MFA Greensboro Faculty David Roderick Featured in The Missouri Review: "Self-Portrait as David Bowie"

David Roderick: "Self-Portriat as David Bowie"

 This week we’re proud to follow-up a Turkey-week hiatus with a previously unpublished poem by David Roderick. Roderick’s first book,Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize.  Recently his poems have appeared in Poetry, New England Review, Southern Review, Cave Wall, and Shenandoah.  In 2007 he was awarded the Amy Lowell Travelling Scholarship.  He currently teaches in the MFA Writing Program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Author’s Note:

“Self-Portrait as David Bowie” comes from a group of hybridized self-portrait/persona poems I’ve been working on.  All the poems in the sequence feature famous Davids.  I kept the ones approaching an emotional resonance that feels truthful and autobiographical, but most of them turned into spectacular failures, including my attempts at channeling David Byrne, David Letterman and, sadly, David Hasselhoff.  I think I did okay with Hockney, Lynch, and Bowie.  Hopefully I won’t get sued.|
 

Read the poem and full article here: http://www.missourireview.com/archives/david-roderick-self-portrait-as-david-bowie/ 

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

 

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Releases Book Trailer for "Pure"

See the trailer for Pure by Julianna Baggott--Exclusive!

There’s no shortage of dystopian YA novels out there. The subgenre has gone past being a trend, and now it seems to be reaching a saturation point. But even if you’ve read one too many post-apocalyptic teen novels lately, make room on your shelf for Pure by Julianna Baggott, because it’s a good one. Dark and wildly imaginative, it tells the story of Pressia, a 16-year-old girl badly burned from the Detonations, a man-made catastrophe that has changed the course of history. The Detonations have divided the world into two classes of people: Pressia and the other damaged people who live in a dangerous, ash-filled world; and the Pures, who live protected under the Dome.

The film rights have already been claimed by Fox after a heated bidding war, and the book comes out Feb. 8. In the meantime, check out the trailer below. If you thought Lisbeth Salander was a bizarre-looking heroine, you haven’t seen Pressia yet!

Watch the exclusive video trailer here: http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/11/28/see-the-trailer-for-pure-by-julianna-baggott-exclusive/ 

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

MFA Greensboro Faculty Stuart Dischell Explains How a Poem Happens

"Days of Me" by Stuart Dischell

When people say they miss me,
I think how much I miss me too,
Me, the old me, the great me,
Lover of three women in one day,
Modest me, the best me, friend
To waiters and bartenders, hearty
Laugher and name rememberer,
Proud me, handsome and hirsute
In soccer shoes and shorts
On the ball fields behind MIT,
Strong me in a weightbelt at the gym,
Mutual sweat dripper in and out...

When was this poem composed? How did it start?

"Days of Me" was written in 1996. It was provoked by a telephone interchange with David Rivard several years, after I moved from Boston to Greensboro. David had said, "We miss you here" and I responded "I miss me too." Some months later, that banter came back to me, so I began a draft with it, and I was lucky and the poem just took off from there.
 
Read the full article here:  http://howapoemhappens.blogspot.com/2011/11/stuart-dischell.html 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Praised for His Persistence

Bookmarks--Persistance Pays Off for Author Almond
    by Ben Steelman

Steve Almond describes himself as "the world's most efficient failed novelist."

He's published half of a novel, "Which Brings Me to You" with Julianna Baggott, about male/female relationships. Now he's working on another.

"But hey, I'm the father of a 2-year-old and a 5-year-old, so I'm not doing anything fast," Almond said.

"Most writing is failing," he added. "For every story you get published, you have 10 that never went anywhere. The whole secret is just staying in the chair."

Some of that chair time is paying off for Almond. His first short story collection in six years, "God Bless America," was released last month by Lookout Books, the literary imprint of the University of North Carolina Wilmington. 

Read the full article here:  http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20111127/COLUMNIST/111129812?p=1&tc=pg 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Reviewed by Witch of the Theatre Going, "Pure"

Title: "Pure"
Author: Julianna Baggott

☆: 4.5/5 – a must-read for 2012!

