Lewis Center for the Arts Names Hodder Fellows for 2012-13
Writers James Arthur, Yasmine El Rashidi, Melinda Moustakis, and A. Rey Pamatmat selected
The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has announced selection of the Mary MacKall Gwinn Hodder Fellows for the 2012-13 academic year. Poet James Arthur, fiction writer Melinda Moustakis, non-fiction writer Yasmine El Rashidi, and playwright A. Rey Pamatmat are recipients of the award created to provide artists in the early stages of their career time to undertake significant new work.
“The Hodder Fellowships are awarded to artists during that crucial period when they have demonstrated exceptional promise, but not yet received widespread recognition,” noted Lewis Center Acting Chair Michael Cadden in making the announcement. “We have a very strong and diverse group of artists joining us next year, and we look forward to what this opportunity for what Mrs. Hodder termed ‘studious leisure’ will enable them to accomplish.”
Hodder Fellows may be poets, playwrights, novelists, creative non-fiction writers, translators, or other artists and humanist who have shown great promise. While many have published a first book or created other work that has contributed to their field of endeavor, the fellowship provides them time to move their work and explorations to the next level. Artists from anywhere may apply in the fall each year for the following academic year. Their proposals include specific work to be undertaken during the fellowship period.
James ArthurJames Arthur was born in Connecticut and grew up in Canada. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, New England Review, and Narrative. He has received the Amy Lowell Travelling Poetry Scholarship, a Stegner Fellowship, a Discovery/The Nation Prize, and a residency at the Amy Clampitt House, as well as fellowships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. His first book, Charms Against Lightening, will be published in November 2012 by Copper Canyon Press. During his fellowship at Princeton, Arthur plans to work on his second book of poetry.
Yasmine El RashidiYasmine El Rashidi is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and a contributing editor to the Middle East arts and culture journal Bidoun. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Guardian, London Review of Books, Index on Censorship, Aperture, The Wall Street Journal, and the Arabic literary journal Weghat Nazar. A collection of her writings on the Egyptian revolution, The Battle for Egypt, was published last year (New York Review of Books/Random House). She was born and raised in Cairo, where she currently lives. During her fellowship, El Rashidi plans to work on a literary nonfiction book, The Successors -- a portrait and memoir of Egypt's youth generation.
Melinda Moustakis. Melinda Moustakis was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and raised in California. Her first book, a collection of linked short stories, Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, was published by University of Georgia Press in 2011 and won the Flannery O’Connor Award in Short Fiction and the Maurice Prize. She received her M.A. from the University of California Davis and her Ph.D. from Western Michigan University. She was recently named a 2011 “5 Under 35” writer by the National Book Foundation. Moustakis plans to work on her first novel during her fellowship, a full-length book that captures the Alaskan fishing community and its many complicated relationships between fishermen, fisherwomen, guides, locals, tourist, scientists, and the wilderness and wildlife.
A. Rey PamatmatA. Rey Pamatmat recently received the 2011-12 Playwright of New York Fellowship from the Lark Play Development Center. His play, Edith Can Shoot Things and Hit Them, began its rolling world premiere at the 2011 Humana Festival before playing at New Theater, Actors Express, Mu Performing Arts, B Street Theater, and Manbites Dog Theater in the 2011-12 season. His plays have been produced off-off Broadway by Second Generation (Thunder Above, Deeps Below), the Vortex Theater (DEVIANT), HERE (High/Limbo/High), and Vampire Cowboys Theatre Company (Red Rover). Samuel French will publish both Edith and Thunder Above in spring 2012. Rey’s work has been developed nationwide at The Public Theater, Playwrights’ Horizons, the Eugene O’Neill Theater, Victory Gardens Theater, Magic Theater Company, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and New Dramatists. He has received a Princess Grace Fellowship for Playwriting, a New York Foundation for the Arts Playwriting Fellowship, an Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation commission, and is a member of the Ma-Yi Theater Company Writers’ Lab. He received his B.F.A. from New York University and his M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama. Pamatmat hopes to explore some new, adventurous theatrical projects during his fellowship.
