Archives for February 2016

Hai-Dang Phan Wins NER Award for Emerging Writers

February 26, 2016

hdphan-atl It is with great pleasure that New England Review and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference announce the selection of Hai-Dang Phan as the recipient of the second annual New England Review Award for Emerging Writers.

Hai-Dang Phan is a poet, translator, and assistant professor at Grinnell College. In addition to New England Review, his poems have been published or are forthcoming in Poetry, the New Yorker, Best American Poetry 2016, jubilat, Prelude, and Bennington Review, and a chapbook of poems, Small Wars, will be out this spring from Convulsive Editions. His translations of work by the contemporary Vietnamese poet Phan Nhiên Hạo have been published in Asymptote, Waxwing, Anomalous, and Cerise Press, and were recognized with a fellowship from the American Literary Translators Association. A graduate of the University of Florida’s MFA program in creative writing, he currently lives in Des Moines and is working on his first poetry book.

Phan will attend the 2016 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as the New England Review Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Scholar. His poem “Are Those F-16s?” appears in NER 36.4. Please join us in wishing Hai-Dang Phan a hearty congratulations.

Mid-Week Break

Sally Keith Reads at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference

February 24, 2016

Poet Sally Keith, faculty leader at the 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, read from Riverhouse (Milkweed Editions, 2015), her collection of poems about the death of her mother.

Sally Keith is the author of three previous collections of poetry: Fact of the Matter, Design, winner of the 2000 Colorado Prize for Poetry, and Dwelling Song, winner of the University of Georgia’s Contemporary Poetry Series competition. Her poetry appears in NER 33.2 and 24.4, as well as her essay “The Spirit of the Beehive” in our online series, Confluences. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Conference and teaches creative writing at George Mason University.

Monday, March 14 at 7pm

NER Vermont Reading Series: Jennifer Grotz, Sydney Lea, and Janice Obuchowski

February 23, 2016

Monday, March 14, 7 pm
51 Main at the Bridge
51 Main Street, Middlebury, VT

The NER Vermont Reading Series presents poets Jennifer Grotz and Sydney Lea and fiction writer Janice Obuchowski, who will read from their recent work at 51 Main at the Bridge in Middlebury, VT. This reading is co-sponsored by the Vermont Book Shop and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Light refreshments will be served. Books, cocktails, and other beverages will be available to purchase. The event is free and open to the public.

Jennifer Grotz’s new collection of poetry, Window Left Open, was just released from Graywolf Press. Her previous collections are The Needle and Cusp. Her poetry has appeared in the New Republic, the New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. She teaches at the University of Rochester and in the MFA program at Warren Wilson College, and is the assistant director of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference.

Sydney Lea is the author of a dozen poetry collections, with No Doubt the Nameless just out this spring from Four Way Books. He has also published a novel, a collection of literary criticism, and four volumes of personal essays, most recently What’s the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long. He was founder and longtime editor of New England Review, and he currently lives in northern Vermont.

Janice Obuchowski has her MFA in fiction from the University of California, Irvine. She’s served on the admissions board for the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and has been a lecturer at the University of Vermont and Middlebury College. A fiction editor at the New England Review, she has published stories in Gettysburg Review, Passages North, Slice, and Seattle Review. She has also recently completed a novel.

NER Classics

Alyce Miller | My Summer of Love

February 19, 2016

Alyce Miller’s Story “My Summer of Love” was published in NER 14.3 (1992).

I was the son and only child of two flower children named Reed and Marie Braxton who met at Berkeley and were married by a clown named Lenny Penny, who joined them “for as long as it feels good.” My parents were staunch socialists and believed in sharing everything, including each other. My arrival was in strict contradiction to my father’s philosophy about the over-population of the world. When I remained small for my age, my father blamed my mother, a resolute vegetarian, for refusing me meat.

Since my parents believed in openness about everything, I grew up with few secrets in a community of their friends near the Haight, knowing a little about a lot: mari-juana, orgone boxes, meditation, birth control, and the relative uncertainty of adult relationships which permutated like kaleidoscopes. My mother worked part-time as a receptionist at an art gallery on Haight Street and volunteered at the free clinic. My father had earned a teaching credential in college and occasionally taught at an alter- native private high school where students didn’t receive grades.

The day my parents took me to the train station my mother was wearing a red flowered skirt and a white blouse, set off the shoulders, and sandals. She and my father passed their morning joint back and forth as we drove down through the Panhandle. They had fought miserably the night before, something about the couple, Dana and Lightning from Los Angeles, who had been “crashing”with us since Easter. My father spent the whole night sitting outside on the front steps “getting his head together.” Now my parents huddled in the front seat like two bad children, eyeing each other, as the acrid smell of marijuana enveloped us all in a forgiving haze.

At the station, my mother put on pink-rimmed granny glasses to hide her puffy eyes. She assured me over and over that my going to Aunt Evie was the best for now while she and my father worked through their “philosophical crisis.””You know how much I adore Evie,” she said several times as if to reassure herself. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else with you.” She asked me not to discuss their troubles with either Aunt Evie or Uncle Ned. “Especially Uncle Ned.” Then from her shoulder bag she pulled out my collapsible travel chess set and pressed it into my hands.

“You forgot this. Don’t forget me,” she whispered, her hot tears staining my cheek. I gratefully stuffed the chess set into my knapsack, along with three chess books and my wooden chess clock.

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New England Review