upstreet will be a sponsor ofBerkshire WordFest 2012

upstreet will be one of the sponsors of the second Berkshire WordFest, a biennial celebration of words and ideas that will take place September 14-16 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 be John Berendt, Francine du Plessix Gray, Mary Jo Salter, Roxana Robinson, and many others, including upstreet author Dani Shapiro (interview, upstreet number seven).

The festival will also feature free readings on the Terrace by poets and writers with ties to the Berkshire region and to upstreet, including Poetry Editor Jessica Greenbaum and poets Karen Chase, Michelle Gillett, Lisken Van Pelt Dus and Irene Willis.

Another WordFest sponsor, Vermont College of Fine Arts, will hold an offsite get-together for alumni/ae, faculty, prospective students, and friends of the College from 5-8 on Friday evening, September 14, at the Firefly Bistro, 71 Church Street, Lenox.

For further information about the WordFest schedule, and to reserve tickets and day passes, call 413-551-5113 or visit the festival website. 

upstreet number eight AugustJournal of the Month selection

upstreet number eight, featuring an interview with award-winning Canadian author Douglas Glover, has been one of two literary journals available to subscribers of Journal of the Month, a new service which enables readers to sample a variety of literary magazines. The other August selection was the New England Review.

Douglas Glover is the author of five story collections, four novels, two books of essays, and The Enamoured Knight, a book about Don Quixote and novel form. His best-selling novel Elle won the 2003 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction and was short-listed for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He currently teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. His most recent book is Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing (Biblioasis, 2012). To read an excerpt from the upstreet number eight interview, go to Glover’s online literary journal, Numéro Cinq.

upstreet number eight is available at Barnes & Noble, Hastings, and Books-A-Million bookstores, on NewPages.com, and at some independent bookstores. It can also be ordered directly from our website.

The submission period for upstreet number nine will begin on September 1, 2012; to read the guidelines and submit, go here.

upstreet is having a party--and you're invited

upstreet will host an off-site reading and celebration during the 2012 AWP Conference, which will take place at the Hilton Chicago, 720 South Michigan Avenue, from February 29-March 3.

Our party will be from 6:30-9 p.m. on Thursday, March 1, at Jak’s Tap, 901 West Jackson Boulevard, which is about a mile from the Hilton, on the Blue Line. This event is free and open to the public. The readers, all poets and prose writers from upstreet number seven, will be Theresa Burns, Hannah Fries, Ellen Lesser, Kristen-Paige Madonia, Robert Vivian, and Bill Zavatsky. 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 seven, or their own books, which will also be available for purchase. Light refreshments will be provided. Come help us celebrate AWP 2011 in Chicago—and don’t forget to visit upstreet’s table (#L7) in the Bookfair. On Saturday, the final day of the Conference, admission to the Bookfair will be open to the public at no charge.

On the evening after our party, Friday, March 2, upstreet author Douglas Glover will hold a pre-launch party for his new essay collection, Attack of the Copula Spiders (Biblioasis, 2012), from 7:15-8 p.m. in Dining Room 4 at the Hilton. Two of the essays in the book previously appeared in upstreet numbers 4 and 6.

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.