In addition to creating new work, Hodder Fellows engage in any number of lectures, performances and other events at the Lewis Center for the Arts, many of which will be open to the public.
Photo credits: (Moustakis) Photo by Emily Stinson; (Others) Courtesy of the artist
Monday, March 19, 2012
New Issue of Comparative Drama
Comparative Drama is pleased to announce the arrival of our winter issue, volume 45.4. The image to the right is included in "Moroccan Acrobats in Britain: Oriental Curiosity and Ethnic Exhibition," by Layachi El Habbouch. Other contributions to this issue include:
Essays
Elizabeth Hutcheon: From Shrew to Subject: Petruchio’s Humanist Education of Katherine in The Taming of the ShrewCarolyn Tilghman: Staging Suffrage: Women Writing Politics and the Edwardian Theatre
Yeeyon Im: Oscar Wilde's Salomé: Disorienting Orientalism
Layachi El Habbouch: Moroccan Acrobats in Britain: Oriental Curiosity and Ethnic Exhibition
Maurice Hunt: Purging the Jesting Spirit in The Tempest
Reviews
Ann Nichols- Sacred Folly: A New History of the Feast of Fools, by Max HarrisMatthew Smith- The Improbability of Othello: Rhetorical Anthropology and Shakespearean Selfhood, by Joel Altman
Freddie Rokem- The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy, by Martin Puchner
Jay Halio- Metaphor and Shakespearean Drama: Unchaste Signification, by Maria Franziska Fahey
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Bonnie Jo Campbell Reads Her Work: Spring 2012 Gwen Frostic Reading Series
We welcome you to join us for our third reading of the Spring 2012 Gwen Frostic Reading Series. We’re honored to have fiction writer and this year's English Department Distinguished Alumna Bonnie Jo Campbell read her work this Friday, March 23rd. The reading will take place at the WMU Bernhard Center, in room 105-107, starting at 8:00 PM. We look forward to seeing you there.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Comics Workshop on Friday, March 16
Department of English
Workshop for
Faculty and Graduate Instructors
“Integrating Comics into English Studies Courses”
Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox
Friday, March 16 2012
1-3 pm
3027 Brown Hall
Interested in adding a graphic novel to one of your English Studies courses? This workshop will address the following topics:
• Developing a basic theoretical and pedagogical grounding in comics studies
• Selecting comics texts that work well in English Studies courses
• Creating comics-centered assignments
2012 Frostic Creative Writing Awards Winners
We are pleased and honored to announce the winners for the 2012 Gwen Frostic Creative Writing Awards. Below you’ll find the results for each genre, as well as comments from our judges. Please join us in congratulating the winners for their excellent work and their success.
Fiction
Judge: Jennifer Vanderbes’ first novel, Easter Island, was named a “best book of 2003” by the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor and her second novel, Strangers at the Feast, was published by Scribner in 2010. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her third novel, about a young girl who becomes a nurse during WWII, will be published in 2013.
Undergraduate
Winner: “On Being Blessed” by Claire Robbins
“A sophisticated narrative combination of the personal and political. Suspenseful, insightful and vividly written.”
Honorable Mention: “The Scraps” by Tom Smith
“A gracefully-drawn portrait of a man struggling to become a good father. A mature and heartfelt story.”
Graduate
Winner: “Wake Turbulence” by Laurie Cedilnik
“A vivid setting and a cast of memorable characters come together in this dramatic and absorbing story of a young girl trying to understand the meaning of motherhood.”
Honorable Mention: “White Maple” by Dan Toronto
“A sympathetic look at a young couple discovering their sexuality and the challenges of adulthood.”
Poetry
Judge: Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of Mule & Pear (New Issues), Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), and The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press). Reviewer Roxane Gay (The Rumpus) writes, “Griffiths tackled sex(uality), slavery, the strength of women, the mark of history, and the power of language, in fierce poems that were so memorable I return to them over and over.” A Cave Canem Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Cave Canem Foundation and others. A photographer and painter, her visual work has been published widely in both national and international magazines and journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.
