Flavorwire: The Ten Best Millennial Authors…

Got some love from Flavorwire! They just posted an article called The Ten Best Millennial Authors You Probably Haven’t Read (Yet). Look for me listed as number nine and here is the link: http://flavorwire.com/378617/the-10-best-millennial-authors-you-probably-havent-read-yet

30 Days of the Flannery O’Connor Award: Day 16

http://ugapress.blogspot.com/2013/03/30-days-of-flannery-oconnor-award-day-16.html

Eric Shade, author of the FOC winner Eyesores, wrote a wonderful and insightful review of Bear Down, Bear North for the Flannery O’Connor Award 30th Anniversay blog series. Here is an excerpt:

Viewing a map of the United States, one may tend automatically to overlook the nation’s two geographical extremes—Hawaii, the honeymoon getaway—and, of course, Alaska, that great, sprawling immensity, more Canada than America, which seems to occupy at least a third if not more of the territory of the Continental United States. Melinda Moustakis’ book will no longer let map viewers let Alaska hide in the periphery of their vision.

What is additionally and fundamentally remarkable about the stories contained in the book is that the state’s major cities—Fairbanks, Anchorage, and Juneau—are themselves on the periphery. Most, if not all, of the action happens outdoors, or in ramshackle cabins, with the Kenai River as a frequent point of reference.

Most immediately demanding of our attention when reading Moustakis’ stories (and what has already deservedly been mentioned) is the striking imagery, particularly in “The Mannequin in Soldotna,” where the hospital staff decorates a mannequin with fishing hooks—hooks that have in fact been removed from patients and set into the mannequin, we imagine, as a warning to locals about the dangers of fishing—especially drunken fishing, fishing with amateurs, or fishing with folks where the relationship is strained.

There is more grotesque imagery, and plenty of brutality—both physical and emotional—but were Moustakis to rely merely on the unsavory and violent, the book would run the risk of seeming one-dimensional, even cruel to its own very charming characters. Instead, Moustakis tempers the freakish and frightening with, first, a generous supply of descriptions of the natural scenery; second, a fine-tuned, grim sense of humor; and third, a recurring, important theme regarding the complicated relationships between women, particularly mothers and daughters, in a land where the traditional gender roles are useless, in a land where women have to be as good—even better—than the men at providing basic sustenance for their families… (click here to read the rest on the UGA Press blog)

American Book Review

Telling Tales

Jeff Wallace

From: American Book Review
Volume 33, Number 4, May/June 2012
p. 6 | 10.1353/abr.2012.0125

Here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Often when reading minimalist literature, I’m struck by the bleakness of the world the characters inhabit. With every detail so neatly drawn, with every line so tightly screwed, there’s little room for warmth. And when light does find its way through, it is always contained. This is even more troubling in authors who tackle rural landscapes while being minimalists. The natural world doesn’t leave a lot of room for hope to begin with, and when drawn so tautly, there is even less hope. But Melinda Moustakis’s debut collection Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, while being superbly crafted and trimmed to the nub, finds hope.

Moustakis drops us dead into the middle of what most Americans would consider the last American frontier: Alaska. And while the stories all do take place within the state, the place is secondary to the frontier in which Moustakis wishes to drop us. The collection is about storytelling. It is about how to tell stories, why stories must be told, and to what lengths an author must go in order to tell a story truthfully.

The truth contained within the collection is that it is necessary to speak, to tell, in order to survive in any world, never minding the added complexity of surviving in a world where life is never a given thing. In “Some Other Animal,” we are shown the character Ruby, who faces starvation (both emotional and physical) because of her own sense of pride and honor:

She opens up every cupboard and scans the empty shelves for a hidden can of noodles. Then she moves the chair in, stands on it for a closer look at the bareness, the stray macaroni, the cracker crumbs, the dust of flour and spices. She should have borrowed the peanut butter. She paces the four corners of the kitchen, trying to ignore the animal noises coming from her gut, worry wrestling with hunger. “Stop it,” she says to her stomach.

It is only in Ruby’s telling of her misdeeds (losing one of the dogs she has been hired to care for and the waiting patiently for an answer from the dog itself) that she has hope of redemption.

