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News and Notes

Writing school confidential

Thinking about getting an MFA? Applying for a writing residency or fellowship? If so, check out An Insider's Guide to Creative Writing Programs, just out from failbetter.com alum Amy Holman ("Let Her Go" and "Busted Pipe," Issue 17; "Brother, Sister" et al, Issue 1). With detailed information on who's studied where, who teaches where, application requirements, fees, and program features, the Guide gives poets, fictionists, and creative non-fictionists everything they need to know to follow their muses and advance their careers.

Who's Wholphin'

© Wholphin

Scott Indrisek, whose "Eating the Dog" graces this very issue, isn't just an up-and-coming fiction writer—he recently collaborated with cooler-than-Zero-K director Steven Soderbergh on "Building No. 7," a shortfilmic homage to Jean-Luc Godard that's featured in the latest issue of Wholphin. What's Wholphin? The lovechild of a bottlenose dolphin and a false killer whale? Of course. But this is the other one—the new quarterly DVD magazine from McSweeney's. Each issue features a series of films ranging from the ponderable to the hilarious to the bizarre. And every one, in the words of Wholphin's editors, makes you feel "the way we felt when we learned that dolphins and whales sometimes, you know, do it."

Alumni News

Donald Antrim (Interview, Issue 2) has a new memoir, The Afterlife, out on Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Sally Ashton ("Rapture" et.al., Issue 20) has a new chapbook, These Metallic Days, out from Main Street Rag. Poems from her prose-poem series Her Name Is Juanita have recently appeared in Frame; others are forthcoming in Mississippi Review.

Paul Auster's (Interview, Issue 8) most recent novel, The Brooklyn Follies, hit bookstores in Iran last month, in the Persian translation of Khojasteh Kayhan. His next novel, Travels In The Scriptorium, is due out from Holt next February.

Barry Ballard's ("Climbing" et.al., Issue 6) poetry has appeared in recent issues of Prairie Schooner, The Connecticut Review, Margie, and Puerto del Sol. His most recent collection, just out from Pudding House, is A Body Speaks Through Fence Lines.

David Barringer ("The Vampires," Issue 8) has been as busy as always: he recently penned a booklet of love letters for Emigre, reviewed Chip Kidd's Book One for Eye Magazine, interviewed George Saunders for Barrelhouse, and is finishing work on a new fiction collection, due out this fall from So New Media.

Richard Bausch's (Interview, Issue 11) tenth novel, Thanksgiving Night, is due out in October from Harper Collins.

Jen Benka ("AMERICA" and "STATES," Issue 10) is curating "Finally With Women," a week-long reading series celebrating Mina Loy, Barbara Guest, Audre Lorde, Muriel Rukeyser, and Gertrude Stein. "FWW" takes place August 6th through 10th, at the Cornelia Street Cafe in Manhattan's West Village. For more information click here.

Sadiq Bey's ("8/24/39" and "8/30/39", Issue 11) A Thousand Days A Year is due out in German translation early next year from Editions Raute. The Italian group Dinamitri Folklore Jazz recently cut a CD, just out from Caligora Records, that features Bey as "guest poet," reading "911", "New Orleans" and "the Bopster".

T.C. Boyle's (Interview, Issue 12) latest novel, Talk Talk, was recently published by Viking.

David Brizer ("Deutsche," Issue 10) is seeking an agent or publisher for his novel The Tibetan Book of the Unwed.

Michael Chabon (Interview, Issue 1) herein provides the latest news on the film adaptation of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay… "The fate of this project—whether it will move at last from the nebulousness of pre-pre-production into really-truly pre-production, with a budget and cast and everything, will [soon] be decided. Miss Natalie Portman is a strong likelihood for the part of Rosa; other casting is ongoing, as are work on the script (a lot of cutting) and tests conducted by a number of top-drawer animation studios (for the comic book elements). Quick answers (as of this date): Golem: yes. Antarctica: yes. Gay love story: yes. Ruins of World's Fair: no. Long Island: no. Orson Welles: no. Salvador Dali: yes. Loving reference to Betty and Veronica: no. Stan Lee: no." In the meantime, the film version of Mysteries of Pittsburgh is finally slated for production. The film is being helmed by Dodgeball director Rawson Marshall Thurber, and cast at this point includes Max Minghella (Art School Confidential, Syriana) as the story's protagonist, Art Bechstein, along with Sienna Miller and Peter Sarsgaard."

Matthew Cheney ("Getting a Date for Amelia," Issue 4) has stories forthcoming in Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Electric Velocipede, and Say...What's the Combination. He was recently named the editor of The Best American Fantasy, a new anthology series from Prime Books.

John Cotter ("Ophelia" and "Midwest," Issue 4) has two poems forthcoming in the next issue of Coconut Poetry, and five due out in a Flim Forum anthology of experimental poets. For more info, check out his new website.

