New England Review

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New Books by NER Authors

March 2023 (Part 2)

March 31, 2023

Say farewell to March with part two of our author book roundup! We’re closing out the month with five new poetry titles, and a collection of climate-oriented speculative fiction. Be sure to shop these and other books by NER authors on our Bookshop.org page.

Tanya, Brenda Shaughnessy’s sixth collection of poetry, is out now from Knopf. Dwelling in the memories of the women who set her on her artistic path, Tanya is intimacy embodied. Shaughnessy is the recipient of a 2018 Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her poem “A Mix Tape: The Hit Singularities” appeared in NER 36.4.

Ina Cariño’s sensorial debut poetry collection, Feast, released earlier this month from Alice James Books. Described as “a whole literary event” by fellow NER author Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Feast won the 2021 Alice James Award and Cariño a 2022 Whiting Award in Poetry. Their poem “Bitter Melon,” which appeared in NER 40.3, was accompanied by a “Behind the Byline” interview.

Hot off the press from Vintage is Allegra Hyde’s highly anticipated short story collection, The Last Catastrophe. These hopeful, speculative narratives wrestle with with a world transformed by climate change and “global weirding.” Hyde’s short story “Shark Fishing” appeared in issue 35.4 and was discussed in a “Behind the Byline” interview with the author.

I Feel Fine by Olivia Muenz—winner of the 2022 Gatewood Prize—is out now courtesy of Switchback Books. Prize judge Julie Carr called the work “shockingly original, haunting and strange . . . At once novelistic and radically fragmented, achingly confessional and austerely technical.” Muenz’s work is forthcoming in New England Review.

New from Yale University Press comes Mary-Alice Daniel’s Mass for Shut-Ins, the 117th volume of Yale Series of Younger Poets. Drawing on African and Western systems of myth and ritual, Daniel confronts tricontinental culture shock and her curious placement within many worlds in this strikingly original debut. Her poem “A Southern Way of Talking About Love” was published in issue 33.4.

Matthew Thorburn’s book-length sequence of poems, String, is out now from LSU Press. String tells the story of a teenage boy’s experiences in war time and its aftermath. Poet Michael Dumanis called the work “a stirring bravura performance, a love song and a song of war, a chronicle of damage, a testament to our capacity for perseverance.” Thorburn’s work has appeared in several issues of NER, most recently issue 38.1.

Find more books by NER authors on our Bookshop.org page.

Filed Under: Featured, NER Authors' Books, News & Notes Tagged With: Allegra Hyde, Brenda Shaughnessy, Ina Cariño, Mary-Alice Daniel, Matthew Thorburn, Olivia Muenz

New Books by NER Authors

March 2023 (Part 1)

March 29, 2023

March has been a busy month for New England Review authors! Part one of our author book roundup includes a collection of sonnets, a gut-wrenching account of the American healthcare system, and much more. Don’t forget to shop these and other titles on our Bookshop.org page.

Sophie Klahr’s collection of sonnets, Two Open Doors in a Field, is out now from Backwaters Press. Poet Mark Doty calls the collection “exhilarating and restless, as scrupulous in its attention to our little roads and highways as it is to our longings.” Klahr’s poem “Tree of Life” recently appeared in NER 43.3.

Celadon Books just released Laura Spence-Ash’s highly-anticipated debut novel Beyond That, the Sea. Author Meg Wolitzer writes, “Beyond That, the Sea is a shimmering dive into a lost past. With deft, beautiful prose, Laura Spence-Ash brings us into the worlds—both inner and outer—of two families in wartime, and over the years that follow. This novel is as haunting as it is accomplished.” Spence-Ash‘s short story “Desire Lines” appeared in NER 38.2.

From From by celebrated poet Monica Youn is out now from Graywolf Press. From From has been praised as “intimate yet expansive, [bringing] remarkable depth, candor, and intensity to personal and social history” (Publishers Weekly). Youn’s work has appeared in multiple issues of NER, most recently issue 37.1. Her poem “25th & Dolores” was an online selection from NER 22.3.

Catherine Gammon’s latest novel, The Martyrs, the Lovers, released on March 12 from 55 Fathoms Publishing. Loosely based on the life and death of the German Green Party founder and activist Petra Kelly with her partner Gert Bastian, the book’s poetic language is as beautiful as it is provoking. Gammon’s short story “Invocation” was featured in NER 39.1 and discussed by the author in a “Behind the Byline” interview. 

Hot off the press from Tin House Books is Charif Shanahan‘s Trace Evidence. An affecting follow-up to his award-winning debut Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing, Shanahan continues his piercing meditations on the intricacies of mixed-race identity, queer desire, time, mortality, and the legacies of anti-Blackness in the US and abroad. Shanahan’s poem “Worthiness” appeared in NER 42.1 and was discussed by the poet in a “Behind the Byline” interview.

Ricardo Nuila’s debut novel, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine, is now out from Scribner. Fellow NER author Javier Zamora noted, “Ricardo Nuila has achieved the impossible: writing a comprehensive, personal, and gut-wrenching account of the American healthcare system.” Nuila was the inaugural winner of the New England Review Award for Emerging Writers, and his short story “At the Bedside,” published in issue 35.1, was featured in Best American Short Stories 2015. 

Find more books by NER authors on our Bookshop.org page.

