New England Review

Fall Awards for NER Authors

NBA, Rona Jaffe, Pushcart & More

This fall a handful of NER authors have been recognized beyond our pages, by the National Book Foundation, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Best American anthologies, & Pushcart Prize. Congratulations to them all!

Two NER authors have been listed as finalists for the 2018 National Book Awards. Winners will be announced at the 69th National Book Awards ceremony on November 14.

Rebecca Makkai is included in the short list for fiction for her novel The Great Believers from Viking Books / Penguin Random House. The Great Believers deals with friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris. Makkai’s story “The Briefcase” was featured in NER 29.2.

Terrance Hayes is a finalist for the award in poetry for his collection American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin, from Penguin Books / Penguin Random House. The poems collected in American Sonnets explores the meanings of American, of assassin, and of love in the sonnet form. His work was featured in NER 39.1.

Alison C. Rollins has been honored with a 2018 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award in poetry. The Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Awards, founded in 1995 by the late novelist Rona Jaffe, are presented annually to six women writers who display excellence and promise in the early stages of their career. It is the only national literary award designed exclusively to support women writers, and is accompanied with a $30,000 prize. Rollins’s poem “Five and a Possible” is featured in NER 39.3, and can be read online here.

• Best American Short Stories 2018, guest editor Roxane Gay, ed. Heidi Pitlor, includes Yoon Choi‘s “The Art of Losing,” and among the “Other distinguished stories” is Alyssa Pelish‘s “The Pathetic Fallacy”
• Best American Poetry 2018, Dana Gioia, guest editor, includes Adrienne Su‘s poem “Substitution”
• Best American Travel Writing 2018, guest editor Cheryl Strayed, ed. Jason Wilson, includes Barrett Swanson‘s “Notes from a Last Man”
• Best American Essays, guest ed. Hilton Als, ed. Robert Atwan, lists as “Notable” Evan Lavender-Smith‘s “Post-its,” Kim McLarin‘s “Eshu Finds Work,” and Clarence Orsi‘s “Take Stock”
• New Stories from the Midwest, guest editor Antonya Nelson, honors Steve de Jarnatt’s “Wraiths in Swelter”
• Pushcart 2019—due out in November—will include Nomi Stone‘s poem “Wonder Days”

New Books from NER Authors: June 2018

From Mark Twain to George Saunders, Bradley Bazzle’s Trash Mountain joins a long tradition of dark humor, wild inventiveness, and social satire in American letters. ―Maceo Montoya, author of The Deportation of Wopper Barraza.

From the publisher: Trash Mountain reflects on life in small southern cities in decline and an adolescent’s search for fundamental values without responsible adults to lead the way.

Bradley Bazzle’s first novel, Trash Mountain, won the 2016 Red Hen Press Fiction Award. His short story “Gift Horse” appeared in NER 31.4. Bradley grew up in Dallas, Texas, and lives in Athens, Georgia, with his wife and daughter.

Trash Mountain can be purchased from your independent booksellers and online.

In a time when we confront daily the frenetic, desensitizing maelstrom of political rhetoric and a ubiquitous flood of mass media, Bruce Bond reminds us in Dear Reader of the quiet but urgent philosophical and spiritual inquiries, sometimes monstrous and animal, that define and affirm our humanity. —Kathleen Graber, author of The Eternal City and Correspondence 

From the publisher: In his single-poem sequence, Dear Reader, Bruce Bond explores the metaphysics of reading as central to the way we negotiate a world—the evasions of our gods and monsters; our Los Angeles in flames; the daily chatter of our small, sweet, and philosophical beasts.

Bruce Bond is the author of sixteen books including For the Lost Cathedral, The Other Sky, and Black Anthem, which won a Tampa Review Prize  in 2016. Presently he is Regents Professor at University of North Texas. His poem “Blood” was published in NER 36.2.

Dear Reader can be purchased directly from the publisher.

Like the birds that populate so many of his poems, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s Dulce is a lesson in song, an instructive repetition of the melodies that shape the inner self. The poems here are for a reader willing to mix and remix, to reimagine themselves in a thousand pieces. —Matthew Shenoda, author of Somewhere Else  

From the publisher: Dulce is truly a lyrical force rife with the rich language of longing and regret that disturbs even the most serene quiet. Surreal and deeply imagistic, the poems map a parallel between the landscape of the border and the landscape of sexuality. Castillo invites the reader to confront and challenge the distinctions of borders and categories, and in doing so, he obscures and negates such divisions.

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is a Canto Mundo fellow and the first undocumented student to graduate from the University of Michigan’s MFA program. He cofounded the Undocupoets campaign which successfully eliminated citizenship requirements from all major first poetry book prizes in the country and was recognized with the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers” award from Poets and Writers magazine. His poems “Pulling the Moon” and “Rituals of Healing” appeared in NER 35.2.

Dulce: Poems can be purchased from the publisher.

Hoagland’s verse is consistently, and crucially, bloodied by a sense of menace and by straight talk. ―The New York Times

From the publisher: Tony Hoagland’s poems interrogate human nature and contemporary culture with an intimate and wild urgency, located somewhere between outrage, stand-up comedy, and grief. His new poems are no less observant of the human and the worldly, no less skeptical, and no less amusing, but they have drifted toward the greater depths of open emotion. Over six collections, Hoagland’s poetry has gotten bigger, more tender, and more encompassing. The poems in Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God turn his clear-eyed vision toward the hidden spaces―and spaciousness―in the human predicament.

Tony Hoagland is the author of five previous poetry collections, including Application for Release from the Dream and What Narcissism Means to Me, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Two of his poems appeared recently in NER 38.3.

Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God can be purchased online.

Norman Lock’s fiction, The Wreckage of Eden, shimmers with glorious language, fluid rhythms, and complex insights. ―NPR

From the Publisher: Powerfully evocative of Emily Dickinson’s life, times, and artistry, this fifth, stand-alone volume in The American Novels series captures a nation riven by conflicts that continue to this day. Lyrically written but unafraid of the ugliness of the time, Lock’s thought-provoking series continues to impress.

Norman Lock is an author of novels, short fiction, and poetry, as well as stage, radio, and screenplays. He has honored with The Dactyl Foundation Literary Fiction Award, the Paris Review Aga Khan Prize for Fiction, and writing fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey. His fiction has appeared frequently in NER, most recently with “A Theory of the Self” in NER 34.2.

The Ensemble can be purchased directly from the publisher,  or from independent booksellers.

Well imagined, intricately plotted, and deeply felt, both humane and human. It unfurls like a peony: you keep thinking it can’t get any more perfect, and it does. A stunning feat. —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Angel of History and Koolaids: The Art of War

From the publisher: A dazzling new novel of friendship and redemption in the face of tragedy and loss set in 1980s Chicago and contemporary Paris, by the acclaimed and award-winning author Rebecca Makkai.

Rebecca Makkai is the author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in Best American Short Stories, Harper’s, and Tin House, among others. Her story “The Briefcase” was featured in New England Review 29.2.

The Great Believers can be purchased directly from the publisher.

NER Vermont Reading Series | July 22, 2015

 

The NER Vermont Reading Series and the Vermont Book Shop are pleased to present Michael Coffey, Penelope Cray, and Rebecca Makkai, who will read from their poetry and fiction at Carol’s Hungry Mind Café. From as far as Chicago and as near as Shelburne, these three writers represent an extraordinary range of literary imagination. Join us at Carol’s Hungry Mind Café (24 Merchants Row, Middlebury, Vermont) on July 22nd at 7:00pm. Books will be available for signing.

 

Coffey by Nancy Crampton

 Michael Coffey is the author of three books of poems and of 27 Men Out, a book about baseball’s perfect games. He also co-edited The Irish in America, a book about Irish immigration, a companion volume to the PBS documentary series. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in NER and NER Digital, and his first book of fiction, The Business of Naming Things, is just out from Bellevue Literary Press. He lives in Manhattan and Bolton Landing, New York.

 

Cray_Portrait

 Penelope Cray’s poems and short shorts have appeared in such literary magazines as Harvard Review, Pleiades, Bartleby Snopes, elimae, and American Letters & Commentary, and in the anthology Please Do Not Remove (2014). She holds an MFA from the New School and lives with her family in Shelburne, Vermont, where she operates an editorial business.

 

Makkai photo-cropRebecca Makkai is the author of the new story collection Music for Wartime, as well as the novels The Hundred-Year House and The Borrower (which has been published in nine translations and chosen as a Booklist Top Ten Debut). Her short fiction, which has appeared in NER, was featured in the Best American Short Stories anthologies in 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011. The recipient of a 2014 NEA Fellowship, she teaches at Lake Forest College, Northwestern University, and StoryStudio Chicago.

New Books for July from NER Authors

The Great Glass Sea“A genuinely fascinating novel—for its inventiveness, its passionate breadth and vision.”

We are pleased to announce Grove Atlantic’s publication of The Great Glass Sea, the debut novel from NER contributor Josh Weil. His piece “Liberation Square” appears in NER 27.2.

Anthony Doerr of the New York Times Book Review describes Weil’s writing as “Full of tenderness and looming menace . . . Gripping . . . Weil meticulously imagines people and their histories, and presents them as a product of their places.”

Josh Weil is a National Book Award “Five Under Thirty-Five” author, and recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, Columbia University, the MacDowell Colony, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and Sewanee. His celebrated collection of novellas, The New Valley, was awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His fiction has appeared in Esquire, Granta, and other publications.

 

hyh_pb“A lively and clever story starring an estate with an intricate history…”

Congratulations to NER contributor Rebecca Makkai on the release of her second novel, The Hundred-Year House (Viking). Rebecca Makkai’s story “The Briefcase” appears in NER 29.2.

From Publisher’s Weekly: “The book is exceptionally well constructed, with engaging characters busy reinventing themselves throughout, and delightful twists that surprise and satisfy.”

Rebecca Makkai’s work was chosen by Salman Rushdie for inclusion in Best American Short Stories 2008. Her work has also appeared in Threepenny Review, Iowa Review, Shenandoah, and Sewanee Review. She is a 2004 graduate of the Bread Loaf School of English and in January 2014, she was awarded a $25,000 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

 

“Thoughtful American readers who have grown tired of hothouse surrealism should embrace Sosnicki’s humor, understated intelligence, and dry ironies . . .”

theworldshared_bookstoresmallerNER congratulates Boris Dralyuk on his translation of Polish poet Darius Sosnicki’s first collection, The World Shared (BOA). Dralyuk’s translation of “The Jolt” appears in NER 34.3-4.

From Publisher’s Weekly: “The first American book from the prolific and celebrated Polish poet and critic not only survives translation; its urbane, articulate, unpredictable freeverse positively flourishes in the American English that the facing-page edition provides.”

Boris Dralyuk has translated several collections of poetry and prose from Russian and Polish. He is the recipient of the 2011 Compass Translation Award and received joint first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize with Irina Mashinski. He is a co-editor of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Literature from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2014).

These books can be purchased from Powell’s Books and other independent booksellers. 

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