October 2, 2024

 

The UMass MFA for Poets and Writers is delighted to announce the following new books by alumni:
 

Theophanies

 

Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali (MFA '21) published by Alice James Books, 2024 and selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A Stadler and Kundiman Fellow, Ali is the poetry editor for West Branch and an Assistant Professor of English at Macalester College. https://www.sarahgali.com

 

The Naming Song

 

Jedediah Berry's (MFA ‘07), The Naming Song, released by Tor Books is a gorgeously imaginative fantasy in the spirit of Hayao Miyazaki and Guillermo del Toro. Together with his partner, writer Emily Houk, Berry runs Ninepin Press, an independent publisher of fiction, poetry, and games in unusual shapes. https://us.macmillan.com/author/jedediahberry

 

Spoilers

 

Marie Buck (MFA ‘07) recently published Spoilers, co-authored with Matthew Walker. Published by fellow UMass alum Lawrence Giffi (MFA ‘06), who runs Golias Books. Spoilers is a book about movies: about watching movies and talking about movies, about being in the dark, alone and together, and about life as a movie and movies as ways of understanding life. Marie currently works as the managing editor of the journal Social Text and teach writing at NYU as a member of UAW Local 7902. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/marie-buck

 

Dear Wallace

 

Julie Choffel’s (MFA '05) most recent book is Dear Wallace from The Backwaters/University of Nebraska Press, 2024, and winner of the Backwaters Prize in Poetry. Dear Wallace addresses the poet and insurance executive Wallace Stevens in an attempt to reconsider art, power, and creativity amid the demands of everyday responsibility. Choffel teaches creative writing at the University of Connecticut. https://www.juliechoffel.com/

 

Bound Up

 

Bound Up: On Kink Power and Belonging is Leora Fridman's (MFA ‘13) newest book out with Wayne State University Press. Bound Up is a provocative look at historical trauma as bound, incarnated, and processed through intimate and sexual expression. Fridman is currently faculty at the Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School and Director of the New Jewish Culture Fellowship. https://www.leorafridman.com/

 

Error

 

Error, a chapbook by David Greenspan (MFA '21). Error is the first title from the California journal and press antiphony.  In addition to an MFA, Greenspan holds a PhD in English (emphasis Creative Writing) from the University of Southern Mississippi (2024). He lectures in the Program in Technical Communication at the University of Michigan. https://davidgreenspanwriter.com

 

Family

 

Once Out of Nature

 

Joy Ladin (MFA '95) celebrates her eleventh poetry collection, Family, and third collection of creative non-fiction, Once Out of Nature: Selected Essays on the Transformation of Gender. Both are published by Persea. Ladin is a widely published essayist and poet, literary scholar, and nationally known speaker on transgender issues. https://joyladin.com/

 

Wintering Over

 

Susannah Lee’s (MFA ‘83) )Wintering Over was published by Finishing Line Press, January 2024. In Wintering Over, a small group of cloistered nuns sail from Iceland to Norway and the collection reflects Lee’s own 2022 journey at The Arctic Circle residency sailing through the Svalbard Archipelago in the High Arctic North. Susannah Lee has worked as a writer, editor, and independent producer for radio, film and print. She was a Fulbright Scholar to Portugal in Screenwriting. Her radio features have aired on Monitor Radio, NPR, WFCR, and Living on Earth. www.susannah-lee.com

 

The Wonders of the Little World

 

Bill Meissner (MFA '72) is the author of twelve books, including four books of short stories and five books of poems. His novels are Summer of Rain, Summer of Fire, and Spirits in the Grass, which won the Midwest Book Award. His newest novel, The Wonders of the Little World, from Stephen F. Austin University Press, came out in January.

 

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit

 

The Girl Who Became a Rabbit by Emilie Menzel (MFA '19) is a book-length lyric poem that pushes the limits of the prose-poetic form to explore how the body carries and shapes grief and what it means to tell a story. Rabbit was selected as the winner of the 2023 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize by Molly McCully Brown and was released in September by the Hub City Writers Project. https://www.emiliemenzel.com

 

Bodys A Bad Monster

 

Body's a Bad Monster is a harrowing exploration of trauma and freedom told in captivating poetic prose from social media sensation Rowan Perez (MFA ‘21), also known as @rid.inkskinned. In Body's a Bad Monster, our narrator shares--sometimes voluntarily, sometimes reluctantly--their voice with a dissociative state called "Mouse"; Mouse and the narrator take turns inhabiting the "body" to tell the story of three monumental relationships in the narrator's life as they unravel over time. Author Rowan Perez, a prolific and innovative writer, expertly uses non-traditional poetic devices--like a lease agreement for her dissociative voice and erasure text to intentionally refuse to engage with male voices or violence--to explore themes of religious trauma, queerness, and body dysmorphia.

 

Velocity at Rest

 

Connolly Ryan (MFA ‘90), UMass Commonwealth Honors faculty member, released his first book of poems, Velocity at Rest (Meat for Tea Press). This collection of 99 poems “leaves the reader amazed, laughing, stunned and whirled about with their incessant and jocular wordplay,” according to Paul Mariana, emeritus UMass faculty member.

 

How To Make Your Mother Cry

 

Sejal Shah (MFA '02) follows her award-winning essay collection, This Is One Way to Dance, with a debut short story collection How to Make Your Mother Cry: Fictions, published by West Virginia University Press. In the eleven linked short stories of How to Make Your Mother Cry, Shah builds a shrine gleaming with memory and myth. https://sejal-shah.com/how-to-make-your-mother-cry/

 

Plat

 

Plat by Lindsey Webb (MFA '17) is a vivid and haunting elegy facing Mormonism, suicide, and gender in the American West. Published by Archway Books, Plat was released in May 2024. Webb is a Clarence Snow Memorial Fellow and PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.  https://archwayeditions.us/plat/