Undergraduate
Winner: “Late Echo” by Brian Bender
“This poem reflects a poet whose voice considers the importance of craft and originality. The balance of rhythms and vivid imagery achieve a sustained and interesting reflection on the significance of ordinary passage and the interrogation that accompanies a certain sort of thoughtfulness. Invoking Ashbery, of course, opened ‘Late Echo’s’ quiet window while the poem makes use of its own questions and its own frank and dreamy regard for the world.”
Honorable Mention: “El Hatillo” by Claire Robbins
Graduate
Winner: “Swarm” by Natalie Giarratano
“This poem is powerful in its ability to weld a persistent line of intimacy against its visual imagery. The rhythm of the poem is both natal and nautical. The craft and use of prose poem as form served the interior of this poem beautifully. ‘Swarm’ provides a remarkable body for a poem that is concerned with the earth and the flesh.”
Honorable Mention: “I am the same age as my best friend's killer” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik
Playwriting
Judge: Kamarie Chapman received her M.F.A. from The University of New Mexico in 2009 with dissertation work in gender and playwriting. Kamarie is thrilled to be teaching Theatre History, Playwriting, Theory, and Outreach Education as adjunct at Western Washigton University (where she earned her BA in Arts). She has taught and directed theatre and outreach to many diverse populations and was the Artistic Director of a mixed-ability company in Albuquerque, NM called Equilibrium through VSA during her final year working on her Masters. Kamarie is a member of the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, The Dramatists Guild, The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and Artists Trust. Her play Deception Pass: An American Story was the winner of two national awards from The Kennedy Center (The David Mark Cohen and co-winner of the Paula Vogel playwriting awards). This play was also the national winner of The ATHE playwriting award. In 2010 her short play, Dijon Love, was a finalist for the Humana Heidman Award and she was a top five finalist for the NPA/Seattle Rep/SAG Screenwriting contest in June of 2010. She has had her work published by NPA and numerous zines, including most recently in the fifth volume of Your Hands Your Mouth.
Undergraduate
Winner: Shades of Grey by Kelsey Pretzer
“Relationships in families have always been complex and fragile (even when they aren’t). In a story of a mid-western family with plenty of skeletons practically jumping out of multiple closets, the implications of the matriarch of the family passing leads three sisters and their families in a new direction in hopes of reinforcing all those fragile cracks in the foundation of their lives. Told with a classic Americana style, Shades of Grey is a script that will strike all those dysfunctional chords that just about anyone can relate to.”
Honorable Mention: Dysrhythmia by Katina Marguerite Donoghue
“For many parents it seems when children reach ‘that age’ their sole intent is to break away from the family unit, often in a colossal storm of family drama. Dysrhythmia asks to see the story from the point of view of the children. Events that take place during peoples’ lives during their formative years are some of the most unforgettable and so are so many moments in this script. Told in style that feels like it’s ready for film, this script takes a poignant peek into the lives of people connected by the most extreme situations.”
Graduate
Winner: “B-11” by G. William Zorn
“‘B-11’ is play that not only examines the life of one mother and her relationship with her daughter who was one of the thousands of victims from airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. This play is particularly impressive in its structure and style paying homage to surrealist movements—liberation and exploration. Caught someplace between a nightmare and the truth, much like the epic lore that surrounds the events that happened on 9/11, this script tells the story of a mother caught in one moment in time.”
Honorable Mention: “Starf*cker” by Adam Pasen
“There are always ‘those kids’ in any industry scene, and Hollywood might be one of the most reputable places for would-be superstars. ‘Starf*cker’ tells the story of two hopefuls seeking out two very different outcomes in a classic structure style with lovely naturalistic dialogue and an age-old story of unrequited love. This short script is smart and funny and will leave you with one of those ‘AwwwWWWwww’ moments at the end.”