The stories that are told between the characters often exist in a shadowy and confusing area of half-truths. Again, this type of telling is necessary for these characters’ survival and strength. In “This One Isn’t Going to Be Afraid,” we are shown Colleen, who tells one of her stories of survival:

She’ll say, “I got mauled by a grizzly in Alaska.. And they believe her….”Actually, it was an accident. I snagged my shoulder on a metal spring while hiding under my bed.. They chuckle with relief. “Man, you had me going.. Kids and a game of hide-and-seek. But they don’t ask what she was hiding from. The truth is there are grizzlies and there are fists and there are bottles and belts. There are choices, play dead or hide.

Colleen, like the other characters, cannot and will not play dead. They hide in their stories. It is in this hiding, running, and, above all, telling, that hope is created.

Moustakis creates a collection which operates in a realm between the short story cycle and the more traditional standard collection. The slight collection (only 157 pages) contains within it 13 distinct stories, some linked by familial ties, some not. The stories are told in a myriad of points of view. Some stories, such as “Point Mackenzie,” are told from very specific, but multiple, third-person close perspectives. The story “Us Kids” is told from the plural first-person point of view. Some are even more fragmented—not based around characters but around body parts, animals, or even small flash fictions. The best of the stories are even told from the difficult but compelling second-person perspective. (Click here to read the rest of the review)

Appreciation for Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones

An excerpt of a post I recently wrote for the National Book Award Fiction blog:

http://nationalbook.squarespace.com/nba-winning-books-blog/2011.html

Melinda Moustakis writes: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones is a beautiful and lyrical novel about survival and resilience and the bare-bulb and bare-bones life of a family in Bois Sauvage, Mississippi. The story is told through the captivating voice of Esch, a smart and vulnerable and complex only-girl among her three brothers named Skeetah, Randall, and Junior, and her widowed father and all her brother’s friends. Esch, in true fashion of a classic Bildungsroman, uses texts she reads in school such as Edith Hamilton’s Mythology and the story of Medea to form her own metaphors and similes in describing the fragile and complicated emotional eco-system of her family and community. Her story and the stories of those she holds dear and the stories of the place she calls home are worthy of an epic.

Esch guides the reader through the ten days leading up to Hurricane Katrina, through the thrall of the storm and the aftermath the very next day. The immediacy of present tense is masterfully rendered―every moment counts, every moment is felt and captured and hard-hitting. The present is tense, intense: How to deal with a father’s incapacitating grief? The need of a basketball camp scholarship for Randall? Skeetah’s dream of turning a profit on his prized fighter-champion pit bull China and her pups? Pregnancy? Hunger? A beautiful boy who turns your heart but may or may not love you back? A hurricane no one else believes is actually coming?

Esch’s inner life is as rich and imaginative as her family’s house is dilapidated and sparse. One of the many triumphs of the book is the way in which the characters are tough and rough-hewn but also dignified by their devotion to each other. This devotion is tested many times and in many ways as each family member seeks comfort and sustenance as an individual and is then asked to make that one sacrifice that threatens to break one’s spirit so that the family can carry on. Because perhaps a semblance of comfort can be found in each other when one more tragedy, one more setback, one more heartbreak, one more storm threatens to destroy everything.

When asked, “Why did you want to write about Hurricane Katrina?” Ward, in the Q&A at the end of the novel, said, “I lived through it. It was terrifying and I needed to write about that. I was also angry at the people who blamed survivors for staying and for choosing to return to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after the storm.” In reading this book, in becoming immersed in Esch’s story and feeling every hunger pain and injury along with her, one comes to understand that Bois Sauvage, with its oppressive heat and humidity and wild chickens and pathways strewn with broken oyster shells, is a place where an oncoming storm is just another possible tragedy in a life filled with them. When the shiny foil seasoning packet from a package of ramen noodles is a bright spot on a dark day, leaving the one possession that keeps the family together, the house, is not an option and even preparing the house for a hurricane is a mundane and maybe unnecessary chore among many chores….(click here to read the rest)

Shortlisted for 2012 William Saroyan Prize

http://library.stanford.edu/saroyan/shortlistsrelease2012.html

May 15, 2012

Shortlist Announced for
2012 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Stanford University Libraries announced today the shortlist for the fifth William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (Saroyan Prize).

