Recent Program Awards and Achievements

Current Student Barbara Ankram has signed her first feature length screenplay option on her original script, The Vines, to Cool Hand International, a U.K. production company out of LA. She will also co-produce. The Vines is a Vampire film that's been described as Lost Boys meets Shaun of the Dead. It's slated for production in the Fall of 2008.

 

Faculty Member Micheline Aharonian Marcom's first novel, Three Apples Fell From Heaven, was optioned by Academy Award nominated screenplay writer José Rivera in fall of 2007. In 2008, Marcom's Draining the Sea was published by Riverhead Books. It is the third book in a trilogy of books about the Armenian Genocide and its aftermath in the twentieth century.

 

Faculty Member Kyle Bass has been appointed Literary Associate for Syracuse Stage and oversees new play acquisition and development. He is currently working with Ping Chong & Co. on the creation of a community-specific theatre piece that will have its world premiere in Syracuse Stage’s 08/09 season. Kyle has been commissioned by Syracuse Stage to write a play about George Washington Carver, which will tour schools beginning in early 2009. Kyle’s short play Northeast was published in the 30th anniversary edition of Callaloo, and his play The Heart of Fear, which appeared in the journal Stone Canoe, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Kyle’s full-length play Wind in the Field (a.k.a. The Boy Millerd) was a featured play at the Great Plains Theatre Conference where it received a staged-reading hosted by Edward Albee. Kyle’s play Tender was given a staged reading by Armory Square Playhouse.

 

Faculty Member Ryan Boudinot’s story "Empty Room," inspired by a painting by Tim Eitel, will appear in Looking Together: Writers On Art, to be published by the University of Washington Press and the Frye Art Museum. Another story, "The Guy Who Kept Meeting Himself" will appear in Mcsweeney's #28, an illustrated issue devoted to fables. This year his short story collection, The Littlest Hitler, was shortlisted for the Washington State Book Award. The title story from his collection is set to be appear in the Writers Digest Books anthology You Must Be This Tall To Ride: Stories On Growing Up And Essays By The People Who Wrote Them. His public performances this year have included readings at Bumbershoot, the Richard Hugo House, and Seattle's Shoebox Theater.

 

Faculty Member Deborah Brevoort’s new play The Poetry of Pizza premiered at the Purple Rose Theatre this year and went on to three other productions at the Mixed Blood Theatre, Virginia Stage Company and Theatre in the Square. Her other new play The Blue-Sky Boys received a workshop production at the Orlando Shakespeare Festival. She was a Resident Artist in the American Lyric Theatre’s opera development program.  Her short opera Altezura was presented at New York’s Symphony Space in January. Her play The Women of Lockerbie was translated into Japanese and was produced at the Haiuza Theatre in Tokyo; the play continues to be produced around the US and UK. In April she was a featured speaker at Calvin College’s Festival of Faith and Writing.

 

Faculty Member Rebecca Brown wrote a five act text for Pro Re Nata, a performance by Launch Dance Co. for a program that premiered at On The Boards theater in Seattle. Short work by Brown was published in Detroit, the magazine of the Detroit Institute of Art, Filter Magazine and elsewhere. She read in San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Bellingham and other West Coast cities from her recently re-issued novel, The Haunted House (City Lights, 2007). She began curating the new NO Comment reading series for New City Theater in Seattle.

 

Program Alum Ross Brown’s full-length play, Hindsight, was selected by the Pasadena Playhouse for two staged readings as part of its Hothouse at the Playhouse reading series.

 

Faculty Member Jan Clausen published two full-length poetry collections: From a Glass House (Ikon) and If You Like Difficulty (Harbor Mountain Press).

 

Faculty Member Darrah Cloud (along with her composer partner Kim D. Sherman) received a National Alliance of Musical Theatre Grant to workshop and develop their new musical Makeover at the Human Race Theatre. The first chapter of her novel Mass For Shut-Ins was published in Quay, and a staged reading of her new play, The Posthumous Democrat, was held at The Women's Project, in New York.

 

Program Alum Gian DiDonna's play, A Sinister Man, was included in the 2008 LAByrinth Theater Company's Barn Series at NY's Public Theater.

