New Pages

Will the cold ever end? Distract yourself with fresh shoots of faculty, student, and alumnae/i writing. Here's an annotated list of new publications, including a mesclun of poetries and a collection of essays about that spring perennial, baseball.


Professor Timothy Brennan
Borrowed Light: Vico, Hegel, and the Colonies
Stanford University Press, March 2014
Publisher's description: "A critical revaluation of the humanist tradition, Borrowed Light makes the case that the 20th century is the 'anticolonial century.' The sparks of concerted resistance to colonial oppression were ignited in the gathering of intellectual malcontents from all over the world in interwar Europe. . . . In readings of the showdown between Spinoza and Vico, Hegel's critique of liberalism, and Nietzsche's antipathy towards the colonies and social democracy, Brennan identifies the divergent lines of the first anticolonial theory."
Katherine Holmes (MA 1985)
Flute Lore, Flute Tales: Artifacts, History, and Stories About the Flute
Couchgrass Books, 2014
Publisher's description: "Explore the flute's four types as they have appeared on most continents since prehistoric times. This book follows the discovery of artifacts and the historical impact of the instrument. Myths, legends, and fairytales are re-told in many chapters. The last pages cover performers who have made the traditional and folk instruments popular again."
Katherine Holmes (MA 1985)
The Swan Bonnet [novel]
Couchgrass Books, 2013
Publisher's description: "In [Dawn's] coastal Alaskan town . . . Dawn's father surprises her part-Aleut mother with a hat she helped to make and also with an idea to catch poachers. Shooting swans has become illegal but Alaska is a territory and Prohibition occupies the Sheriff. . . . After she and her mother encounter women from a ship and find out about a hunting party, they ride to the inlet. There are townspeople roving the shore too but who is the vigilante and who is the poacher?" "What a relaxing, classic, and vibrant story. . . ." - from the HarperCollins Editor's Desk review of The Swan Bonnet at Authonomy.com
Patrick Hueller (MFA 2010) writing as Paul Hoblin
Archenemy [novel]
Darby Creek Publishing, 2013
Publisher's description: "When Eva Riley moved to town, she and Addie became super close. But when Eva wanted to be more than friends, Addie put soccer first instead. Suddenly Eva's sending Addie mean notes. Then she's screwing up Addie's plays. After a while, Addie's not sure she even wants her friend back." The young adult novel was named to the Rainbow List, selected by the ALA.
Molly Sutton Kiefer (MFA 2012)
Nestuary [creative nonfiction]
Ricochet Editions, 2014
From poet Arielle Greenberg: "Nestuary is a compelling document of the alchemical nature of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and becoming a mother. In stunning, lyric language, Molly Sutton Kiefer spins the tale of a journey of intervention and invocation: the high technology of fertility treatments and the ancient wisdom of the goddesses at work together. These 'little needle songs' of violence, love, illness, and power are rich with awareness and full of milk and mermaids, moons and medicines, and ultimately, 'magnificent' babies. And they are sung urgently and out of order, as they should be."
Carrie Lorig (MFA candidate), with Nick Sturm
Labor Day [poetry chapbook]
Forklift, OH Press, 2014
Josh Ostergaard (MFA 2011)
The Devil's Snake Curve: A Fan's Notes From Left Field [creative nonfiction]
Coffee House Press, 2014
From Booklist: "Readers who, like the author, see baseball as a metaphor for, well, nearly everything, and who deem the Yankees as not only representative of the misdistribution of wealth in America but also connected to such events as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Vietnam War will love this book. Those who merely enjoy baseball as baseball, even those who root for his despised Yankees, may still find plenty to like in Ostergaard's oddball take on the sport."
Scott F. Parker (MFA candidate) writing as The Synthesis
in here [prose chapbook]
Monkey Puzzle Press, 2014
From poet (and alumnus) Ed Bok Lee: "From deep within in here, evocations of The Synthesis operate on multiple planes of creation independent of, in opposition to, and, simultaneously, in beautiful harmony with the ever-evolving subject of this anti-memoir/cultural critique/poem/compendium of aphorisms/memoir-anti. Over and over, the strangest, most hermeneutical music emanates from deep within the fractures of this grand and haunting achievement."
Francine Marie Tolf (MFA 2006)
Shadow Town: Essays on Growing Up in Joliet, Illinois [prose chapbook]
Green Fuse Poetic Arts Press, 2013
Elisabeth Workman (MFA candidate)
ULTRAMEGAPRAIRIELAND [poetry]
Bloof Books, March 2014
Publisher's description: "Referentially crammed and brimming with cultural bling, the poems in ULTRAMEGAPRAIRIELAND range from forlorn to flipped out, citing and subverting far-flung sources high, holy, and WTF. 'I wrote all of the poems after moving back to the Midwest from the Middle East,' explains Workman. 'They are all somehow symptomatic of my inability to adjust, not to the Midwest per se, but just in general. Surviving the Midwest is all about juxtaposition.'"
Elisabeth Workman (MFA candidate), with Michael Sikkema
TERRORISM IS WHAT WHALE [poetry chapbook]
Grey Book Press, 2014
Publisher's description: "Late last year, Elisabeth Workman and Michael Sikkema (both GBP-published poets) contacted me about a collaboration (or two) they'd been working on. I quickly accepted TERRORISM IS WHAT WHALE. It's a brillant collection of post-Flarf gems, a dialogue between what might pass for 'traditional' poems and 'surveillance portraits.' It's all lively and subversive and fun for the whole family!"
Candice Wuehle (MA 2012)
cursewords: a manual in 19 steps for aspiring transmographs [poetry chapbook]
Dancing Girl Press, 2014