MFA Greensboro Alum Robert Morgan Featured in Connotation Press

"Valley Wind" by Robert Morgan

I reckon everybody knows
the pleasing breeze that tends to flow
up slopes on sunny summer days,
as air that’s warmed by solar blaze
reflected lifts up valley sides
and stirs the leaves on towering heights,
a manic rise, a thrill of breath
to soothe the sweltering aftermath
of steady glare. Then as the sun
goes down the wind reverses run,
depresses slow then gathers speed
to sink from peak to valley bed,
the highs now balanced by the sloughs,
chill air from summit altitudes
and stratosphere pushed down
to cool the dew on bottom ground,

Read the rest of the feature here: http://connotationpress.com/a-poetry-congeries-with-john-hoppenthaler/1246-robert-morgan-poetry

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

I reckon everybody knows

the pleasing breeze that tends to flow

up slopes on sunny summer days,

as air that’s warmed by solar blaze

reflected lifts up valley sides

and stirs the leaves on towering heights,

a manic rise, a thrill of breath

to soothe the sweltering aftermath

of steady glare. Then as the sun

goes down the wind reverses run,

depresses slow then gathers speed

to sink from peak to valley bed,

the highs now balanced by the sloughs,

chill air from summit altitudes

and stratosphere pushed down

to cool the dew on bottom ground,

promoting sleep in house and den,

Read more about ConnotationPress.com | Robert Morgan - Poetry by connotationpress.com

I reckon everybody knows

the pleasing breeze that tends to flow

up slopes on sunny summer days,

as air that’s warmed by solar blaze

reflected lifts up valley sides

and stirs the leaves on towering heights,

a manic rise, a thrill of breath

to soothe the sweltering aftermath

of steady glare. Then as the sun

goes down the wind reverses run,

depresses slow then gathers speed

to sink from peak to valley bed,

the highs now balanced by the sloughs,

chill air from summit altitudes

and stratosphere pushed down

to cool the dew on bottom ground,

promoting sleep in house and den,

Read more about ConnotationPress.com | Robert Morgan - Poetry by connotationpress.com

Valley Wind

 

I reckon everybody knows

the pleasing breeze that tends to flow

up slopes on sunny summer days,

as air that’s warmed by solar blaze

reflected lifts up valley sides

and stirs the leaves on towering heights,

a manic rise, a thrill of breath

to soothe the sweltering aftermath

of steady glare. Then as the sun

goes down the wind reverses run,

Read more about ConnotationPress.com | Robert Morgan - Poetry by connotationpress.com

Valley Wind

 

I reckon everybody knows

the pleasing breeze that tends to flow

up slopes on sunny summer days,

as air that’s warmed by solar blaze

reflected lifts up valley sides

and stirs the leaves on towering heights,

a manic rise, a thrill of breath

to soothe the sweltering aftermath

of steady glare. Then as the sun

goes down the wind reverses run,

Read more about ConnotationPress.com | Robert Morgan - Poetry by connotationpress.com

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Interviews Fellow Alum Michael Gills

1/2 Dozen for Michael Gills
     by Julianna Baggott

Here is a 1/2 Dozen
with my dear friend (from way back)
Michael Gills.
His story collection THE DEATH OF BONNIE AND CLYDE and his novel GO LOVE came out this past year.
(GO LOVE is a triumphant novel that I read early on. Truly wonderful. Click here to read a Q and A with Gills in Psychology Today -- in take a look at his process.)
I adore Gills and his brilliant writerly soul!

HERE GOES:

Current obsessions—literary or otherwise.

I
play guitar and sing in a band that is currently working up a cover of
Gregg Allman's cover of Sleepy John Estes' "Floating Bridge," this
killer blues song from the 30's about a near death experience in muddy
water. Allman's version appeared on Youtube just after his own near
death from liver failure and subsequent transplant. That edge comes
through--his voice shakes, and I believe. Now, I'm rehearsing the song,
and it's under my skin, that eerie bridge, the tremolo, what seeps
between.

Writing Tip #2.

Get
up at 4:30 a.m., turn on your machine, and go. Your inner-censor is
turned off then and you can knock out a chunk before the sun even
rises--hard to fuck up a day like that. Revise by the hard light of
day. In bed by 8:30 p.m. Do it all again.

Read the full interview here: http://bridgetasher.blogspot.com/2012/01/12-dozen-for-michael-gills_30.html

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Faculty Emeritus Fred Chappell Participates in a Collaborative Novel about Asheville

Malaprop's Celebrates 30 Years with Collaborative Novel
     by Mark Shultz
To commemorate the 30th anniversary of Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville, N.C., co-owner (with Emoke B'Racz) Linda Barrett Knopp and her husband Brian Lee Knopp enlisted 10 western North Carolina writers to write a chapter each for a collaborative serial novel set in Malaprop’s hometown. The result, Naked Came the Leaf Peeper, is an R-rated comic romp through Asheville and environs involving an assassin, a detective, and a bunch of mysterious deaths linked to a land deal gone bad.

“Brian started the book out as a PG affair,” Linda Barrett Knopp told PW, “but it quickly turned R-rated. The authors told us this was the most fun writing they’d had in years. I’ve read it probably a dozen times and I still laugh out loud.”

 

The rules were simple: each author wrote a chapter, had only two weeks to complete it, and none were told who had written the previous chapters (“Though the authors had a vague, unconfirmed idea of who was working on the project,” said Linda Barrett). Brian Lee, who wrote Malaprop’s bestselling book of 2010 and 2011, Mayhem in Mayberry: Misadventures of a P.I. in Southern Appalachia (Cosmic Pigbite Press) wrote the first chapter, and Linda Barrett wrote the penultimate chapter and serves as editor. The other ten authors, in chapter order, are John P. McAfee, Susan Reinhardt, Vicki Lane, Tommy Hays, Wayne Caldwell, Fred Chappell, Alan Gratz, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Gene Cheek, and Tony Earley, with an afterward by Charles F. Price. As the book is intended as a fundraiser, everyone involved worked for free, including the local artist who provides the cover art.