Review: This one really kind of made me have to sit back and think after finishing it. Yeah, it definitely lives up to the hype – “Pure” is a fantastic and awful tale of the fall of modern society, and what seems all too possible. And yeah, it gave me nightmares (that’s when you know a dystopian tale has been done right – it gives you nightmares of these possible futures). Yet at the beginning it dragged a bit, only to really start amping things up at the start of the second third of the book. Regardless of how I personally try to parse it out, “Pure” is definitely one to be on the watch for in 2012 and definitely deserves a place on any TBR shelf for the upcoming new year.

Read the full review here:  https://witchoftheatregoing.wordpress.com/2011/11/26/review-pure-by-julianna-baggott/ 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Reviews "White Truffles in Winter" for the Boston Globe

White Truffles in Winter by N.M. Kelby
     by Steve Almond

The putative hero of N.M. Kelby’s new novel, “White Truffles in Winter,’’ is the legendary French chef Auguste Escoffier, who helped forge what we now think of as high cuisine. But the real stars of the book are his dishes, which are described with an eroticized appreciation likely to induce drooling.

Here, for instance, is but a fraction of the epic meal Escoffier serves Kaiser Wilhelm II, in the months leading up to World War I: “There was cantaloupe to start. And then a consommé garnished with gold leaf and the most delicate custard. A fried fillet of sole, in the style of the miller’s wife, rolled in flour, fried and garnished with fish roe. A terrine of boned rack of baby lamb studded with foie gras and truffles. Chicken in aspic. Crayfish soufflé. And sweets, so many sweets.’’ 

Read the full review here:  http://bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2011/11/23/white-truffles-winter-kelby/S4Y3o1ry6hfbCgzddPeP9I/story.html 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Kelly Link Talks about Why Stories Work

"The Hortlak" by Kelly Link: You're Talking a Lot, but You're Not Saying Anything

 Synopsis:  Eric works at the All-Night, a convenience store located on Canada’s border, next to a chasm at the bottom of which lives a peaceful population of zombies, some of whom occasionally shop at the store—though they always seem to want something Eric can’t give them.  While he tries to discern what his coworker’s plans mean for the store, Eric pines after Charley, a woman whose job it is to put dogs to death when their owners don’t want them.

Sometimes I have to remind myself what the goal of this blog is supposed to be, according to the mission statement I posted.  That is, the question I want to answer about each particular story I read is not “What is this about?” but “Why does this work?”

What’s the difference?  Well, for one thing, when I consider the first question, I often find myself taken out of the story I’m reading.  I get distracted with trying to solve the puzzle—Is this a symbol?  Was what that character said a metaphor for something else?  Am I too dumb to understand this story?  As if a story were a riddle with a definite answer.  Asking “What is this about?” is a totally legitimate thing to do, but not, I think, when you’re reading a story.  Asking that question is like that moment in the time-travel movie Somewhere in Time when Christopher Reeve reaches into his pocket and discovers the modern-day penny he’d forgotten he put there, then suddenly finds himself flung back into the world of 1980 after having fallen in love with a woman in 1912—which is to say, it takes me out of the world of the story.

Read the full article here:  https://thecraftproject.wordpress.com/2011/11/21/the-hortlak-by-kelly-link-youre-talking-a-lot-but-not-saying-anything/ 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Reviewed, "God Bless America"

Finished the book of stories by Steve Almond, God Bless America.  Quite good, really good, fresh and sharp in so many ways.  Y que?  as George Haley would say (as Virginia recounted many times over the years but especially last month in Santiago while we were at the literary festival, the scholarly conference).  Almond writes with tremendous sureness and precision—both the funny stories and the serious...

See the original post here:   http://bobgarlitz.com/2011/11/23/steve-almond/ 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Reviewed by Clover Hill Book Reviews, "Pure"

Pure by Julianna Baggott

The cover on this ARC is pure white, as is the book title and author’s name on the spine – I know it makes sense for it to be white; however it makes it extremely hard to see both the title and author name – I’m not sure if this is the final book sleeve which will be published though. 

