ASU Book Group: ‘Crossing the Line: A Marriage across Borders’ by Linda Valdez

Crossing the Line book coverThe ASU Book Group is meeting Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2016 from 12-1 p.m. at the Piper Writers House (PWH) ASU, Tempe campus. The September 2016 reading selection of the ASU Book Group is “Crossing the Line: A Marriage across Borders” by local writer Linda Valdez. The book group is open to all in the ASU community and meets monthly from noon–1 p.m. in the Piper Writers House on ASU’s Tempe campus. Authors are generally present.

Not a typical immigration story, “Crossing the Line” is told by a middle-class American woman who falls in love with the son of an impoverished family from rural Mexico—a man who crosses the border illegally to be with her. Married in 1988, Linda and Sixto Valdez learn to love each other’s very different families and cultures, raising their child to walk proudly in both worlds. “Crossing the Line” cuts through the fears and preconceptions that fuel the continuing political turmoil over immigration. The book is available at amazon.com.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing in 2003, Linda Valdez is a columnist and editorial writer at the Arizona Republic/azcentral.com. She has written extensively about immigration and border issues. Her commentary opposing Arizona’s infamous anti-immigration laws earned her the Scripps Howard Walker Stone Award for editorial writing in 2011.

Other ASU Book Group meetings and selections for 2016-2017 include Oct. 26 (Matt Bell: “Scrapper”); Nov. 30 (Betty E. Hammer Joy: “Angela Hutchinson Hammer: Arizona’s Pioneer Newspaperwoman”); Jan. 25 (Michael Smith: “At Home with the Aztecs: An Archaeologist Uncovers Their Daily Life”); Feb. 22 (Tara Ison: “Ball”); Mar. 29 (Martin Beck Matuštík: “Out of Silence: Repair across Generations”); andApr. 26 (Melissa Pritchard: “A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write”). Additional selections TBD.

The ASU Book Group is sponsored as a community outreach initiative by the Department of English and organized in partnership with the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.

Free of charge and open to the public.

Poet Ray Gonzalez at ASU [Video]

Poet and Superstition Review contributor (Issue 3Issue 7) visited Arizona State University this semester to read assorted selections from his poetry. You can see a video of the event below.

Ray Gonzalez is the author of 10 books of poetry and three collections of essays. His poetry has appeared in the 1999, 2000, and 2003 editions of The Best American Poetry (Scribners) and The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses 2000 (Pushcart Press). He is a full-time Professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at The University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

Franz Wright Reading

It’s finally here! Tomorrow, Superstition Review and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing are hosting a reading with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright!

Franz Wright, born in Austria and educated at Oberlin College, received the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 for his book of poetry Walking to Martha’s Vineyard. Critics have praised Wright for his poetry, exclaiming that “Wright oscillates between direct and evasive dictions, between the barroom floor and the arts club podium, from aphoristic aside to icily poetic abstraction.” The Boston Review has said of Wright’s poetry; “among the most honest, haunting, and human being written today.” Other works by Wright include Wheeling Motel, God’s Silence, The Beforelife, Going North in Winter, and many others.

The reading and book signing will be held on Tuesday, April 20th at the Pima Auditorium (Room 230) in the Memorial Union at 7:30 p.m.

The following day, April 21, a public craft Q&A will be held at 11:00 a.m. at the Piper Writers House on the ASU Tempe campus.

Early Announcement for SR Reading with Franz Wright

While we’ve yet to work out the details for our first reading of the semester, we are proud to announce that we’ve recently solidified our final reading series event for Issue 5. Superstition Review is teaming up with the Piper Center for Creative Writing to present a reading with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Franz Wright.

Poet FRANZ WRIGHT
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Reading and Booksigning, 7:30 pm
Pima Auditorium (Room 230) / Memorial Union – ASU Tempe Campus
Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Public Craft Q&A, 11 a.m.
Piper Writers House – ASU Tempe Campus

I’ll announce it again as the event gets closer, but we wanted to give you plenty of time to plan ahead!

Distinguished Visiting Writers Series: Francine Prose

ASU’s Piper Center is bringing Novelist Francine Prose to ASU on March 2nd and 3rd as part of its Distinguished Visiting Writers Series.