Read the full article here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/50176-malaprop-s-celebrates-30-years-with-collaborative-novel.html

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Interviewed by Kugelmass about Humor in Writing

Kugelmass talks with Steve Almond
In this space, Kugelmass asks funny writers about writing funny. As you will see, there is nothing remotely funny about this process. If you want a pleasant chuckle, purchase an issue. If you want to learn something, well read on.

To call Steve Almond a humor writer would be to call Tito Puente a drummer or Rollie Fingers a mustache-grower. He is the author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction. His latest, God Bless America: Stories is due out in October. Touch his words on this page and you will become more talented.

Almond on writing and when it happens to be funny

My general goal is to aim for a painful truth and use the mighty shield of humor to avoid getting too seriously hurt. But I try not to consciously adopt a style or tone (i.e. “I will now try to be funny”) because that never works. It’s more a matter of pursuing the material.

Almond on who and what is funny

For me, most humor comes from tragedy -- the simultaneous confession and forgiveness of unbearable truths. In other words: the forgiveness is the joke. So basically, any time we’re dealing with transgressive feelings. Shame. Rage. Lust. The inherent moral absurdity of our current political climate is a great example. The insatiable greed and hypocrisy, the mind-bending rationalizations -- it’s all so incredibly sad. But Stewart and Colbert make their nut by converting that stuff into laughs. I also laugh (most people do, I think) when the velocity of truth exceeds normal standards.
 
Read the full interview here: http://firewheel-editions.org/kugelmass/interviews/issue2/almond.shtml

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Alum Kelly Link Featured in The Year of Magical Reading

The Year of Magical Reading: Magic for Beginners by Kelly Link
     by Ted Gioia
Someone ought to write a history of literary misdirection—the story of the stories that avoid telling stories, the tales that set out towards a goal and never quite get there.  We think of this as a postmodern conceit, but its roots can be traced in Tristam Shandy, Don Quixote, perhaps even back to Apuleius's The Golden Ass.  At an extreme, such narratives end right wherethey begins—FinnegansWake is the classic example—and remind me of thoselong distance runners whocircle round and round onthe same route, never going
anywhere except back to thestarting line.  Readers oftengripe at these roundaboutstories, yet even a closedloop can offer an enticingjourney if the landmarks and milestones are sufficiently compelling.

Kelly Link has made her reputation on precisely this kind of narrative.   She knows an endless number of ways to prevent her stories from reaching a destination.   In "Lull," the final tale in her 2006 collection, Magic for Beginners, she interrupts the narrative with a story within a story—then a few pages later, starts up another story within that story.   One might think that these would serve as sufficient obstacles to achieving narrative closure—but Link, emulating the famous aviator Wrong Way Corrigan, goes a step further, presenting the chronology of the central story in reverse (akin to Martin Amis's Time's Arrow), an approach that ensures that readers can only end up back at the beginning. 
Read the full article here: http://conceptualfiction.com/magic_for_beginners.html

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Reviewed, 'Pure'

Pure by Julianna Baggott--Book Review
     by sfx
When it comes to raising the dramatic stakes and getting the sort of cathartic kick that reminds you your life is actually pretty good, you can’t beat a good dystopia. Pure offers two for the price of one.

On the one hand, we have the survivors of an apparent nuclear holocaust, scraping for food in the wreckage of civilisation and literally carrying the past around with them: when the bombs hit, you see, they left people fused to whatever they were carrying, or standing beside. Teenage protagonist Pressia, for example, has a plastic doll’s head in place of a hand. She got off lightly – we meet others who live with much grimmer consequences. (Two words: mothers, children. Yeah.)

On the other hand, there are the privileged few who reached shelter just before the blasts, and now live within the confines of the Dome. “Confines” being the operative word; although protected from the extremes of life outside, the Dome’s children are channelled relentlessly towards repopulating the world (girls) or fighting off the ragged few outside who’ve inconveniently failed to clear the way for them by dying (boys).

Read the full review here: http://www.sfx.co.uk/2012/01/27/pure-by-julianna-baggott-book-review/

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Alum Matt O'Donnell Featured in the Bowdoin Daily Sun

From the Fishouse: The Poetic Pursuits of Bowdoin Magazine's Matt O'Donnell
Bowdoin Magazine Associate Editor Matt O’Donnell is a renaissance man. In addition to his journalistic duties chronicling the life of the College and its alumni for the magazine, the Bowdoin Daily Sun, and the College’s ever increasing social media effort, and leading Bowdoin Outing Club groups up and down mountains hither and yon, he is at work as editor of From the Fishouse, an online audio literary journal.

O’Donnell founded the non-profit From the Fishouse with poet Camille T. Dungy, a professor at San Francisco State University, to promote the oral tradition of poetry. Fishouse takes its name — and spelling — from the writing cabin of the late Maine writer, Lawrence Sargent Hall ’36, who taught English at Bowdoin from 1946 to 1986. The actual Fishouse now sits in the woods behind O’Donnell’s home. Along with its online offerings, Fishouse runs a visiting poet reading series on campus, co-sponsored by the Bowdoin College Alpha Delta Phi Society Literary Fund.

O’Donnell and From the Fishouse were profiled this week on the website of 32 Poems Magazine.

Read the original article here: http://www.bowdoindailysun.com/2012/01/from-the-fishouse-the-poetic-pursuits-of-bowdoin-magazines-matt-odonnell/

Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org