Pure is a post-apocalyptic novel – after the detonations the world is split in two; the Wretches and the Pures.  The Pures are those that were housed in the Dome before the detonations and are therefore unscarred by the full force of the blast.  The Wretches are those cut off from the Dome and living in poverty, people who survived and are fused together with whatever the detonations flung at them – metal, glass and animals. 

Pressia Belze is a Wrench, who dreams of safety of the Dome with the Pure.  Her grandfather is frail and does everything he can to protect her.  Partridge is the son of the leader of the Dome, and detests their regimented and forced way of life.  He remembers snippets of his childhood and wants more than the Dome can give him – he yearns for freedom.  Pressia and Partridge come from opposite sides of the fence, but together must unite and take action.

Read the full review here:  http://cloverhillbookreviews.blogspot.com/2011/11/pure-by-julianna-baggott.html 

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Reviewed/Interviewed by Star News Online

Almond crunch time
     by Ben Steelman

...Almond’s first short-story collection in six years, “God Bless America,” was released last month by Lookout Books, the literary imprint of UNCW’s creative writing department.

It’s a tough act to follow. Lookout’s first book, “Binocular Vision” by Edith Pearlman, was reviewed on the front page of the New York Times Sunday book section and was a finalist  for a National Book Award. (It didn’t win, but even getting in the finals was a big deal for a fledgling academic publisher.)

“God Bless America” seems to be holding up, though. Almond’s hometown paper, The Boston Globe, called it “terrific,” “provocative” and “memorable.”

“I didn’t set out to comment on the state of America in 2011,” Almond said. “That would be pretentious and ridiculous.” Rather, the stories emerged from the past few years (a couple as much as a decade back), and dealt with issues that happened to be on his mind at the time.

Read the full article here: http://books.blogs.starnewsonline.com/14858/almond-crunch-time/

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

MFA Greensboro Faculty David Roderick Featured on Poetry Daily, "Pastoral"

"Pastoral"
     by David Roderick

Birds graze the tassels,
           sparrowing actually, or mocking,
their colors worth
           nothing unless I pin
           their wings
                       in the field.
Speaking of field:
           the Russians say
           life is a walk across an open one
where mules are buried,
           and men.
           The soil remembers
a forest that marched right through.
In time-lapse.

Read the full poem here: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=15298

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Reviewed by The Aussie Zombie

Pure by Julianna Baggott

When I first read the synopsis of this book, I was a little bit reluctant to start reading. Although dystopian fiction is one of my favourites, it all sounded a little bit ‘YA-romancey’’ to me. However, as I skimmed through the first few pages, I decided maybe it could be better than it sounded.

Julianna Baggott describes the post-apocalyptic/dystopic world after The Detonations in a way that sucks you right into the story from page one. Mutated animals, disfigured humans, creatures that defy definition are all part of a world that is unrecognizable, yet recognizable at the same time.

The characters, particularly Pressia, are so well defined and drawn I was immediately immersed into their lives, their feelings and their very different situations.

Read the full review here: http://theaussiezombie.blogspot.com/2011/11/pure-pure-1-by-julianna-baggott.html

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Interviewed for WHQR.

Laura Hunsberger Interviews Author Steve Almond

Steve Almond, the keynote speaker of UNCW’s Writers’ Week and author of God Bless America, talks with Laura.

During our Classical block on Tuesdays through Fridays at 12:06, Jemila Ericson and other staff members host a celebration of the arts and culture of the Lower Cape Fear. They interview artists, actors, dancers, writers and creators of community events--all the inspiring movers and shakers who enrich our lives.

Listen to the interview here:http://www.whqr.org/post/laura-hunsberger-interviews-author-steve-almond?ft=1&f=142462986

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Camille Dungy Reads Her Work

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Interviews Marc Schuster for The Nervous Breakdown

An Interview with Marc Schuster
     by Steve Almond

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up Marc Schuster’s debut novel, The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl. But I’ll admit to some trepidation. After all, the novel’s narrator and heroine is Audrey, a recently divorced mother of two daughters who takes up with a local restaurant owners, and her good friend … Cocaine. I had no idea how Schuster was going to pull this voice off, and feared he’d wind up resorting to the violent mayhem that drives the television series Weeds.