Novelist FRANCINE PROSE
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Public Craft Q&A, 2 pm
Piper Writers House – ASU Tempe Campus
Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Reading and Booksigning, 7 pm
Phoenix Art Museum, Whiteman Hall
1625 N. Central Ave, Phoenix, AZ

Prose is the author of 14 novels and six books of nonfiction, including Household Saints, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Reading Like a Writer, a New York Times Bestseller. Her most recent works include Goldengrove: A Novel and Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. Mark your calendars for this exciting event!

Meet the Interns: Heidi Nielson, Fiction Editor

heidinielson_0Heidi Nielson is pursuing concurrent degrees in English (Creative Writing) and Journalism (Digital Journalism), as well as a minor in Music.

Superstition Review: What do you do for SR?

Heidi Nielson: As a fiction editor, I send solicitations to authors for work, as well as for interviews, read, discuss, and decide on submissions along with Riki, and conduct at least one interview with an author.

SR: How did you hear about SR?

HN: I first heard about the internship while I was interning at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, working with Hayden’s Ferry Review. Shortly thereafter, I volunteered at the Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers’ Conference at ASU and was able to attend a class on literary journals that Patricia Murphy was teaching, and met with her after the class ended. During the last issue, I helped with the blog, though I wasn’t officially an intern. I’m very excited to be an intern this semester.

SR: What is your favorite section of SR and why?

HN: As a fiction writer, I tend to gravitate toward the fiction section of any journal first. I am an avid reader, as well as a writer. I feel like I learn the most about writing fiction from reading the work of more experienced and talented writers, like those in Superstition Review.

SR: Who is your dream contributor to the journal?

HN: My dream contributor would probably be Jhumpa Lahiri. Her prose is beautiful, and I admire the way that she is able to immerse her readers in Bengali culture.

SR: What job would you like to try out?

HN: Probably blogger. I really enjoy social media and had a lot of fun when I helped with the blog during the last issue.

SR: What are you most excited for?

HN: I would say that I am most excited to just read submissions. We are writing to so many amazing writers this semester to request work.

SR: What is the first book you remember falling in love with?

HN: I think the first book I fell in love with was Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. What made that book so compelling to me as a child, I think, was that their family felt so similar to my own. I come from a family of six girls, and one boy, and the personalities of myself and the three sisters closest to me in age, always seemed so similar to the four sisters in Little Women.

SR: What are you currently reading?

HN: I’m currently reading a compilation of T.C. Boyle’s short stories, entitled simply, Stories.

SR: What are your favorite websites to distract you from homework?

HN: I noticed that most people were saying Facebook, and I can’t deny that I do check it more than once a day, but I think the website that usually distracts me from homework the most is etsy.com. It’s a website of handmade or vintage items, and I can just spend hours browsing through the thousands of items. I also get distracted by my Google Reader. I subscribe to about 50 blogs, and so I’m almost constantly reading posts.

SR: Do you write? Tell us about a project you are working on.

HN: I write fiction, mainly short stories. I have been working on revisions of two stories I wrote for my fiction class last year since the last ended, and I’m on my sixth drafts of both.

Superstition Review Reading 3

What: Superstition Review Reading 3: Featuring Carol Ann Bassett
When: Monday, November 30, 2009 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.
Where: ASU Memorial Union Building, Pima Auditorium (Room 230)

In conjunction with the ASU School of Life Sciences and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Superstition Review proudly announces its final reading of the Issue 4 Reading Series featuring renowned nonfiction writer and journalist Carol Ann Bassett. Author of three books of literary nonfiction, including her most recent release Galapagos at the Crossroads, Bassett’s work has received high acclaim, being anthologized in the American Nature Writing series. She was a regular contributor to The New York Times and Time Life Inc. and her work has appeared in such national publications as The Nation and The Los Angeles Times. Her work focuses on natural history, the environment, and traditional cultures in transition.

