New England Review

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.

NER Presents 3 New Fiction Writers

Thursday, April 18, 7 pm

Brad Felver, David Moats, and Kylie Winger will read at the Vermont Book Shop

Join us on April 18 for a reading at the Vermont Book Shop with three fiction writers: Brad Felver, whose debut collection of stories, The Dogs of Detroit, won the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize; David Moats, a well-known Vermont journalist whose new fiction appears in the current issue of NER; and Kylie Winger, a Middlebury College senior and Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference alum. 

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

Brad Felver is author of the story collection The Dogs of Detroit (University of Pittsburgh Press), which won the 2018 Drue Heinz Literature Prize. His other honors include the O. Henry Prize, a Pushcart Prize special mention, and the Zone 3 Fiction Prize. His fiction and essays have appeared widely in magazines such as One Story, New England Review, Hunger Mountain, and Colorado Review. “City of Glass,” his essay about boxing and the city of Toledo, appears in the spring 2018 issue of NER. He lives with his wife and kids in northern Ohio.  
 
David Moats was born in Salt Lake City and grew up in California. For many years he worked as an editor at the Rutland Herald in Vermont, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2001. He is the author of the book Civil Wars: A Battle for Gay Marriage, published by Harcourt in 2004. He is also the author of numerous plays, most recently An Afternoon in France, which was performed in Middlebury, Vermont, in 2012. “The Incident,” in the current issue of NER, is his first published fiction. He lives in Salisbury, Vermont.

 Kylie Winger is a senior at Middlebury College from Medford, OR, and Elgin, IL. A literary studies major, she also attended the 2017 summer session at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and received a Middlebury student scholarship in fiction to attend the 2018 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She is currently an intern at NER, where she does everything from addressing envelopes and updating the website to creating new episodes of the NER Out Loud podcast.

Co-sponsored by New England Review and the Vermont Book Shop

NER @ AWP

Dear Lit Mag Editors: Now What?

If you’ll be at the AWP conference on March 28, join editors from Poetry, The Offing, Ecotone, Vinyl, and New England Review for a discussion about submitting to lit mags.

Panel description: When writers send their work to magazines, they know it will be just one in thousands. What makes one submission stand out from all the others? At this panel, five lit mag editors talk about what they want from a submission—and what they don’t want. They cover the practical as well as the more elusive questions, giving writers a chance to get beyond the guidelines and ask questions of their own.

  • Anna Lena Phillips Bell
  • Lindsay Garbutt
  • Luther Hughes
  • Phillip B. Williams
  • Carolyn Kuebler

Portland Ballroom 255, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Thursday, March 28, 2019
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

Anna Lena Phillips Bell is the editor of Ecotone and Lookout Books, and she teaches at University of North Carolina Wilmington. She is the author of Ornament, winner of the 2016 Vassar Miller Prize, and the artist’s book A Pocket Book of Forms.

Lindsay Garbutt is the associate editor of Poetry and one of the judges of the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowships. She cohosts the Poetry Magazine Podcast with Don Share.

Luther Hughes is the founding editor of The Shade Journal, executive editor for the The Offing, and is 1/3 of The Poet Salon podcast. He is the author of Touched. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Poetry, The Seattle Times, New England Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and others.

Carolyn Kuebler is the editor of New England Review. Before coming to NER as managing editor in 2004, she was an editor at Library Journal and founding editor of Rain Taxi. She has published her writing in various magazines, literary and otherwise.

Phillip B. Williams is the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl and author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels, Burn, and Thief in the Interior, winner of the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His poetry has appeared in Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online, The Southern Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, West Branch, Blackbird, and others.

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Stop by the New England Review table (14103) for a copy of our spring issue, hot off the press. Also pick up subscription specials and back issue bargains, and sign up for our raffle. Also check out Northeast by Northwest: New England Review Authors of the PacNW.

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