Karen Chase publishesbook-length poem

Jamali-Kamali: A Tale of Passion in Mughal India (Mapin, 2011), by upstreet author Karen Chase (numbers one, two, three, four, and six), is a book-length homoerotic poem that tells the story of Jamali and Kamali, two men who lived in 16th century Delhi. According to oral tradition, the men were lovers. Although they existed, the book is a fiction about love, sex, separation and death. The Introduction by Mughal scholar Milo Beach includes nine photographs of the Jamali-Kamali Mosque and Tomb in Delhi, where the two men are buried in white marble graves side by side in a small, exquisite tomb.

Karen Chase lives in The Berkshire Hills of Western Massachusetts. Her poems, stories and essays have appeared in many magazines, including The Gettysburg Review, The New Yorker, The New Republic and Southwest Review. Her book of poems, Kazimierz Square, was short-listed by Foreword Magazine as “Best Indie Poetry Book of 2000.” Land of Stone, her nonfiction book about her work as Poet-in-Residence at a psychiatric hospital, was named a Best Book of 2007 by Chronogram and won a Bronze medal in the 2008 Independent Publisher Book Awards. About Bear, her second collection of poems, Harvard Review said, “Karen Chase’s poems are buoyed by lightness and vitality, a joy in physical pleasures, and an imitable sense of humor.”

Fletcher memoir to be published by University of Nebraska Press

Descanso for My Father: Fragments of a Life, a memoir by Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, a finalist for the Bakeless Literary Award, will be published on March 1, 2012, as part of the University of Nebraska Press “American Lives” series. Harrison was upstreet’s Creative Nonfiction Editor for numbers three, four, five, and six, and his essay, “Undercurrent,” appeared in upstreet number two.

Harrison holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. He is a National Magazine Award essay finalist and four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and his honors include a New Letters best essay award and a Pushcart Prize special citation. His essays have appeared or are forthcoming in New Letters, Fourth Genre, Cimarron Review, New Ohio Review, Water~Stone Review, South Loop Review, Puerto del Sol, Palabra, The Writer’s Chronicle and many other journals. One of his essays, “The Beautiful City of Tirzah,” is featured in the Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction as among 50 outstanding works since 1970. He is editor of the online experimental creative nonfiction journal Shadowbox and teaches creative writing at the Regis University Master of Arts program, the University of Denver’s University College, and the Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop in Denver.

New upstreet Fiction Editor

Beginning with the upcoming eighth issue, Joyce A. Griffin of Suffern, NY, will be upstreet’s Fiction Editor. She replaces Robin Oliveira, who held this position for the previous five issues.

Joyce holds a BA in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, where she  worked with authors Mary Grimm, Phyllis Barber, and Lawrence Sutin, among others. She is Managing Editor of The Hastings Center Report and IRB: Ethics & Human Research, journals published by The Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute in Garrison, NY. Her fiction has been published in The Berkshire Review and upstreet (“Bits and Pieces,” number one, and “Michael Ryan,” number three). She has been an Assistant Fiction Editor at upstreet for the past two years, and has a novel in progress whose working title is How High the Moon. She and her husband, Michael Mittelman, have a five-year-old daughter, Zooey, and are expecting their second child in September.

Asked to comment on what she would look for in a fiction submission, Joyce said: “What I want to read is a story whose author has spent enough time with it to make it work on every level so that its seams are invisible and what is uniquely wonderful about it can shine through as clearly as possible. I want upstreet to publish the kind of story that envelops me—the kind that makes me forget on its first page that I am reading for upstreet, and instead, just lets me read.”

Submissions for upstreet number eight will open September 1, and close March 1, 2012. For detailed guidelines, and to submit, please visit the upstreet website.

Two upstreet scholars named forPostgraduate Writers’ Conference

Tiff Holland of Round Rock, TX, and Leah Soderberg of Tempe, AZ, have been named the recipients of two $500 scholarships for the 16th annual Postgraduate Writers’ Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier. These scholarships were provided by upstreet for two qualified students who might not otherwise have been able to attend the Conference. Preference was given to applicants who had been published in upstreet or served on the magazine’s editorial staff. Tiff will be a participant in Ellen Lesser’s short story workshop, and Leah will be taking Kevin Young’s poetry workshop.

This year’s Postgraduate Writers’ Conference will take place August 9-15. 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.

upstreet authors serving on this year’s award-winning faculty are Conference Director and short story workshop leader Ellen Lesser (“Impound,” upstreet number seven), short story workshop leader David Jauss (“Depositions,” number six), and creative nonfiction workshop leader Sue William Silverman (Interview, number six). Conference participants whose work has appeared in upstreet are Tiff Holland (“Ooh Baby,” number four, and “Eidetic,” number five) and Meg Harris (“You Could Save My Life,” number two). upstreet Editor/Publisher Vivian Dorsel will also be a Conference participant, for the fourth time.

