Kudos, Q2 2019: News and Accolades from the Lighthouse Community

It's kudos time! This is our quarterly opportunity to celebrate the latest publication and award news from our members, instructors, and workshop participants. If you're a Lighthouse member who'd like to share your own good news, let us know here.

BOOK DEALS AND NEWS

Instructor Jennifer Wortman’s collection, This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love. was just released in May and was excerpted in The Offing. 

Instructor Robert Garner McBrearty's collection of flash fiction WHEN I CAN'T SLEEP has been accepted for publication by Matter Press. Robert also has a story in the winter issue of Witness Magazine. 

Instructor Andrea Rexilius's fourth book, Sister Urn, is out from Sidebrow Books. 

Poetry Book Project graduate Martha Kalin's poetry manuscript How to Hold a Flying River has been awarded the Terry J. Cox Poetry Award and will be published by Regal House Publishing in spring of 2020. She worked on this manuscript with Chris Ransick as mentor.

Poetry Collective graduate Wendy Mannis Scher's first poetry chapbook, Fault, is scheduled to be released by Finishing Line Press this summer. The chapbook is part of a larger manuscript she focused on while working with Andrea Rexilius and Elizabeth Robinson in the Poetry Collective. 

Member Sarah Adleman’s first book, The Lampblack Blue of Memory: Her Mother Echoes, a hybrid memoir, was released last month by Tolsun Books.

Young Writers Program Co-Director Kimberly O'Connor's poetry collection White Lung is forthcoming from Saturnalia Books in fall 2021.

 

AWARDS AND RECOGNITIONS 

Instructor Nick Arvin won the Colorado Book Award for his novel Mad Boy (Europa Editions).

Instructor Diana Khoi Nguyen’s collection Ghost Of won the Colorado Book Award for poetry.

Instructor Tiffany Quay Tyson’s novel The Past is Never won the 2019 Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction. 

Instructor Karen Auvinen’s memoir, Rough Beauty: Forty Seasons of Mountain Living (Scribner), was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. The book is out in paperback now.

Youth Instructor and Book Project Graduate Caitlin Plante was accepted into the Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Fiction Workshop with Lan Samantha Chang. She was also accepted to the Kenyon Review's Summer Workshop, and will attend next summer 2020. 

Member Bill Hatcher’s book Principles of Flight has been selected as a finalist in the 13th Annual National Indie Excellence Awards in the Social/Political Change category.

Member Robert Case was a contributor to the book 1969 Are You Still Listening?  which won the 2019 Best Book Award in the National Indie Excellence Awards in the Social/Political Change category.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Instructor John Cotter’s personal essay "Former Lives" appears in the Summer 2019 issue of The Literary Review

Operations Manager Manuel Aragon had a short story published in Anomaly.

Executive Director Michael Henry’s poem, “Gun Remakes America,” appeared in Poets Reading the News.

Program and Content Coordinator Torin Jensen's drawing, "Laocoön thought bubble, or An Ouroboros With A Conscience † †Art* *Language,” was exhibited in Geogia Art Space's 2019 Open Call Show.

Young Writers Program Co-Director Kimberly O'Connor's poem, “My American Childhood in Reverse,” was recently published in Cagibi. Kim worked on the poem in Major Jackson's Advanced Workshop at Lit Fest. 

Book Project member Corie Rosen's short story, "I Know Exactly How This Works," appeared in Roanoke Review's summer issue. 

Poetry Book Project graduate Connie Zumpf’s poem, “Wildlife Problems” appears in North American Review’s Summer 2019 issue. Three additional poems were published in the May 2019 edition of Human Touch, an annual anthology from the Anschutz Medical Campus community at the University of Colorado.  

Book Project Alum Amanda Baldeneaux’s short story “Salt Land” was just published in the spring Missouri Review. And bonus: it won the coveted Missouri Review Editors’ Prize!

Member Hillary Frances published a personal essay, “Which Way’s Home,” in Salt Hill Journal. It’s based on a project that was launched in BK Loren's weekend intensive at Lit Fest.

Member Martha Johns had her essay “Suffering and Survival: Stories from my work in a narcotics recovery clinic” published in the Winter/Spring 2019 issue of Catamaran. She is grateful for feedback received in workshops taught by John Cotter.

Member Deborah Kelly will have four poems and an interview appear in Thalia Magazine's summer 2019 issue, themed "a(wake)".

Member Johanna Levene's first fiction story, "Grork Dentist," was published in Issue 038 of Luna Station Quarterly. In addition, her first creative essay "I See You" was published on the 1000 Love, You Letters website and will be included in the print anthology Love, You Book in fall 2019.

Member Petra Perkins had a "tiny love story" published in the New York Times Modern Love column, and a huge love story published in Sports Car Digest titled “A Good (Car) Guy is Hard to Find: A Girl's Memoir.

Member Amy Reardon had a Q&A published in The Adroit Journal.

Member Catherine Salcito had an essay published in Wanderlust-Journal.

Member Michele Finn Johnson's flash fiction “Santo Spirito, 1577” was selected for publication in the Best Small Fictions 2019 anthology.