October 10, 7 pm: Emily Arnason Casey, Rahat Huda, Sara London, Sarah Wolfson at the Vermont Book Shop.

New England Review

Reading November 14 in Middlebury

Megan Mayhew Bergman & Spring Ulmer

Megan Mayhew Bergman and Spring Ulmer

New England Review and the Middlebury College Program in Creative Writing Program are pleased to present new writing faculty Megan Mayhew Bergman and Spring Ulmer, who will read from their fiction and essays. Join us Thursday, November 14, at 4:30 pm, in the Axinn Center, Abernethy Room, at Middlebury College. Light refreshments will be served in the Winter Garden.

Megan Mayhew Bergman, joining the Creative Writing faculty this year in fiction, is the author of Almost Famous Women, Birds of a Lesser Paradise, and Indigo Run. She is a regular columnist for The Guardian, and her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, and other publications. She was a fellow at the American Library in Paris and now directs Middlebury’s Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference.

Spring Ulmer, who joined the Creative Writing faculty last fall with a specialty in nonfiction, is the author of Benjamin’s Spectacles, The Age of Virtual Reproduction, and the forthcoming Bestiality of the Involved. She lives in Essex, New York, with her son André.

NER Vermont Reading Series

October 10 at 7 pm

from left: Emily Arnason Casey, Rahat Huda, Sara London, Sarah Wolfson

Join us for an evening of new writing with poets Sara London and Sarah Wolfson, essayist Emily Arnason Casey, and fiction writer Rahat Huda, at the Vermont Book Shop, 38 Main Street, Middlebury, VT.

Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase and signing. Free and open to the public.

Emily Arnason Casey’s debut collection of essays, Made Holy, was published by the University of Georgia Press in 2019. She has been an instructor at the Community College of Vermont, Winooski, since 2012, and her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Hotel Amerika, The Normal School,Hunger Mountain, and other journals. Originally from northern Minnesota, she now lives with her family in Orwell, Vermont. 

Rahat Huda is a junior at Middlebury College. Originally from New York, she writes about the city in all its hectic glory. She spends any spare time she has daydreaming about adopting a pitbull after graduation. 

Sara London is the author of Upkeep (Four Way Books, 2019) and The Tyranny of Milk (Four Way Books, 2010). Her poems have appeared in many journals, including The Common, Quarterly West, Cortland Review, and Hudson Review. She grew up in California and Vermont and attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She teaches at Smith College and lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Sarah Wolfson is the author of the debut poetry collection A Common Name for Everything (Green Writers Press, 2019). Her poems have appeared in Canadian and American journals including AGNI, The Fiddlehead, Michigan Quarterly Review, and TriQuarterly. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan. Originally from Vermont, she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches writing at McGill University.

The NER Vermont Reading Series is co-sponsored by the Vermont Book Shop. To be added to our events email list, please send a message to NER.Vermont@gmail.com. 

A Midd Reunion Reading

NER welcomes alumni and faculty, June 8

New England Review is pleased to present its annual gathering of Middlebury College alumni and faculty authors during Middlebury’s reunion weekend, Saturday, June 8, at 2:30 p.m. Axinn Center, Room 229. This year brings a range of accomplished alumni from classes ranging from 1979 to 2009, with Sam Collier, Dede Cummings, Meghan Laslocky, and Emilie Trice, along with Middlebury College professor of poetry and creative writing Karin Gottshall. The authors will read from a range of poems, stories, essays, and more. Books will be available for signing; free and open to the public.

Sam Collier ’09 is a playwright, poet, and theater artist. Her play Daisy Violet the Bitch Beast King was a finalist for the O’Neill Theater Center’s 2017 National Playwright Conference. Other plays include Silo Tree, Suit of Leaves,thing with feathers, and Quiet, Witches. Her work has been developed by the Chicago Theatre Marathon, Theater Nyx, PTP/NYC, New Ground Theatre, the UNESCO Cities’ Play Festival, and the AWOI Little Festival of Iowa Legends. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Iron Horse, Mortar Magazine, Guernica, and others, and she has held fellowships and residencies with the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the National Theatre Institute, and the Folger Shakespeare Library. She holds an MFA in playwriting from the University of Iowa.

Dede Cummings ’79 is a Vermont poet and publisher, and commentator for Vermont Public Radio. At Middlebury College, she won the Mary Dunning Thwing Award and attended the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference as an undergraduate fellow. She has published poems in Mademoiselle, Connotation Press,Mom Egg Review,Bloodroot Literary,and Green Mountains Reviewand was a Discover/The Nation poetry semi-finalist and a 2016 Vermont Studio Center poet. Her first poetry book, To Look Out From, won the 2016 Homebound Publications Poetry Prize. Her second collection of poetry, The Meeting Place, is due out in spring 2020 from Salmon Poetry. Dede is the founder and publisher of Green Writers Press in Brattleboro, Vermont, a global press devoted to environmental activism, social justice, and sustainable publishing. 