Non-Fiction		Fiction
Black Elephants by Karol Nielsen	The Chimps of Fauna Sanctuary by Andrew Westoll	Bear Down, Bear North by Melinda Moustakis	The Dance Boots by Linda LeGarde Grover
Confessions of a Left-Handed Man by Peter Selgin	Family of Shadows by Garin K. Hovannisian	Dog-Heart by Diana McCaulay	East of the West by Miroslav Penkov
The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik	Pulphead by John Jeremiah Sullivan	The Free World by David Bezmozgis	The Gendarme by Mark T. Mustian
Rattlesnake Daddy by Brent Spencer	Solacers by Arion Golmakani	Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner	Lunch Bucket Paradise by Fred Setterberg
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey	Tales from a Mountain City by Quynh Dao	The Madonnas of Echo Park by Brando Skyhorse	Orientation by Daniel Orozco
The Tenth Parallel by Eliza Griswold	Under Surge, Under Siege by Ellis Anderson	Shards by Ismet Prcic	Skippy Dies by Paul Murray
		Standing at the Crossroads by Charles Davis	The Submission by Amy Waldman
		This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks

The awards are intended to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan literary legacy of originality, vitality and stylistic innovation. The Saroyan Prize recognizes newly published works of both fiction and non-fiction. A prize of $5,000 will be awarded in each category. Winners will be announced this summer.

Hodder Fellowship Announcement

Going to be a Hodder Fellow at The Lewis Center of the Arts next year!

http://www.princeton.edu/arts/lewis_center/society_of_fellows/fellows/12-13/

Lewis Center for the Arts Names Hodder Fellows for 2012-13
Writers James Arthur, Yasmine El Rashidi, Melinda Moustakis, and A. Rey Pamatmat selected

The Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University has announced selection of the Mary MacKall Gwinn Hodder Fellows for the 2012-13 academic year.  Poet James Arthur, fiction writer Melinda Moustakis, non-fiction writer Yasmine El Rashidi, and playwright A. Rey Pamatmat are recipients of the award created to provide artists in the early stages of their career time to undertake significant new work.

“The Hodder Fellowships are awarded to artists during that crucial period when they have demonstrated exceptional promise, but not yet received widespread recognition,” noted Lewis Center Acting Chair Michael Cadden in making the announcement.  “We have a very strong and diverse group of artists joining us next year, and we look forward to what this opportunity for what Mrs. Hodder termed ‘studious leisure’ will enable them to accomplish.”

Hodder Fellows may be poets, playwrights, novelists, creative non-fiction writers, translators, or other artists and humanist who have shown great promise.  While many have published a first book or created other work that has contributed to their field of endeavor, the fellowship provides them time to move their work and explorations to the next level.  Artists from anywhere may apply in the fall each year for the following academic year.  Their proposals include specific work to be undertaken during the fellowship period…. (full announcement and bios of the four fellows can be read HERE)

Orion Magazine

The Orion Blog

Bookshelf: Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories

January 20, 2012, by Melinda Moustakis

Melinda Moustakis is the author of the short story collection Bear Down, Bear North: Alaska Stories, reviewed in the January/February 2012 issue of Orion. We asked Melinda a few questions about the relationship between her stories’ characters and the Alaskan landscape.

When I first started writing fiction, I spent a lot of time describing the settings of stories, and, often, the setting was more vivid and interesting and alive than any of the humans inhabiting the piece. Bear Down, Bear North is subtitled “Alaska Stories” because I wanted readers to know where the stories were set—because Alaska is as much a character as any of the humans in the book.

There’s a line in the story “The Mannequin in Soldotna” that reads, “What is the sound of a river?” I often ask myself, What is the sound of a place? What does Alaska sound like to me—in dialogue, on the page, in those still moments? A character has a voice; a landscape can have a voice. These things are all intimately connected, and when I find each element difficult to parse out, I know I’m getting something right.

I just taught The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories, edited by Ben Marcus, and in the preface, he breaks down the definition of plot. One definition is the literal, a “small piece of ground,” and another is the setting or “space in which a story occurs,” a plot of land where characters live and events happen. I found this very useful in thinking about place. Plot is a piece of land, a place. Plot is place. And I like to think that characters are place as well.

To me, the Alaska in this book is not external to the characters, not just a landscape out there. It’s an emotional and psychological landscape, too. It is part of the human characters—their mirror, their echo, their metaphorical plane… (click here to read the rest)