Creative writing alumni Caitlin Horrocks & W. Todd Kaneko visit ASU

Thursday, Nov. 19, 2020 @ 7:00 p.m. (AZ/MST)  |  Online

Register: https://asu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMscO6urjstGd1dAZcjygFWu5cFf47IXAe1

The Creative Writing Program in the Department of English at ASU presents a virtual reading by two of its star graduates: fiction writer Caitlin Horrocks (MFA 2007) and poet W. Todd Kaneko (MFA 2006). The event takes place on Thursday, November 19, 2020 at 7 p.m. AZ/MST (6 p.m. PST / 8 p.m. CST / 9 p.m. EST). A link to attend will be provided after registration.

About the authors

Caitlin Horrocks is author of the novel The Vexations, named one of the 10 best books of 2019 by the Wall Street Journal, and the story collections Life Among the Terranauts (forthcoming January 2021) and This is Not Your City. Her stories and essays appear in The New YorkerThe Best American Short Stories, The PEN/O. Henry Prize StoriesThe Pushcart Prize, The Paris Review, Tin HouseOne Story and elsewhere. She teaches at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. 

W. Todd Kaneko is the author of This Is How the Bone Sings (Black Lawrence Press, 2020) and The Dead Wrestler Elegies, 2nd Edition (New Michigan Press, 2021), and co-author of Slash / Slash (Diode Editions, 2021) and Poetry: A Writers’ Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). His poetry and prose have appeared in PoetryAlaskan Quarterly ReviewThe Normal SchoolBarrelhouseBest Small Fictions, and many other places. A Kundiman fellow, he is an associate professor of writing at Grand Valley State University and lives with his family in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Register: https://asu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMscO6urjstGd1dAZcjygFWu5cFf47IXAe1

More information: Justin Petropoulos, Justin.Petropoulos@asu.edu

Virtual Reading Featuring S[r] Contributor

Don’t miss this week’s installment of the Fire Hydrant Reading Series! It will feature readings from past Superstition Review Contributor, Thomas Legendre, and Fire Hydrant Reading Series co-creator, Kristi Carter.

This free and virtual event will take place this Wednesday, August 13th at 12pm Central Time and will last about 30 minutes. It will take place over Zoom at this link or Meeting ID 972 9633 0154. The event passcode is 081320.  

Read more about Thomas Legendre here and watch past installments of the Fire Hydrant Reading Series here.

#ArtLitPhx: MFA Student Reading Series: Kalani Pickhart, Elliot Winter, Tucker Leighty-Philips

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Date: February 7, 2019
Time: 8:00 p.m., come early to grab a drink or snack and mingle!
Location: The Social Hall (715 S McClintock Dr) Tempe, AZ

Event Description:
Calling all lovers of poetry and prose! Join English’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program for the first semester of a special 8-part reading series featuring brand new work from ASU graduate students. Each reading will highlight two to three students at The Social Hall, a new destination bar and restaurant in Tempe. Do yourself a favor and support the arts by taking a night off to enjoy some of the best work our community is producing.

Featured Readers for this Date:
Kalani Pickhart, fiction
Elliot Winter, poetry
Tucker Leighty-Philips, fiction

Contributor Update: Alison Hawthorne Deming

Hello everybody! Today, we here at Superstition Review are thrilled to announce that past contributor Alison Hawthorne Deming, who read for us back in April of 2011, has just been named Regents’ Professor at the University of Arizona, by the Arizona Board of Regents. To be named a Regents’ Professor is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a faculty member in the university system, and we can think of none more deserving than Alison Hawthorne Deming. You can read the full press release here, and if you’re interested in Alison’s work, check out her most recent publications: a new book of poetry titled”Stairway to Heaven,” out now from Penguin (found here), and her collaboration with photographer Stephen Strom, titled “Death Valley: Painted Light” (found here). Congratulations to Alison and the University of Arizona!

Congratulations!
Past contributor for Superstition Review and newly named Regents’ Professor Alison Hawthorne Deming.

#ArtLitPhx: Caffeine Corridor Poetry feat. Matt Hart & Jeff Sirkin

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The Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series featuring poets Matt Hart and Jeff Sirkin, takes place on Friday, November 11, at {9} The Gallery. This event is hosted by Bill Campana, Jack Evans, and Shawnee Orion in partnership with Four Chambers Press. {9} The Gallery is located on 1229 Grand Ave. Phoenix AZ, 85007. The event is free and open to the public.