Creative Nonfiction
Judge: Richard Katrovas is the author of Green Dragons (winner of the Wesleyan University Press New Poets Series, 1983), Snug Harbor (Wesleyan, 1986), The Public Mirror (Wesleyan, 1990), The Book of Complaints (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1993), Prague, USA (stories, Portals Press, 1996), Dithyrambs (choral lyrics, Carnegie Mellon, 1998), Mystic Pig (novel, Small Mouth Press, 2001; Oleander Press, 2008), The Republic of Burma Shave (memoir, Carnegie Mellon, 2001), Prague Winter (Carnegie Mellon, 2005), The Years of Smashing Bricks (an “anecdotal memoir,” Carnegie Mellon, 2008), and Scorpio Rising: Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon, 2011). Katrovas edited Ten Years after the Velvet Revolution, the first anthology of Czech poetry to appear in English after Czechoslovakia’s bloodless revolution. Katrovas’ poems, stories and essays have appeared in dozens of the leading literary journals and anthologies. Witness to the Velvet Revolution on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1989, Katrovas is the founding director of Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program, which is going into its eighteenth year. Katrovas is married to the yogini Krista Katrovas, and is the proud father of three Czech-American daughters, Ema, Anna, and Ella.
Undergraduate
Winner: “Secret” by Michelle Repke
Graduate
Winner: “Light as a Feather” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik
Honorable Mention: “Operation Toe Breaker” by Brandon Davis Jennings
Fiction
Judge: Jennifer Vanderbes’ first novel, Easter Island, was named a “best book of 2003” by the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor and her second novel, Strangers at the Feast, was published by Scribner in 2010. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, and her work has been translated into sixteen languages. Her third novel, about a young girl who becomes a nurse during WWII, will be published in 2013.
Undergraduate
Winner: “On Being Blessed” by Claire Robbins
“A sophisticated narrative combination of the personal and political. Suspenseful, insightful and vividly written.”
Honorable Mention: “The Scraps” by Tom Smith
“A gracefully-drawn portrait of a man struggling to become a good father. A mature and heartfelt story.”
Graduate
Winner: “Wake Turbulence” by Laurie Cedilnik
“A vivid setting and a cast of memorable characters come together in this dramatic and absorbing story of a young girl trying to understand the meaning of motherhood.”
Honorable Mention: “White Maple” by Dan Toronto
“A sympathetic look at a young couple discovering their sexuality and the challenges of adulthood.”
Poetry
Judge: Rachel Eliza Griffiths is the author of Mule & Pear (New Issues), Miracle Arrhythmia (Willow Books), and The Requited Distance (Sheep Meadow Press). Reviewer Roxane Gay (The Rumpus) writes, “Griffiths tackled sex(uality), slavery, the strength of women, the mark of history, and the power of language, in fierce poems that were so memorable I return to them over and over.” A Cave Canem Fellow, she is the recipient of fellowships from Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, Vermont Studio Center, New York State Summer Writers Institute, the Cave Canem Foundation and others. A photographer and painter, her visual work has been published widely in both national and international magazines and journals. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in New York.
Undergraduate
Winner: “Late Echo” by Brian Bender
“This poem reflects a poet whose voice considers the importance of craft and originality. The balance of rhythms and vivid imagery achieve a sustained and interesting reflection on the significance of ordinary passage and the interrogation that accompanies a certain sort of thoughtfulness. Invoking Ashbery, of course, opened ‘Late Echo’s’ quiet window while the poem makes use of its own questions and its own frank and dreamy regard for the world.”
Honorable Mention: “El Hatillo” by Claire Robbins
Graduate
Winner: “Swarm” by Natalie Giarratano
“This poem is powerful in its ability to weld a persistent line of intimacy against its visual imagery. The rhythm of the poem is both natal and nautical. The craft and use of prose poem as form served the interior of this poem beautifully. ‘Swarm’ provides a remarkable body for a poem that is concerned with the earth and the flesh.”