Not so.

The novel has plenty of zany plot twists. But Schuster keeps the focus on Audrey’s internal struggles—her attempts to balance the selfless directives of her superego against the liberating wants of her id. The result is a novel that’s funny, suspenseful, but also beautifully tender.

I sat down with Marc (electronically, as it were) to find out more…

Read the interview here: http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/salmond/2011/11/an-interview-with-marc-schuster/
 
Find out more about the MFA Writing Program here:http://mfagreensboro.org

MFA Greensboro Alum Michael C. Peterson Featured in The Collagist, "Les Beaux Jours"

"Les Beaux Jours"
     by Michael C. Peterson

    

               after Balthus

Days of orifices. What lawns and what forests! and the mouth
that wants to be the garter, drawn softly to its soft appendage.

Because you've looked hardly into what looks hard at you
you've built a fire in the maw, widened the tongs while

we were outside, surrounded by birds of various kinds.
Pretty standard alterity. It was the manner of her hand

on a lintel, as if suggesting nextness or something well-arranged.
It was the angle of the moment she was or wasn't looking.
Read the original publication here: http://www.dzancbooks.org/the-collagist/2011/11/14/les-beaux-jours.html

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Lynne Barrett Interviewed

As my MFA thesis director, Lynne Barrett alternately pushed and pulled me through the writing of my memoir-still-in-progress, and for that I will be forever grateful.

In addition to being one of the best editors and teachers I’ve ever known (and I’ve known a few), Lynne is also a brilliant writer, and her new short story collection, Magpies, is pure glittering literary pleasure.

Lynne was gracious enough to answer a few questions for me, which I’ll post in four installments, beginning today and continuing through Thursday, while I write my NaNo words.

Read the interview here: http://www.angelakelsey.com/2011/11/on-magpies-part-one-of-a-four-part-interview-with-lynne-barrett/

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Julianna Baggott Reviewed by Publisher's Weekly

Pure by Julianna Baggott

Baggott’s highly anticipated postapocalyptic horror novel, a dramatic shift from her lighthearted poetry, women’s fiction (as Bridget Asher), and children’s books, is a fascinating mix of stark, oppressive authoritarianism and grotesque anarchy. Like most survivors of the Detonations, teen Pressia is disfigured, a doll’s head fused into the place where her hand should be. She’s better off than people who were merged into each other, with animals, or even with the Earth itself, but she’s also at risk of being drafted into the paramilitary Operation Sacred Revolution. The few who survived unscathed—known as “Pures”—live in the Domes, impenetrable arcologies where the few children are forced into rigid training and genetic enhancement. When Partridge, believing his mother to be alive in the wilderness, escapes from a Dome, he’s rescued by Pressia.

Read the full review here: http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-1-4555-0306-3

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Jim Clark Performs "One Night Late"

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Jim Clark's Poetry Featured in Future Cycle

"One Night Late"
     by Jim Clark
I heard Phil Ochs on internet radio
One night late as I worked from my home
In an outlying province of the old imperial
Lost and forsaken U. S. of A.

And Richard Fariña was harmonizing sweetly
To a song that I knew but had never heard
In the pre-dawn light of the millennial morning
I scratched these words on the back of a bill

Chorus:

Loaves and fishes and horses and wishes
The virgins go begging to the cold-hearted bridegroom
If Jesus was here he’d climb back on the cross
He’d walk straight back in the shadows of the tomb

Read the full poem here: http://www.futurecycle.org/FutureCyclePoetry/Clark-OneNightLate.aspx

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

 

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond to Appear on a Writing Panel at Holy Cross College

Working Writers Series Hosts Panel on Literary Careers

Author Steve Almond and literary agent Betsy Lerner will be featured in a panel on literary careers titled “A Life in Letters” on Thursday, Dec. 8 at 7:30 p.m. in Rehm Library at the College of the Holy Cross. The Jenks Chair of Contemporary American Letters, Leah Hager Cohen, will serve as moderator of the panel. The event, sponsored by the College’s Creative Writing Program, is free and open to the public.

