Calendar Note: Nov. 6 Maxine Kumin Event Canceled

Maxine Kumin's poetry reading at St. Johnsbury (VT) Academy on Friday Nov. 6 has been canceled to the flu pandemic, which has closed the school campus. We hope to reschedule. Stay healthy!

Opportunity for Boston-Area Writers

We're passing this along for Pine Manor College, www.pmc.edu/mfa for more details. Nice way to leap into the new year!

PINE MANOR COLLEGE invites local writers to audit
graduate-level creative writing classes

Pine Manor College is pleased to announce that a select number of graduate-level creative writing courses will be open to the public for auditing during the January Residency of its Solstice MFA Program, scheduled from January 1–10, 2010.

One local writer, a post-graduate student, said: “…I think Solstice MFA classes can fill an unmet need for Boston’s writing community —to provide bursts of momentum to working writers who may not want the intensity of instruction found in either an MFA Program or a long-term advanced level workshop, but can benefit immensely from individual master classes.”

Classes are open to serious writers working at all levels; auditors are encouraged to complete the advance preparation requirements for any MFA class they wish to attend.

January 2010 MFA classes that are open to the public include:

Cross genre courses:
An Eye for an I: Lyrical Elements in Poetry — A Gift for the Prose Writer
Narrative Arrival: A Craft Class for All Genres A course on film adaptations of the novel: Is the Book Always Better?
Two classes on creative nonfiction:
Every Word Counts: Crafting Nonfiction That Sings
Maxine Hong Kingston: A Trans-Genre Memoirist
Two fiction courses:
Place in Fiction: Larry McMurtry and Thalia, Texas
Action that Shakes the Page
An in-depth look at poetic structure:
Structure & Artistic Memory
A class on how writers can engage with
their communities:
Higher Ground: How to Enrich Your Community and Make a Difference Through Your Art

January 2010 Classes are now available for registration; the deadline for enrolling as an auditor for the Winter 2009 Residency is December 28, 2009. For course descriptions, our audit policy, and a downloadable registration form, go to: www.pmc.edu/mfa

ABOUT PINE MANOR COLLEGE

As an undergraduate institution consistently ranked among the most diverse in the country, Pine Manor College emphasizes an inclusive, community-building approach to liberal arts education. The Solstice MFA in Creative Writing reflects the College’s overall mission by creating a supportive, welcoming environment in which writers of all backgrounds are encouraged to take creative risks. We strive to instill in our students an appreciation for the value of community-building and community service, and see engagement with the literary arts not only as a means to personal fulfillment but also as an instrument for real cultural change.
fiction • poetry • creative nonfiction • writing for children and young adults
400 Heath Street, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 | 617-731-7697

Calendar Alert, November 5, Poets Stewart, Waldor, Ossmann

THE COLLECTED POETS SERIES:

Thursday, Nov. 5th, 2009 at 7:30 pm, poets Pamela (Jody) Stewart, Peter Waldor and April Ossman will read from their work. Free. Mocha Maya's Coffee House, 47 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370, 413-625-6292. Wheelchair accessible. See www.collectedpoets.com for more information.

The Collected Poets Series highlights the work of established and emerging poets. Each event showcases the remarkable local poets of Western Massachusetts and the finest regional, national, and international talent. The series is usually held every first Thursday of the month.

Pamela (Jody) Stewart was born in Boston. She received her BA from Goddard College ADP and her MFA from the University of Iowa. Among her publications are four poetry chapbooks and five full-length volumes of poems: The St. Vlas Elegies (L'Epervier Press, l977), Cascades (L'Epervier Press, l979), Nightblind (Ion Books/Raccoon, l985), Infrequent Mysteries (Alice James Book, l991) and The Red Window (University of Georgia Press, l997). A chapbook, The Ghost Farm will be published by Pleasure Boat Studio in the spring of 2010. Jody has been included in the Pushcart Anthologies twice, won American Poetry Review's first prize for Best Poems of l980, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Hawthorndon Fellowship and an MCC grant. She met her current husband Ed Cothey while traveling in Cornwall, UK. They returned to the States in l990 to Hawley, MA and formed Tregellys Farm. Jody is working on a New and Selected volume.

