Welcome to the June residency 2021 edition ofThe Container
It’s residency month! Because we know it can be hard to keep track of the various goings ons, we’ve rounded up highlights for residency week — including a few planned in-person meetups.
FYI: An informal Zoom gathering won’t happen this month because we’ll already be together and zooming. TBD if late summer meetups will happen; if not, we’ll see you all again in the fall!
June residency highlights
Get ready for these events and more! All times listed are eastern standard.
Novelist Jane Hamilton (The Book of Ruth,A Map of the World) will give a craft talk on Saturday, June 26, at 4pm, and a reading on Sunday, June 27, at 7pm.
Ann will be in conversation with Paula McLain, acclaimed author of The Paris Wife, on Saturday, June 26, at 7pm.
Johnny Temple, publisher and president of Akashic Press, will talk to us about publishing on Thursday, July 1 at 4pm.
Novelist AK Small (Bright Burning Stars) and memoirist Catherine Murray (Now You See the Sky) will join us for a panel discussion on publishing debut works on Saturday, July 3, at 10am.
Program graduates, Jim Birdick, Tom Cowen, Amanda Iacampo, Fernando Linhares, Ash Malkani, John McDaid, Marney McNall, Karen Traub, and Tommie Yuille will give craft talks and readings! Check the final schedule on airtable for days, times and Zoom links.
And, of course, our wonderful residency faculty will give crafts talks and readings and host drop-in sessions throughout the week. Check the final schedule on airtable for their sessions.
Opportunities to eat, drink, and be merry together in person will be sprinkled through the week:
Jen Roberts is coordinating a dinner on Sunday, June 27. A 5:30 reservation has been made at Stoneacre Garden. If you’d like to join, please let Jen know ASAP. About 12 people are already planning to attend; cheers to that!
Ann is hosting a dinner in her loft in Providence on Friday, July 2, at 6pm; be sure to let her know if you’ll be there. A group screening of the evening’s reading will follow.
The program is hosting a BBQ on Saturday, July 3, at Salve starting at 5pm — family and friends are welcome, and student readings will follow.
Alden will teach a special Yoga for Writers class on Monday, June 28, at 10am.
What have you been reading and loving? Let us know! We’d like to get a Newport MFA resource list of what we’ve read and found especially useful. Click here to add your favs to a shared Google Doc.
While you're there, check out this month's recommendations from students and faculty.
Crafty things we’ve been loving
The Center for Fiction’s reading and conversation between Courtney Zoffness and Gina Frangello on how years of writing fiction have informed their latest projects in narrative nonfiction, Zoffness’s collection of personal essays, Spilt Milk, and Frangello’s memoir Blow Your House Down.
BOMB Magazine’s episode of A Room with a View, featuring a conversation with Lilly Dancyger, Melissa Febos, and Forsyth Harmon on the use of illustrations and hybrid forms to break apart conventional narratives.
This Lit Hub essay: “At the Intersection of Journalism and Memoir: A Reading List.”
Work in progress
Every month we feature a short excerpt from a graduate's work in progress or published work. This month’s WiP comes from alum Katie Hughes-Pucchi. The passage is from a not-yet-titled piece of hyperreal fiction still in development, which Katie says is “new-ish territory”—enjoy!
Beverly looked out onto her front lawn and saw a 20-foot replica of the Statue of Liberty, planted into the grass with fresh cement. The cement was still wet, but Beverly hadn’t seen any notifications from her Ring Doorbell about movement on the lawn. There was no pile of dirt that would have been displaced in digging the cement footings. Beverly stepped out onto her porch, craning her neck up and down her street hoping to see a large flatbed truck, the kind you see on the highway with a bright orange sign that reads “Wide Load.” The kind of sign that her husband Larry would notice while driving them in his Toyota Corolla and elbow Beverly to say, “Just like you honey.” But there was no sign of any moving vehicles.
Beverly even looked up to the sky, as if such a heavy metal statue could have been airlifted into place, but of course, that seemed foolish to think of in retrospect. What with the weight of such an object necessitating an aircraft that would indubitably occasion a rumble, rattle, or roar – none of which were heard by Beverly.
As she approached the large statue, a high-pitch humming sound began throbbing in her ear. Could other people hear this too? The neighborhood cat, the one that everyone fed but no one claimed, sauntered through her yard unaffected by the humming. The tabby circled around Ms. Liberty as if it were a new shoebox to examine or a pen to push off a coffee table. Interested and bored all at once.
