Contributor Update, Sara Sams

Join Superstition Review in congratulating one of our past faculty advisors, Sara Sams, on her forthcoming book, Atom City, out May 14th. Atom City is a collection of poems exploring the topic of the atomic bomb and The Manhattan Project’s creation of the city Oak Ridge. Inspired by historian Peter Bacon Hales’ Atomic Spaces, Sara’s work takes the perspective of an observer contemplating and witnessing such concepts as, “the rhetoric of the Manhattan Engineering District, the militarization of scientific conversations, the mythologized stories of the local residents of Oak Ridge Valley before it was condemned, the use of such myths to underscore the morality of the bomb, current exhibits at the American Museum of Science and Energy, [her] own family’s participation in the Project and the stories they’ve hot-potato’d since, the atomification of so much of [her] hometown (including [her] high school’s logo), and so on.”

“Sara Sams’ Atom City shows us what violence and invisible interiority and tenderness is at the core of the American Hometown.

Sarah Vap, author of Viability

Click here to pre-order Atom City. Be sure to also check out Sara’s website and Twitter, as well as, Issue 22, in which she helped create and advised on.

#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.