Honum Wins First Book Prize for "The Tulip-Flame"

Graduate Chloe Honum (2010) has won the 2013 First Book Prize from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center for her collection The Tulip-Flame. Chloe's work beat out more than 700 other manuscripts for top prize; in 2012 it made Chloe a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Look for the book in spring 2014. Congratulations, Chloe!

New Cavalli Anthology Features Brock Translations

A new collection by acclaimed Italian poet Patrizia Cavalli, My Poems Won't Change the World, includes several works translated by our own Geoff Brock, professor of poetry and translation. Geoff joins an elite cadre of practicing poets & translators, including Mark Strand, Jorie Graham, Jonathan Galassi, Rosanna Warren, J. D. McClatchy, and David Shapiro, to bring Cavalli's work to English-language readers.

Honum in Plume

Read "January in West Texas" by alumna Chloe Honum (2010) in the latest issue of Plume, a poem of knotted days and separations.

Brock Featured in The Best American Poetry Blog

The Best American Poetry blog offers a two-part post about contemporary verse translation in which fifteen practitioners of the craft offer insight and advice.  We're proud to find our own Professor Geoff Brock among the literary translators featured. In part 1, Geoff tells readers what qualities to seek in poetry translations. In part 2, he'll offer a list of translations he admires and discuss a work of his own.

Dearnley Wins Playboy Fiction Contest

Congratulations to fourth-year student Stu Dearnley, whose story "Sparring Partners" won the 2013 Playboy College Fiction Contest. His story appears in the October issue of the magazine, available now.

Stu's win gives our MFA program a hat trick: recent graduate Meaghan Mulholland won the contest in 2010 for her story "Woman, Fire, and the Sea," and alum Hardin Young won in 2003 for "The One Percenter."

Sanders Publishes Essay Marking DFW's Death

One of our favorite former students, Steve Sanders--now a PhD student at the Univ. of Houston and nonfiction editor at Gulf Coast--marked the five-year anniversary of David Foster Wallace's death with this personal and poignant essay. 

Two New Poems by Takacs

Second-year student Eszter Takacs has two new poems out, both available online! You'll find "I meant nothing by which we stand here gracefully eating" in the September issue of Thrush, and "Together we will talk right down to Earth" in issue 3 of Ghost Proposal.

New Collection of Flash Fiction from Rafferty

Poetry alumnus Charles Rafferty (1990) ventures into prose with his new collection of flash fiction, Saturday Night at Magellan's, published by Fomite Press. Grab a copy and enjoy some dramatic morsels of story.

And for a taste of Charles' poetry, check out his collection The Man on the Tower, or his latest chapbook "Appetites," published by Clemson University Press. 

Askew Essay in Tin House

Ready for a close encounter of the slithery sort? Check out a new essay by Rilla Askew, visiting associate professor of fiction, in the latest issue of Tin House. You can read "Rhumba" in the Features section here.

Fiction by Kinzer in Whole Beast Rag

Second-year fiction student David Kinzer has a new story, "The Ai Wei Wei Industry," in Whole Beast Rag. 

"Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist and political dissident, appeared at a Handan police station one late spring afternoon. His hair was very gray, and his blue floral shirt was missing two buttons at belly level. At this point, he’d been detained by the Chinese government for 146 days. The first thing he told the police, and the phrase repeated to them most often in the hours afterward, was I am not Ai Weiwei."

Alchemy Features Translation by Fares

The journal Alchemy features a new excerpt from the novel "32" by Sahar Mandour, translated from the Arabic by second-year student Nicole Fares.

"Her parents would tell her that Saeed would make a good partner for her when they grow old, so she should put up with him. She told me: what if I tolerate him and he dies of a heart attack ten years from now? Or what if I kill him before he reaches old age? How can I sacrifice the best years of my life, only to grow old and still have to face him, like a bad job?"