Peter Waldor was born in Newark, New Jersey. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. For the past twenty years Waldor worked in the insurance business in northern New Jersey where he lives with his wife and three children. Waldor's poetry has appeared in many magazines (both in print and on-line)such as Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, theAmerican Poetry Review, Ploughshares, the Iowa Review and Mothering Magazine.Waldor's book of poetry, Door to a Noisy Room, was published by Alice James Books in January, 2008.

April Ossmann is the author of Anxious Music (Four Way Books, 2007) and has published her poetry widely in journals including Colorado Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, and Harvard Review, and in anthologies including From the Fishouse (Persea Books, 2009) and Contemporary Poetry of New England(UPNE, 2002). She has won several poetry awards, including the 2000 Prairie Schooner Readers' Choice Award. She is a publishing, writing and editing consultant (www.aprilossmann.com), and teaches poetry in private tutorials and at The Writer's Center in White River Junction, VT. She has also taught at Lebanon College and the University of Maine at Farmington and was executive director of Alice James Books from 2000 -2008. She lives in Post Mills, VT.

Reading Michael Genelin, Alan Furst, and Other Dark Thoughts

As generations, we may sometimes be defined by the wars or acts of war that have shaped our thinking. Many of my friends shaped their ideas of life by testing them during the Vietnam War: Is government trustworthy? Are political leaders honest? How responsible does a reader have to be in testing what's in print?

My son's generation, I suspect, is scarred in the same way by the 9/11 Attack Against America -- and the political and cultural responses to America's newly perceived vulnerability.

But these are very much American experiences, American ideas. I don't expect to "see Europe" as my father's generation did, or to explore Asia as my sons do and will. So the mysteries that I read often shape my thinking about those regions and their histories, cultures, and people.

My sense of England's recent heritage (forget Robin Hood and Shakespeare) draws in part from the Great War mysteries of Charles Todd and Jacqueline Winspear, not to mention John Lawton and Christopher Fowler for the grimmer side of things. I always order the newest Donna Leon to sample Venice, and Giles Blunt for northern Canada. I have enough good sense to doubt that Alexander McCall Smith's No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency is more valid than, say, Peter Mathiessen's African travelogues -- but I still enjoy the notion of common people solving human dilemmas through common sense. And I won't even try to talk about the sustained darkness of the current crop of Scandinavian detectives and tales, from Henning Mankell, Karin Fossum, and others.

Way beyond these explorations, though, is the complex and often grim history of Eastern Europe, a region that must have been fiercely present to my father's generation (those who saw World War II firsthand) but has quietly vanished along with the Cold War for today's Americans. Most of the people I know personally who talk about Slovenia or Hungary are tourists, happy to spend American dollars where they seem to buy more.

Alan Furst's review of Kati Marton's ENEMIES OF THE PEOPLE in today's New York Times begins, "The year is 1955; most of the world has taken sides in the cold war." Marton's book explores her parents' desperate lives in Cold War Hungary and "has all the magnetism and, yes, excitement, of the very best spy fiction. But would that it were fiction."

Furst writes this from his position as author of ten fierce and wonderful books of "spy fiction" set in Eastern Europe, most recently THE SPIES OF WARSAW, which went into paperback in June of this year. Like the memoirist, he's lived in the countries where he sets his fiction, although not for long periods of time (Paris is his outside-America home). And he writes from having known the people and cultures that were once behind the Iron Curtain, where the machinations of the Communist Party bred a desperate corruption necessary to sustain life.

It's uncomfortable reading. Although I'm often moved and always, in the end, deeply satisfied with Furst's plots and characters and their efforts to trade what they can afford to lose, for the integrity they desire, these are books that I face seriously. They're not beach reading. They demand that I question my own willingness to sacrifice for ideals like democracy and freedom of the press, as well as for the safety of my family.

Forgive, please, this long approach -- but what the latest mysteries of Eastern Europe demand has slowed me down in reaching a review of Michael Genelin's first two books with Soho Crime: SIREN OF THE WATERS (2008) and DARK DREAMS (2009).