Upcoming deadlines
The Blue Lynx Prize For Poetry awards $2,000 plus publication for a full-length poetry collection. The Prize is awarded for an unpublished, full-length volume of poems by a U.S. author, which includes foreign nationals living and writing in the U.S. and U.S. citizens living abroad. $28 entry fee. Deadline: June 16
Ninth Letter Ekphrastic Poetry Contest: Seriality, Sexuality, Semiotics. Submit up to three poems responding to Hal Fischer’s photography (includes a one-year subscription to Ninth Letter). The winner will receive $1,000, have their work published in Ninth Letter, and give a reading at the Hal Fischer Symposium at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in November, 2021 (travel expenses covered). Click here for full contest guidelines. Deadline: June 30
2021 CRAFT First Chapters Contest open to all adult, literary fiction writers Excerpts of book-length fiction, the first chapter or chapters of unpublished novels/novellas, completed or in progress, up to 5,000 words. $20 entry fee per entry. Guest Judge: Masie Cochran of Tin House. Click here for submission guidelines. Deadline: June 30
Virtual events to keep you inspired
In Languages of Truth: Essays 2003–2020 Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie reflects on his long and complex relationship with storytelling. Through this compilation of seminal essays, criticism, and more recent speeches, Rushdie explores the intersections of truth, language, art, and life—and some of his quintessential preoccupations: censorship, migration, and multiculturalism. At the Chicago Humanities Festival, Rushdie is joined by poet Srikanth (Chicu) Reddy (Underworld Lit, Voyager) for a conversation about these conceptual crossroads and the lessons literature illuminates. Where & When: Livestreamed on YouTube on June 16th at 7pm central time with a live Q+A. Click here to register and for more information.
What digital events have you been attending, or wanting to attend? Let us know and we can share them with the group :-)
Faculty events you won’t want to miss
Tim Weed has a number of upcoming events this summer and fall:
One of John McDaid's recent hypertext fictions was discussed at length in a new book from Amherst College Press, Twining: Critical and Creative Approaches to Hypertext Narratives by Anastasia Salter and Stuart Moulthrop. The authors note, "In design and execution, ‘We Knew the Glass Man’ is a hybrid, bridging the domains of book and software, haunted equally by technology and literature." Click here to read the story.
Helena Touhey has a piece of nonfiction out in the water-themed summer issue of Chautauqua Literary Journal: “The Ascent.” Helena read this piece during the student readings last June. Order a copy here. She also has a story out in the June issue of Newport Life Magazine, which explores the sport of freediving—and also the ways her MFA thinking/writing is beginning to mingle with her journalistic thinking/writing. Read the article here.
MFA Alum Marissa Gallerani published a review of Melissa Febos’s latest essay collection, Girlhood, in the Harvard Review Online, which received this praise in our MFA Facebook group: “balanced and revelatory,” “crisply written, provides keen insight,” “such a fantastic piece, so well composed and written!”
Tom Cowan will have two essays published this fall: “The Road Ahead,” which he read from at the January 2021 residency, and “Finding Dylan Thomas.”
Danielle Trussoni’s latest NYT column is out in the summer reading supplement.
Tim Weed has a new short story coming out in Pangyrus and an interview with Cuban-American novelist Dariel Suarez at the Fiction Writers Review.
Via the What Cheer Writers Club Newsletter (which is fantastic and you should all subscribe to!): Mary-Kim Arnold and husband Matthew Derby shared their thoughts on writing and marriage in this interview by Dead Darlings. Also, Mary-Kim has just been appointed to the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts!
Let us know....
What you're reading, listening to, and watching that's lighting you up!
Alums, tell us what your writing life is like post graduation. What keeps you inspired and engaged in your work?
Faculty, what events, publications, and workshops do you have coming up?
Have you joined the WhatsApp Newport MFA group? It's open to all students and alum!
Download WhatsApp on your phone and send Helena an email with your cell number if you'd like to join.
P.S. Feeling generous? Donate to the Ann Hood Scholarship
What’s that? It’s a fund that’s been created to help support future students of the Newport MFA. For more info, click here. On the donation page, select "Other" and type in "Ann Hood Scholarship."
