Alumni News

"There is, in Stephanie Johnson's stories, a profound, unflashy magic of seeing. She puts you right up to the beating hearts of her people—from which vantage, you see how they miss one another, and you understand as odd, perfect miracles their moments of connection and knowledge," said author Scott Garson.

Alum's debut book makes big splash

USAToday recently featured alum Matthew Aaron Goodman, MFA '00, in their New voices column for his book Hold Love Strong (Touchstone). The book is a coming-of-age novel narrated by a young black man, born to a 13-year-old mother, in a Queens, N.Y., neighborhood devastated by crack and AIDS. Barnes and Noble has chosen the novel for its summer Discover Great New Writers program. USAToday says the book is notable because, Goodman, who is white, has been praised by black scholar Cornel West and poet Nikki Giovanni for his narration in the voice of black man. Goodman, 34, lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., with his wife and splits his time between writing fiction and running a literary program for "young men and women who are caught up in the criminal justice system," according to the paper.

Cornel West, author of Race Matters and Democracy Matters, calls the book "a powerful and poignant story of the gallant Abraham who struggles on the night side of American society yet exudes a light of genuine hope…." Author Thisbe Nissen says, "Matthew Aaron Goodman writes with tremendous heart and gorgeous lyricism. He loves the characters whose lives he chronicles, loves them in all their flaws, through all their missteps. He's with them, celebrating their glories in ecstatic, ebullient riffs, and mourning their defeats with an unflinching compassion…" Publishers Weekly says, "Goodman delivers a commanding investigation of love, family and freedom set in a New York City housing project…." Booklist says"[Hold Love Strong is] told exceptionally well in the lyrical first person voice of a sensitive and perceptive youth."

Goodman's next project is a political novel that imagines a U.S. occupation of Brooklyn after Sept. 11, 2001, rather than Iraq.

Alum's spy novel wins high marks, to be made into film

Olen Steinhauer, MFA '98, has published his latest book, a thriller called The Tourist. The Los Angeles Times says, "As rich and intriguing as the best of Le Carré, Deighton or Graham Greene, Steinhauer's complex, moving spy novel is perfect for our uncertain, emotionally fraught times." George Clooney's company has bought the film rights with the actor slated to star and produce.

The book is about a group of CIA assassins called Tourists who are scattered around the globe. Both Booklist and Publishers Weekly gave the book a starred review. Publishers Weekly called the book "an outstanding stand-alone, a contemporary spy thriller." It continued, "While plenty of breathtaking scenes in the world's most beautiful places bolster the heart-stopping action, the real story is the soul-crushing toil the job inflicts on a person who can't trust anyone, whose life is a lie fueled by paranoia." The Washington Post said, The Tourist is serious entertainment that raises interesting questions."

Steinhauer previously published a quintet of books that the New York Times calls an "ingenious series of novels that open in 1948 and advance through the cold war era, yielding a group portrait of paranoia, cynicism and despair. In the pitiless environment of these books, broader political issues are always hanging over people's heads." The Times goes on to say, "Steinhauer applies the same paranoia-cynicism-­despair matrix to The Tourist, but it's set in a different political landscape." These earlier books have been nominated for the Edgar and other awards.

Alumna is prolific poet whose latest collection is praised

Alumna Denise Duhamel '84 recently published her latest poetry collection book. Ka-Ching! is a book of poems that explores America's obsession with money. The publisher also describes it as "a crown of sonnets about e-bay, sestinas on the subjects of Sean Penn and the main characters of fairytales, a pantoum that riffs on a childhood riddle, and a villanelle inspired by bathroom graffiti." Beckian Fritz Goldberg said of the book, "With wry intelligence and wit, Duhamel's Ka-Ching! explores the mysteries of luck and accident in the welter of pop culture and private struggle. From a child's monopoly money to the harsh realities of aging parents recovering from a horrifying accident, her colloquial ease belies the poignancy of human predicament, celebrates the resilience of imagination, and leaves us with poems in which we recognize anew the wealth of our language, our lucky hearts."

Duhamel is associate professor of English at Florida International University. She is the author of ten poetry collections, including Two and Two and Queen for a Day: Selected and New Poems. Duhamel has also written five books of poetry and co-edited, with Maureen Seaton and David Trinidad, Saints of Hysteria: A Half-Century of Collaborative American Poetry. The recipient of numerous awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, she has been anthologized widely, appearing in six volumes of The Best American Poetry.