Genelin introduces Commander Jana Matinova, an often lonely investigator on the police force in Slovakia. Estranged from her rebel husband (an outlaw for his political stance, at the very least) and from her daughter, she labors under conditions of post-communist mistrust, betrayal, and a coldness that is more than the subzero wind sweeping through her state-issue coat. Each advance in her cases comes at personal cost.

In SIREN OF THE WATERS Matinova investigates human trafficking, a commerce of flesh and power that roots in the poverty left behind by uncaring governments. Fear, urgency, and a prevailing sense of being sold out dog her movements. It's hard to say whether she's most at risk from the criminals she chases or from her own colleagues in their equal desperation. How can we like this woman who lies when necessary, sacrifices her family, then abruptly gives up her self-respect in order to save others?

The threads pulled loose from this weave of threat and determination become ragged edges about to unravel in Genelin's sequel, DARK DREAMS. Martinova's career and family, even her life, balance on a knife edge. Her own childhood friend, Sofia, entangles her in bribery and corruption scandals; killings multiply. Soon even her colleagues mistrust her: "Everyone assiduously avoided mentioning Jana's involvement as a possible suspect. They went about their business and, when they had contact with Jana, avoided any topic other than the one at hand. Things were stiff and overly polite, but it could have been much worse. ... Jana used the time to go over her notes."

As crime fiction goes, these stand toward the dark side, not so much for brutality or gore as for the certainty that "home" is a place of danger and loss.

But they are utterly convincing, and I wouldn't miss them for anything. If we are to understand the force of history and the passions of the present in Eastern Europe, Genelin, like Furst, is a valuable guide. And Jana Matinova's courage, and her willingness to keep trying for justice, generate a heat and light worth valuing.

Halloween Treats!

We've pulled out from the shelves three salutes to Halloween, that favorite holiday of creative kids. One is a Vermont classic: PASSING STRANGE: TRUE TALES OF NEW ENGLAND HAUNTINGS AND HORRORS, by Joe Citro. Our copy is the hard-to-find first edition hardcover brought out by Chapters in 1996.

Second, Knopf recruited master of dark illustration Michael McCurdy for its 2005 volume of Edgar Allen Poe's TALES OF TERROR. Not only is the 90-page book crawling with creepy art, but it includes a CD narrated by Edward Blake, reading aloud "The Masque of the Red Death" (so appropriate as H1N1 flue spreads among us), "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Black Cat," and "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Third is a delicious signed picturebook we just nabbed: Chris Van Allsburg's THE WIDOW'S BROOM. Van Allsburg dated his signature 10-17-92 -- just a couple of weeks before Halloween, seventeen years ago. A gem.

These are all listed at our part of ABE Books (click on www.KingdomBks.com and then choose Browse & Buy to drop straight into our listings). If you'd like a photo or scan to help your decision, all you need to do is ask (KingdomBks@aol.com).

Tonight! Louise Penny, Norwich, Vermont, 7 p.m.

If you missed listening to and meeting Canadian mystery author Louise Penny last night in Montpelier, there's still time (if you're in northern New England) to get to her other Vermont event -- tonight at 7 p.m. at the Norwich Bookstore. Penny mentioned last night that she is in contract talks for her sixth through ninth books in the Chief Inspector Gamache series (originally labeled Three Pines mysteries, for the fictional Eastern TOwnships village where they mostly take place). The fifth book, hot this fall, is THE BRUTAL TELLING; Penny's first book is already nearly unavailable in hardover first edition.

God May Be Silent, But Not Poet Franz Wright

Franz Wright's reading last night at Plymouth State University (NH) celebrated his new collection, WHEELING MOTEL. From the wonder and exhaled prayer of "Kyrie" to the delicious humor of "The Soul Complains" and the ironies of "Professor Alone During Office Hours," the collection continues Wright's portraiture of happiness as it arrives almost as a surprise, after years of loss, anguish, and despair.

He prefaced the poems with two new prose works, one set on a Rhode Island beach, the other titled "Paul's Song" -- these are from one of two new collections he's just completing (the other is poetry). Those will bring the total for this decade of his writing to six books, an amazing output.