Susan Daitch ("Jnun in the Age of Metal," Issue 14) had two stories in the May issue of The Brooklyn Rail.

Richard Fulco ("An Exploration," Issue 12) has been busy writing theater articles for The Brooklyn Rail, and curating a Monday Night playwrights' reading series at Park Slope's Night and Day Restaurant.

Janet Gorzegno ("Untitled," et. al., Issue 13) recently co-curated "Drawing on Katrina—Mississippi Children Respond to the Storm" at the University of Southern Mississippi's Museum of Art. And two of her paintings were recently selected for including in "Ohr Rising," which runs from August 25 through September 25 at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College's Fine Art Gallery, on the college's Jefferson Davis campus, in Gulfport.

David Hamill ("Blue Nanos" et al., Issue 2) was recently awarded a studio space grant by the Marie Walshe Sharp Art Foundation.

Heidi Julavits's (Interview, Issue 4) new novel, The Uses of Enchantment, will be published in October by Doubleday.

Christian Langworthy ("The Film Critic," Issue 7) is working with painter Matt Jacobs on a collaborative piece, "Examples of Foreplay."

Shelly Lependorf and Stan Shire ("Horizon Fields III" et al., Issue 18) have works currently showing at the Carrie Haddad Gallery, in Hudson, NY, at the Philadelphia International Airport, and at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

Douglas Light's ("Break Up," Issue 18) novel, East Fifth Bliss, is due out in September from Behler.

Robert Lopez ("Essentials," Issue 15) has work in the current issues of Willow Springs, Indiana Review, Denver Quarterly, and Vestal Review, and forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review and The Mississippi Review.

Peter Markus's ("Our Father Who Walks On Water Comes Home With Two Buckets Of Fish," Issue 2) first book of brothers, Good, Brother, is slated for a fall reissue from Calamari Press.

Jen Michalski's ("The Movie Version of My Life," Issue 18) online journal, JMWW: A Quarterly Journal of Writing, will publish a print anthology this fall. She has work forthcoming in The Potomac and will be reading at the Baltimore Book Festival in September.

Colleen Mondor's ("Our Missing Aviator," Issue 20) "Mercy Flight," about lifesaving in Alaska, is due out this month in Storyglossia.

Mary Morris' (Interview, Issue 16) novel, Revenge, is just out in paperback from Picador. Her travel memoir about the Mississippi River, The River Queen, will be published next spring by Henry Holt.

Cooper Renner's ("Origami" and "Untitled," published under the name Cooper Esteban, Issue 4) translation of three works by the Mexican writer Mario Bellatin is now available from Ravenna Press. He adds, "It can also be ordered at Amazon, but they charge more for postage and don't discount the title, so Ravenna is a better deal."

John Rybicki's ("Julie Ovary Song," et. al., Issue 17) next collection of poems, We Bed Down Into Water!, will be published by Northwestern University Press in the fall of 2007.

Richard Russo (Interview, Issue 4) wrote the screenplay for the recentBritpic "Keeping Mum," starring Maggie Smith, Rowan Atkinson, Kristin Scott-Thomas and Patrick Swayze.

Thaddeus Rutkowski ("Dear Daughter" and "Waiting for the Phone to Ring," Issue 15) reads from his new novel, Tetched, on August 22nd, at 7 p.m., at the Barnes & Noble on Broadway at W. 82nd in Manhattan. He gives a memoir reading at Atlanta's Callanwolde Fine Arts Center on November 10th at 7 p.m..

Kevin Sampsell ("Sharon Calls," Issue 20) guest-edited the latest issue of the Arizona literary journal Spork, and has a story in the new Chiasmus Press anthology Northwest Edge.

George Saunders's (Interview, Issue 5) newest story collection, In Persuasion Nation, is due out this month from Riverhead Books.

Liana Scalettar ("Flowereaters," Issue 12) has a story forthcoming in American Short Fiction, a poem forthcoming in Sentence, and a fall residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute.

Karen Shepard ("Like Love," Issue 14) is on tour in support of her new novel Don't I Know You?

Maggie Smith ("I Dream a Highway" and "Suspension," Issue 16) is at work on her second book, and has poems forthcoming in Court Green, Gulf Coast, and Quarterly West.

Jane Unrue ("Ark," Issue 3) has new work in the current (and final) issue of 3rd bed.

Lee Upton ("Apology to Keats" and "The Broom," Issue 1; "The Decorator Crab," Issue 17) has poems forthcoming in Barrow Street, Court Green, and Massachusetts Review, and fiction in an upcoming issue of Natural Bridge. Her fifth book of poems, Undid in the Land of Undone, is due out next fall from New Issues Press.

We encourage all our alumni to keep us updated on the latest in their lives, by dropping us a line at alumni@failbetter.com.

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