Almond is the author of 10 books of fiction and non-fiction, three of which he published himself. This Won’t Take But a Minute, Honey, is composed of 30 brief stories, and 30 brief essays on the psychology and practice of writing. Bad Poetry and Letters from People Who Hate Me are exactly what they sound like. His stories have appeared in the Best American and Pushcart anthologies. This past October, Lookout Press published his third story collection, God Bless America: Stories.

Read the full article here: http://news.holycross.edu/blog/2011/11/29/working-writers-series-hosts-panel-on-literary-careers/

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

MFA Greensboro Alum George Singleton Featured in The Georgia Review

An Excerpt from "Which Rocks We Chose"
     by George Singleton

LUCKILY for everyone in the furthest branches of the family tree, the mule spoke English to my grandfather. Up until this seminal point in the development of what became Carolina Rocks, a few generations of Loopers had tried to farm worthless land that sloped from the mountainside down to all tributaries of the Saluda River. From what I understood, my great-greatgrandfather and then his son barely grew enough corn to feed their families, much less take to market. Our land stood so desolate back then that no Looper joined the troops in the 1860s; no Looper even understood that the country underwent some type of a conflict. What I’m saying is, our stretch of sterile soil kept Loopers from needing slaves, which pretty much caused locals to label them everything from uppity to unpatriotic, from hex ridden to slow witted. Until the mule spoke English to my grandfather, our family crest might’ve portrayed a chipped plow blade, wilted sprigs, and a man with a giant question mark above his head.

Read the full excerpt here:  http://garev.uga.edu/summer06/singleton.pdf

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

MFA Greensboro Faculty Stewart Dischell Featured in The Cortland Review

Because You Have Seen It So
     By Stuart Dischell

Sometimes here in autumn, usually after a rainstorm,

The trees one morning lose their leaves and the light

'Abounds earlie in the newly stripp'd branches'


Through the living room windows. The whole house


Gets exposed inside and out to its angles, the glass

Illuminating all sorts of patterns and prints

'Such the gazer might be delighted by passing clouds.'


Certain spiders familiarize themselves with corners,


'Their webs flutter'ng in the breeze of the fire'

Dog fur and dust twine like ivy up the chair legs.


You can tell on the chapped lips of lovers, this winter


Will be long. A child will mourn the death of a houseplant

And draw it in its clay pot with green leaves.

The refrigerator door will keep it among magnets.

Read and listen to this and other poems by Stuart Dischell here: http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/53/dischell.html

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Michael Gills Interviewed by Psychology Today

Who's Worth Loving?
Hardly anyone's worth loving, says novelist, bot go love anyway.
     By Susan K. Perry, Ph.D.

Go Love, a debut novel by Michael Gills offers a fresh perspective on the struggle to love and to be worthy of
love, the impossibility and the necessity of loving. Set mostly in
Arkansas (where Gills grew up) and told in two voices, the plot gathers
force as it moves toward a fraught family funeral.

Even those characters in Go Love
who don't make good choices are treated with profound compassion by the
author. The main male character's relationship to his mother, and to
his daughter, in particular, are a jolt to the heart.

Gills won acclaim for his first collection of short fiction, Why I Lie, with University of Nevada Press, and his second, The Death of Bonnie and Clyde,
is published by Texas Review Press. He's won a fellowship and a grant
and earned a Ph.D., and he teaches at the Honors College at the
University of Utah. Go Love is published by the delightfully named Raw Dog Screaming Press.

Read the interview with Michael Gills here: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/creating-in-flow/201110/whos-worth-loving

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Reviewed by Star News Online

Book Review -- Almond Shows adept touch in God Bless America
     By Ben Steelman

Lookout Books, the
fiction imprint of the creative writing department at the University of
North Carolina Wilmington, hit one out of the park with its first
release, "Binocular Vision" by Edith Pearlman.

Not only did the
short-story collection garner a front-page rave in The New York Times
Book Review, it also landed a National Book Award nomination.

