a story by past participant Dawn Promislow

A newly published story by Dawn Promislow, SLS 09 participant, set in Vilnus.

Enjoy.

Maple Tree Literary Supplement.

More from the World of Friends of SLS

Kevin Canty’s Everything in the New Yorker

SLS Montreal reader/moderator/community liaison Ian Orti reviewed in The Globe and Mail

Chuck Klosterman catches up with Bill Simmons on the BS Report

Matvei Yankelevich Interview

Good friend of SLS, and former SLS Russia adjunct faculty member Matvei Yankelevich pops up in an engaging interview on Largehearted Boy.  The founder of Ugly Duckling Presse, Kharms scholar, and talented poet and translator is intriguing as always. Read the interview here.

EMILIE STAAT

Former SLS-St. Petersburg participant Emilie Staat writes:

Hi SLS,

I wish I could attend the New York reunion and that I had more concrete news to share about my book, but for the moment:

Emilie Staat is astonished daily that she’s a freelance writer in New Orleans. She’s finishing the third draft of her novel, The Winter Circus, the first draft of which was workshopped in SLS’s St. Petersburg, Russia program in 2007. She blogs about life, writing and New Orleans at: http://emiliestaat.wordpress.com/

Thanks,
Emilie

ANNE SORBIE

Anne Sorbie (SLS-St. Petersburg-’06) writes from Calgary, AB:

Greetings SLS friends!

I’m writing to let you know that y first novel, “Memoir of a Good Death,” is forthcoming with Thistledown Press in September 2010.

Best wishes for a great reunion in NYC!

Our congratulations!

 

KEVIN CRAIG’S KENYA BLOG

Kevin Craig, SLS-Kenya-’09 participant, has started a blog dedicated to his time in the country, both in and outside the SLS context: What Happened in Kenya. So far, vivid and interesting. Check it out:

 http://happenedinkenya.wordpress.com/2010/02/03/young-lion-on-safari-masai-mara-kenya-dec-11-2009/

A FEW MORE LITHUANIA PHOTOS

A few more black-and-white Lithuania photos by SLS’s Julia Blaukopf:

LITHUANIA PHOTOS

Several among the great many photographs taken by SLS-Lithuania participant, the writer, artist and photographer Julia Blaukopf <www.juliablaukopf.com>:

J. MAE BARIZO, CLAUDIA CORTESE, MARIE PONSOT, AND NICK THRAN READING

Former SLS-St. Petersburg participant, J. Mae Barizo, will be reading  at Cornelia Street Cafe in Manhattan on January 27th, along with the great Marie Ponsot and the very talented Claudia Cortese and Nick Thran. YT would strongly encourage those in the large NYC area to attend: one would be foolish not to, frankly, in the absence of an abiding reason to the contrary. In addition to being an exceptionally evocative, powerful and vivid poet — whose work had fairly leapt out at the SLS-Contest readers some few years ago and has of late been drawing an ever-wider measure of well-deserved attention – J. Mae is a highly accomplished, international-level music performer… and just a warm and very smart human being.  

Here are the particulars:

Marie Ponsot
J. Mae Barizo
Claudia Cortese
&
Nick Thran

Where: Cornelia Street Café
When: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010, 6pm
$7 admission gets you one free drink!
 

 Marie Ponsot is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Bird Catcher (1998), a finalist for the 1999 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Springing: New and Selected Poems (2002), which was named a “notable book of the year” by The New York Times Book Review.  Among her awards are a creative writing grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Prize, The Robert Frost Poetry Award, and the Shaughnessy Medal of the Modern Language Association.

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo was shortlisted for Canada’s Robert Kroetsch award for Innovative Poetry and Ahsahta Press’s Sawtooth Poetry Prize.  Her work has appeared in Baltimore Review, Bellingham Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Atlanta Review, among others. She is the author “The Concert Review” and “The Marble Palace.”

Nick Thran is the author of one poetry collection, Every Inadequate Name (Insomniac Press, 2006). A second collection, Earworm, will appear in 2011 with Nightwood Editions. He currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Claudia Cortese is the recipient of Kent State’s Undergraduate Wick Poetry Award. She recently completed her MFA in Poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, where she was the poetry editor for Lumina Magazine and a featured reader at the Sarah Lawrence Poetry Festival. Her work has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and At-Large Magazine.

MARKS OF CIVILIZATION

At the end of the SLS-Lithuania program this past summer, Phillip Lopate told Yours Truly that one of the participants in his non-fiction seminar, Arielle Bernstein, had written a powerful essay based on her two weeks in Vilnius.  YT subsequently asked Arielle if he could read it, and she e-mailed it to him. It is quite terrific indeed, and some good literary journal of high distinction most definitely should publish it. In the meantime, Arielle, who teaches creative writing at American University in D.C., has kindly agreed to let us put it up on this blog. Here it is:

Marks of Civilization.

Picture below was taken from Kerry Keys’ balcony in the former Vilnius Jewish ghetto in the dusk