Alumni Publications

Alice Anderson MFA ’93

Some Bright Morning, I’ll Fly Away

^{Memoir / St. Martin’s Press, 2017}

Hurricane Katrina damages both Anderson’s beloved Mississippi home and her prominent doctor-husband’s mental health. After he attacks her at knifepoint, she flees with her children. Against the odds—and the legal system—Anderson creates a new life for her family and rediscovers herself.

Bethany Ball MFA ’13

What to Do about the Solomons

^{Fiction / Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017}

When Marc Solomon is falsely accused of money laundering, the news reverberates throughout his scattered family. Secrets and rumors ripple from Los Angeles to a Jordan River Valley kibbutz. The turmoil reveals what binds the Solomons together and what threatens to tear them apart.

Nan Bauer-Maglin ’63 (co-editor)

Staging Women’s Lives in Academia: Gendered Life Stages in Language and Literature Workplaces

^{Gender Studies / SUNY Press, 2017}

In these essays, women at all stages of their academic careers speak about never feeling young enough or old enough and share their continuing struggles to balance work and family. Collectively, the authors argue that workplaces—not women—must change to address these issues.

Joan Juliet Buck ’70

The Price of Illusion

^{Memoir / Atria Books (Simon & Schuster), 2017}

In 1994, Buck became the first (and thus far only) American woman to top the masthead of Paris Vogue as editor-in-chief. This memoir traces her journey from the glittering heights of the international fashion world to the depths of scandal and rejection, where she discovers who she truly is.

Abigail Carroll ’99

A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim

^{Religion / Eerdmans, 2017}

Today, Saint Francis is best known as a bird-feeding ceramic garden statue. But in these 40 lyrical letters to the sentimentalized figure, Carroll delves into his character, legacy, and impact on modern life and faith.

Durga Chew-Bose ’09

Too Much and Not the Mood

^{Essay / FSG Originals, 2017}

Inspired by a quote from Virginia Woolf’s A Writer’s Diary, Chew-Bose explores what it means to be a first-generation immigrant, a writer, a child of divorced parents, and simply herself in her debut collection of lyric essays.

Rachelle Cruz ’07

God’s Will for Monsters

^{Poetry / Inlandia Institute, 2017}

Cruz’s experimental poetry blends prose, invented scholarly excerpts, and Philippine cultural artifacts to create a sensual, dream-like narrative of her life, history, and ethnicity. Reviewer Juan Felipe Herrera, former Poet Laureate of the United States, describes her work as “deeply serious, yet playful” and “one of a kind.”

Alex Dimitrov MFA ’09

Together and by Ourselves

^{Poetry / Copper Canyon Press, 2017}

Modern technology connects more of us than ever before, yet our feelings of loneliness persist. Dimitrov’s second book of poems explores our desire to escape such existential contradictions with money and celebrity, while also confronting readers with the realities of life we cannot change.

Lauren Fishbein ’82 (co-author)

Pucci de Rossi

^{Monograph / Editions Norma, 2017}

Italian-born Pucci de Rossi was a pupil of American sculptor H. B. Walker and a regular on the European art scene of the 1980s. With text in English and French, this first-ever monograph on the prolific artist includes many photos of his work and is co-authored by Fishbein, who was once his apprentice.

Meg Freitag ’05

Edith

^{Poetry / BOATT Press, 2017}

The inaugural winner of the 2016 BOAAT Book Prize for a first book in poetry, this collection takes its name from a beloved bird who meets an untimely death. Edith dips in and out of Freitag’s verses—sometimes exuberant, sometimes darkly humorous—about love, solitude, and the wilderness.

Jimin Han MFA ’98

A Small Revolution

^{Fiction / Little A, 2017}

Lloyd Kang holds four young women hostage at gunpoint. One of them, Yoona, met Lloyd and his friend Jaesung the previous summer in South Korea. Now, Jaesung is dead under mysterious circumstances, and Yoona must confront her love for him while she fights to survive Lloyd’s breakdown.

Liza Ketchum ’68

The Life Fantastic

^{Young Adult Fiction / Merit Press (Simon & Schuster), 2017}

In 1913, 15-year-old Teresa runs away from her demanding father in Vermont to pursue her dream of singing on Broadway. Her friendship with Pietro, an African American dancer, is complicated by their competition and by the racial backdrop of early 20th-century America.

Joanna H. Kraus ’59

Blue Toboggan

^{Children’s Fiction / Mascot Books, 2017}

For children ages 8–12, this sensitively written and illustrated book deals with grief and how to cope with loss by turning to friends and family for support—and by cherishing special memories.

Ellie Roscher ’13

Play Like a Girl: How a Soccer School in Kenya’s Slums Started a Revolution

^{Education / Viva Editions (Simon & Schuster), 2017}

Roscher chronicles the work of Abdul Kassim, who grew up in Kenya amid countless examples of gender inequality. The girls’ soccer team he formed in 2002 to help empower local young women has since blossomed into an academy providing academic, artistic, and athletic programs for 100-plus students each year.

Jeannette Watson (Sanger) ’68

It’s My Party: A Memoir

^{Memoir / Turtle Point Press, 2017}

Born into a celebrity family hiding dark secrets behind a glamorous facade, Watson hid her own depression until she suffered a breakdown. This memoir traces her journey from debutante to single mother and bookstore owner to spiritual healer.