Filed Under: Featured, NER Authors' Books, News & Notes Tagged With: Catherine Gammon, Charif Shanahan, Laura Spence-Ash, Monica Youn, Ricardo Nuila, Sophie Klahr

Introducing NER 44.1

Spring 2023

March 27, 2023

“I like to think of genre as a matter of nets and veils, because nets and veils, which provide cover and establish boundaries, also reveal and catch,” says Carolyn Kuebler in the editor’s note to the new issue. In this issue you’ll find pieces in each of our traditional genres—though some could easily slide from one to the other—as well as an interview with multitalented artist Suzanne Jackson (whose nets are featured on our cover) and an excerpt from The Hours: An Opera in Two Acts, the first libretto our pages have ever seen.

Find these and more in NER 44.1—which just arrived from the printer and can be purchased in print or e-book—and also catch a sample of the spring issue here on our website.

Filed Under: Featured, News & Notes

NER Interns: Where are they now?

Doug LeCours

March 24, 2023

Doug during his time at Middlebury where he majored in Dance and English and
American Literatures. Photo by Alan Kimara Dixon.

Editorial intern Olivia Q. Pintair ’22.5 talks to Doug LeCours ’15—former NER intern and current writer, dancer, and choreographer—about creative inspiration, time, and embodiment through dance and fiction writing.


Olivia Q. Pintair: Where are you now, geographically and artistically, and what were some of the steps you took after Middlebury to get there?

Doug LeCours: I live in Ann Arbor, Michigan where I’m in my second semester of an MFA in fiction at the Helen Zell Writers’ Program, working on a collection of stories and a novel. After Middlebury, I moved to New York City and worked for seven years as a contemporary dancer and choreographer. During that time, my writing took the form of performance text and monologues directly related to the dance work I was making, with a few forays into critical writing. When the pandemic hit and my dance work momentarily evaporated, I started writing fiction in earnest again and fell back in love with reading. In a way, I feel like I’m playing catch-up—both on the contemporary literature that I missed while in the thick of a dance career and also on some literary classics and lesser known works. It’s a pleasure to be reminded there will always be more to read. 

OQP: As a dancer and a writer, what themes or questions is your work in conversation with? 

DL: Improvisation, queerness, sex, memory, nostalgia, wealth, scammers, and art history. 

OQP: Do you feel any overlap between your creative processes in dance and fiction writing? How do your experiences of these two mediums inform or stray from one another?

DL: In choreography and fiction, you’re dealing with time. It sounds so obvious, but it’s easy to forget, especially as a dancer inside of a performance where an hour can feel like three weeks or two seconds. Film is a bridge for me between dance and writing in looking at how filmmakers have chosen to deal with time. I’m always thinking about movies as I make dances, perform, or write.

I also think there’s something about having been a dancer—being a body in space, moving between highly specific states that often reach physical or emotional extremes—that has equipped me with an ability to really be with a character as they move through a story. A lot of the dance projects I was involved with were developed improvisationally, and although writing is a different medium, there’s that same sense of What can happen next? What moment can I shape that complicates / escalates / advances / undercuts what came before? I’m calling on a similar nimbleness to make confident choices and move forward compositionally. 

OQP: Is there a creative project you’ve most enjoyed working on recently? 

DL: Two dances come to mind: Julie Mayo’s Nerve Show and John Jasperse’s Visitation. Both required me to access performative qualities I wasn’t aware I possessed, and I’m deeply proud of both projects.

I had an experience writing a story this past fall where the story just came—less plugging and chugging, more of a rushing forth. I hadn’t had that experience in a while, and it was a pleasure to be able to follow the piece as it emerged from beginning to end.

OQP: Who inspires you creatively? 

DL: The many teachers I’ve had the pleasure of studying with at Middlebury and beyond, and the choreographers and directors with whom I’ve worked. 

So many artists and writers: Rachel Cusk, David Lynch, Miranda July, Michael Haneke, Mary Gaitskill, Patricia Highsmith, Fleur Jaeggy, James Baldwin, Sarah Michelson, John Cheever, Tere O’Connor. 

OQP: What are some things you learned as an undergraduate that most benefit you today in your professional and creative work?

DL: In both my studies of dance and creative writing at Middlebury, I was treated like an artist. I was taught early on that I didn’t have to wait for anyone’s permission to make something; as long as I was interested in it, it mattered.

Photo courtesy of Doug LeCours.

I also learned how to have a job and juggle scholarship and art-making. I worked all four years at the Box Office—and of course at NER, gaining some early insight into the literary landscape I’m entering again. These skills helped me to dive into the complicated Tetris game of dancing, writing, and paying for a life while living in New York.

OQP: Any book or music recommendations?

DL: Mary Gaitskill’s Veronica and all of her short stories. Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy. Leonard Michaels’ Sylvia. Alice Coltrane. Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk (a perfect album). William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops—great writing music.

Last year I was directed toward a writer named Christopher Coe who died in 1994 during the AIDS crisis. He was a student of Gordon Lish, and wrote with the sentence level precision and gravitas I love and am working toward in my own writing. His two novels, I Look Divine and Such Times, are sharp and devastating. The brevity of his career is a major loss, but I’m glad we have these contributions.


Filed Under: Featured, Interns, News & Notes, Where Are They Now Tagged With: Doug LeCours, Olivia Q. Pintair

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Tomas Venclova

Literature & Democracy

Tomas Venclova

“A principled stance against aggression should never turn into blind hatred. Such hatred does not help anyone to win . . .”

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