For more information on the VCFA Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, go here.

Courtney Maum publishes short story collection

Small Things in Big Places, a short story collection by upstreet author Courtney Maum (“I Used to be Rich,” upstreet number six) has been published by Troy Bookmakers.

Courtney is an interdisciplinary writer who lives in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts. Besides writing fiction, she specializes in the development of brand identity for companies and individuals through the alignment of voice and story, work which earned her the Audi Talent Award at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. In addition to upstreet, her fiction has appeared in The Coe Review, Defenestration, Stamford Festival of the Arts, Daedalus, In Other Words, Slice Magazine, and Freerange Nonfiction.

Small Things in Big Places, which won an Honorable Mention in the Dzanc Books short story collection competition, can be purchased online from the publisher.

Gretchen Fletcherpublishes poetry chapbook

The Scent of Oranges: poems from the tropics, a poetry chapbook by upstreet poet Gretchen Fletcher (“Recitation in Clover,” upstreet number three) has been released by Finishing Line Press. The poems in the collection are set in South Florida, and were inspired by the flora and fauna of that area.

Gretchen’s poems have appeared in The Chattahoochee Review, Pacific Coast Journal, Northeast Corridor, Inkwell, Pudding Magazine, and other journals. They have also been anthologized in Poetic Voices Without Borders, Open Windows 2005, Sincerely Elvis, You Are Here: New York Streets in Poetry, and Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge: Poems About Marriage. She received the grand prize in San Francisco’s Artists Embassy International Dancing Poetry Festival, and first honorable mention in Canada’s lichen literary journal Serial Poet competition. She was a finalist for the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and a juried poet at the Houston Poetry Fest.

In 2008, Gretchen was a winner in the first-ever national contest for poetry inspired by Times Square, “Bright Lights/ Big Verse: Poems of Times Square,” and read her winning poem, “Two Giant Men in New York,” in Times Square on June 23. This competition, sponsored by the Poetry Society of America and the Times Square Alliance, selected five winners from a pool of close to 700 entrants. Besides the trip to New York to read her poem, she received a prize of $1,000.

Gretchen grew up in Palm Beach and attended the University of Miami. A resident of Fort Lauderdale, she leads poetry and creative nonfiction workshops for Florida Center for the Book, an affiliate of the Library of Congress. You may visit her on the web at Open Art Space.

Pushcart Board nominatesfour upstreet works

In addition to the nominations sent in by independent publishers and literary magazines, Pushcart Press also considers work nominated by its own Board of Contributing Editors. For the fourth year in a row, the Pushcart Board has nominated work from upstreet to be considered for inclusion in the next Pushcart Prize anthology, along with the six nominations made by our editors. The nominated works from upstreet number six are a poem by Karen Chase, "Leaving Home," a short story by Erik Wennermark, "The True Story of Yu Tien," and two essays, "That Furrowed Brow," by Andrew D. Cohen, and "The Barest Shapes of Light," by Nina Feng. It is a great compliment for upstreet to be singled out by this Board, which contains many distinguished writers. Congratulations to all four nominees, and best wishes to them in the competition.

Robin Oliveira novel chosen fortwo community reading programs

My Name is Mary Sutter (Viking Penguin, 2010), a novel by upstreet Fiction Editor Robin Oliveira, has been selected by two communities for their annual reading programs. Community reading programs typically include book discussions, readings, lectures, workshops, film and/or theatrical productions, and other events directly or thematically related to the chosen book.

The city of Roswell, Georgia, selected the book for its Roswell Reads Program, which began in February and will conclude with a literary luncheon at 11:30am Saturday, March 5, at the Roswell Adult Recreation Center, at which Robin will give a talk on her novel.

Schenectady County, New York, chose the novel for its One County, One Book Program, which will take place in April and feature a talk by the author at 2pm Saturday, April 9, at Schenectady County Community College, followed by a reception and book signing. Area book groups may enter a drawing to have lunch with Robin preceding her SCCC appearance.

Set in the mid-19th century, My Name is Mary Sutter 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.

Robin Oliveira grew up in Loudonville, NY. She holds a BA in Russian from the University of Montana and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts, and is a Registered Nurse. In 2007, she 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. She has been Fiction Editor for upstreet number three, four, five, six, and the upcoming seven, which will appear in June of this year. Robin lives in Seattle with her husband, Andrew, their daughter, Noelle, and their son, Miles. My Name is Mary Sutter is her first novel.

