Bits of news from some of the Fellows in Literature
Edward Hirsch, FAAR 1989, has written a book-length poem to the memory of his son who died in 2011 after taking a club drug at a party. Gabriel: A Poem was released in September, 2014. In the Sunday Book Review of the New York Times Emily Rapp writes, “Turning a poetic imagination to loss, “Gabriel” inventories the bitter tricks of suffering that reveal grief’s power to bewilder and disorient…” The poem was longlisted in poetry for the 2014 National Book Award. See also Finding the Words by Alec Wilkinson (The New Yorker, 4 August, 2014).
Recent work by Aaron Hamburger, FAAR 2006 includes the story “New Neighbor” in the anthology Law and Disorder
and an essay on Frank Sargeson in the Summer 2014 issue of Tin House. Links to more writing are on his website.
night thoughts: 70 dream poems & notes from an analysis by Sarah Arvio, FAAR 2004 was released in paperback in August, 2014.
Along with books, stories, reviews, and essays, Tom Bissell, FAAR 2007, is busy writing scripts for video games. His newest are The Vanishing of Ethan Carter released in 2014, and Battlefield: Hardline which is due to come out in 2015. His book Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter is a look at cultural and popular aspects of video games. He discusses his fascination with the art form in this interview in The New Yorker.
Edmund Keeley, FAAR 1960, won the 2014 PEN Award for Translation from the PEN American Center. The award is given for a book-length translation of poetry not written in English. Keeley and his co-translator Karen Emmerich received the award for their tranlation of Diaries of Exile by Yannis Ritsos from the Greek. Ritsos wrote the poem-diary while in internal exile as a political prisoner during Greece’s Civil War in the late 1940s.
Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jorie Graham, RAAR 2008 has a new book coming out. From the New World: Poems 1976-2014 will be on sale 17 February 2015.