Issue 3. July 2010
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STORIES ON THE STREET The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
Who better to read aloud Kenneth Grahame's famous passage about the delight of "messing about in boats" than the rowers and staff at Boston's Community Rowing, Inc.? The Drum stopped by the boathouse early one morning last week and found a group of willing--and even enthusiastic--participants just coming off the water. Community Rowing is one of the largest public boat clubs in the United States, introducing people of all ages and all abilities to the sport of rowing. Visit their website for more info.
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Allison Williams is based in Kalamazoo, Michigan but lives mostly on the road as a professional street performer with Aerial Angels. Nonfiction includes Travelers' Tales Prague. Plays include Drop Dead, Juliet! and her solo show, TRUE STORY (Best of the London Fringe 2006). Suggestions for a country to live and write in this December gratefully received at allison@angelsintheair.com.
TAGS: flash fiction : under five minutes :
PREMIUM ADAM STUMACHER Local Appetites
Adam Stumacher's work has appeared in Best New American Voices, TriQuarterly, The Massachusetts Review, and The Sun, and was winner of the Raymond Carver Short Story Award. He holds degrees from Cornell University and Saint Mary's College, and he was the the Carol Houck Smith Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing. He lives in Boston, where he teaches creative writing at Grub Street and MIT, and he is working on a short story collection and a novel.
TAGS: short fiction : under thirty minutes :
PREMIUM TARA MASIH A Haunt of Memory
Tara L. Masih is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction (a ForeWord Book of the Year) and author of Where the Dog Star Never Glows: Stories. She has published fiction, poetry, and essays in numerous anthologies and literary magazines (including Confrontation, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Natural Bridge, Red River Review, Night Train, and The Caribbean Writer), and several limited edition illustrated chapbooks featuring her flash fiction have been published by The Feral Press. Awards for her work include first place in The Ledge Magazine’s fiction contest and Pushcart Prize, Best New American Voices, and Best of the Web nominations. www.taramasih.com.
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Pete Michael Smith lives and writes in the hills of western Massachusetts. He hopes to someday be able to live off of his fictions, but for now, is happy to live in them. Currently, he is at work on a collection of stories each written in a different style of painting. He blogs irregularly at honeyedmagic.com.
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PREMIUM VESTAL MCINTYRE Tickle or Torture
Vestal McIntyre is the author of the story collection You Are Not the One and the novel Lake Overturn, which has just been released in paperback from Harper Perennial. Lake Overturn was named an Editors’ Choice by the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book of 2009 by the Washington Post, and won the Grub Street National Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Vestal lives in London.
TAGS: essay : under ten minutes :
PREMIUM JONATHAN PAPERNICK Skin for Skin
Jonathan Papernick is the author of The Ascent of Eli Israel and Who by Fire, Who by Blood. His second collection of short stories There is No Other, from which the story "Skin for Skin" appears, will be available in bookstores this fall. Author Dara Horn wrote about There is No Other, "Every single story here delivers a knock-out punch that will leave you reeling long after you've put it down -- and revising your thinking on what life and love really mean." Papernick teaches fiction writing at Emerson College and the BIMA program at Brandeis University. To learn more, please visit www.jonpapernick.com or become a fan of Jonathan Papernick on Facebook.
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ETHAN GILSDORF Loving the Momster
Ethan Gilsdorf is the author of the travel memoir / pop culture investigation Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks: An Epic Quest for Reality Among Role Players, Online Gamers, and Other Dwellers of Imaginary Realms, named a Must-Read Book by the Massachusetts Book Awards. A poet, teacher, critic and journalist, Gilsdorf publishes travel, arts, and pop culture stories regularly in the New York Times, Boston Globe, and Christian Science Monitor, and has been published in dozen of other magazines, newspapers and guidebooks worldwide. He is a book and film critic for the Boston Globe and the film columnist for Art New England. His blog "Geek Pride" is seen regularly on PsychologyToday.com, and he also blogs for Boston.com's Globetrotting, Tor.com and TheOneRing.net. Follow Ethan’s adventures at http://www.ethangilsdorf.com.
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Celeste Ng earned her MFA at the University of Michigan and was the winner of the Hopwood Award. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in One Story, TriQuarterly, Subtropics, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Boston and teaches creative writing at Grub Street; she is also a blogger for the Huffington Post and contributing editor at Fiction Writers Review.
