On Thursday, March 23, at 7:00 PM, the Creative Writing Program at ASU presents a reading by Bojan Louis and Sara Sams.
Bojan Louis is Diné of the Naakai dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. He’s written a variety of poetry and fiction, published in Alaska Quarterly, Ecotone, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. He’s published two books: Sinking Bell: Stories and Currents, which received an American Book Award. To learn more, visit his website.
Sara Sams is a writer and translator from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She’s written a variety of poetry and nonfiction in Blackbird, Now and Then, Waxwing, and elsewhere. She’s published Atom City, her fist book of poems. To learn more, visit her website.
Read Bojan Louis’s interview in Issue 20 of Superstition Review.
Sara Sams advised on and helped to create Issue 22 of Superstition Review.
This event is free and open to the public! To learn more and register, go here.
Do you have a great writing workspace? Share a picture of the space that allows your creativity to flow to win an exclusive Superstition Review mug! Messy, orderly, or out of the ordinary workspaces are all invited to apply. To do so:
The contest will run from March 25th to April 3rd. We look forward to seeing all of the creative workspaces where masterpieces are born! You can view entries from our previous Workspace contests here.
Richard Shelton, 1970 | Photo credit: LaVerne Harrell Clark
On Saturday, March 4th, from 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm, the University of Arizona Poetry Center will be celebrating the life of Richard Shelton, renowned poet, memoirist, and activist. He wrote 11 books of poetry and established a writers workshop in the Arizona State Prison at Florence. He was also an emeritus Regents Professor of Creative Writing and a founding faculty member of the University of Arizona MFA Program in Creative Writing.
This event is free, open to the public, and available online. To learn more, go here.
An interview with Richard Shelton appeared in Issue 10 of Superstition Review.
On Friday, March 3rd, at 6:30 pm, join best-selling authors Andrew Greer and Amanda Ward at the Changing Hands Bookstore in Phoenix. There, they will be discussing their creative journeys, their writing, and their friendship. This event is free and open to the public. To learn more and register, go here.
Amanda Eyre Ward lives in Austin, TX. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Sleep Toward Heaven, How to Be Lost, Love Stories in This Town, Forgive Me, Close Your Eyes, The Same Sky, The Nearness of You, The Jetsetters, and The Lifeguards. An interview with Amanda Eyre Ward was published in Issue 7 of Superstition Review.
Andrew Sean Greer is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of seven works of fiction, including The Confessions of Max Tivoli and Lessis Lost. He lives in San Fransisco and Milan. An interview with Andrew Sean Greer was published in Issue 15 of Superstition Review.
Join the Young Authors’ Studio’s Writing Retreat this Saturday, February 18, at ASU’s Polytechnic Campus! This event is free and open to everyone of all ages. Beginning at 9:30am, Dr. Wendy Williams will lead attendees through nine YA books to spark their creativity. Then, attendees will have the option of choosing three breakout writing sessions from 10:30am to 12:00pm. After, there’s lunch and spoken-word poetry.
This event has free parking, free pizza, and b00k giveaways! To learn more and register, go here.
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf (Ig Publishing, 2023)
Join award-winning author Tara Ison at the following bookstore events! There, she will be discussing At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf, her new novel set in World War II France. Centered around Danielle, a Parisian Jewish girl who’s gone into hiding as a Catholic orphan, this book reveals how some lies can grow so large, we deceive even ourselves.
February 22 – Washington DC – Politics and Prose, in convo with Susan Kelesinko Coll, 7 pm
February 24 – Los Angeles – Vroman’s Pasadena, in convo with David L. Ulin, 7 pm
February 25 – San Francisco – Book Passage, Ferry Building, in convo with Meredith Hall, 3 pm
March 2 – Phoenix – Changing Hands, Phoenix, in convo with Devoney Looser, 6 pm
March 9 – Boston – Brookline Booksmith, in convo with Doug Bauer, 7 pm
March 16 – Flagstaff – Brightside Books, in convo with Nicole Walker, 6 pm
March 22 – Chicago – International House at University of Chicago, 6 pm
A Jewish girl comes of age in Vichy France, relentlessly deformed by the spiritual rot of her era… Ison is unflinching in her depiction of the self-inflicted corruption that replaces the character’s moral core with a twisted version of Christianity, brilliantly illustrating the epigraph from Solzhenitsyn: ‘To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.’…Free of sentiment but not without hope of redemption, this is a suspenseful and chilling story.