 

Current Student Debbie Finkelstein's short play The Apology was performed as part of the Playwright & Directors Unit, Santa Fe Performing Arts, Armory for the Arts in Santa Fe.

 

Current Student Matt Forss had a review paper, "Morocco: The Art of Sama' in Fes" appear in Ethnomusicology Vol. 52 (2) Spring 2008. This is the prestigious, peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology. 

 

Faculty Member Kenny Fries's The History of My Shoes and the Evolution of Darwin's Theory was awarded the 2007 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights, and is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. His op-ed, "Oscar Pistorius: Running Outside of His Lane," appeared in the Washington Post. 

 

Faculty Member Beatrix Gates, working as co-translator with Electa Arenal, has placed The Poems of Vikram Babu by contemporary Spanish poet Jesus Aguado with Host Publications of Austin, TX and NYC. The Poems of Vikram Babu is forthcoming in a bilingual edition.

 

Faculty Member Elena Georgiou had two poems published, “Immigrant /test9: Incantation (By Phone)," in BOMB Magazine. A third poem, “Train,” was also accepted for BOMB Magazine’s online issue, and is due to come out this month. Her prose poem “Class” was published in the most recent issue of the Denver Quarterly.  At the beginning of 2008, she began work as the poetry editor for Bloom and has also increased her involvement with Tarpaulin Sky Press, where she is currently serving as an associate editor.

 

Program Alum David Gonthier published a book with the Edwin Mellen Press, American Prison Film Since 1930: From The Big House to The Shawshank Redemption (May, 2006).  

 

Current Student Michael Grady has had one of his plays was chosen to be a part of The Boston Theater Marathon. The BTM is a festival of 10-minute plays which the Boston Playwrights Theatre has been producing with Boston University for the last decade. This will be Michael’s second time with the Marathon, His short play Eralset, or Scrabble in Babel was published in Quay Journal.

 

Current Student Julie Greene was the featured reader at the Center for New Words open mic event called "Mouthful" at the Center for New Words.

 

Current Student Charles Hale has begun publishing a regular fiction column titled “What The Faulkner” in The Local Voice.

 

Program Alum Erich Hintze's poetry and short fiction has been accepted by The Sierra Nevada College Review, The South Carolina Review, and the SNReview.

 

Program Alum Eric Johnke’s short play, Felt Up, is a finalist in the Alleyway Theatre's Maxim Mazumdar New Play Competition. His short play His and Hers and His and Hers and His and Hers and His and Hers (part of a larger work, The Body Politic) was published in a recent issue of Quay Journal.

 

Faculty Member Bhanu Kapil has been invited to be a panelist for "Aggression" a Small Press Traffic conference on contemporary experimental writing. Excerpts from her work have appeared in the magazines Denver Quarterly, Bombay Gin, and XCP. Her writing appears in a new Norton anthology, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond, edited by Carolyn Forche and Ravi Shankar.

 

Faculty Member Susan Kim's stage adaptation of Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club will be produced in November 2008 at the East West Players in Los Angeles; it will also be published by Dramatists Play Service.

 

Faculty Member Michael Klein has just completed a new manuscript of poems some of which are in the current issues of Bloom and Massachusetts Review.  His essay on Laura Nyro will be published as part of Diva Complex (University of Wisconsin Press), an anthology of essays by men about divas. His poem "Looking for the Body Music" is the opening piece in Eve Ensler and Molly Doyle's anthology of writing that faces violence against women, A Memory, A Monologue, A Rant, and a Prayer (Random House).

 

Faculty Member Neil Landau has taken the position as Vice-President of Scripted Development for AMEDIA Film Group, a studio based in Moscow (Russia). Neil is now overseeing all scripted development for the studio including TV series, TV movies, theatrical movies, animation, and documentaries.

 

Faculty Member Aimee Liu’s bestselling memoir Gaining was published by Warner Books in 2007 and was released in trade paper by Wellness Central in 2008. She also had essays in the anthologies For Keeps, published by Seal Press, and A Stranger Among Us, published by Other Voices Books. 

