Nonfiction writer Matt Komatsu, Class of 2017, recently joined the roster of the some of the world's most celebrated and talented writers with the recent publication of his essay "The Buried Stone" in The Paris Review. The essay describes his visit to a tsunami ishi, or “tsunami stone,” in the Japanese village of Yoshihama. The boulder serves as warning and memorial to a series of devastating tsunamis over the centuries, most recently in 2011. Matt's guide was 89-year-old Hanōkizawa, who shared the village's experiences with tsunamis and  his own.

It's a lovely little essay well worth your time. It also means that those of us who know Matt can entertain ourselves with a literary version of "Six Degrees of Separation."

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Carve Magazine has opened its Prose & Poetry contest from Oct. 1 to Nov. 15. The prize in each genre is $1,000 and publication in the April issue. Note the entry fee of $17.

Hurry! The Missouri Review has extended the deadline for the Jeffrey E. Smith Editors' Prize until Oct. 15. Clearly they are waiting for your piece. The prize is $5,000 per genre in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Entry fee is $25. Details here. 

New Millenium Writings also sponsors a writing contest for all genres, open through November 30. Submit your best work and $20 here.

Superstition Review, an online literary journal published by Arizona State University, seeks poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art submissions this month, too. Deadline is November 5. See guidelines here. 

Creative Nonfiction magazine is accepting essays through Nov. 19 about "the role of games and play in our everyday lives" for a special issue, and through Feb. 25 for an issue dedicated to memoir. Information about these calls for submissions and others is posted here. 

Finding good places to submit your poems, short stories, and essays can sometimes seem like more work than writing them in the first place. Fortunately, a few sites aggregate links to publications and other writing opportunities. Good places to begin include:​

• Poets & Writers magazine hosts a submissions calendar as well as searchable listings for literary magazines, small presses, and contests, grants, and awards. 
• NewPages.com features a searchable database of more than 1,400 literary outlets that's regularly updated. The site offers many other writerly resources, including classified listings of recent calls for manuscripts and writing contests.

At the 2017 summer residency, CWLA's low-residency MFA program celebrated its 10th anniversary. In days of yore, the department operated as a traditional three-year program. For several reasons, the faculty proposed shifting to a low-residency model and university administrators immediately understood the brilliance of their plan. The low-residency program opened for business in Summer 2007 with a lot of enthusiasm, the faith of a brand-new group of students and mentors, and (let's be honest) a teensy bit of trepidation. Twelve days later, Director David Stevenson and his merry band of faculty celebrated the residency's success and then took a long nap.
 
Alumni of the low-residency and original program joined current students and faculty for a celebratory reception. 

In any creative writing program, successes and accomplishments come every day in ways most others don't see. Anybody who keeps writing after graduation is hugely successful. So are those who find and contribute to a literary community. The simplest way to track these kinds of accomplishments is to take note of the number of students who have published short stories, essays, poems, anthologies, articles, and books. We'd need  another 10 years to list every single publication, but look here for some highlights.

Zack Rogow sends along this announcement for fiction students:

• This Side of the Divide Anthology Seeks Short Fiction 
• Deadline: October 31, 2017

Baobab Press and the University of Nevada, Reno MFA Program in Creative Writing are partnering to publish This Side of the Divide, an anthology of short fiction by emerging and established authors exploring the United States West. We’re seeking fresh, original views of the western U.S. Our aim is to capture this region’s unique essence in all of its cultural and geographic diversity. Selected writers will receive a complimentary copy of the book and a payment of $100. Stories should be 3,000-5,000 words, and will need to be submitted no later than October 31st, 2017. Please visit baobabpress.com/submissions for details.

Well, some fun ones, too. The program's Facebook page has photographs from the summer residency, as well as publication news from student writers and mentors and the occasional interesting link to stories about writing and such. You might also want to join the ultra-exclusive Blue Fox Literary Society, which posts news and links from current and past students and faculty. It's a closed group, but get in touch with one of the members (including your friendly faculty mentors) and you're in like Flynn. 

On the practical side, the Graduate School's web presence seems to shift through time and space, but here is the latest verified link: UAA Graduate School. Of supreme importance to you third-years is the 2015-16 Graduate Student Handbook. You'll also want to memorize every single page of the Thesis Formatting Handbook, revised in Spring 2014. Enjoy!

By Dan Branch
July 2015

It’s raining. I’m walking into a sea of middle-aged Motley Crue fans, each a stunning example of bad wardrobe choice. I am wiping rain off my glasses while wondering, “Did that woman ever look good in that cut away blouse with her breasts unsupported by a bra?”

It’s raining. I’m walking into a room full of MFA students, taking a seat in the Non Fiction ghetto. I’m wondering how the environmental movement survived Abbey, how many loggers ended up in hospital when their chain saw hit a tree spike, whether Craig Childs ever sleeps, ever slows down, ever sips tea while listening to Corelli.
It's still raining. I am sleeping, dreaming about Childs’ desert until the Blue Fox empties out and liquored-up writers jam up against the dorm door like salmon at a weir.

It’s never going to stop raining, not even for me, one virtuous enough to wheel my folding bike out of the dorm at 7 a.m. for a two-hour ride on the coastal trail that soon goes wrong.

I’m wet when I reach where the Sandhill Cranes fed yesterday morning. Their absence is the first of a string of unfortunate events that will deny me a chance to answer writing prompts at the Science Center. I will never ponder what it is like to be a mosquito just before the swat. Never watch a moose chase Rob Pockat into the teeth of a bear.

I wish I could blame a moose for making me late by blocking the bike path but none appears, even after a Cook Inlet wave soaks my left shoe, which a moose would have found funny. I can’t blame bears, brown or black. They didn’t even leave scat for me to swerve around.

I can blame the rain that doesn’t stop. Without the rain, I might have brought a street map, might not have gotten lost in a South Anchorage desert where people suburb along streets with berry names, and bird names, and flower names; would not have found myself going the wrong way on Arlene, circling back to a busy berry street that I had left 30 minutes ago. I might have fallen in love with Arlene if she had led me to the Campbell Creek bike trail.

It’s raining and I am heading the wrong direction on Martin Luther King Junior just before the bus leaves and, to be honest, more important to me, just before someone grabs the last Cobb salad box lunch.

It’s raining, and I’m eating Cobb salad in my dorm room, listening to Corelli, thinking about how I am going to explain my absence from the science center, writing about Arlene, Cobb salad, an empty seat on the bus, feral writers, glam rock fans lacking glamour, and, did I mention, the rain.  

David is all that you could ask for in a mentor, director, teacher, writer, and friend. He is respected, respectful, prolific, and, by the measure of his students, extremely accomplished. His appreciation of the true art of writing is pervasive. On the subjects of beauty and struggle, David said, “It’s part of the deal we all signed up for when we were born; it’s in the nature of the contract: You have X number of years, the years will end and may do so at any time. It’s up to you to give the time meaning, to use it well. [And this is] all part and parcel of the great, usually unstated, directive of the artist. The first time I read Faulkner’s Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (a classic artist’s manifesto) I loved it, but almost immediately was thrown into a quandary: how was Faulkner’s own writing working to embody these really lofty ideals? The answer is: indirectly and with lots of complications…Look, I probably can’t break your heart: the bar is too damned high. But, trust me, I will be trying to do it in the next, and every, thing I write.”

We all should look forward to having David crush us under the weight of such esteemed heartbreak. Because when he’s done, he’ll be the one to pick us all back up.

From our friend Zack:

Sassafras Literary Magazine is seeking submissions of poetry, prose, fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction and artworks. This online lit mag is looking for intense, clear, original and minimalistic writing. Complex and advanced styles and concepts also welcome. The magazine is looking to represent new voices, and promote new writing. Every issue is composed by mostly unknown (less known) writers. Sassafras welcomes unpublished writers. If your writing is dense, unexpected, peculiar, soft-spoken, or sharp and hard to forget, submit! No reading fee, and submissions accepted year-round. Please see the submission guidelines at: sassafrasmag.wordpress.com/submit/.

Megan McCardle answers that question and more in Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators. She thinks most writers went astray in English classes by being too good. The ability to whip through reading and writing assignments at the last minute produces the false sense that natural talent will always come through. Unfortunately, professional writers can't count on that advantage because they're competing with all of the other English whizzes, she writes:

So the fear of producing bad work can trap writers into paralyzing procrastination and even self-handicapping--"deliberately doing things that will hamper their performance in order to give themselves an excuse for not doing well." The only reason procrastinators  get any work done is that they're more afraid of not turning in anything at all.
 
The rest of the article explores related psychological syndromes, the role of the educational system, and the consequences for society.  It's an interesting examination of the roots of failure that will give all procrastinators a reason to avoid the keyboard for just a little bit longer. . . .