Chariott, Martone essays called “Notable”by Best American Essays 2009

Two essays appearing in upstreet number four have been cited as Notable Works by Best American Essays 2009: “Vocabulary Lesson,” by Katherine Lien Chariott, and “Hermes Goes to College,” by Michael Martone.

Katherine Lien Chariott holds an MFA from Cornell University and a PhD from University of Nevada/Las Vegas, where she was a Schaeffer Fellow in fiction. Her prose has appeared or is forthcoming in Columbia, Hunger Mountain, Sonora Review, Concho River Review, 580 Split, and elsewhere. She lives in Shanghai, China.

Michael Martone, who was also the interview subject in upstreet’s fourth issue, teaches in the Program for Creative Writing at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, and the Postgraduate Writers’ Conference at Vermont College of Fine Arts. He is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including Alive and Dead in Indiana, Michael Martone, and Racing in Place. He has edited nine other volumes, the most recent of which is Not Normal, Illinois: Peculiar Fictions from the Flyover. His stories and essays have appeared in many magazines and journals, and he has received numerous fellowships, prizes, and awards.

upstreet number four won the Bronze Medal in the anthologies category of the 2009 Independent Publisher Book Awards. A third essay in that issue, “Everlasting,” by Frank Tempone, was cited as a Notable Work by Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.

upstreet is delighted, and congratulates all of its Notable essayists.

Reiter chapbook available from Amsterdam Press

upstreet poet Jendi Reiter’s poetry chapbook, Swallow, winner of the 2008 Flip Kelly Poetry Prize, can now be purchased from Amsterdam Press.

Jendi is the Vice President of WinningWriters.com, a monthly online newsletter dedicated to the finding and creation of resources for writers, which has been named one of Writer’s Digest’s “101 Best Websites for Writers” for the past five years. Jendi’s first poetry collection was A Talent for Sadness (Turning Point, 2003). Her poem “Poet’s Resume” was published in upstreet number one. Her work has also appeared in Best American Poetry 1990, and in many journals, including Poetry, The New Criterion, Southern Poetry Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Pavement Saw, Hanging Loose, First Things, The Lyric, The Christian Century, The Saint Ann’s Review, Cider Press Review, A New Song, U.S. Catholic, The Rose & Thorn, About Such Things, Grasslands Review, Alaska Quarterly Review and Clackamas Literary Review. She has won two awards from the Poetry Society.

You can visit Jendi at her website, Reiter’s Block.

Tempone essay cited as ‘Notable’ by Best American Nonrequired Reading

“Everlasting,” an essay by Frank Tempone in upstreet number four, has been listed as a Notable work by the editors of Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009.

This is the first time a work appearing in upstreet has been mentioned in one of the prestigious annual Best American anthologies. upstreet number four was the winner of the Bronze Medal in the Anthologies category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards. The editors of that issue nominated “Everlasting” for a 2008 Pushcart Prize and for Volume III of The Best Creative Nonfiction.

Frank Tempone holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A fiction writer and essayist, he has been a secondary school teacher for fifteen years, and his work has appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, 580 Split, and The Berkshire Review. Another one of his personal narratives, “Born Again,” appeared in upstreet number three, whose editors nominated it for a 2007 Pushcart Prize and for Volume II of The Best Creative Nonfiction. The founder and former director of Word Street, the drop-in tutoring and writing center in Pittsfield, MA, he now lives in Chicago, IL.

We are very happy to congratulate Frank, who was Fiction Editor for upstreet number one, and Prose Editor for number two, and conducted the author interview for both issues.

upstreet submissions up 21%

During the first month of its submission period, upstreet number six recorded a total of 648 submissions (fiction 290, poetry 288, creative nonfiction 70), compared with 534 submissions (fiction 210, poetry 254, CNF 70) for upstreet number five during September of 2008. This represents an increase of 21 per cent.

This will be the second year that upstreet has used Submission Manager, the online submission system developed by Devin Emke of One Story magazine. The Submission Manager software is available for purchase by literary journals through the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses.