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LAUREN GRODSTEIN This Truth I'm Telling
Lauren Grodstein is the author of A Friend of the Family, a 2009 Washington Post Book of the Year, a New York Times Editor's Pick, and an Amazon Spotlight Pick. Her other works include the novel Reproduction is the Flaw of Love and the story collection The Best of Animals. She teaches English and creative writing at Rutgers-Camden.
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PREMIUM LYNNE GRIFFIN Sea Escape, Chapter Two
Lynne Griffin writes about family life. She is the author of Life Without Summer-A novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), and the nonfiction parenting title, Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment, (Penguin, 2007). Sea Escape-to be published by Simon & Schuster in July 2010 is her second novel. Lynne teaches family studies at the graduate level, and writing at Grub Street Writers in Boston. She appears regularly on Boston’s Fox Morning News talking about family life issues. Lynne writes for the blog, Family Life Stories.
TAGS: novel excerpt : under twenty minutes :
Lynne Griffin writes about family life. She is the author of Life Without Summer-A novel (St. Martin’s Press, 2009), and the nonfiction parenting title, Negotiation Generation: Take Back Your Parental Authority Without Punishment, (Penguin, 2007). Sea Escape-to be published by Simon & Schuster in July 2010 is her second novel. Lynne teaches family studies at the graduate level, and writing at Grub Street Writers in Boston. She appears regularly on Boston’s Fox Morning News talking about family life issues. Lynne writes for the blog, Family Life Stories.
TAGS: novel excerpt : under twenty minutes :
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MICHELLE HOOVER Our Little BerthaMichelle Hoover teaches writing at Boston University and Grub Street. She has published fiction in
Confrontation,
The Massachusetts Review,
Prairie Schooner, and
Best New American Voices, among others. She has been a Bread Loaf Writer's Conference scholar, the Philip Roth Writer-in-Residence at Bucknell University, a MacDowell fellow, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and in 2005 the winner of the PEN/New England Discovery Award for Fiction. She was born in Ames, Iowa, the granddaughter of four longtime farming families. "Our Little Bertha" recounts her discovery of her great-grandmother's journal, the document which she later used to inspire her novel,
The Quickening, due out June 29, 2010, from Other Press. Learn more at
www.michellehoover.net.
TAGS: essay : under thirty minutes :
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LYNNE BARRETT Macy Is The Other WomanLynne Barrett's story "Macy Is The Other Woman" appears in her second story collection,
The Secret Names of Women (Carnegie Mellon University Press). She has received the Edgar award for best mystery story and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship. Her stories have been published in
Night Train,
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine,
Delta Blues,
One Year to a Writing Life,
Miami Noir,
A Dixie Christmas, and many other anthologies and literary magazines. She teaches in the MFA program at Florida International University. More information can be found at
http://sites.google.com/site/lynnebarrett/ TAGS: short fiction : under twenty minutes :
PREMIUM BEN PERCY The Neighborhood
Benjamin Percy is the author of a novel,
The Wilding (Graywolf, 2010), and two books of stories,
Refresh, Refresh and
The Language of Elk. His fiction and nonfiction appear in
Esquire,
Outside,
Men's Journal, the
Paris Review,
Tin House,
Ploughshares,
Glimmer Train, and many other publications. His honors include the Whiting Writers Award, the Plimpton Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and inclusion in
Best American Short Stories. He teaches in the MFA program in creative writing and environment at Iowa State University.
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PREMIUM MAUD CASEY Fugueur
Maud Casey is the author of two novels, The Shape of Things to Come, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and Genealogy, a New York Times Editor's Choice Book, and a collection of stories, Drastic. She lives in Washington, D.C. and teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Maryland and the low-residency MFA Program at Warren Wilson.
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Nathan Poole is a second year MFA candidate at Warren Wilson College in Asheville NC. His short fiction has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Lumiere Reader, and Loom: Journal for the Arts. He blogs at duggdugg.com
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JASON M. RUBIN A Handful of Nickels
Jason M. Rubin is an award-winning copywriter at a Boston-based agency who has written music reviews in print and online, reviews of hot sauces for InsaneChicken.com. A frequent contributor to The Jewish Advocate weekly newspaper, he teaches workshops on brainstorming and blogs about music and writing at http://dovenestedtowers.blogspot.com. Jason has completed a novel based on the 17-century English folk song “Matty Groves."