Matt Hart is the author of several books of poems, including Sermons and Lectures Both Blank and Relentless (Typecast Publishing, 2012), Debacle Debacle (H_NGM_N Books, 2013), and Radiant Action (H_NGM_N Books, 2016). Hart’s poems, reviews, and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in numerous print and online journals, including The Academy of American Poets online, Big Bell, Cincinnati Review, Coldfront, Columbia Poetry Review, H_NGM_N, Harvard Review, Jam Tarts Magazine, jubilat, Kenyon Review online, Lungfull!, and POETRY, among others. His awards include a Pushcart Prize, a 2013 individual artist grant from The Shifting Foundation, and fellowships from both the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. A co-founder and the editor-in- chief of Forklift, Ohio: A Journal of Poetry, Cooking & Light Industrial Safety, he lives in Cincinnati where he is Associate Professor in Creative Writing and the Chair of Liberal Arts at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. He plays guitar and shouts in the bands TRAVEL and THE LOUDEST SOUNDER.

Jeff Sirkin grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and he is the author of the poetry collection Travelers Aid Society (Veliz Books 2016). In addition to poetry, he writes on popular music and literature. His work has appeared in Mandorla; Forklift, Ohio; Puerto del Sol, the Volta and elsewhere. Co-editor of the web journal A DOZEN NOTHING, he currently teaches in the Creative Writing Department at the University of Texas, El Paso, where he also co-curates the Dishonest Mailman Reading Series.

For more information, please visit the Facebook event.

#ArtLitPhx: Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series feat. John Spaulding

Corridor Series-John

The Caffeine Corridor Poetry Series featuring poet John Spaulding takes place on Friday, October 14, at 9 The Gallery. Open mic starts at 7 p.m. and sign up starts at 6:45 p.m. This event is hosted by Bill Campana, Jack Evans, and Shawnte Orion. 9 The Gallery is located on 1229 Grand Ave. Phoenix AZ, 85007. The event is free.

John Spaulding’s work has appeared in nearly fifty periodicals, including The Atlantic, Rattle, Nimrod, Poetry, Prairie Schooner, APR, The Iowa Review, The Canadian Forum, Boston Review, The Southern Review, Hunger Mountain, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other places. His four published poetry titles include The White Train (Louisiana State University Press), The Roses of Starvation (Riverstone), Hospital (Finishing Line Press) and Walking in Stone Wesleyan). He was awarded the first Norma Millay Fellowship, and has been a Walt Whitman Award finalist, as well as a winner of the National Poetry Series. His book Hospital was selected by the Arizona Daily Star as one of the best books of 2012 by a southwestern author. John’s articles, “Poetry and the Media” and “The Popularity of Poetry,” appeared in the Journal of Popular Culture and Popular Culture Review, respectively. John is also the editor of a culinary history, Civil War Recipes, published by the University Press of Kentucky. After serving as a psychologist with the Indian Health Service for twenty years, he is now teaching writing at Pima Community College in Tucson, Arizona.

For more information you can visit the Facebook event.

#ArtLitPhx: Anne Heintz at the Uptown PEN

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The Uptown PEN is a monthly open mic and reading series hosted by Four Chambers. The series aims to showcase the work of local authors and it also brings a monthly featured author. Local authors can bring poetry, flash fiction, or any other pieces. The open mic lasts around an hour (first come, first serve) and with a half hour for the featured author. To be featured, please e-mail: fourchamberspress@gmail.com.

Anne Heintz is a native Arizonan who likes to write about teaching and teach about writing. She represented the US at an international playwriting festival for young artists called Interplay, held in Townsville, Australia. Her most recent academic scholarship may be found in the Springer Handbook for Digital Learning in K-12 Schools. She is the co-author of two practitioner volumes for teachers, published by Guilford Press and Teachers College Press. Her fiction piece, Not Exacta, was featured at Spillers, a performance art event showcasing Arizona writers. She has short fiction appearing in Four Chambers 04. She is currently working on a musical about teachers.

The event takes place Tuesday, October 11th, 2016, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Practical Art. 5070 N Central Ave, 85012 Phoenix. For more information, visit the Facebook event.

#ArtLitPhx: MFA Reading Series – Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy

MFA Reading Series - ASUPoets Sarah Vap, Dexter L. Booth, and Patricia Colleen Murphy will read from their recent work at Hayden Library on the Tempe Campus as part of the MFA Alumni Reading Series, presented by ASU’s Creative Writing Program. The event takes place on Thursday, September 22nd. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the reading begins at 7:00 p.m. A book signing and reception with light refreshments will follow the reading.

Sarah Vap received her MFA from Arizona State University. Vap is the author of six collections of poetry. Her most recent book, Viability, was selected by Mary Jo Bang for the National Poetry Series, and was released by Penguin in 2016.

