Harrison Candelaria Fletcher launches online CNF journal

Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, upstreet’s Creative Nonfiction Editor for the past four years, has launched Shadowbox, “a biannual journal exclusively devoted to creative nonfiction of every shape, style, and incarnation.” Co-edited by John-Michael Rivera, each issue will include new writing, interviews, reviews of published work, interactive links, a gallery of visual/literary collaborations, and an archive of resurrected writings. The inaugural Spring 2010 issue features an interview with Brenda Miller, a word/image collaboration by Margo Klass and Frank Soos, and work by thirteen essayists, including upstreet number three author Karen Michelle Otero, upstreet number four author Daniel Hales, J. Michael Martinez, Kerry Muir, and Robert Vivian, and much more.

Fletcher’s work has appeared in The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction, New Letters, Fourth Genre, Water-Stone Review, Puerto del Sol, Palabra, and many other journals. A finalist for the National Magazine Award, PEN Center USA, and Bakeless Literary Prize, his recent honors include a New Letters best essay award and Pushcart Prize special mention. He just completed an essay collection, Man in a Box, and is writing a memoir. He teaches literary nonfiction at Regis University, the University of Denver, and Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop.

Rivera is Associate Professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he teaches cultural studies and literary nonfiction. His poems and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Palabra, Pilgrimage, sienwerden, Eclectica Magazine, American Literary History and Aztlan. An award-winning writer, he also curates writing exhibits for innovative writers of color in the US and abroad. He is working on a mixed-genre project titled amatl, an encyclopaedia in part(s), and Clock Works, a Diagram of Time.

upstreet sends Shadowbox its very best wishes for success.

upstreet Fiction Editor to read in Albany area

upstreet Fiction Editor Robin Oliveira will appear in two New York State Capital Region locations on Monday, July 26, as part of the reading/signing tour for her novel, My Name is Mary Sutter (Viking Penguin, 2010). At 2pm, she will visit Pruyn House in Latham, NY, where she will read from the novel and talk about its Albany setting.

At 7pm, there will be a reading and book signing at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, where Robin will be introduced by upstreet Editor/Publisher Vivian Dorsel.

My Name is Mary Sutter appeared in the July issue of O! The Oprah Magazine as the No. 7 selection on Oprah's Summer Reading List.

upstreet to be a sponsor of Berkshire WordFest

upstreet will be one of the sponsors of the first annual Berkshire WordFest, a celebration of words and ideas that will take place July 23-25 at The Mount in Lenox, Massachusetts, the historic home and gardens of Edith Wharton. This literary festival will bring together a varied collection of contemporary authors in an exciting array of events that will include talks, readings, panel discussions, interviews, and book signings. Featured authors will include Garrison Keillor, Francine Prose, Jim Shepard, Susan Orlean, and many others. For further information about the WordFest schedule, and to reserve tickets and day passes, call 413-551-5113 or visit http://berkshirewordfest.org/

Barber essay cited as ‘Notable’ by Best American Essays 2010

“Sweetgrass,” an essay by Phyllis Barber in upstreet number five, has been listed as a Notable work by the editors of Best American Essays 2010, edited by Christopher Hitchens. This is the fourth time a work appearing in upstreet has been mentioned in one of the prestigious annual Best American anthologies. The previous ones were Frank Tempone’s essay, “Everlasting,” in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009, and the essays “Vocabulary Lesson,” by Katherine Lien Chariott, and “Hermes Goes to College,” by Michael Martone, in Best American Essays 2009—all from the award-winning issue, upstreet number four.

Phyllis Barber’s seventh book, Raw Edges (U. of Nevada), a coming-of-age-in-middle-age memoir, came out earlier this year. She is the author of the novel And the Desert Shall Blossom (U. of Utah), two books of short stories, The School of Love (U. of Utah) and Parting the Veil: Stories From a Mormon Imagination (Signature Books), and How I Got Cultured: A Nevada Memoir (U. of Georgia), for which she received the AWP Award Series prize in Creative Nonfiction in 1991. Phyllis has been on the prose faculty of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and was recently inducted into the Nevada Writers’ Hall of Fame. She lives in Denver.

We congratulate Phyllis, and thank her for helping to make upstreet Notable.