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Tara Ison is the author of The List (Scribner), A Child out of Alcatraz (Faber & Faber, Inc.), a Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Rockaway (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press), featured as one of the “Best Books of Summer” in O, The Oprah Magazine, July 2013. Her essay collection, Reeling Through Life: How I Learned to Live, Love, and Die at the Movies, was the Winner of the PEN Southwest Book Award for Best Creative Nonfiction. She earned her MFA in Fiction & Literature from Bennington College and has taught creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis, Northwestern University, Ohio State University, Goddard College, Antioch University Los Angeles, and UC Riverside Palm Desert. She is currently Professor of Fiction at Arizona State University. To learn more, visit her website.
Superstition Review is also pleased to announce an upcoming interview with Tara Ison about At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf.
At the Hour Between Dog and Wolf will be released February 21st. To pre-order it, go here.
On February 11th, this Saturday, Tom Leveen will be leading a workshop about crafting a novel. Mainly a young adult horror author, Leveen has written nine books and won a variety of awards: ALA/YALSA Best Book of 2013, the Westchester Fiction Award, the Grand Canyon Reader Award, and others.
The Young Author’s Studio, which is hosting this event, works to support literacy education through community outreach of various kinds: writing institutes, Sparky Slam competitions, Open Door sessions, online writing workshops, and an online journal.
This workshop is geared especially toward teachers and writers of young adult fiction, although it’s open to anyone who’s interested. To learn more and register for this free event, click here.
Photos from right to left: Ferruginous Pygmy-Owl by Charles Murphy; Western Screech-Owl by Ken Shultz; Burrowing Owl by Lindsay Diehl
Audubon Southwest has partnered with AZ Wilderness Brewing Company and Liberty Wildlife to bring a new beer on “Thirstday,” February 9th, which will lead into a contest where participants decide who is Arizona’s superb owl. Audubon Southwest is the Arizona branch of the National Audubon Society, an organization dedicated to protecting birds and educating the public. This will be the first time the Center has hosted its Birds & Beer event in-person since the pandemic began. This edition of Birds & Beer is titled Superb Owl. AZ Wilderness’ new “Superb Owl” beer can be tasted at the event, and live owls will be shown.
Superb Owl will take place on February 9th, 2023, from 5:30 PM to 8 PM. Admission is free and no advanced reservation is required. Please note that beer and soft drinks will still be on sale, however. Voting for which owl is superb began on January 24th. It will be located in the Rio Salado Audubon Center at the following address:
3131 S. Central Ave. Phoenix, AZ 85040
Liberty Wildlife will bring the live owls, and Mexican Spotted Owl biologist Amanda Moors will talk about her work as a guest speaker. Even Woodsy Owl will be there!
More information about this event can be found here. Click here to RSVP. You can also scan the QR code below to learn more about event registration and voting in the contest.
Join ASU’s TomorrowTalks with Jemele Hill on Thursday, January 26th, at 6pm AZ time. TomorrowTalks is a student-engagement initiative meant to put students in conversation with authors, who explain how they use their writing to address society’s most pressing issues. It’s led by the Division of Humanities at ASU and hosted by ASU’s Department of English in partnership with Macmillan Publishers.
This event takes place over Zoom and is free, although registration is required. Hill will be discussing her memoir Uphill, published by Henry Holt and Co. One of Oprah Daily’s Best Fall Nonfiction Books of 2022, Uphill is a bold, unflinching look at Hill’s life and her battle to overcome intergenerational trauma. Hill forges a new path with truth and confidence, rising to find her voice and speak to the world.
