Here at UC, we and the rest of the English Department are anticipating the October visit of Julie Schumacher, who’ll read in the Elliston Poetry Room at 4 p.m. on the 26th of that spooky month. Staffer and fan Don Peteroy reviews her latest—Dear Committee Members—below. Don Peteroy: In Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members, Jason …
Don Peteroy: Hemingway notes that in effective prose, writers will omit aspects of the story, but the reader will nonetheless sense the presence of what’s not there. “The dignity of the movement of an ice-berg,” Hemingway says, “is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” Likewise, in Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud describes the …
Don Peteroy: Come mid-February, I will stand before three examiners and, hopefully, demonstrate that the University of Cincinnati’s English department didn’t make a grave mistake when they accepted me for PhD candidacy. My areas of study are Skepticism on the Early Modern Stage and Comic Fiction. Since May, I have been trudging through my reading …
Don Peteroy: For the last four months, I’ve been reading humorous novels exclusively, trying to unpack how humor works, looking for ways the written medium imposes limitations on a writer’s ability to provoke laughter while also granting opportunities that you wouldn’t get in, say, standup comedy or film. I’m particularly interested in how writers sustain …
Brian Trapp: I’m currently writing a novel, which has not proved helpful for my mental health. I’m beset with the usual first-draft questions: How many narrators? One? Three? How much time will the narrative cover? One month? One year? Ten? To keep from quitting forever and taking up a more forgiving occupation (Bomb defuser? Smoke …
Brian Brodeur: As part of my reading for qualifying exams here at University of Cincinnati, I’ve been researching a module on Contemporary American narrative poetry. Though unfairly regarded by many poets and critics as déclassé, this poetic genre has enjoyed something of an awakening in recent years. I’m thinking not only of the verse novels …
Brian Trapp: It’s often said that fiction make us feel less lonely. However, growing up with a disabled twin brother, I often found novels to be a lonely place. Where were the stories about brothers like mine? Families like mine? Stories that depicted the severely disabled as more than objects of pity? This year, I …
Lisa Ampleman: I’ve been savoring Mary Szybist’s second book of poems, Incarnadine (Graywolf, 2013), released recently. Nearly eight years ago in St. Louis, I heard Szybist read from her first book, Granted, and I bought it immediately. In fact, I asked her where I could find a copy of one of the newer poems she’d …
Spring Break is at an end, and it’s great to be back in the office. The staff at CR is so devoted, so focused, so . . . fused to the rewarding work of bringing you lit that buzzes your bulbs, we tend to feel a bit lost when we don’t have submissions to read, …
Associate Editor Becky Adnot-Haynes: When I was a kid I used to do this weird thing where I folded over the top of my sock because the seam bothered my toes. Apparently, my uncle used to do the same, and he turned out to be a doctor—so my parents used to joke that maybe I …
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