Megan Epler Wood ’74

Sustainable Tourism on a Finite Planet: Environmental, Business, and Policy Solutions

^{Nonfiction / Routledge, 2017}

Travel and tourism can have broad consequences for local economies as well as the global environment. As tourism increases and previously quiet locations become destinations, this book offers ways for those in every aspect of the tourism industry to protect local resources and reduce carbon impacts.

Cynthia Weingartner Bardes ’63

Pansy in London: The Mystery of the Missing Puppy

^{Children’s Fiction / Octobre, LLC, 2017}

Globe-trotting Pansy the Poodle and her human friend, Avery, are summoned to Buckingham Palace.

Christine Tinkle Beresniova ’00

Holocaust Education in Lithuania: Community, Conflict, and the Making of Civil Society

^{Nonfiction / Lexington Books (Rowman & Littlefield), 2017}

History and memory often differ. In Lithuania, Beresniova studies how the Holocaust is remembered, how international policies are attempting to recraft its narrative, and the political and cultural assumptions that factor into Holocaust education programs.

Ann Cefola ’81, MFA ’97

Free Ferry

^{Poetry / Upper Hand Press LLC, 2017}

In a single epic poem, Cefola mythologizes the scientists who first isolated plutonium. As was often the case in the Cold War era, their idyllic suburban context belies underlying danger.

Rebecca Chianese ’84

Mercy

^{Fiction / Hollow Press, 2017}

Carly thought she’d left her chaotic Brooklyn childhood behind when she moved to the suburbs and started a family, but when she becomes a divorced empty nester, she learns her past is still present.

Robert Fanning MFA ’97

Our Sudden Museum

^{Poetry / Salmon Poetry, 2017}

In a bittersweet collection centered on elegies to family members, Fanning writes not only of grief, but also hope. As he remembers a departed brother, sister, and father, he looks to the lives of his children, still to be led.

Georgette Gouveia ’77, MFA ’80

The Penalty for Holding

^{Fiction / Less Than Three Press, 2017}

In this novel from The Games Men Play Series, backup quarterback Quinn Novak begins two separate and secret relationships with quarterbacks from other teams, unaware that the two old rivals have their own history together.

Chloe Honum ’03

Then Winter

^{Poetry / Bull City Press, 2017}

Exploring a world that is often kept silent, Honum’s poems carry the reader along on a journey through a psychiatric ward, where jokes and friends exist alongside pain and isolation.

Mike Levine ’07 (co-author)

At Least You’re Not These Monsters!

^{Graphic Novel, Humor / Devastator Press, 2017}

This colorful and crusty cast of monsters reminds readers that their own body parts, eyesight, memory, and every other attribute could be worse—much worse.

Jeannine Marie Pitas ’05 (translator)

I Remember Nightfall

^{Poetry / Ugly Duckling Presse, 2017}

This bilingual edition translates four book-length poems by Marosa di Giorgio, one of Uruguay’s most famous poets. The verses explore memory, familial relationships, erotic desire, and war, using the recurring setting of a garden as a stage for interactions between the natural and supernatural.

Kara Rota ’09 (editor)

Freshman Year of Life: Essays That Tell the Truth about Work, Home, and Love after College

^{Essay / Flatiron Books, 2017}

These 38 essays from diverse writers, including Eric Glover ’09, offer a kaleidoscope of stories about what happens after the supposed “best years of life.”

Kathleen “Katie” McMenamin Sabo ’92 (co-author)

Organize Your Way: Simple Strategies for Every Personality

^{Nonfiction / Sterling, 2017}

Katie and sister Kelly provide strategies for home organization based on personality type to help ensure each space stays orderly—and all housemates coexist peacefully.

Jeanne Scheper ’88

Moving Performances: Divas, Iconicity, and Remembering the Modern Stage

^{Nonfiction / Rutgers University Press, 2016}

Focusing on four early 20^th-century divas—Aida Overton Walker, Loïe Fuller, Libby Holman, and Josephine Baker—Scheper examines their icon status in a culture that both venerated and marginalized them.

Diane Heiskell Schetky ’61

Taking Flight: New Poems & Others

^{Poetry / Just Write Books, 2017}

In this travelogue in verse, Schetky invites readers to journey from Maine to the Arctic, into the lives of her intimate friends, and alongside a river that becomes a companion.

Aiyanna Sezak-Blatt ’07

A Tangled Tree: My Father’s Path to Immortality

^{Memoir / Logosophia, LLC, 2017}

Sezak-Blatt’s father Moshe, a Polish Jew, escapes the Nazis to become a Harvard professor and rabbi—and then a psychedelia-fueled, globe-trotting spiritual seeker who fathers six children with five women. After years apart, Moshe reunites with his fourth child to record their family’s labyrinthine story.

Ptolemy Tompkins ’85 (co-author)

Proof of God: The Shocking True Answer to the World’s Most Important Question

^{Religion / Howard Books (Simon & Schuster), 2017}

With astrophysicist Bernard Haisch, Tompkins argues that God’s presence is scientifically provable—repositioning science not as an enemy of faith but a justification.