Spring has finally arrived in Happy Valley, and look, we're all blooming, too!
Faculty
Toni Jensen’s short story "Looking for Boll Weevil" is forthcoming (in October) in the anthology Best of the West: Stories from the Wide Side of the Missouri, and it's in there with stories by Rick Bass, Yiyun Li, T.C. Boyle and others.
Elizabeth Kadetsky’s personal essay "The Memory Pavilion" was accepted at Post Road for publication this summer, while "The Oracle" appeared in Mission at Tenth this March. Both are adapted from her memoir The Memory Eaters. Her short story "An Incident at the Plaza" will appear in Antioch Review’s all-fiction issue this summer—this is from her collection of short stories connected by the theme of travelers and their misreadings in exotic settings, other stories of which have appeared in TriQuarterly, Gettysburg Review, the Pushcart Prizes and elsewhere. "An Incident at the Plaza" was also named top ten in the Open City Trophy prize this winter. In other news, her book First There Is a Mountain was signed for the Dzanc Books eReprint series, while she also became contributing editor at Defunct magazine, edited by Robin Hemley. Her essay “The Naked City,” published in Defunct last summer, was reprinted in the Overland online magazine in Australia. In the best news of all, she signed an additional three-year contract at Penn State as visiting assistant professor in fiction and nonfiction in the Emerging Writer Series.
Poetry in America, a new collection of poems, by Julia Spicher Kasdorf, is due from U. Pittsburgh Press in August 2011. Also in the fall, Penn State Press will release a new edition of The House of the Black Ring, which Julia has been editing with Josh Brown, a graduate student in the German program. This local color mystery, written by the first chair of the PSU English Department Fred Lewis Pattee, is set in Hell's Bottom (aka Happy Valley) and largely based on details about everyday life in the area gleaned from compositions written by Penn State undergraduates in the late 1890s.
In 2008, she and Josh also produced a new edition of J. W. Yoder's regional classic, Rosanna of the Amish, sent in Centre and Mifflin Counties. This year, Julia has been traveling around the state presenting an illustrated lecture, "ROSANNA OF THE AMISH: Fact and Fiction" as part of the Speaker's Bureau of the PA Humanities Council. The talk addresses current questions of truth and facticity in memoir with regard to the 1940 work of autoethnography. Julia’s stint with the Speaker's Bureau will conclude in July when the final lecture will be filmed for the PA Cable Network in Huntingdon, PA, Yoder's last home.
Tom Noyes (Penn State Behrend) was recently named first runner-up in Sycamore Review's 2011 Wabash Fiction Prize. In addition to Sycamore Review, Tom's stories have recently appeared or are slated to appear in New Ohio Review and Image.
George Looney (Penn State Behrend) Recently poems of mine have won the ZONE 3 Poetry Prize and the Jeffrey Smith Editors' Prize in Poetry from THE MISSOURI REVIEW, and my fifth collection of poetry, A SHORT BESTIARY OF LOVE AND MADNESS, has been accepted and will be published this fall by Stephen F. Austin State University Press.
Erin Murphy’s (Penn State Altoona) fourth book of poetry, Word Problems, was published this month by Word Press:http://www.word-press.com/murphy-word-problems.html.
Students
Jo Hsu’s short story "Flashpoint," the first thing she wrote at Penn State and for which she wishes to thank Elizabeth Kadetsky’s fall workshop, will be published in TINGE Magazine at the end of April,
Evan McGarvey was accepted for the summer at both the Juniper Institute at UMass:
http://www.umass.edu/juniperinstitute/, and the Indiana University Writers' Conference:
http://www.indiana.edu/~writecon/.
http://www.umass.edu/juniperinstitute/, and the Indiana University Writers' Conference:
http://www.indiana.edu/~writecon/.
Rachel Mennies has had poems accepted at Poet Lore, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Boxcar Poetry Review.
Andrea Rochat was the winner of this year’s Toby Thompson Prize for Literary Nonfiction, for her essay, “Spine.”
Emily May Anderson will have two poems appearing in Pudding Magazine (Summer 2011) and three poems appearing in Poetry East (Fall 2011). She has also placed book reviews this semester with Green Mountains Review, Mid-American Review, and Chiron Review; and her chapbook manuscript, Beautiful River, was a finalist for the White Eagle Coffee Store Press chapbook prize (coincidentally won by Rachael Lyon, part time English faculty at Penn State Altoona)
Sarah Blake recently had poems appear on MiPOesias.com and in the Spring issue of FIELD. Her poem, "Form," published in the 8th issue of Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, has been nominated by Sentence editors for Best New Poets 2011. Finally, she just launched a website about her book! The site features an audio project based on the poem Terrance Hayes named as Honorable Mention for the 2011 Academy of American Poets Prize. Check out http://www.kanyewestpoetry.com (Outside of poetry, she's nine months pregnant with a baby boy!)
Alyse Bensel’s poem "Zinnia" will appear in the Spring issue of The Meadowland Review
She has book placed book reviews with Calyx, Newpages.com and Coldfront.
Book review for Approaching Ice by Elizabeth Bradfield is up on Newpages.com book review section
Jessica Karbowiak’s essay, “Surge Capacity,” will be published in The Chaffey Review (the Winter 2011 issue). Her short story,” Boxes,” will come out in Arcadia’s online edition and in the yearly print journal, and her short story, “Slices of Saartjie,” got picked up by an online magazine, Orion Headless.
Alumni
Silvi Alcivar recently had a gallery show at secession art & design, and her business, The Poetry Store was named one of Daily Candy's Best New Finds 2010.
Cindy Clem’s essay, “My Husband Clive" has been accepted at Memoir (and).
Jarod Rosello’s comics "I'll See you Later" and “Cadenza,” have appeared in Gin Palace 2 and
Entertainer Anthology, respectively. His story, "He Has Options" appears in EDNA.
William Kelley Woolfitt has had fiction published in Riddle Fence, nonfiction in Shadowbox and poetry in Confrontation, Harper’s Ferry Review and Southern Humanities Review.
Allison Schuette—has received tenure and been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor of English at Valparaiso University.
Joel Patton was recently the weekly featured poet at No Tell Motel.
Jeffrey Morgan’s first book of poetry, Crying Shame has just been released on BlazeVOX Books.
Sheila Squillante’s poems have appeared or will appear in Cream City Review, No Tell Motel, Right Hand Pointing, Eratio: Postmodern Poetry, MiPoesias, and Naugatuck River Review. Her lyric essay, “On Fire,” will appear at Brevity in early 2012.
Stephanie Anderson Witmer’s feature story, “Smart Eating Made Simple,” appeared in the March 2011 issue of Better Homes & Gardens. Her regular parenting column called "Family Style" and a blog called "Mommy-logues" will appear in Susquehanna Style magazine, beginning in Jan. 2011
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