Fortunately, Lookout's second release, Steve Almond's "God Bless America," shows no signs of a sophomore slump.

Like
"Binocular Vision" it's a set of short stories by a contemporary master
who, like Pearlman, happens to be a New Englander. "God Bless America,"
however, includes several tales set in North Carolina, with locations
scattered across the map from San Diego to Erie, Pa.

Almond
has gained his biggest audience with his nonfiction. Algonquin Books of
Chapel Hill published his "Candyfreak," an appreciation of America's
regional, artisinal sweets, including the Goo-Goo Cluster.

However,
he's also produced two well-regarded prior collections, "My Life in
Heavy Metal" and "The Evil B.B. Chow," as well as "Which Brings Me to
You," a he said/she said view of romantic relationships with Julianna
Baggott.

Read the full review here: http://www.starnewsonline.com/article/20111106/ENT/111109836?Title=Book-Review-Almond-shows-adept-touch-in-God-Bless-America-&tc=ar

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Talks Humor for The Wall St. Journal

Wisecracks as Wisdom
     by Steve Almond

One of the occupational hazards of being described as a humorist is
that you get asked a lot how to write funny. The first thing I tell
people is that they should never, ever set out to be funny. That
generally gets a laugh. But I mean it.

The comic impulse isn't some wrench
you hoist out of your writer's tool box when the action seems to be
flagging. It arises from a determined confrontation with feelings that
are essentially tragic in nature: grief, shame, powerlessness, anxiety.
As a rule, the sadder the material, the funnier the prose.

Back in high school, for instance, I
would have told you that J.D. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" was
the most hilarious book ever written. That's the one about a teenage kid
suffering a nervous breakdown. The Martin Amis novel "Money," which had
me howling through my 20s, is about an alcoholic movie producer named
John Self who enthusiastically wrecks his life. And Lorrie Moore's
"Birds of America," which I spent my 30s memorizing, offers a cast of
women who are alienated and depressed.

Read the full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204394804577010263837087548.html

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Kelly Link Interviewed by Weird Fiction Review

An Interview with Kelly Link: "All Books Are Weird"

Kelly Link is an influential American writer of
hard-to-classify short fiction that has been described as fantasy,
slipstream, or magic realism. Link has published three collections: Stranger Things Happen (2001), Magic for Beginners (2005), and Pretty Monsters (2008). Her stories have won the Nebula, Hugo, and World Fantasy Awards.

Although not known as a writer of “weird tales” per se, most of
Link’s stories tend to be grounded in an underlying darkness. The story
reprinted in The Weird compendium, “The Specialist’s Hat” (1998), creeps
up on the reader, slowly trading a sense of innocence for one of
terror. The story is technically as perfect as classics like Shirley
Jackson’s “The Summer People” and showcases the effortless complexity of
Link’s fiction. Her most recent editorial collaboration with her
husband, Gavin Grant, is Steampunk!, an original anthology of YA fiction.

WFR caught up with Link in the
middle of short story revisions, from which she took a break to answer
our questions about weird fiction…

Read the interview here: http://weirdfictionreview.com/2011/11/an-interview-with-kelly-link-%E2%80%9Call-books-are-weird%E2%80%9D/

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

MFA Greensboro Alum Steve Almond Interviewed by Heeb

The Sick Comedy of Steve Almond!
     By Steven Beeber

Steve Almond’s latest collection of short
stories takes the comic writer into new terrain—the darkness. Not that
Almond was exactly light before. His memoir Candyfreak—in which
he exposed himself as obsessively self-medicating with sweets—is never
going to be optioned by Disney. Still over the course of these new
stories, the darkness gradually deepens. Like many comics before him,
Almond’s got a tragic side, and it’s gaining on him fast.

Well, good thing. Because as hard as I’ve laughed at Almond’s earlier
work, I’m now aching for more of his latest. Is it because I’m a sucker
for stories where lobotomies or blood-splattered breach births are the
subject? A little. But even more it’s because I see Almond tapping into a
new vein here. And as the blood runs, I’m hooked.

Read the full review here: http://heebmagazine.com/the-sick-comedy-of-steve-almond/29949

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