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Ellen Meeropol is fascinated by characters on the fault lines of political upheaval, so in September 2005 she left her nurse practitioner career to spend more time with them. She works part-time in an independent bookstore and teaches fiction writing workshops. Her first novel, House Arrest, is forthcoming from Red Hen in early 2011. Her stories have appeared in Bridges, Portland Magazine, Pedestal, and The Women's Times. She lives in western Massachusetts. www.ellenmeeropol.com
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DEBORAH BLICHER Gotta Move the Cow
Deborah L. Blicher likes writing and science. She has written engineering articles, poetry, a speech research study, a coloring book, and an essay on a women's clinic bombing that was the first nonfiction ever to appear in Calyx Journal. After earning her MFA at Emerson College, she worked as a software test engineer. When she finishes her book about the Amazon, she wants to write about becoming the mother of two preschoolers from Russia. She considers herself an audio junkie.
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GRACE TALUSAN The Girl in The Red Dress
Grace Talusan was born in the Philippines and grew up in the US. She writes fiction and essays with recent publications in Best American Medical Writing 2009 and Solstice:a magazine of diverse voices. She contributes book reviews to The Rumpus. She teaches writing at Tufts University and Grub Street. For more, visit http://gracetalusan.com/
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PREMIUM LAURA SALAMY Signs of Life
Laura Salamy lives in Massachusetts with her husband, a daughter, and two silly dogs. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Get Born, Inkspotter, The Boston Globe, and The Providence Journal. When she’s not writing, editing someone else’s work, or doing laundry, she hooks colorful rugs.
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PREMIUM RANDY SUSAN MEYERS The Murderer's Daughters
Randy Susan Meyers’ debut novel, The Murderer’s Daughters (St. Martins Press, January 2010) is informed by her years of work with batterers, domestic violence victims, and at-risk youth impacted by family violence. She was raised by books, in Brooklyn, where she could walk to the library daily. Each book she read added to her sense of who she could be in this world. Reading In Cold Blood at too tender an age assured that she’d never stay alone in a country house. Biographies of women like Marie Curie and Elizabeth Blackwell opened doors to another world and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn taught her faith in the future. randysusanmeyers.com
TAGS: novel excerpt : under twenty minutes :
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AIMEE LOISELLE Three Women Wishing For A Boy
Aimee Loiselle often uses green tea as an excuse to break from writing. She has stories forthcoming in Steam Ticket and the American Fiction anthology. Stories with her name have also appeared in Blueline, Natural Bridge, Square Lake, and Out of Line. Her novel manuscript was shortlisted in the Faulkner-Wisdom Competition, and she likes pizza with artichokes. Learn more at www.aimeeloiselle.com.
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MAMEVE MEDWED How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life
Born in Maine and named for two grandmothers, Mamie and Eva, Bangor’s “other” writer (after Stephen King), Mameve Medwed is the author of five novels, Mail, Host Family, The End of an Error, How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life, (2007 Massachusetts Book Award Honors in Fiction) and Of Men and Their Mothers (Booksense notable pick for May 2008) Her short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in, among others, Yankee, Redbook, Playgirl, The Boston Globe, Ascent, The Missouri Review, Confrontation, The Readerville Journal, Newsday and The Washington Post.
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PREMIUM JENNA BLUM The Stormchasers
Jenna Blum's novel The STORMCHASERS will be available May 27, 2010. She spent five years researching the novel by chasing tornadoes with the stormchase company Tempest Tours. Her 2004 novel, THOSE WHO SAVE US was a New York Times bestseller, a Boston Globe bestseller, the winner of the 2005 Ribalow Prize, a Borders Book Club pick, and a favorite with book clubs across the country. Currently, Jenna runs master novel workshops for Grub Street Writers in Boston, where she lives. jennablum.com
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Elinor Teele is a writer, actress and photographer living in Massachusetts. She writes fiction for both children and adults and regularly reviews books for The California Literary Review. An adopted New Zealander, she holds a PhD in Old English Literature from the University of Cambridge, England. www.squamcreativeservices.com
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E. B. Moore is the author of New Eden A Legacy (Finishing Line Press 2009). Her short stories and poetry have appeared in print and on-line in various journals including honorable mention in Inkwell’s Fiction contest. She spent a month at Yaddo, and on full fellowship at The Vermont Studio Center, she finished Sickle Moon, a novel based on stories of her Old Order Amish relatives.
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Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the internationally acclaimed CORPUS CHRISTI: STORIES and the editor of the bestselling NAMING THE WORLD AND OTHER EXERCISES FOR THE CREATIVE WRITER. He teaches in the Bennington Writing Seminar, and he's the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard University. More information can be found at www.bretanthonyjohnston.com.
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