Wendy Brenner (MFA, 1991) Algonquin, 2001 ISBN: 1565122453 A bodybuilder is charged with superhuman energy and an ability to make lightbulbs explode. A grieving father tries to communicate with his dead son via a tape recorder. A high school girl claims to have her uncle’s nipple in an envelope. A thirtysomething woman is fired from […]
John Brandon (MFA pending) McSweeney’s, 2013 ISBN: 9781936365739 On the top floor of a small desert hospital, an unlikely piano prodigy lies in a coma, attended to by his gruff, helpless father. Outside the clinic, a motley vigil assembles beneath a reluctant New Mexico winter—all watched by a disconsolate wolf on his nightly rounds. To […]
John Brandon (MFA Pending) McSweeney’s, 2008 ISBN: 9781932416909 Arkansas is a biting first novel full of wet T-shirt contests, illicit drugs, and cross-country road trips. There are the days: the dappled grounds, the aimless yardwork, the hours in the booth giving directions to families in SUVs. And then there are the nights: crisscrossing the South with […]
Bill Beverly (MFA, 1991) WordFarm, 2013 ISBN: 9781602260139 In this anthology, editors Deborah Ager, Bill Beverly and John Poch showcase 64 of the best poems to appear in 32 Poems Magazine during its first 10 years of publication. Each poet also offers brief commentary on his or her selected poem. Featuring a wide variety of forms, topics […]
Read more "Old Flame: From the First 10 Years of 32 Poems Magazine"
Bill Beverly (MFA, 1991) Mississippi, 2003 ISBN: 1578065372 The fugitive is the sinister hero of many a novel (Light in August, Beloved), the luminary in a cluster of motion pictures and in other popular entertainment (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Bonnie and Clyde, The Fugitive, Thelma and Louise), and a headliner for the daily news (O.J. Simpson, Osama […]
Read more "On the Lam: Narratives of Flight in J. Edgar Hoover’s America"
Chris Bachelder (MFA, 2002) Scribner, 2001 ISBN: 0743219465 In this brilliant satire of our media-saturated culture, the sovereign nation of Las Vegas – the entertainment capital of the world – is host to Bear v. Shark II. After a disappointing loss in the first matchup between the land and the sea, the bear is back […]
Chris Bachelder (MFA, 2002) Bloomsbury, 2006 ISBN: 9781582346366 U.S.! is a playful, darkly comic novel that imagines the serial resurrection and assassination of tireless muckraker Upton Sinclair. In Chris Bachelder’s bizarre world, Sinclair is repeatedly brought back by beleaguered but optimistic leftists (whose refrain is “Hope and Shovels Forever”), and then gunned down (and once harpooned!) […]
Jay Atkinson (MFA, 1982) If all sports are really about war, then rugby is a heart-thumping epic of bayonet charges and hand-to-hand fighting. In Memoirs of a Rugby-Playing Man, bestselling author Jay Atkinson describes his thirty-five year odyssey in the sport — from his rough and rowdy days at the University of Florida, through the intrigue […]
Jay Atkinson (MA, 1982) Crown, 2005 ISBN: 1400050758 From the author of the bestselling Ice Time comes his “year in the life” as a rookie private investigator and the story of a legendary incorruptible cop and genuine American hero. back
Read more "Legends of Winter Hill: Cops, Con Men, and Joe McCain, the Last Real Detective"
Jay Atkinson (MA, 1982) Breakaway Books, 1997 ISBN: 1558215654 Both a rugby novel and a thriller (and surely the only book to lay claim to such a pedigree), Caveman Politics is a tragicomic look at the lowdown Neanderthal life and politics of a small Florida town. It’s about slackers versus careerists, the edges of society against the […]