Dexter L. Booth earned an MFA in creative writing from Arizona State University. His collection Scratching the Ghost was selected by Major Jackson for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize.

Patricia Colleen Murphy, a graduate of ASU’s MFA Program in Creative Writing, founded Superstition Review at Arizona State University, where she teaches creative writing and magazine production. Her collection, Hemming Flames, was selected by Stephen Dunn for the May Swenson Poetry Award.

The event is free of charge and is open to the public. For more information please visit the ASU page and/or the Facebook event.

s[r] Goodreads #FridayReads

This week on Goodreads.com, Superstition Review‘s Poetry Editor, Abner Porzio, reviewed two of his latest reads.

Or ConsequenceOr Consequence, by Cynthia Hogue.

Of utmost brilliance, Hogue’s collection of poems compels readers to journey forth and contemplate histories, causation, and unanswerable questions. Life’s grounding complexities and the boundaries of conscience are sewn together by the delicate and strong mindful poet. The mastery over focal points, techniques of blurring and redefining panoramas of place and time, string both universal and modern truths to the humanity that has been reconnected or what has been left naturally incomplete. Tragedies are shown as temporal, and yet, they are devastating events to be acknowledged collectively as part of the human experience. Pain is the human denominator. Suffering gets transmuted through hearable voices. Governing dynamics test the limits of the spirit when unanswerable histories and body experiences are questioned for their causation. Struggle for understanding exists in being stuck contemplating in-between past and present, causes and effects.

The poetry asks readers to be reminded of the constraint of the ‘element being’ grounded in a body. Hogue’s poems have exquisite profound gifts of sounds, which add elegant depths of resonance. Hogue’s sensitivity to how semantics and pragmatics choose the idiosyncratic communications simply honors natural languages as persistent and being capable of uncovering the inexistent. The acute articulation of linguistic expressions ranges beyond the comprised syntax with powerful erasures and silencing strikethroughs. Genius at metaphor, actions are of most significance.

Some lines that I enjoyed:

“I go in circles circles circles/ the first says, though I wish/ to cut the water like wings slice air.”

“Who can say no to such mayhem?”

“Looking could not make meaning.”

 

Some Nights No Cars at AllSome Nights No Cars at All, by Josh Rathkamp.

An immediate must read. Rathkamp’s collection of poems travel the mind inward to the perplex phenomenon of the familiar place, while travelling alongside each of the speakers’ trusty precise observances. These locations are where mere destinations only get furthered for the better; for they allow readers to arrive at their own active insightfulness and rediscoveries. Over and over again, his invaluable poetics carry each read to real heights of ambivalence. Truths, majestic assumptions, and understandings of what it means to be human are of interest. Physical and emotional manifestations of human imperfections have literal transparencies. The absence, loss, and the theme of emptiness countered the implications of the refilling notions of transient place.

Rathkamp’s verses are saturated with specific visual details. These inquiries of the present, past, and future moments, which are grounded in place, show ambivalence in all its nuances. All the ambiguities of separation, the humanistic postured reinterpretation of ambivalence explore the thought processes of being caught between making it work and giving up on the union. Struggle coincides with the flutter of melding conclusions, which hold the blueprints of these possibilities for an anxiety-free existence intact. Holistically, the poetic viewpoint renders points of transpiration life before these moments further change.

Some lines that I enjoyed:

“And again I am finding ways/ to clean the mess I made,/ rationalizing their nest to fallen twigs/ wound with mud and fishing line,/ the simple possibility of making another.”

“We were what we wanted.”

“We grew into speaking without words.”

“Sometimes what we think is soaring is actually/ a hell of a lot of work.”

Alison Hawthorne Deming Reading Wrap-Up: Myths, Rope and Dog Tags

Deming reading from her manuscript ZOOLOGIES.

Last Wednesday at ASU’s Tempe campus, Superstition Review held the latest event in its reading series with poet, author and educator, Alison Hawthorne Deming. She read a selection of poems from her latest book Rope. She also read a few short prose pieces from her manuscript ZOOLOGIES.

Students, colleagues and friends gathered in the Education Lecture Hall and after a few words from Superstition Review founding editor Patricia Murphy, and a brief introduction from Professor Joni Adamson, Deming took the podium and she read from her writings about the importance of dog tags, modern day Greek myths and finding salty, sea soaked rope on the coast. After the reading and applause she took time to sign copies of her books and speak to colleagues and friends.

Superstition Review staff and interns would like to thank everyone who attended the reading and we would like to extend a special thanks to Alison Hawthorne Deming for coming in to town and sharing her wonderful work with us.

Patricia Murphy discuss the upcoming launch of Issue 7.

Alison signs books.