To have your work considered for upstreet number six, go to the website, click on Submit, read the guidelines, and follow the instructions. The submission period ends March 1, 2010.

Jean Valentine wins Wallace Stevens Award

Jean Valentine, whose poem, “Who watches,” appears in upstreet number five, has won the 2009 Wallace Stevens Award, given annually to recognize outstanding and proven mastery in the art of poetry. Established in 1994, the award now carries a stipend of $100,000 for the recipient. This year’s judges were Frank Bidart, Rita Dove, Robert Hass, Lyn Hejinian, Galway Kinnell, Nathaniel Mackey, Sharon Olds, Carl Phillips, Robert Pinsky, Kay Ryan, Gary Snyder, Gerald Stern, Susan Stewart, James Tate, Ellen Bryant Voigt, and C. K. Williams.

Past winners have included A. R. Ammons, Louise Glück, Adrienne Rich, Ruth Stone, Mark Strand, James Tate and Richard Wilbur.

Valentine, current New York State Poet, has lived most of her life in New York City. Her collection, Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems 1965-2003, won the 2004 National Book Award. Her tenth collection is Little Boat (Wesleyan, 2007). She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and awards from the NEA, The Bunting Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, the New York Council for the Arts, The New York Foundation for the Arts, and The Poetry Society of America. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Columbia University, the 92nd Street Y, and Vermont College of Fine Arts. She was one of six featured poets in the May 2009 upstreet reading at BookCourt in Brooklyn.

upstreet editor/publisher featured on “Write the Book”

An interview with upstreet editor/publisher Vivian Dorsel will be featured on the August 31 broadcast of “Write the Book,” the radio show and podcast for writers and curious readers. Hosted by writer Shelagh Connor Shapiro, “Write the Book” features interviews with authors, poets, agents, editors, illustrators and other people who love—and live—books. Previous interviewees have included Margot Livesey, Richard Russo, Mary McGarry Morris, Michael Collier, David Jauss, Richard Jackson, Tim Brookes, Sue William Silverman, and upstreet number five authors Robin Behn, Phyllis Barber, and Robin Hemley, among others. The show airs every Monday (2-3 pm) on WOMM-LP, 105.9 FM, The Radiator, in Burlington, VT. To hear Monday’s broadcast, go to http://theradiator.org/, and follow the “Listen to live stream” instructions. A free podcast of the program will be available Tuesday, September 1, at http://writethebook.podbean.com/

“Write the Book” host Shelagh Shapiro is a graduate of Middlebury College and the Vermont College MFA in Writing Program. Her stories have been published in a number of literary journals, including North Dakota Quarterly, Hunger Mountain, Short Story, The Baltimore Review and Hot Off the Press, an Australian anthology published by the New South Wales Writers’ Center, at which she was a participant in 2005. She lives near Burlington, VT, with her husband and two sons.

upstreet 5 features Hemley interview

upstreet number five, which is now on sale, features a 20-page interview with Robin Hemley, director of the nonfiction writing program at the University of Iowa, and author of the recently released memoir, Do-Over! In Which a Forty-Eight-Year-Old Father of Three Returns to Kindergarten, Summer Camp, the Prom, and other Embarrassments. Robin, currently in the Philippines on a 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship, also teaches in the MFA in writing program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

This year’s issue, at 224 pages, received the largest number of submissions in upstreet’s five-year history. It contains nine short stories, selected from 1,178 submitted; nine creative nonfiction pieces, chosen from 358 submitted; and 28 of the 2,053 submitted poems.

The 42 contributors to upstreet number five are located from Seattle, Washington, to Birmingham, Alabama, from Portland, Maine, to Kentfield, California, and outside the country in France, Sweden, Scotland, and Hong Kong. Their levels of experience range from a MacArthur Fellow and a member of the Nevada Writers’ Hall of Fame to an author whose first published story appears in this issue. upstreet is proud of the geographic and experiential diversity of its contributors. We hope we will continue to attract high-quality submissions, both from established authors and from the new voices whose discovery makes publishing a literary journal such an exciting and rewarding enterprise.