John Ashbery Reads from Notes from the Air

Turkish Novelist Elif Shafak on Storytelling and the Politics of Fiction

Rat King Press Reading at Lovin Cup on Dec. 12!

Johnson's own indie publisher Rat King Press will present an evening of readings at the Lovin Cup Cafe on Monday, December 12 from 6:30 to 11:00pm.  There will be several fiction readings, followed by an open mic (poetry, prose, ranting -- all are welcome).

Rat King Press is still considering fiction submissions for the reading, which can be sent to ratkingpress@gmail.com.  This is a terrific opportunity for writers to share their work with a community of peers.

Rat King Press is also currently accepting submissions for their literary magazine The Rat Tail Detail, whose submission guidelines can be found here.

So come out and support Johnson's own independent publishers and writers!

WHAT:  Rat King Press Reading
WHERE:  The Lovin Cup Cafe
WHEN:  Mon., Dec. 12, 6:30pm - 11:00pm

How to Write a Statement of Purpose for M.F.A in Creative Writing Programs

Among the most daunting -- and critical -- tasks involved in applying for graduate creative writing programs is writing the dreaded Statement of Purpose, which serves as a cover letter and therefore your first impression to the strangers reviewing your (and often hundreds of others') application.  Along with your writing sample, the Statement of Purpose is arguably the most important document.

Because the Statement of Purpose is often required to be one page or less, most applicants spend several weeks or even months crafting an effective SOP.  The problem, however, is that hardly anyone can say what, exactly, makes an SOP effective.  What should you include?  What should you not include?  How much personality ("flair") should there be, and what writerly ambitions or childhood trauma's are best left unmentioned?

Luckily, author and writing professor Cathy Day lays down some essential Do's and Don't's about writing the SOP.  Any writer serious about applying to graduate creative writing programs will benefit from these tips -- provided, after all, by someone who reviews M.F.A. applications regularly.

So take note!

Come Celebrate Graduating B.F.A. Students Stephanie Girard and Dayton Shafer!

Fall Authors Series Concludes with Two of JSC'S Own . . .

This Thursday, November 10th, JSC proudly welcomes a visit by two of its own, authors Neil Shepard and Tony Whedon.  

Even though both Shepard and Whedon recently retired from JSC's Department of Writing and Literature, both have been very busy.  During their visit, they will be celebrating the release of two new books:  Things to Pray for in Vermont by Tony Whedon and (T)ravel/Un(T)ravel by Neil Shepard (both released by Mid-List Press).  Please come celebrate with them!

WHEN:  Thursday, December 10 / 4:00 pm
WHERE:  Stearns Performance Space

Tony Whedon is also the author of the excellent book of essays A Language Dark Enough (Mid-List, 2004), which, according to the publisher, "travels on four continents in search of a language that describes 'home.' From Port-au-Prince to Shanghai, from Ecuador's Andes to the Green Mountains of Vermont, many of those he meets—his students, colleagues, and fellow travelers—are displaced people, exiles in a global community."  Whedon is also a pioneer of PoJazz, a lively performance-based fusion of poetry and jazz that has gained an enthusiastic following among his former students at JSC.

Read here Whedon's lovely essay "Kindred Spirits," featured in Hunger Mountain.

And here is Whedon's poem "Impermanence," published in Blackbird.

Neil Shepard is the author of three previous poetry collections with Mid-List, Scavenging the Country for a Heartbeat, I'm Here Because I Lost My Way, This Far from the Source--all of which, according to the publisher, "take readers on a journey across emotional as well as physical distances."


Shepard is the Founding Editor of JSC's acclaimed literary journal Green Mountains Review, which this spring will celebrate its first 25 years with an all-poetry anniversary issue.  

Read here an interview with Neil Shepard featured in Hunger Mountain.  

Here, courtesy of Mid-List Press, is an excerpt from Shepard's (T)ravel/Un(T)ravel:


AUBADE, WEST OF PARIS

(T)ravel/Un(T)ravel by Neil Shepard
(Mid-List Press, 2011)

(early spring)

throw open the doors --

almonds flowering
snow on trees, plums purpling
the black limbs of winter

flowering -- the ing is the thing
zing! -- dang if I ain't plain tame
this morning. I been dead
all winter, so tame is wild!
where I come from.

daffodils are yellow, not yellowed --
kids disappear in forsythia --
guardians on high alert, floating
over trees disguised as pink clouds --

throw open the doors! --

burble like a fool -- you've bungled enough
years -- burble, bungle, to hell
with the middle way, temper-
ance is our condition,
more than we admit -- not enough
heart epaulets -- not after thirty, no --

hereby decree all public men and women
shall sew hearts on sleeves or else --
shipped off to flower factories --

rough winds do shake
the darling buds -- how long
can these little courage-makers hang on?

Lydia Davis to Visit JSC on Halloween!

Lydia Davis

The JSC Fall Authors Series continues!

On Monday, October 31, fiction writer and translator Lydia Davis will visit JSC to read from her work.  Lydia Davis is the author the novel The End of the Story and the story collections Break It Down, Almost No Memory, Samuel Johnson Is Indignant, and Varieties of Disturbance, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007.  The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis was published in 2009 and, according to New Yorker book critic James Wood, "will in time be seen as one of the great, strange American literary contributions, distinct and crookedly personal, like the work of Flannery O'Connor, Donald Barthelme, or J. F. Powers."

Davis has received the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Grant" for her fiction, and her accomplishments in translation are just as impressive.  Not only has she translated recent editions of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, but she has been named a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French government.  Whoa.

WHEN:  Monday, October 31 (5:30pm)
WHERE:  Johnson State College / Stearns Performance Space

Free and open to the public!

More on Lydia Davis:

Read an interview with Lydia Davis from The Believer.

Listen to three audio interviews with Lydia Davis at KCRW's Bookworm:
     in 1998 (discussing and reading from Almost No Memory);
     in 2002 (discussing and reading from Samuel Johnson Is Indignant);
     and in 2007 (discussing and reading from Varieties of Disturbance).

Read another interview with Lydia Davis by the National Book Foundation, conducted after she was selected as a finalist for the 2007 National Book Award.

And here is an interview with Davis at BOMB Magazine.

Read Davis's story "The Dreadful Mucamas" from the recent issue of Granta.

Read ten tiny stories by Davis, "Ten Stories from Flaubert," courtesy of The Paris Review.

Also from The Paris Review, here is Lydia Davis talking about translating the newest edition of Gustave Flaubert's novel of novels, Madame Bovary; and here is her follow-up.

And listen here to Davis's at-length discussion of translating Madame Bovary

PennSound presents here a trove of audio recordings of Lydia Davis's readings, interviews, and talks.

Read Davis's first-time translation of the Dutch (from The Mole and Other Very Short Animal Stories by A. L. Snijders) in Asymptote. 

Finally, below is a video inspired by a single sentence by Lydia Davis: