upstreet Fiction Editor featured in two AWP events

upstreet Fiction Editor Robin Oliveira, author of the historical novel My Name is Mary Sutter, will be a participant in two events at the Annual Conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in Washington, DC. She will be a featured reader in the Vermont College of Fine Arts 30th Anniversary reading, from 1:30-2:45pm Thursday 3 February, in the Maryland Suite Room on the Lobby Level of the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel. She will also conduct a panel, “The Craft of Historical Fiction,” from 1:30-2:45pm Saturday 5 February, in the Coolidge Room on the Mezzanine Level of the Marriott.

The reading will be a celebration of VCFA’s 30-year history as one of the first low-residency MFA in Writing programs in the country. As an innovator in the field, the College will celebrate this milestone with an introduction by Mark Doty and a reading by former faculty member Sydney Lea, Robin, and three other alumni/ae—Nin Andrews, Earl Braggs, and Wally Lamb (who was the subject of the upstreet number three author interview).

The panel will be an exploration of the craft of historical fiction by Robin and four other debut authors—Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Kelly O’Connor McNees, John Pipkin, and Anna Keesey, the authors of, respectively, Wench, The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, Woodsburner, and Little Century. They will delve into the role of imagination, the use of fictional versus real characters, the incorporation of research, and the commitment of the author to real events.

upstreet is having a party—and you’re invited

upstreet will host an off-site reading and celebration during the 2011 AWP Conference, which will take place at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, DC, from February 2-5.

Our party will be at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday 3 February at Medaterra, 2614 Connecticut Avenue NW, a restaurant within walking distance of the Marriott. This event is free and open to the public. The readers, all poets and prose writers from upstreet number six, will be Mark Halliday, David Jauss, Jay Kauffmann, Maureen Sherbondy, Robin Underdahl, and Michelle Yasmine Valladares. upstreet Editor/Publisher Vivian Dorsel will emcee the festivities.

Following the reading, there will be an opportunity for authors to sign copies of upstreet number six, or their own books, which will also be available for purchase. Light refreshments will be provided. Come help us celebrate AWP 2011 in Washington—and don’t forget to visit upstreet’s table (#C10) in the Bookfair. On Saturday, the final day of the Conference, admission to the Bookfair will be open to the public at no charge.

upstreet poet awarded NEA Fellowship

upstreet poet Yerra Sugarman (“We Were a Boat,” upstreet number four) has received a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship of $25,000 for Poetry. Her first collection of poems, Forms of Gone (Sheep Meadow, 2002) received the 2005 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Poetry Award. Her second book is The Bag of Broken Glass (Sheep Meadow, 2008). Her other honors include a “Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Prize, a Chicago Literary Award, the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award, and its Cecil Hemley Memorial Award, a Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award, and a 2008 Canada Council Grant for Creative Writers.

Yerra was born in Toronto and lives in New York City, where she has taught creative writing in undergraduate and MFA programs. She is currently Writer in Residence at Eugene Lang College of The New School for Liberal Arts, and teaches poetry at Rutgers University. You can visit her at her blog .