Emersonian's latest book is praised for 'revealing' nature

"In her bold new memoir, former artist's model Kathleen Rooney MFA '05 reveals all about being a muse," reports The Daily Beast. Rooney's latest book, Live Nude Girl: My Life as an Object (University of Arkansas Press) explores her work as a model for painters, sculptors, and photographers while also looking at how nude modeling has been practiced in history and is practiced today. Rooney writes that modeling is the "spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance." She draws on her own experiences as an artist's model but also includes stories of famous and infamous artists and models through the ages. Peter Stitt, editor of The Gettysburg Review, declares the book is "introspective, learned, and thoughtful. While revealing what a nude model does, how she does it and why, what she feels and thinks while doing it, Rooney explores what her profession means to her personally and what it means and has meant to others. The writing is enticing, engaging, inviting, and the anecdotes it tells are irresistible." The Daily Beast profile says, "In Live Nude Girl, Rooney is at her best when she describes the mechanics of modeling and her fraught relationship with her own body in often surprisingly poetic language. In the book's opening chapter, she writes, "My skinny is what I have always been. My skinny is how I always want to be. My skinny is me. But sometimes I distrust it."

The Daily Beast further points out, "The places where high and low culture met have always been of interest to Rooney. In Live Nude Girl, the theme shows up as the place where the titillation of nudity meets high art. Her first nonfiction book, Reading With Oprah: The Book Club That Changed America (2005), explored the clash between fine literature and the populist Oprah, while her poetry collaboration with Elisa Gabbert, That Tiny Insane Voluptuousness (2008), combines the influence of Theodore Storm, a high-culture German poet, with the LOLs and BRBs of Internet speak." The article calls Rooney "an accomplished poet" who won the Ruth Lily Fellowship from Poetry magazine in 2003 and has had poems published in dozens of journals, including Agni and Harvard Review. Rooney's first solo collection, Oneiromance (an epithalamion), appeared in 2008.

Graduate writes novel in three days, and wins contest

A 2005 graduate of WLP's MFA program has won the 31st Annual 3-Day Novel Contest, billed as "the world's most notorious literary marathon." Jason Rapczynski, of New Haven, Conn., will have his book, The Videographer, published for winning the award. Rapczynski was competing against 570 entrants from all over North America and the world. Of those, 428 writers completed their novels.

The International 3-Day Novel Contest is "an annual put-your-keyboard-where-your-mouth-is literary challenge that asks writers to complete an entire novel over a single long weekend," said the statement.

Rapczynski is a writer and rare book dealer. "He prepped for the contest not by drafting an outline, but by immersing himself in the rough and shadowy corners of the YouTube microworld," according to a release from the contest sponsor's. "The resulting dark, satirical and fast-moving story of the con artists, lost souls, web-addled stunt junkies and gullible dreamers of the digital generation took first prize and will be released by 3-Day Books in August 2009." Rapczynski is a member of the Delta Epsilon Sigma National Scholastic Honor Society. He has lived in Boston, Burlington, Vermont and the Maine woods.

MFA alumna publishes third novel

Teresa Stores, MFA' 93, recently published her third novel, Backslide (Spinsters Ink). The book explores the fundamentalist Southern Baptist religion set against the America of 1969-70 through one character's coming of age and later coming out as a lesbian. Stores is an associate professor at the University of Hartford, where she directs the creative writing program. Stores first two books are Getting to the Point and SideTrakcs, both published by Naiad Press. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Oregon Literary Review, Sinister Wisdom, Out Magazine, Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly, Blithe House Quarterly, Poetry Motel, Artistic F/X, Bloom, Cicada, Earth's Daughters, Best Lesbian Fiction 2005, and other anthologies and journals. She has been awarded writing grants by the Vermont Arts Council, Barbara Deming Fund, and the Cardin Fund, and has been a scholar and contributor at the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and Bread Loaf. This year she chairs the team responsible for the Pedagogy Forums at the annual conference of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) in Atlanta and will edit The Best of the AWP Pedagogy Papers, 2007.