Honorable Mention: “I am the same age as my best friend's killer” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik
Playwriting
Judge: Kamarie Chapman received her M.F.A. from The University of New Mexico in 2009 with dissertation work in gender and playwriting. Kamarie is thrilled to be teaching Theatre History, Playwriting, Theory, and Outreach Education as adjunct at Western Washigton University (where she earned her BA in Arts). She has taught and directed theatre and outreach to many diverse populations and was the Artistic Director of a mixed-ability company in Albuquerque, NM called Equilibrium through VSA during her final year working on her Masters. Kamarie is a member of the Northwest Playwrights Alliance, The Dramatists Guild, The Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) and Artists Trust. Her play Deception Pass: An American Story was the winner of two national awards from The Kennedy Center (The David Mark Cohen and co-winner of the Paula Vogel playwriting awards). This play was also the national winner of The ATHE playwriting award. In 2010 her short play, Dijon Love, was a finalist for the Humana Heidman Award and she was a top five finalist for the NPA/Seattle Rep/SAG Screenwriting contest in June of 2010. She has had her work published by NPA and numerous zines, including most recently in the fifth volume of Your Hands Your Mouth.
Undergraduate
Winner: Shades of Grey by Kelsey Pretzer
“Relationships in families have always been complex and fragile (even when they aren’t). In a story of a mid-western family with plenty of skeletons practically jumping out of multiple closets, the implications of the matriarch of the family passing leads three sisters and their families in a new direction in hopes of reinforcing all those fragile cracks in the foundation of their lives. Told with a classic Americana style, Shades of Grey is a script that will strike all those dysfunctional chords that just about anyone can relate to.”
Honorable Mention: Dysrhythmia by Katina Marguerite Donoghue
“For many parents it seems when children reach ‘that age’ their sole intent is to break away from the family unit, often in a colossal storm of family drama. Dysrhythmia asks to see the story from the point of view of the children. Events that take place during peoples’ lives during their formative years are some of the most unforgettable and so are so many moments in this script. Told in style that feels like it’s ready for film, this script takes a poignant peek into the lives of people connected by the most extreme situations.”
Graduate
Winner: “B-11” by G. William Zorn
“‘B-11’ is play that not only examines the life of one mother and her relationship with her daughter who was one of the thousands of victims from airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001. This play is particularly impressive in its structure and style paying homage to surrealist movements—liberation and exploration. Caught someplace between a nightmare and the truth, much like the epic lore that surrounds the events that happened on 9/11, this script tells the story of a mother caught in one moment in time.”
Honorable Mention: “Starf*cker” by Adam Pasen
“There are always ‘those kids’ in any industry scene, and Hollywood might be one of the most reputable places for would-be superstars. ‘Starf*cker’ tells the story of two hopefuls seeking out two very different outcomes in a classic structure style with lovely naturalistic dialogue and an age-old story of unrequited love. This short script is smart and funny and will leave you with one of those ‘AwwwWWWwww’ moments at the end.”
Creative Nonfiction
Judge: Richard Katrovas is the author of Green Dragons (winner of the Wesleyan University Press New Poets Series, 1983), Snug Harbor (Wesleyan, 1986), The Public Mirror (Wesleyan, 1990), The Book of Complaints (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 1993), Prague, USA (stories, Portals Press, 1996), Dithyrambs (choral lyrics, Carnegie Mellon, 1998), Mystic Pig (novel, Small Mouth Press, 2001; Oleander Press, 2008), The Republic of Burma Shave (memoir, Carnegie Mellon, 2001), Prague Winter (Carnegie Mellon, 2005), The Years of Smashing Bricks (an “anecdotal memoir,” Carnegie Mellon, 2008), and Scorpio Rising: Selected Poems (Carnegie Mellon, 2011). Katrovas edited Ten Years after the Velvet Revolution, the first anthology of Czech poetry to appear in English after Czechoslovakia’s bloodless revolution. Katrovas’ poems, stories and essays have appeared in dozens of the leading literary journals and anthologies. Witness to the Velvet Revolution on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1989, Katrovas is the founding director of Western Michigan University’s Prague Summer Program, which is going into its eighteenth year. Katrovas is married to the yogini Krista Katrovas, and is the proud father of three Czech-American daughters, Ema, Anna, and Ella.
Undergraduate
Winner: “Secret” by Michelle Repke
Graduate
Winner: “Light as a Feather” by Laurie Ann Cedilnik
Honorable Mention: “Operation Toe Breaker” by Brandon Davis Jennings
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