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Britt Kaufmann, Belonging, a poetry chapbook
September 27, 2010Britt Kaufmann’s (GC ’96) chapbook Belonging was named a semi-finalist in Finishing Line Press’s most recent New Women’s Voices Series contest and will be published this winter. The collection loosely chronicles her upbringing in Mennonite Goshen and her move to the mountains of Western North Carolina. Her poetry has been published in The Mennonite, Western North Carolina Woman, Now & Then: The Appalachian Magazine, Main Street Rag, and LiteraryMama.com among others. She serves on the planning committee for the annual Carolina Mountains Literary Festival held in her hometown of Burnsville, North Carolina, where she lives with her husband Chad Smoker …
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Sandra Birdsell's latest novel, Waiting for Joe
September 26, 2010Random House Canada has just released Sandra Birdsell's latest novel, Waiting for Joe.
Its premise is a highly appropriate one for our stressed economic times:
After you've lost it all— job, house, savings, future—what have you got left? A piercing new novel of our times by one of Canada's finest fiction writers.
On a chilly early morning in late spring, Joe Beaudry and his wife, Laurie, wake up in circumstances that would challenge saints: they are on the lam in a stolen motorhome on the edge of a Walmart parking lot in Regina, Saskatchewan. They've gone bust, spectacularly: lost the … -
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Carla Funk's new poetry collection, Apologetic
September 26, 2010Turnstone Press has just released Carla Funk's Apologetic.
Capturing moments in time and nature, Carla Funk’s poems bring the world to a momentary standstill. Funk translates vivid descriptions and feeling into her poems, both testing and playing with traditional poetic experiences.
Apologetic’s poems experiment with expressing thoughts and emotions in formal poetic traditions, confining words to metrical lines or rhyme schemes. Many deal with the natural world, moments in time spent outdoors, in gardens, and capturing fleeting impressions in the human experience. Playing with form and content, Funk evokes the idea of a flesh-and-bones body (the poetic structure) carrying a …
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New Poetry Book from Di Brandt -- Walking to Mojacar
September 22, 2010Di Brandt's newest book of poetry, Walking to Mojacar, will be published in Canada by Turnstone Press this fall. In October Brandt will tour Winnipeg, Calgary and Toronto.
Reviewers' comments about Walking to Mojacar:
Di Brandt has surpassed herself in this extraordinary book, which hurls itself upon our desperate environmental, emotional, spiritual condition with fury and eloquence and headlong grace. The sequence “Hymns for Detroit,” which sets German hymns the poet heard in her Mennonite farming childhood against “trans(e)lations” for that most damaged city, could make the angels weep. Everywhere,Walking to Mojacar makes us know how far we have gone … -
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EMU Crossroads focuses on Literature
September 21, 2010The Summer 2010 issues of Eastern Mennonite University's Crossroads Magazine focuses on Mennonite Writers and publishers who are alumnae of that institution. To view the issue on line, go to
http://issuu.com/easternmennoniteuniversity/docs/crossroads-summer-2010
The issue includes poems by such writers at Debra Gingerich and Juanita Brunk, along with excerpts and articles by Kirsten Eve Beachy, Omar Eby, Merle Good, Valerie Weaver-Zercher and others.
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New novel by Omar Eby, Mill Creek, just published
September 21, 2010A new novel published by Omar Eby, Mill Creek, is set in Lancaster County in the 1950s.
"Mill Creek tells the story of the age-old struggle of an adolescent's attempts to understand himself and his world. Peter Martin, the brainy, shy, farm-boy narrator, pious beyond his years, fights a private war: whether to remain with his strict farm people or whether to embrace his best friend's anarchic approach to Mennonite life. . . An almost amorous friendship, the threat of the draft (Korean War), the lure of art, a pregnancy and a tragic drowning aid Peter to make compromising moves … -
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David Bergen makes Giller Prize Long List
September 20, 2010The Canadian Press
David Bergen has made the long list for the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize.(Thomas Fricke/McClelland & Stewart)
For someone whose novels have been described as "downbeat," "grim" and "moodily existential," Winnipeg author David Bergen is surprisingly light-hearted when discussing his latest work of fiction,The Matter with Morris.
On the phone from his home in Winnipeg, Bergen laughs easily and answers just about anything thrown his way. He had even more reason to cheer Monday when the book was shortlisted for the $50,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, an award the author won in 2005 for his …
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Tongue Screws and Testimonies--release reading!
September 18, 20107:30 Thursday, November 18: A release reading for Tongue Screws and Testimonies will take place in Harrisonburg, Va. Eastern Mennonite University’s Martin Chapel, hosted by the department of Language and Literature.
Tongue Screws and Testimonies: Poems, Stories and Essays, edited by Kirsten Beachy, will be published by Herald Press in early December, though rumor has it that the books are ahead of schedule. Contributors include a long list of Mennonite writers from Di Brandt and Rhoda Janzen to Julia Kasdorf and Rudy Wiebe.
For the publisher's website about the book see: http://store.mpn.net/productdetails.cfm?PC=1501
For information on the editor and a list …
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Jeff Gundy is Image Artist of the Month
August 12, 2010Jeff Gundy, featured poet in the current issue of the CMW Journal (see our home page), is the Image "Artist of the Month." See this link for details on Image Update:
http://imagejournal.org/page/artist-of-the-month/jeff-gundy-2
From the article: [Gundy's] poetry and essays are rooted in the Mennonite tradition, which he credits with giving him “the sense that things outside of my pathetic life matter, and that I ought to think about my own problems and ambitions in the context of something much larger.” From these roots he draws both a sense of humility and a prophetic impulse—forces that hold each other in …
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Todd Davis on Poetry Daily
July 30, 2010Poetry Daily will feature poems by Todd Davis on August 3 and August 10.
On August 3rd, in their "features" section, they will be featuring "The Girl Who Taught a Chicken to Walk Backwards," as part of a highlight for the 60th anniversary issue of Shenandoah.On August 10th they will feature "None of This Could Be Metaphor" as the daily poem while highlighting The Least of These, Davis's most recent collection, published by Michigan State University Press.
Check it out at http://poems.com