Tiff Holland wins Rose Metal PressShort Short Chapbook Award

upstreet author Tiff Holland has received the Rose Metal Press Fifth Annual Chapbook Award for short fiction. Her book, Betty Superman, was chosen from among 117 contestants by judge Kim Chinquee, and will be released in July 2011.

Rose Metal Press describes the book this way: “The stories in Betty Superman are true, except when they’re not. They’re based on Tiff Holland’s relationship with her mother, a story arc all its own, only Betty isn’t her mother and Holland’s not the narrator, not completely. … In unsentimental and percussive prose, Holland examines Betty as character, dragon lady, and mother.”

Tiff’s essay “Ooh Baby” was published in upstreet number four, and her essay “Eidetic” in upstreet number five. She earned her PhD in Creative Writing from the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. Her poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in many other journals and anthologies, including Hobarts, Smokelong Quarterly, The Atlanta Review, The Mississippi Review, and Elimae. In 2007 her story “The Boys” was named one of StorySouth’s top 100, and the following year “Cadet” one of Wigleaf’s top 50. She has also won a Wick Award from Kent State University. Her poetry chapbook, Bone in a Tin Funnel, is available through Pudding House Press.

Tiff lives in Round Rock, Texas, with her husband and daughter, and teaches at Austin Community College.

Frances McCue poetry collectionto be launched February 20

The Bled, a new poetry collection by upstreet poet Frances McCue, will be launched by Factory Hollow Press at 5pm February 20 at Flying Object, a bookstore, letterpress and gallery at 42 West Street, Hadley, Massachusetts.

Derived from the Arabic word baladi (land), “the bled” is a term invented by the French, who colonized much of North Africa. In this context, it means hinterland, or raw desert. Frances McCue and her family lived in Morocco for a year, on the edge of the bled, and this book is about the time they spent there. Frances’s husband, Gary Greaves, died on February 12, 2010, a year ago today.

“This book is that rare and necessary thing that real poetry is—a clear-eyed, ruthless, beautiful, terrible look at what it is to be human with a body and a brain and heart, to find love and to lose it, to be knocked around by death and grief, to wonder how you can go on living but knowing you must. To try to understand—through words—what can’t be understood.”—Rebecca Brown

“This is the most moving account of a spouse’s death that I have ever read.”—James Tate

Frances McCue is the author of the poetry collection The Stenographer’s Breakfast (Beacon, 1992) and the nonfiction book The Northwest Towns of Richard Hugo (University of Washington, 2010). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in upstreet number seven, Cutbank, The Seattle Review, Crab Creek Review, Poetry Northwest, MS. Magazine, and other publications, and in several anthologies, including Looking Together, For a Living: The Poetry of Work, and World in Our Words: Contemporary American Women Writers. Her essays and reviews have been published in a variety of magazines and newspapers, including The Georgia Review, Tin House, The Seattle Times, The Stranger, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and The New York Times Book Review.

Frances’s honors include a 2009 Pushcart Prize nomination, a 2009 GAMMA award, a 2006 Seattle Mayor’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs grant, a 2006 Jack Straw Writers Fellowship, and a 4Culture 2004 Individual Artist Award. She is Writer in Residence and Lecturer at the University of Washington in Seattle, and has been a Fulbright Senior Scholar and Lecturer at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakesh, Morocco. She was Founding Executive/Artistic Director of the Richard Hugo House in Seattle, the largest literary center west of the Mississippi.

A second launch event for The Bled will take place March 4 at Open Books in Seattle, Washington. You may visit Frances McCue online at her blog.

Feldman upstreet poem chosenfor Best American Poetry 2011

“In November,” a poem by Alan Feldman appearing in upstreet number six, has been chosen for publication in The Best American Poetry 2011 by Guest Editor Kevin Young.

Alan Feldman’s most recent full-length poetry collection, A Sail to Great Island (U. of Wisconsin Press), was awarded the 2004 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and in 2005 was one of two finalists for the National Jewish Book Award in poetry. Another full-length collection, The Happy Genius (Sun, 1978), won the 1979 Elliston Book Award for the best poetry collection published by an independent U.S. press. His poems have appeared in such publications as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Nation, Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, upstreet number four (“Preparing for Class” and “The Grounding”) and upstreet number five (“On the Water”).

Alan’s work is also represented in a number of anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 2001, and he has received poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Foundation. He and his wife, artist Nan Hass Feldman, live in Framingham and Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where he likes to cruise his double-keeled boat on Cape Cod Bay. You may visit Alan online at his website.

The editors of upstreet are delighted to congratulate Alan on his inclusion in The Best American Poetry 2011.

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 .