Reading with Dan Chaon

Indiana University's English Department and MFA Program

presents

A Reading by Dan Chaon

Where: Grand Hall of the Neal-Marshall Center
When: Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Time: 7:00pm


Dan Chaon is the author, most recently, of the national bestseller Await Your Reply, which was named one of the ten best books of the year by Publisher's Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, and Laura Miller of salon.com, as well as being named among the year's best fiction by such newspapers as The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune.

Dan is also the author of the short story collection Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the 2001 National Book Award, and the novel You Remind Me of Me. Dan's fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Dan lives in Cleveland Heights, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing and Literature.

It's Here!

The Winter 2009 Issue is here! featuring work by Michael Martone, Eugene Gloria, Peter Selgin, Mary Miller, Richard Jackson, our 2009 Poetry Prize Winner Tom Christopher, and many, many more!

The poems will be sure to delight you, the nonfiction will thrill you, and the fiction will enthrall...so get this curious rabbit issue delivered to your doorstep by ordering online or if your a local dropped by BH 465 to pick up your very own copy.

Don Belton

On December 27th 2009, Don Belton, a much loved member of the Creative Writing faculty here at IU, was brutually murdered. Don was an incredibly generous man, a talented intellectual, and a gifted writer. Words are inadequate to describe the sense of loss and sadness that his students, colleagues, friends, and family feel. He will be greatly missed.

I feel fortunate to have worked closely with Don this past semester. I would spend hours in his office, sitting on the sofa, laughing, listening to jazz and marveling at the hundreds of books that lined the walls. I will always remember the advice he gave me. He had a way of zeroing in on exactly what wasn't working in a draft and explaining the problem in the most original way possible. He once told me that I didn't yet understand a phrase I had written to describe a character. On one of the last stories of mine that he read, he told me that fiction was a poker game and I needed to work on my bluff. And he was right every time. I feel that I am a better writer and a better reader because of Don and I thank him for that.

More information regarding this tragdey can be found here: www.justicefordonbelton.com

If you are in Bloomington, please join us for Don's memorial service this Friday, January 15th at 5 p.m. at the Uniterian Universalist Church, 2120 N Fee Lane (for directions please visit www.uubloomington.org).

-Nina

Happy Holidays!

Well, dear Blue Light Readers, the semester is ending and that means two important things: first, our latest issue, 31.2, will be arriving in mailboxes any day now--hooray!--and second, the IR staff is officially on vacation--double hooray! Thank you to everyone who made this semester so much fun!

Also, we've announced our 2009 Fiction Prize winner! Congrats to Rolf Yngve! As soon as we return in January, we will update our website with all the finalists. (We just received a holiday gift of Windows Vista on all of our office computers and apparently have lost all the software we need for website updating...um, thanks Santa?)

That's it for us until January 11th. We wish everyone a very happy holiday season and a marvelous new year!

Best, Nina

2009 Fiction Prize Winner

We are pleased to announce our 2009 Fiction Prize winner: Rolf Yngve, whose story "Efendim" will be published in our upcoming Summer 2010 issue, 32.1.

Our final judge, Ron Carlson, had this to say about the story: In the cauldron of a high seas pirate and hostage standoff, "Efendim" offers a nervous and pressurized world by way of a rolling kaleidoscope of viewpoints. The story is braced with that rarity real things, and bears a confident authority; there is something of Conrad here. This ponderous ordeal flashes at us, the life and death moments like the myriad
reflections on the water.

Congratulations Rolf!

Congratulations also to the runner-up, Roger Sheffer, for his story "Shuttle" and second runner-up, Jeff P. Jones, for his story, "The Runciter Project."

Thank you to everyone who helped make this year's contest such a success!

You Damn Right, I've Got the Blues

The Blue Feature submission period has now closed. Daily, I’ve encountered stunning, blue work and, as melancholy as some of it has been to read, I couldn’t be more sad to call it quits. As an homage to the submission periods’ end, I thought I’d hip you all to my current blue obsession: Blues. More specifically, blues guitarist Laith Al Saadi. This Ann Arbor, Michigan artist is a guitar virtuoso, singer/song writer who is comfortable with old standards and originals alike. Everything about him—his axe, his big, smoky voice—is blue but emphatically celebratory of that feeling (think Buddy Guy’s “You Damn Right I’ve Got the Blues”). Watch the video below, listen to his thoughts on "voice" and be reminded of the Ars Poetica. Enjoy the tunes!

2009 Pushcart Nominations!

We'd like to offer our congratulations to the writers below, whose work our editors have selected for Pushcart nominations. In alphabetical order by author last name:

“Sometimes You Break Their Hearts, Sometimes They Break Yours” by Marie-Helene Bertino, Fiction (from IR 31.2, Winter 2009)

“Aubade in Which the Bats Tried to Warn Me” by Traci Brimhall, Poetry (from IR 31.1, Summer 2009)

“Terror Birds,” by Abby Geni, Fiction (from IR 31.2, Winter 2009)

“here is the sweet hand you always turn back on yourself,” by francine j. harris, Poetry (from IR 31.2, Winter 2009)

“Cousin Mike: A Memoir,” by Daniel Nester, Nonfiction (from IR 31.1, Summer 2009)

“Pavel and Peter Ever After,” by Kerri Webster, Poetry (from IR 31.2, Winter 2009)


And thank you to all our contributors for your wonderful work!