Emersonian's poems win prize

Liz Ahl '92 has won the 2008 Slapering Hol Press chapbook prize. Her chapbook, A Thirst That's Partly Mine, is a collection of poetry about human interaction with the natural world. "I'm thrilled to see my poems arranged in such a beautiful book," said Ahl. "The letterpress cover and hand-binding, along with several other special details, make the books themselves a pleasure to look at and hold." Ahl is a professor of English at Plymouth State University

"A Thirst That's Partly Mine is a deeply satisfying chapbook in which the individual poems add up to much more than the sum of their parts," said Grace Bauer. According to poet Robin Becker, "Liz Ahl brings a naturalist's close observation and a metaphysician's dry wit to poems about our lived experiences in the natural/physical world." Copies of the chapbook provided by the PSU Bookstore, will be available for purchase and signing. Her poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Women's Review of Books, The Laurel Review, The Formalist, Southern Poetry Review, North American Review and other literary journals and anthologies. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska and an M.F.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.

Journal founded by alumni celebrates five years

Founded by 2003 MFA alumni Rebecca Morgan Frank and Rob Arnold, Memorious, an online journal of new verse and fiction, recently celebrated the release of the Fall 2008 issue, which marks the fifth anniversary edition of the journal.The issue features poetry and prose from well known writers including Kevin Prufer, G. C. Waldrep, Kelle Groom, Todd Hearon, and Allan Reeder, as well as a conversation between Alexander Chee and Sigrid Nunez, an interview with Larissa Szporluck, and a selection of work from emerging writers.

The first issue of Memorious was published in 2004. Since then, contributors have included Lloyd Schwartz, Gail Mazur, Bob Hicok, Kim Chinquee, Major Jackson, Denise Duhamel, Steve Almond, Joyce Peseroff, Jake Adam York, Paul Yoon, Benjamin Percy, Andrea Cohen, and David Rivard, in addition to many new and exciting voices. Also, the Memorious archives include interviews with writers such as Pablo Neruda, Robert Creeley, Bill Knott, and Jim Shepard. Work first published in Memorious has been selected as a finalist for the Million Writers Award and has been reprinted in Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and Best of the Web.

Currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Cincinnati, Editor-in-Chief Rebecca Morgan Frank taught at Emerson College and Grub Street, and was a member of The Writers Room of Boston. Editor Rob Arnold still lives in Boston and is the managing director of Ploughshares. Fiction Editor Jessica Murphy and Assistant Editor Laura van den Berg also earned their MFAs from Emerson College. Now a resident of Seattle, Murphy once worked for the Atlantic Monthly, while van den Berg first gained editorial experience as a Ploughshares staff member and as the editor-in-chief of another Boston-based journal, Redivider.

Alumna wins book prize for poetry collection

Kathleen Rooney, MFA '05, has published a collection of poems, Oneiromance (an epithalamion), which won the 2007 Gatewood Prize. The book explores the absurdity and divinity of the marriage ceremony through a dream sequence that blends call and response with Shakespearean odes, romance and cynicism, storytelling and wordplay.

Poet Alice Fulton said, "Kathleen Rooney's beautifully structured epithalamion is saturated with nuptial terror: the music and friction, zeal and unease, absurdity and profundity of marriage. Oneiromance (an epithalamion) parodies and feasts upon the vain excesses of contemporary wedding culture, but there's tenderness and devotion here, too a sweetness that's saucy rather than cloying."

The prize judge, Patty Seyburn, says of the book: "Oneiromance (an epithalamion) gives the marriage poem a case of vertigo, displacing while embracing the panoply of possibility when two people attempt to forge a life together. Kathleen Rooney creates a dream-state with fluid borders and a surreal set of laws that allow her to question inherited wisdom and perception, all the while converging on the altar from numerous (occasionally, numinous) angles. The romance persists between the narrator and the beloved—and crucially, between the author and language's opportunities to address the nuances and edges of commitment deemed inexplicable. These poems contain deep doubt and true sentiment, providing that pleasure-giving union of provocation and renewal."

Rooney is co-founder of Rose Metal Press and author of Reading with Oprah, among other books.

Master's graduate publishes with Simon & Schuster

Chris Eboch, MA '94, is celebrating the release of her latest books, Jesse Owens: Young Record Breaker and Milton Hershey: Young Chocolatier. Both are part of Simon & Schuster's Childhood of Famous Americans series, for ages 8-12, and written under the name M. M. Eboch. The book on Owens tells the inspiring story of Olympic gold medalist, focusing on his childhood and how through hard work and courage the African-American sprinter overcame racism, poverty and poor health. The other is a biography of chocolate king Milton Hershey, who started work at an ice cream parlor at age 14, and who, at 18, opened his own confectionery shop only to loose it six years later. After several failed attempts, he finally found success and even started a school for underprivileged children, which still functions today.