Karin Gottshall, Assistant Professor in English and American Literatures, is the author of two award-winning poetry books: Crocus (Fordham University Press, 2007) and The River Won’t Hold You (Ohio State University Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in national literary journals such as FIELD, New England Review, and Kenyon Review. A 2015 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference poetry fellowship winner, Gottshall lives in Vermont where she teaches at Middlebury College and directs the New England Young Writers’ Conference.

Meghan Laslocky ’89 grew up on a farm in Shoreham, attended MUHS and The Madeira School, and majored in English at Middlebury. Her book, The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages, was inspired by history’s great love stories, and by her own, both happy and sad. She lives in Oakland, California, with her son and regularly returns to Vermont to spend time with her family and friends here. 

Emilie Trice ’04 is an artist, writer, and curator specializing in contemporary visual culture. Her writing has appeared online for the New York Times, Paris Review, Artforum, Artnet, and Dazed Digital, and in international magazines including Sleek (Berlin), SOMA (San Francisco), and DAMn (Brussels). She has written catalogue essays for artists such as Miya Ando and Ted Riederer and has been cited in academic publications including Climate Change: An Encyclopedia of Science and History.

David Huddle & Gregory Spatz

Book Release Reading, June 20, 7 pm

  • Gregory Spatz
  • David Huddle

Join us at the Vermont Book Shop for a summer evening with two Tupelo Press authors! 

David Huddle, the author of 21 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, will present his new novel, Hazel, and Gregory Spatz, a fiction writer, fiddler, and long-time NER contributor will present What Could Be Saved, his new collection of novellas and stories.

The reading will begin at 7 pm at the Vermont Book Shop, 38 Main Street, Middlebury, VT. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

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David Huddle is the author of seven poetry collections, six short story collections, five novels, a novella, and a collection of essays titled The Writing Habit. His new book from Tupelo is the novel Hazel. He won the 2012 Library of Virginia Award for Fiction for Nothing Can Make Me Do Thisand the 2013 Pen New England Award for Poetry for Blacksnake at the Family Reunion. Originally from Ivanhoe, Virginia, Huddle has lived in Vermont for nearly fifty years. He teaches at the Bread Loaf School of English and the Rainier Writing Workshop

Gregory Spatz is the author of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler’s Dream,and No One But Us, and of the story collections Half as Happy and Wonderful Tricks. His new book from Tupelo Press is What Could Be Saved, a collection of novellas and stories. His fiction has appeared in many publications, including The New Yorker, Glimmer Train, Shenandoah, Epoch, Kenyon Review, and New England Review, where he published his first story in 1992 and appeared most recently in 2017. The recipient of a Michener Fellowship, an Iowa Arts Fellowship, a Washington State Book Award, and an NEA Fellowship in literature, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane. Spatz plays the fiddle in the twice Juno-nominated bluegrass band John Reischman and the Jaybirds.

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Hazel (Tupelo Press, 2019), is a portrait of a woman both ordinary and exceptional, composed in glimpses of her life from child to elder. Hazel is a loner and somewhat of a pill. Although she’s not likeable in the regular ways, she’s rigorously honest in the way she examines her world, and in relationships with a few other people. Hazel’s nephew John Robert is captivated by the mystery of such a uniquely serious person. He assembles episodes from Hazel’s life, and the novel reveals a lifelong struggle by someone whose integrity is absolute. Huddle proves the complete life of almost anyone would be profoundly complex if seen whole.

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At the heart of What Could Be Saved (Tupelo Press, 2019) is the richly complex of world of violins—its beauty and magic, romance and deceit, vast history and absolute rigor. These stories sing through the hopes and dreams of builders, dealers, and players within their mysterious world. From the story of a young man refusing to meet his luthier father’s expectations to a fantastic story told from the perspective of abused and forgotten violins, this book bears witness to tragic, comic, and thoroughly fraught dramas. A sustained musicality thrums through these beautiful, almost dream-like tales. Spatz’s language is precise and powerful, his fiction elegantly wrought. A book that echoes long after its music ends.

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Tupelo Press is an independent, literary press devoted to discovering and publishing works of poetry, literary fiction, and creative nonfiction by emerging and established writers. What we look for is a blend of urgency of language, imagination, distinctiveness, and craft. What we produce and how we produce it—from design to printing to paper quality—honors the writing in books which boast the uniquely sensual look and feel of a Tupelo Press book.

In continuous operation in Middlebury since 1949, the Vermont Book Shopis an institution. We, its stewards, are devoted to providing excellent customer service, promoting interpersonal engagement around books, and giving back to the community that supports us.

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