MFA alum Patty Paine will have her first full-length poetry collection, Oracle Bones, published by Red Hen Press in 2010.
August 2009 Archives
Patty Paine and Samia Touati of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar, and Jeff Lodge of VCU Richmond, recently signed a contract with Garnet Publishing/Ithaca Press to publish Bint Ar-rimal: An Anthology of Contemporary Arabian Gulf Poetry, of which they are the editors. The anthology will feature the work of 30-40 poets from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and of translators, including those most well-regarded in the field, from the world over. Publication is scheduled for spring/summer 2011.
Tom De Haven completed work on Our Hero, a book-length essay about Superman for Yale University Press's Icons of America Series (to be published Feb. 1, 2010) and also finished co-editing (with former MFA students Andrew Blossom and Brian Castleberry) Richmond Noir, to be published on March 1 2010 by Akashic Press. (De Haven's story, "Playing with DaBlonde" appears in the book.)
MATX student Lee Bloxom was awarded the Hibbs/Waller Scholarship for the Fall 2009 semester. The annual scholarship was established by the VCU/MCV Women’s Club and the Graduate School of Virginia Commonwealth University.
Recent MA graduates Leslie Cohngee and Carolyn White were hired as collateral faculty at VCU University College.
MATX student Belinda Haikes has received a one-year visiting faculty appointment in the Digital Design Program at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.
Deb Olin Unferth has won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, which honors the best debut novel published in 2008. Her winning book is Vacation, a tale of a contemporary businessman whose life takes a mysterious, heartbreaking turn. Unferth will receive the award at the First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University on November 6. Unferth was one of three finalists for the prize, which is now in its eighth year. The other finalists were David Mura, for Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire, and Jesmyn Ward, for Where the Line Bleeds.
More than 80 novels were submitted for consideration for this year’s prize. A group of more than 100 readers reduced the list to finalists and semifinalists. The finalists were then considered by a panel of judges that included Travis Holland, winner of the 2008 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for The Archivist’s Story; Peter Orner, winner of the 2007 Award for The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo; and Andrew Blossom, editor of Makeout Creek and the forthcoming anthology Richmond Noir.
Recent MA graduate John Coffey was hired as a 12th grade English teacher in Martinsville, VA.
