spring 2008 issue of Salamander Magazine: http://media.cas.suffolk.edu/salamander/.

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MICHAEL O'KEEFE ’06 was interviewed by www.anthologiesonline.com regarding his advisory role in the anthology, The Poem I Turn To: The Poetry Behind Performances edited by JASON SHINDER. (Profits from the sale of the book go to an acting scholarship at USC and a writing scholarship at the Academy of American Poets.)

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JUDY ROWLEY ’02 sends the following:

“My memoir essay, ‘The Province of Magic,’” about the years I lived in South Korea, is in the latest issue of Fourth Genre, Explorations in Nonfiction spring 2008, published by Michigan State University Press.

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LAUREL SAVILLE ’04 sends the following:

“I’ll be teaching a class on June 21st at the New Hampshire Writers’ Project in Manchester, NH, titled ‘Other People’s Passions.’ The course will discuss how to develop a writing project about an area of interest, and then find the people and resources needed to develop the project, conduct interviews, find artwork, and make sense of the raw material collected to create a compelling article or book.

I recently profiled the artist Tino Seghal for Adbusters Magazine and have articles on branding forthcoming in Dynamic Graphics and Step Inside Design, as well as a profile of the graphic designer/artist, Stefan Sagmeister, forthcoming this fall in the international magazine of arts, POL/Oxygen.”

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FACULTY NEWS AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

JANE HIRSHFIELD has four poems in the May issue of Poetry and poems will appear in the June issues of The Atlantic Monthly and The Believer, as well as the summer political poetry issue of Poetry Northwest and an upcoming Orion. A small book of three recent essays, Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry has just been published (in England only) by Bloodaxe Books. Earlier this year she taught a workshop in Guatemala with former Bennington Writing Seminars associate faculty member JOYCE MAYNARD, and she will be teaching a one week new writing workshop, “Poetry and the Intimacy With All Things,” at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, June 22-27 information available at: http://tinyurl.com/5qtntw.  

This fall she'll be a presenter at the Dodge Poetry Festival as well as doing a short residency at Duke University.

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NUALA O’FAOLAIN died in Dublin on May 9, 2008: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/books/11ofaolain.html.

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SHEILA KOHLER sends the following:

“My big news is that my book, Cracks, is finally going into production as a film after being optioned seven times! The directors are Jordan Scott and her father, Ridley as well as Christine Vachan. It's an English production and Eva Green will star" http://www.iftn.ie/?act1=record&aid=73&rid=4281209&tpl=archnews&only=1.

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TERESE SVOBODA will read with Ann Landsman on May 28 at 8:00pm for Rick Whittaker's SIP series at 998 Amsterdam between 109th and 110th in NYC.

She will also be reading on June 16 at 7:00pm at Book Court, 163 Court Street in Brooklyn, NY.

Terese will also be teaching at the Manhattanville Writers’ Week the last week of June:

http://www.manhattanville.edu/AcademicsandResearch/DowdOGormanWritingCenter/SummerWritersWeek/Default.aspx.  

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OPPORTUNITIES

DO YOU READ?

If you do, would you please complete the survey from The Future of Publishing Think Tank? Please take five minutes and complete the survey. Feel free to circulate widely! Here's the link: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=DDu9a8VJ5ipw5K0U8kGgTw_3d_3d.  

Who is The Future of Publishing Think Tank? The Future of Publishing Think Tank is an ad hoc groups of writers, editors, publishers, educators, and booksellers who are concerned about the economic, technological, and social trends that are making it more difficult for writers to get their books to readers. We're working on imagining and developing new models to make this easier.

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See recent Of-Interest issues:

May 6, 2008
April 22, 2008
March 12, 2008
February 27, 2008

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Elaine McFerron
Alumni Liaison, Writing Seminars
Bennington College
One College Drive
Bennington, VT 05201
emcferron@bennington.edu