Because of his willingess to be frank, bear exposure, and take audience questions seriously, Wright enchanted the group last night. Don't miss the chance to hear and see him as he tours for this book. In the meantime, Knopf is offering a link that will give you readings of two of the poems "Wheeling Motel" and "Day One."

Calendar Alert, Thurs. Nov. 4, Poet Kevin Young

If you think November fits the northern New England saying of "no sun, no snow, no-vember" there's a perfect poetry event coming up to light the season: On Thursday November 4 at Plymouth State University (Plymouth NH, exit 25 from I-93) meet the blues head-on with poet Kevin Young, at 7 p.m.; reception and signing follow.

Archer Mayor, THE PRICE OF MALICE: A must-have Joe Gunther Police Procedural

The twentieth Joe Gunther crime novel slipped quietly into the spotlight yesterday, as Minotaur Books released THE PRICE OF MALICE a few days before its scheduled "October" debut. Hurrah! This is the one we've been waiting for -- not just because it's number 20 in the series, not just because once you get acquainted with Joe and his team you've got to get the next book, and not just because it's a good swift read. Here's the best part: THE PRICE OF MALICE builds on number 19, THE CATCH, and spins intensity and sense out of the situations that Archer Mayor set up in that Maine-oriented story.

It will come as no surprise to Gunther fans that Joe is having trouble with his intimate relationship again, as THE PRICE OF MALICE opens. His mellow and promising times with barkeeper Lyn Silva sailed onto nasty rocks during THE CATCH, as Joe's drug and murder investigations led him to exhuming part of Lyn's family history. Discouraged and distanced, Lyn's left Brattleboro without telling Joe. It makes a tough platform for this Vermont Bureau of Investigation (VBI) chief -- how can you trust yourself and your judgment, when the people you most care about keep walking out of your life?

The opening chapter steps inside another relationship, one that's kept Joe and his readers intrigued: the offbeat but pretty successful domestic partnership of foul-mouthed and stubborn Willy Kunkle and hard-working Sammie Martens, the lone woman on Joe's team. You can see what ties them together when the mention of "homicide" in a middle-of-the-night phone call cheers them both and sends them scrambling for their clothes. And the discovery that the victim is a suspected child predator makes them more satisfied, as it suits their sense of justice. The trouble is, they're also determined to catch the murderer, even if he or she had a darned good reason for turning to crime.

When Joe's efforts to steer his team are repeatedly interrupted by a lingering drugs and border manipulation and his girlfriend starts taking risks that involve him, the VBI chief lets down his team by being in all the wrong places at the moments when their complex hunt turns dangerous. Archer Mayor spins the scenes sharply and intensely, and keeps both Joe and the action on the run.

If you like THE CATCH, you'll love what this sequel does with what you absorbed from that one -- and if you weren't sure you wanted to adapt to Joe Gunther pursuing criminals off the coast of Maine, THE PRICE OF MALICE will convince you that the wider pattern adds up to quite a tale.

Check www.archermayor.com for author events; Mayor will be racing around for this one!

Calendar Alert: Poets Annie Finch and Lisa Olstein, October 1, Shelburne Falls, Mass.

Thursday, Oct. 1st, 2009 at 7:30 pm, poets ANNIE FINCH and LISA OLSTEIN will read from their work, kicking off the Collected Poets Series' new season.

Free. Mocha Maya's Coffee House, 47 Bridge Street, Shelburne Falls, MA 01370, 413-625-6292. Wheelchair accessible. See www.collectedpoets.com for more information.

Annie Finch (left-hand photo, above) is the author or editor of fifteen books of poetry, translation, and criticism. Her books of poetry include Eve, Calendars, The Encyclopedia of Scotland, and the forthcoming Among the Goddesses: A Narrative Libretto. Her music, art, and theater collaborations include two operas. Her poems appear in anthologies, textbooks, and journals including Agni, Fulcrum, Kenyon Review, Paris Review, Prairie Schooner, and Yale Review, and her books on poetics include A Formal Feeling Comes, An Exaltation of Forms, The Ghost of Meter, The Body of Poetry, and the forthcoming A Poet’s Craft. Annie's book of poetry, Calendars, was shortlisted for the Foreword Poetry Book of the Year Award and in 2009 she was awarded the Robert Fitzgerald Award. She has performed her poetry across the U.S. and in England, France, Greece, Ireland, and Spain. She earned a BA from Yale University, a MA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, and a PhD in English from Stanford University. Annie lives in Maine where she directs Stonecoast, the low-residency MFA program of the University of Southern Maine.

