upstreet number four wins IPPY Bronze Medal

upstreet number four has been named the Bronze Medal winner in the anthologies category of the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY). These awards, chosen from 3,380 entries in 65 national categories (there is no literary journals category), have been given annually for the past thirteen years in recognition of excellence in independent publishing.

upstreet number four, which was released in June of 2008, features a 24-page interview with Indiana-born author Michael Martone. The 36 poets and prose writers whose work appears in this issue include finalists for the 2007 National Book Award (David Kirby) and the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award (Michael O’Brien), a winner of the World’s Greatest Short Story Contest (Michael Martone), a 2008 IPPY Bronze Medalist (Karen Chase), a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow (Bill Zavatsky), and the winner of the 2003 Governor General’s Award for English Fiction, Canada’s highest literary prize (Douglas Glover). Their work has appeared in such publications as The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, Yale Review, Best American Short Stories, Best Canadian Stories, and the Norton anthologies. Besides these accomplished authors, upstreet number four includes many whose publication careers are just beginning. We are very pleased about this, since upstreet was founded with the vision that it would ultimately be a mixture of established and emerging writers.

In the IPPY anthologies category, the 2009 Silver Medal winner is Listen to Me: Shared Secrets from WriteGirl, by Keren Taylor (WriteGirl), and the two books tied for the Gold Medal are A Stranger Among Us: Stories of Cross Cultural Collision and Connection, edited by Stacy Bierlein (Other Voices Books), and And the World Changed: Contemporary Stories by Pakistani Women, edited by Muneeza Shamsie (The Feminist Press, CUNY). The medals will be presented at an awards ceremony and reception in New York City on Friday, May 29.

Our thanks and congratulations to everyone who has been a part of upstreet number four.

Ruback story to appear in war anthology

Max Ruback, whose creative nonfiction piece, “Soldiers,” appeared in upstreet number three, will have a short story in Home of the Brave: Stories in Uniform (Press 53), which will be released on Saturday, May 23. This anthology of war stories, edited by Jeffery Hess, also contains work by 23 other writers, including Tim O’Brien, James Salter, Kurt Vonnegut, and Tobias Wolff. A portion of the book’s proceeds will be donated to USA Cares, a nonprofit organization that assists post-9/11 members of the military and their families to cope with the financial burdens resulting from their service to America.

Max Ruback was born in Massachusetts and graduated from Mount Ida College. He teaches English and reading at John I. Leonard High School in West Palm Beach, Florida, where he also coaches the JV boys’ basketball team. He has recent or forth-coming work in Descant, Frostproof Review, Quick Fiction, Zing, Smokelong Quarterly, and other publications. He recently finished a collection titled The Kindest Light.

upstreet author elected VCFA Faculty Chair

Author and editor Xu Xi, whose short story “Anon.” will appear in upstreet number five, has been elected to a three-year term as Faculty Chair of the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA in Writing program. She has been a member of the program’s prose faculty for seven years, and advises both fiction and creative nonfiction students. As Faculty Chair, she will work in cooperation with the program’s administrative director and faculty advisory committee to provide oversight for the program on academic issues and matters having to do with faculty. She will also conduct the graduation exercises during each residency and respresent the program in broader literary forums such as the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. She will continue to conduct workshops, and will advise a reduced number of students each semester.

Xu Xi is the author or editor of ten books. Recent titles include Evanescent Isles (essays), Fifty-Fifty (ed., anthology), Overleaf Hong Kong (stories and essays) and The Unwalled City (novel). She inhabits the flight path connecting New York, Hong Kong and the South Island of New Zealand. To learn more about her and her work, visit her website.

upstreet is happy to congratulate Xu Xi on her new position.

Two upstreet authors featured in Hunger Mountain auction

Hunger Mountain, the semiannual arts journal published by Vermont College of Fine Arts, will hold its spring fundraising auction on ebay, beginning at noon EST on Saturday, May 2. Participants will have an opportunity to bid on manuscript critiques to be conducted by mail, e-mail or phone with notable authors and agents, two of whom will be upstreet authors Michael Martone and Xu Xi. Bidding will end at noon EST on Saturday, May 9th. Two other writers whose manuscript consultation services are being offered are David Jauss, who purchased the first copy of upstreet number one sold, and Philip Graham, upstreet’s first subscriber.

All auction purchases are tax deductible. Along with other items, the one-on-one critiques in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, writing for children and writing for the stage will be available at http://stores.shop.ebay.com/thehungermountainstore. Check it out.

upstreet wishes Hunger Mountain a successful auction.