Alum Authors 2023
The 2023 Alum Authors Celebration took place during Reunion Weekend on Saturday, May 27. Alums from reunion classes who've published new books within the past five years, pictured above, spoke about their work.
Tales of the Romanov Empire
by Tamar Anolic '03
Two Sisters of Fayetteville
by Tamar Anolic '03
Lonely Spirit
by Tamar Anolic '03
A B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree
The Lonely Spirit is also a winner for historical fiction in the Firebird Book Awards. It was Long Listed for the Historical Fiction Company's Book of the Year Awards, and received the "Highly Recommended" award of excellence from the Historical Fiction Company.
"This book is exemplary... A quick read with a huge plot that will leave the reader wanting more. Quinn is a great character. The time period of the mid 1800s in the West and the tensions between the Comanches and the Army is well described and adds a wonderful dimension to the story of Quinn.... What a nice read! I didn't know what to expect as I began to read and I enjoyed every aspect of it. The pacing, organization and structure were well executed. You bring the reader right into the heart of the story as Quinn begins his journey to find out who he truly is. His story is so compelling, I was literally turning the pages to find out what happens next. Great job! ... Quinn is a fantastic character. He doesn't fit into either world and must forge his own way to discover who he is and where he does belong. He's so well fleshed out and so compelling, I was actually sad when I came to the end. The secondary characters were also well fleshed out and believable. You do a good job creating another character in the Old West itself. You bring the location to life in a vivid way." Judge, 30th Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards.
The Lonely Spirit is a short story collection sprawled across the Old West. As the only half-Comanche U.S. Marshal, L.S. Quinn straddles two worlds, searching for peace in both.
Quinn is one of the best Marshals, well-respected for finding criminals and bringing them to justice. His adventures pit him against criminals like Florence Finnegan, the famous brothel owner and gunslinger, and Jack Mattherson, whose attack on U.S. Senator William Quincy brings out Quinn's desire for revenge. But Quinn isn't always lucky: when one of his partners turns into his enemy on a lonely stretch of land, Quinn no longer knows whom to trust.
The fight between the Comanche and the United States Army is never far from Quinn's mind, either. When the Army kills his fiancée, Quinn must rebuild his life, even as he finds himself a lasting enemy in Colonel Ranald Mackenzie, a respected Civil War veteran.
But Quinn's journeys also bring him into contact with kindness he does not anticipate in such a wild land. To his surprise, sympathy comes in the form of Colonel Robert Graypool, whose level-headed command of the Comanche reservation at Fort Sill brings out Quinn's respect when he least expects it. Humanity also resides in Dr. Mary Newcomb, one of the few women physicians of the day. In both of them, Quinn finds some of the community for which he searches.
Recognize and Give Thanks
by Marcia Cantarella '68
My grandkids - - on both sides of my family both Black and White - - are the fifth generation to go to college. That makes them essentially unicorns.
I come from a long line of educators, disruptors and change agents.Beginning with my grandfather Whitney Young Sr. who ran a school with a secret college prep curriculum from the 1920s to the 1950s, to his son Whitney Young Jr., my father, who was the architect of the War on Poverty with LBJ, or his sister Arnita who flew planes for the Red Cross during WWII we have been engaged in making change. I have known powerful leaders, black and white who have been change agents and many have been part of our family legacy, and many continue that legacy today. We have had friends and allies from the white community whether serving with the National Urban League for my father or being life partners like my late husband Fancesco Cantarella, a leader in corporate responsibility.
I have had the chance to engage with college students, especially students of color to see them now in key leadership roles themselves. There have been the friends, classmates and allies with whom I have worked and played and who are change agents themselves yet unsung. There are so many that I know, and love and value who have been part of the battle for social good and equity. Yet so many are not recognized, let alone fully thanked for all they do or have done. This is my chance to do that through telling the story of how these people have been an amazing gift in my own life
Estate Grown
by Mara Feeney '73
My book is a collection of short stories about how a couple of urban professionals (both BMC alumnae) purchase country land and figure out (on a very steep learning curve) how to engage in agricultural pursuits. With the help of neighbors (and despite the antics of others) they succeed in creating an organic paradise, growing their own olives, nuts, fruits, vegetables, and wine grapes. Over the course of three decades they secure a firm footing in the complex rural community and win a prestigious award for their estate-grown Zinfandel.
This feast for the senses is just the ticket for anyone who has driven through the country and wondered "Gee, what would it be like to leave the city behind, move to a place full of meadows, vineyards, orchards and forests and start growing my own food." The author's innocence optimism and perseverance invite readers to imagine themselves undertaking such an adventure and make it all seem doable. The Fiddletown Stories is escapist literature at its very finest, filled with descriptions of the unique foothills environment and the colorful characters who inhabit it.