Jemele Hill’s commitment to truth telling is unparalleled. Whether she is exposing white supremacy or being radically transparent about her own history, Jemele’s resolve remains steadfast. She makes you want to lean in and listen, but more importantly, she encourages us all to use our voices to tell necessary, hard truths.
Gabrielle Union, New York Times bestselling author of We’re Going to Need More Wine and You Got Anything Stronger?
Jemele Hill is currently a contributor for the Atlantic, where she writes about the intersection of culture, politics, race, and sports. She was an Emmy-Award winning cohost of ESPN and was 2018 NABJ Journalist of the Year.
Hill is relentless but fair, and she is equally comfortable parsing out instances of institutional racism and admitting to her own mistakes. She balances humor, vulnerability, and passion, creating a text that is both exciting and emotionally satisfying.
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To learn more about TomorrowTalks and register for the event, go here.
In just two days, Issue 30 of Superstition Review will launch! On Dec. 1st, readers will have access to paintings, photography, and more—all created by five talented artists: Corey S. Pressman, Jenny Wu, RAEchel Running, Shirin Mellat Gohar, and Valyntina Grenier. Read about all of them below!
Corey S. Pressman is an artist, writer, and teacher living in the Pacific Northwest. His art is shown around the country and has won several awards. He has published academic works as well as short stories and poetry in both journals and book collections including Gastronomica, the Clackamas Literary Review, Lucky Jefferson Magazine, and Arizona State University Press.
Jenny Wu is an artist and educator. She is a visiting assistant professor at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. Wu’s work acknowledges the sensational and perceptual properties of materiality and then transforms the materials from their original forms and purpose to present them within new contexts. Her work has been exhibited in galleries and museums including Denise Bibro Fine Art, Katzen Museum, Huntington Museum of Art, Vilnius Academy of Arts in Lithuania, and CICA Museum in South Korea. Jenny Wu was born in Nanjing, China. She holds a B.A. from William Smith College, and an M.F.A. from American University.
RAEchel Running (She/Her) is a visual storyteller, creating multi-media images that explore and champion restorative relationships of the diverse cultures connected to these beautiful, tragic and mystical histories of the Americas. Born in Flagstaff, AZ, of Trinidadian (Chinese and Afro Caribbean) American (French Canadian and Swedish) She hangs her hat in Bisbee, AZ. Her current work cross-pollinates a documentarian’s eye with handmade and digital photo illustrations, mixing the interspace between reality and dream. Internationally published, she enjoys fostering visual literacy and planet stewardship to inspire and enrich restorative relationships within communities for upcoming generations.
Shirin Mellat Gohar is a visual artist based in Tehran, Iran. She received her BFA from the Tehran University of Art. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions, nationally and internationally, such as Sugar Gallery, USA; Naregatsi Gallery, Armenia; as well as Aaran Gallery, Homa Gallery, First Painting Symposium in Museum of Qasr, and First Drawing Biennial in Iran. Shirin, with a hybrid national identity (Iranian-Iraqi), grew up within Iranian society during Iran-Iraq the war. Working primarily with painting and drawing, she addresses her dual identity through employing domestic crafts, which she learned from her mother at a very young age.
Valyntina Grenier is a multi-genre eco artist living with her wife in Tucson, AZ. She works with paint, ink, neon, encaustic medium, recycled or repurposed materials and words. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Fever Dream/ Take Heart (Cathexis Northwest Press 2020) and In Our Now (Finishing Line Press 2022). You’ll find her work in, Impermanent Earth, The Impossible Beast, The Journal, Lana Turner, The Night Heron Barks, Querencia, Ran Off With the Star Bassoon, Sunspot, and The Wardrobe. Find her at valyntinagrenier.com or Insta @valyntinagrenier.
