---

---

News and Notes

Alumni News

Greg Ames's ("Biographers," Issue 2; "The Snowing Loneliness of Buffalo," Issue 17) fiction has appeared in recent numbers of McSweeney's and Barrelhouse; another story is forthcoming in the first print edition of Yankee Pot Roast.

Sally Ashton ("Rapture" et al., Issue 20) has work forthcoming in The Dos Passos Review, caesura, Sentence, and Another Chicago Magazine.

David Barringer's ("The Vampires," Issue 8) fiction, humor, and odds-and-ends collection Twisted Fun is just out from Elope Press, while his interview with George Saunders (Interview, Issue 5) appears in the latest edition of Barrelhouse.

Richard Bausch's (Interview, Issue 11) tenth novel, Thanksgiving Night, was recently published to much acclaim by HarperCollins.

Charles Baxter's (Interview, Issue 10) novel The Feast of Love is being made into a movie starring Greg Kinnear and Academy Award winner Morgan Freeman. Directed by Robert Benton, the pic is slated for a 2007 release.

Caren Beilin ("Three or So Uses of the Crab Apple," Issue 21) has an essay in How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors, due this coming April from Rizzoli.

Susan Buttenwieser's ("Someone's Drunk Wife," Issue 18) story collection Smoldering was a finalist in this year's G.S. Sharat Chandra Prize for Short Fiction, sponsored by the University of Missouri, Kansas City.

Brock Clarke's ("The Wedding Present," Issue 10) fourth book—a novel, An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New York—is due from Algonquin this coming September.

John Cotter ("Ophelia" and "Midwest," Issue 4) has two poems in the next issue of Coconut Poetry, five in a forthcoming Flim Forum anthology, and a new website.

An excerpt from Susan Daitch's ("Jnun in the Age of Metal," Issue 14) novel The Colorist appears in the new NYU Press anthology Up Is Up, But So Is Down: New York's Downtown Literary Scene, 1974-1992; her story "The Golden Triangle" is featured in The Brooklyn Rail Anthology, just out from Hanging Loose Press.

E.L. Doctorow's (Interview, Issue 14) Creationists, a collection of essays on creativity, was published this fall by Random House.

Richard Fulco's ("An Exploration," Issue 12) play Get Out of Jail Free was recently read at Manhattan's Flea Theatre and will be workshopped in January at Minneapolis's Playwrights' Center. His Short Trilogy will be produced this spring at Central Oklahoma University.

Ellen Hagan ("Old Bardstown," Issue 10) has work forthcoming in Check the Rhyme: An Anthology of Female Poets and Emcees, America! What's My Name and Submerged: Tales from the Basin. She recently performed her shows America What? and Becoming Woman in Kentucky.

Nick Hornby's (Interview, Issue 9) novel High Fidelity has been made into a Broadway musical. Walter Bobbie (Chicago, Sweet Charity) directed the production, which ran earlier this month at the Imperial Theater.

Heidi Julavits's (Interview, Issue 4) latest novel, The Uses of Enchantment—a coming-of-age mystery The New Yorker calls "a sophisticated meditation on truth and bias"—is just out from Doubleday.

Kristin Kearns ("Sleeping with Jesus," Issue 16) has a story in a recent issue of Faultline, and another forthcoming in Calyx.

Shelly Lependorf and Stan Shire ("Horizon Fields III" et. al., Issue 18) have works currently showing at the Carrie Haddad Gallery, in Hudson, NY, at the Philadelphia International Airport, and at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad.

Nathan Long ("Form of Things," Issue 5) spent part of this past summer as a fellow in the Eastern Frontier Education Foundation's Norton Island Residency Program, on Norton Island, Maine. He has stories in recent or forthcoming issues of The Dos Passos Review, Lodestar Quarterly, Dispatch, and The Tusculum Review; his chapbook The Dog and The Last Hot Day of Summer is just out from Popularink Press.

Robert Lopez's ("Essentials," Issue 15) novel Part of the World is due in January from Calamari Press. He has stories forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Caketrain, and New York Tyrant, and poems forthcoming in Blackbird and The Mississippi Review.

Peter Markus ("Our Father Who Walks On Water Comes Home With Two Buckets Of Fish," Issue 2) has stories forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, New York Tyrant, Double Room, and Tarpaulin Sky.

Mary Morris's (Interview, Issue 16) The River Queen, an account of her trip down the Mississippi River in a houseboat, will be published by Holt this coming April.

Thylias Moss ("Prologue of the Book of Hallowed Verses of the Holy Circus of Decent Girls," Issue 18) maintains three podcasts at the iTunes music store; all can be downloaded for free. If you'd like to see or hear a video or sonic poam (products of acts of making) of any of her work, email a request to thyliasm@umich.edu, and she'll add said poam to an upcoming podcast.

Jane Ormerod ("Last Year's Capers," Issue 21) has poems in the current issues of Dirt and CLWN WR, and five more forthcoming in Arsenic Lobster.

Mia Pearlman's ("The Galaxies in My Veins Still Waltzing," et. al., Issue 16) cloudscapes were recently shown at the Tentents Art Lab, in Beacon, NY. For more on her recent work, check her website.

Cooper Renner's ("Origami" and "Untitled," published under the name Cooper Esteban, Issue 4) poetry collection Mosefolket will be available in early 2007 from Alhambra, an imprint of Ravenna Press.

Russell Rowland ("Ed Got a Job," Issue 15) recently sold his second novel, The Watershed Years, to Riverbend Press.

John Rybicki's ("Julie Ovary Song," et. al., Issue 17) second poetry collection, We Bed Down Into Water, is due next fall from Northwestern University Press.

Thaddeus Rutkowski's ("Dear Daughter" and "Waiting for the Phone to Ring," Issue 15) story "Beautiful Youth" is featured in Up Is Up, But So Is Down. He also has work in current or forthcoming issues of Crowd Magazine, Mobius, Nowa Okolica Poetow, and Public Illumination Magazine. His prose poem, "Dear Daughter," can be found in the new Turtle Ink Press title Coevolution: The Monday Night Poetry 2006 Anthology.

Kevin Sampsell ("Sharon Calls," Issue 20) has started writing a monthly column for the Associated Press called Book Pusher.

George Saunders (Interview, Issue 5) was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.

Karen Shepard ("Like Love," Issue 14) latest novel, Don't I Know You?, is due in paperback from Harper Perennial this coming June. She has an essay in the new Hudson Street Press anthology, Searching for Mary Poppins: Women Write About the Intense Relationship Between Mothers and Nannies, and a short story, "Children in the House," in After: Short Stories about Parenting from our Top Writers, due in January from Overlook Press.

Maggie Smith ("I Dream a Highway" et. al., Issue 16) has two poems in the current issue of Gulf Coast, and others forthcoming in Quarterly West, the tiny, Massachusetts Review, and Court Green.

Randall Stoltzfus ("Chrysler," et. al., Issue 21) has paintings in Après Nous, Le Deluge, a group show running until December 22 at the Francis Naumann Gallery on Manhattan's Upper East Side.

Fraser Sutherland's ("Lights of Castries," Issue 16) collection The Matuschka Case: Selected Poems 1970-2005 is fresh out from TSAR Publications.

We encourage all our alumni to keep us updated on the latest in their lives, by dropping us a line at alumni@failbetter.com.

© 2007 failbetter LLC · all rights reserved