Strip Tees
by Kate Flannery '03
"Compelling and brave, Kate's story is a must read for all young women learning how to navigate adulthood and identity."
--Lili Reinhart, New York Times bestselling author
Strip Tees is a fever dream of a memoir--Hunter S. Thompson meets Gloria Steinem--about a recent college graduate and what happens when her feminist ideals meet the real world.
She slowly begins to lose herself in a landscape of rowdy sex-positivity, racy photo shoots, and a cultlike devotion to the unorthodox CEO and founder of the brand. The line between sexual liberation and exploitation quickly grows hazy, leading Kate to question the company's ethics and wrestle with her own. Strip Tees captures a moment in our recent past that's already sepia toned in nostalgia, and also paints a timeless portrait of a young woman who must choose between what business demands and self-respect requires.
Breathing Technique
Translated by Sibelan Forrester '83
Everburning Pilot
Translated by Sibelan Forrester '83
A bilingual edition of Leonid Schwab's poetry with an introduction by Maria Stepanova.
Leonid Schwab is an integral figure for the understanding of Russian contemporary poetry; he's also one of its least conforming members. While remaining singularly unique, Schwab has had a liberating effect on a number of Russophone poets during the past two decades. In his strange poems, elimination of the lyric subject and heightened narrativity unite with masterfully measured lines to create worlds that remain perpetually beguiling.
The verses trace the contours of something along the lines of happiness, they delineate its momentary trajectories, indicate the direction--until a new shift exposes the next, still uninhabited tract of invisible territory. This strange, dazzling, twilit universe--inhabited by bison, electricians, and short circuits--is something like a promise that you cannot not believe: Schwab knows what he's talking about.--Maria Stepanova
Borges tells of imperial cartographers attempting to construct a map of the empire that was the size of the empire. Discolored tatters of the abandoned project still exist in the desert; beggars and animals live in them. He might have been talking about the poetry of Leonid Schwab. Schwab's astonishing semilegible living pictures, poetic tatters of imperial dreams, studies in slowed-down, polyphonic time, remnants of an unwritable, strangely male epic are among the most hauntingly beautiful poems written in Russian today. I love them but I could never set them to music, a composer friend says, 'they are music'--Eugene Ostashevsky
Leonid Schwab is a poet who creates worlds that oscillate between past and present, stillness and passage, mystery and nightmare. His poems travel far and wide, taking the reader on unexpected visits to Chkalov, Hebron, Chicago, Poland, Manchuria, and even the Moon. Schwab's poetry transcends rigid cultural frames and national allegiances by engaging in dynamic experiments with border-crossing, diasporic aesthetics, and homelessness.--Alex Moshkin
Poetry.
Length of Days
Translated by Sibelan Forrester '83
The Length of Days: An Urban Ballad is set mostly in the composite Donbas city of Z--an uncanny foretelling of what this letter has come to symbolize since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Several embedded narratives attributed to an alcoholic chemist-turned-massage therapist give insight into the funny, ironic, or tragic lives of people who remained in the occupied Donbas after Russia's initial aggression in 2014.
With elements of magical realism, Volodymyr Rafeyenko's novel combines a wicked sense of humor with political analysis, philosophy, poetry, and moral interrogation. Witty references to popular culture--Ukrainian and European--underline the international and transnational aspects of Ukrainian literature. The novel ends on the hopeful note that even death cannot have the final word: the resilient inhabitants of Z grow in power through reincarnation.
Times of Mobility
Edited by Sibelan Forrester '83
In an era of increased mobility and globalisation, a fast growing body of writing originates from authors who live in-between languages and cultures. In response to this challenge, transnational perspective offers a new approach to the growing body of cultural texts with an emphasis on experiences of migration, transculturation, bilingualism and (cultural) translation. The introductory analysis and the fifteen essays in this collection critically interrogate complex relations between transnational and translation studies, bringing to this dialogue a much needed gender perspective. Divided into three parts (From Transnational to Translational; Reading Across Borders and Transnational in Translation), they address a range of issues relevant for this debate, from theoretical problems to practical questions of literary criticism and translation, understood as an act of cultural interpretation. The volume mostly deals with contemporary literary and cultural production, but also with classical texts and modernist literature. Its particular quality is a strong (although not exclusive) focus on Central and East European literatures, and more generally on women writers. Its interdisciplinary, transnational and intercultural perspective makes it relevant across disciplinary boundaries, from literary and translation studies to gender studies, cultural studies and migration studies.