Spring Reading Series

Monday, March 16th Superstition Review will be hosting the first reading of its Spring Reading Series. Arizona State University Creative Writers Cynthia Hogue and Peter Turchi will share their poetry and fiction. The reading will be held in the Cooley Ballroom at the ASU Polytechnic Campus at 7:30 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The reading is generously sponsored by the Student Affairs organization at the Polytechnic Campus and is catered with organic food shares donated by the CSA. Our menu includes:

Swiss Chard Boules Stuffed w/ Chili Pepper Risotto
Roasted Vegetable Dumplings w/ Dipping Sauce
Local Orange Pico de Gallo w/ Tortilla Chips

Cynthia Hogue has published nine books, including an electronic chapbook, Under Erasure, in thedrunkenboat.com (December 2007), The Incognito Body (2006), and two co-edited editions, Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews (2006), and the first edition of H.D.’s The Sword Went Out to Sea, by Delia Alton (2007). Among her honors are an Arizona Commission on the Arts Project Grant and a MacDowell Colony Residency Fellowship, both in 2008. Professor Hogue taught in the M.F.A. program at the University of New Orleans before moving to Pennsylvania, where she directed the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University for eight years. While in Pennsylvania, she trained in conflict resolution with the Mennonites and became a trained mediator specializing in diversity issues in education. In 2003, she joined the Department of English at ASU as the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry.

Peter Turchi is the author of five books: a novel, The Girls Next Door; a collection of stories, Magician; a non-fiction account of the exploits of treasure hunter Barry Clifford, co-written with the subject; an artist’s exhibit catalog, Suburban Journals: The Sketchbooks, Drawings, and Prints of Charles Ritchie; and Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer. He has also co-edited, with Charles Baxter, Bringing the Devil to His Knees: The Craft of Fiction and the Writing Life, and, with Andrea Barrett, The Story Behind the Story: Twenty-Six Stories by Contemporary Writers and How They Work. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He has taught at Northwestern University, Appalachian State, and the University of Houston, and for 15 years he directed and taught in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. He now teaches and is Director of Creative Writing and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University.

Join us Monday, March 16th to see these talented writers present their original work. I personally have found the readings not only enjoyable and enlightening, but inspirational to my own work as a writer. I have found few experiences to be as motivational as attending a live reading with contemporary authors. The readings have grown increasingly popular over the past year since the magazine first began the series, and our upcoming reading looks to be our most popular to date. We here at Superstition Review are excited to have such respected authors representing the magazine. We look forward to seeing you all there.

written by Alisha Allston

Others of Significance

virgina g. piper writers house
Virginia G. Piper’s Writers House on Tempe Campus is among the main writing hubs of Arizona State University.

As you may have noticed, our blogroll has just been updated. If not, take a look to the side of this column and observe our two links to other Arizona State University publications, Hayden’s Ferry Review and Lux Undergraduate Creative Review. As one of the largest schools in the United States, we are also lucky to have such a diverse and spanning writing climate between these three publications. Each of our fellow publications inhabits a different niche, and we here at Superstition Review encourage you to check them out.

While Superstition Review is a national literary publication, Hayden’s Ferry Review has expanded to an international scope. They accept works not only from locally based creative individuals, but also from writers abroad and digital recordings, with a specialty section devoted to works in non-English languages and their translations. Hayden’s Ferry Review releases two issues a year, much like our own Review, and their next submission deadline is Februrary 28th, 2009. Their current issue is themed on the grotesque, and may contain sensitive topics.

Lux Undergraduate Creative Review is a publication specializing on the works of undergraduate students at Arizona State University (like myself). Lux accepts exclusively the written works of ASU students from all campuses, as well as music and art. If you are an ASU undergraduate student, you are invited to submit your work–but be sure to do so soon, as Lux‘s next submission deadline is October 26th, 2008. Lux is published once a year, every spring. Especially unique to Lux are their contests, their last one having specialized in flash fiction.

Reading Series Today!

Picture of Arizona Desert

We hope that you all remembered to mark you calendars for today’s amazing Superstition Review reading series featuring ASU Virginia G. Piper Center Creative Writers Charles Jensen, Beth Staples, Aimee Baker, Matthew Brennan, and Marqueshia Wilson.

The reading will be held today at 2 p.m. on the ASU Polytechnic campus in Cooley Ballroom B. To view directions to the Polytechnic campus, please click here.

Feel free to visit the Virginia G. Piper Center website to learn more about what they do, and please click on the names above to learn a little more about each writer. To learn about future readings sponsored by Superstition Review, please click here.

Hope to see you there!