Robin Oliveira novel released May 15

My Name is Mary Sutter, a novel by upstreet Fiction Editor Robin Oliveira, was released by Viking Penguin on May 15. Set in the mid-19th century, Robin’s novel follows the aspirations and difficulties of a brilliant, somewhat odd, yet remarkable young midwife from Albany, NY, whose lofty hope of becoming a surgeon far exceeds what her family and the physicians and medical schools of her time are willing to accept. She travels to Washington, DC, to work in the Civil War hospitals, only to find the challenges formidable and the pull of home unavoidable.

“A magnificent Civil War epic, a saga of female liberation, and a gorgeous love story. Mary is indomitable, fearless, and captivating—a riveting read.”—Douglas Glover, author of Elle

“My Name is Mary Sutter is a powerful debut—equally compelling for its portrayal of the horrors of surgery during the Civil War as it is for its human drama. Mary Sutter is unforgettable, not just because she’s quirky, odd, and persistent in her quest to be a surgeon, but also because she is alive inside anyone who knows what it is to dream.—Xu Xi, author of Habit of a Foreign Sky

“The subject matter—medicine and medical conditions during the Civil War—is thoroughly researched and compelling. The plot—the Union’s conduct of the war, intertwined with the wartime love story—moves quickly and inevitably. But, most important, the protagonist, Mary Sutter, takes hold of the readers on the first page and leads us, with confidence and determination, to the last.”—Vivian Dorsel, Editor/Publisher of upstreet

In 2007, Robin won the $10,000 15th annual James Jones First Novel Fellowship, awarded to an American author of a first-novel-in-progress by the James Jones Literary Society and Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre, PA. Born in Albany, NY, in 1954, she earned a BA in Russian from the University of Montana and continued to study at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow, USSR. She became a Registered Nurse, and then worked as a bone marrow transplant and cardiac care nurse in Seattle before earning an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2006. She has been Fiction Editor for upstreet number three, four, five, and the upcoming six, which will appear in June of this year. Robin lives in Seattle with her husband, Andrew Oliveira, their daughter, Noelle, and their son, Miles.

Robin is represented by agent Marly Rusoff of Marly Rusoff & Associates (NA). For details of Robin’s book tour, go here.

Scholarship offered for Martone workshopat Postgraduate Writers’ Conference

upstreet number four author Michael Martone will join the award-winning faculty at the 15th annual Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, August 9-15, at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. Designed for experienced writers with MFAs or equivalent backgrounds, the Conference features workshops limited to six participants, faculty and participant readings, craft classes, issues forums, and individual consultations with faculty, all within a vibrant, inclusive community atmosphere.

For fans of upstreet and Michael Martone, the Conference is pleased to offer a special scholarship opportunity to support participation in Martone’s Short Story workshop group. upstreet Editor/Publisher Vivian Dorsel, who has twice participated in Martone’s workshop, enthusiastically recommends it to fiction writers who would like a unique and inspiring learning experience. Interested writers should contact Conference Director Ellen Lesser at pgconference@vermontcollege.edu.

Visit www.vermontcollege.edu/post-graduate-writers-conference for full details about the conference.

Cooley poetry collection wins Kinereth Gensler Award

Milk Dress, the fourth poetry collection by upstreet poet Nicole Cooley (“Hour of the Pink Flashlight,” upstreet number five) will be published in November by Alice James Books as co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award. This award, one of two competitions run by the publisher, is open to poets residing in New York, New Jersey, and New England. In addition to publication, winners of the award receive $2,000 and serve a three-year term on the Alice James Books Editorial Board.

“These are poems of birth and motherhood. They begin with a new life and end in a new self. They probe deep into the places where love extinguishes identity and yet renews awareness. What is so compelling here is that the arc of this journey is described with such music, craft and rigor in this wonderful collection.”—Eavan Boland

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. Her third book of poems, Breach, about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast, was published by LSU Press in April. Her first book, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award and was published by LSU Press in 1996. Her second book, The Afflicted Girls, was chosen as one of the best poetry books of 2004 by Library Journal. She directs the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY, and lives outside New York City with her husband and two young daughters.

Nicole was one of the featured readers in the upstreet number five offsite reading party during the April AWP Conference in Denver.