Eboch is also the author of The Well of Sacrifice, a middle grade historical adventure set in 9th century Guatemala, and five nonfiction books for young people.

Alum author got idea for her book while at Emerson

"Until she found herself desperately searching for a subject during a nonfiction book workshop at Emerson College, Laurie Edwards, MFA '06, never considered writing about her experience with chronic disease," begins an article from the GateHouse News Service about the writer. "I was still in that stage in my life where I was doing whatever I could to prove I wasn't sick," the 28-year-old told the paper. After 20 years of hospitalization after hospitalization without a firm answer to her illness, Edwards was finally diagnosed with primary ciliary dyskinesia, a rare, cystic fibrosis-like genetic respiratory disorder that causes frequent infections, thick mucus and decreased oxygenation.

Though she initially wrote travel pieces and nonfiction features at Emerson, Edwards turned to the idea of writing about her health problems during her time in the master's program at Emerson. "I just got such a great reception," she said. "People said, 'Write more."' She is now the author of Life Disrupted: Getting Real About Chronic Illnesses in Your Twenties and Thirties. "Everyone's saying, 'This is exactly my life,"' Edwards said, referring to readers with chronic diseases. Edwards said, "This is supposed to be the point in your life when everything comes together, not when everything falls apart." Her book is divided into three sections: the health care system, going to school or work, and relationships and utilizes both personal experience as well as stories from six patients with a range of illnesses. Edwards also maintains a blog called A Chronic Dose.

Alum publishes book of ghost stories

Adam Golaski '97 is celebrating the publication of his book of supernatural ghost stories, entitled Worse than Myself (Raw Dog Screaming Press). A recent feature on Golaski in the Holbrook Sun noted, however, that "the book may not feature the kind of horror one might expect." Golaski told the paper that readers refer to the genre he writes in as "quiet horror," because the stories don't focus on gore. The stories may be "disturbing and horrifying," but "not gross," he said. The book's two sections are "New England and New York" and "Montana," the places Golaski is familiar with and where he set these tales. The article also notes, "Golaski described the characters in his stories as having encounters with something larger than themselves. Their experiences are something outside of the normal realm."

Author Ramsey Campbell says, "Adam Golaski has an enviable talent for the insidiously weird. His images creep into the imagination and stay in the mind like nightmares you didn't know you had. He's a writer of real originality, subtlety, and eloquent suggestiveness." Author Brian Evenson calls the book a "strong collection with enough variation to keep readers riveted from the first story to the last. Worse Than Myself has the impulses of traditional horror but keeps things a little more open, inflecting the forms we're familiar with and making them startlingly fresh again."

Golaski already has a new book accepted for publication as well. His next book is slated to come out next year. Color Plates, which will be published by Rose Metal Press (founded by Emerson alumnae Abigail Beckel [MA '05] and Kathleen Rooney [MFA '05] is a book of short stories, focusing on famous impressionist painters. Golaski describes it as "a tour of sorts given by painter Mary Cassatt," said the paper.

Golaski works as a business copywriter and teaches literature and writing at colleges in Connecticut. He is also the publisher, editor, and owner of the science fiction and horror magazine New Genre. Golaski also co-founded Flim Forum Press, a poetry publisher.

Alum writer's book becomes TV movie

Lola Douglas (the pseudonym for alumna Lara Zeises, MFA '01) is the author of True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet and its sequel More Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet. True Confessions was made into a TV movie starring multi-platinum recording artist Joanna "JoJo" Levesque and Golden Globe winner Valerie Bertinelli. It premiered on Lifetime last month. School Library Journal says, "This tell-all journal-style story is nearly as amusing and compelling as Meg Cabot's "Princess Diaries" and Louise Rennison's "Georgia Nicolson" series. Kirkus Reviews adds, "Despite the topic's darker subject, since the narrative is in chatty diary form, this is light, breezy and lots of fun, especially for girls with Hollywood fantasies." KLIATT, in a starred review, calls the book "an absorbing read. Who has not imagined themselves in the ranks of the wealthy and famous, the mundane life a mask for the glamorous persona fighting to get out? The themes of finding the joys of the simple life, making true friends, accepting responsibility, and overcoming drug addiction are also well realized. "

Zeises is also the author of Bringing Up the Bones, an honor book for the 2001 Delacorte Press Prize Competition; Contents Under Pressure, winner of the 2006 Delaware Blue Hen Teen Book Award and a 2006 IRA Young Adult Choices selection; and Anyone But You.