Lisa Olstein (right-hand photo, above) is the author of Lost Alphabet (Copper CanyonPress, 2009), Radio Crackling, Radio Gone (Copper Canyon Press, 2006), winner of the Hayden Carruth Award. Cold Satellite, an album of songs based on her poems and lyrics, is forthcoming from singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. Her poems have appeared in many literary journals including The Iowa Review, American Letters & Commentary, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, and elsewhere. A contributing editor of jubilat, with Dara Wier and Noy Holland, Lisa co-founded the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she is Associate Director of MFA Program for Poets and Writers.

Vermont Police Procedural: THE ERRAND BOY, Don Bredes

The third Hector Bellevance police procedural THE ERRAND BOY releases next week, and it's an intriguing addition to the world of Vermont crime fiction. Don Bredes isn't just targeting the leftover back-to-landers and close-to-the-border drug handlers that populate his fictional state -- he's also laying out the conflicts of jurisdiction that take place so often in a rural region, where local police get brushed aside by county or state investigators. And heaven help us all when the federal agents step in.

But Hector Bellevance, town constable, knows Tipton better than any outsider could. When a youthful driver, Sebastian Tuttle, careens out of control toward Hector and his pregnant wife Wilma (yep, the same one he had such a hard time courting in Cold Comfort and The Fifth Season), Hector manages to push Wilma out of the way just in time, and takes the glancing impact of the car on himself. But -- disastrously -- Wilma lands with her head on a concrete slab and the impact does enough damage to put her into a coma.

When Hector, half crazed by the injury to his wife, tracks down the driver and his brother, murder cuts into the mess. Soon the proximity of the Canada border, the nastiness of factory farming (picture thousands of confined chickens, laying eggs and depositing, er, manure), and competition for breaking open a drug cartel complicate the life that Hector and Wilma and their 11-year-old daughter Myra have, where harvesting the beans and raspberries and getting them to market has to take priority over anything, yes, anything else. But now Hector is minus Wilma's help, and Myra takes to sitting at the hospital trying to get her mom to respond. So Hector's first level of panic is purely practical, local, and rural:

Myra hadn't brought in a quarter of the beans. Eighty feet of spinach needed cutting or it would bolt. The early raspberries would be dropping off the canes in another downpour. I had a round of deliveries to make tomorrow -- the beans and lettuces and spinach, plus trays of arugula, mesclun, basil, broccoli, dill, beet greens, and chard, none of them picked. And the raspberries. I had tomatoes to mulch, and asparagus, beets, leeks, onions, cabbages, and carrots to weed.

I had to find help.

Neighbor Hugh Gebbie steps up in the crisis, and also keeps Myra company as Hector drives around looking for the criminals and uncovering their network. But Hugh's laid-back caretaking doesn't prevent Myra being kidnapped, and that's about all it takes to push Hector into acting like a rogue police officer as he races to rescue his daughter.

Of course, he has folks he knows to ask about shady dealings. It's just a pity that he's trusting Kandi Henderson. She keeps showing that she's not the person he's always wanted her to be. Will he see her clearly enough, before innocent people are added to the criminals dying in the crisis?

Bredes has crafted a tightly plotted crime novel with local color that's vivid and often poignant, and his handling of Hector's midlife parenting and job-blending rings painfully true. Perhaps some officers would spend more time with an unconscious, hospitalized wife, or would keep their young daughter further away from the tasks of community policing -- yet Hector's choices reflect the character he's shown in the two previous novels, and when the strands of tension finally crest and resolve, the risks and losses are well balanced with what Hector and his friends and family can achieve.

Hurrah for this long-awaited Vermont tale!

[Looking for more info on Bredes? Click here.]