 

Faculty Member Douglas A. Martin recently published In The Time Of Assignments, a book of poems, and his piece “Sentences In Reflection” appeared in Spring/Summer 2008 issue of Fence magazine. His story "The Heart of Paris" will be anthologized in the forthcoming Big Trip: More Good Gay Travel Writing. In September, Nightboat Books will publish Your Body Figured, a work of lyric prose. He recently completed his doctorate in English at the CUNY Graduate Center, where his dissertation on the post-modern writer Kathy Acker was awarded the Irving Howe Prize for Best Dissertation Involving Politics and Literature.

 

Current Student Tanyss Martula’s short play, Laps, was performed in a one-act festival at New Century Theater.

 

Program Alum Matthew Mayo has been accepted into the Western Writers of America.  He also edits Miami Living Magazine and the upcoming anthology, Where Legends Ride: New Tales of the Old West.

 

Current Student Donnelle McGee's poem “Don’t Look At My Arms” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Bruce Guernsey, the editor of The Spoon River Poetry Review. Two poems, "Scary" and "A Pen For Eli" appeared in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal.

 

Faculty Member John McManus spent the spring of 2008 as the Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. This summer he will be a fellow at the Robert M. Macnamara Foundation in Westport, Maine.

 

Current Student Bill Meis is one of the featured interviews in New York independent filmmaker Joe Pacheco's latest film, After The Fall, which documents two American journalists' trip to (and unexpected expulsion from) Vietnam to cover the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.

 

Current Student Kali Meister's poem "Incest" was accepted for publication in the Asheville Poetry Review. She been chosen as the Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee.

 

Program Alum Chris Millis has closed a deal with Lionsgate Pictures to produce his Goddard thesis novel God & California as a major motion picture. Chris will be adapting his novel for the screen.

 

Program Alum Mary Carroll Moore’s thesis novel, Qualities of Light, was accepted for Spring 2009 publication by Spinsters Ink Press in Florida.

 

Faculty Member Nicola Morris's critical book, The Golem in Jewish American Literature: Risks and Responsibilities in the Fiction of Thane Rosenbaum, Nomi Eve and Steve Stern, was published in the fall of 2007 by Peter Lang Publishing, in their Twentieth-Century American Jewish Writers Series, edited by Daniel Walden. She will be the discussion leader for a discussion series, "Modern Marvels; Jewish Adventures in the Graphic Novel," in Cortland, NY in the Fall of 2008, funded by the American Library Association

 

Faculty Member Victoria Nelson published fiction, "One Million B.C.," in Raritan; the introduction to Geoffrey Household's Rogue Male, New York Review of Books Classics; an essay, "Faux Catholic," in boundary 2; Her play Seraphita had a concert reading at the Shotgun Players, Berkeley. She was awarded an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship for the academic year 2008-2009.

 

Faculty Member Richard Panek has been named a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow. He has also been awarded an Antarctic Artists and Writers grant from the National Science Foundation to visit the scientific facilities at the South Pole this coming winter as part of the research for his next book, Let There Be Dark, about dark matter, dark energy, and the future of cosmology (due for publication by Houghton Mifflin in 2010). He also curated “Toil and Trouble: Stories of Experiments Gone Wrong” at The Moth, the New York City stand-up storytelling institution. And he wrote an essay on Einstein for Discover.

 

Current Student Kim Pereira has two pieces about Wonder Woman and modern fairy tales in Girl Culture: An Encyclopedia (Greenwood Press).

 

Program Alum Romy Shinn Piccolella's chapbook of poetry, Tether, has been accepted for publication by Pudding House Publications. She has also had individual poems accepted for publication in Fourth River, The Cherry Blossom Review, and languageandculture.net.

 

Faculty Member Rachel Pollack recently had the cover story in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. She was commissioned to design and write a text for a tarot deck based on the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

 

Current Student Charles Rice-Gonzales’s new production of his play, Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo, directed by Jorge Merced (HOLA and ACE award winner) was presented at BAAD! - The Bronx Academy of Arts & Dance. His short story "Bronx Boyz in Poe Cottage," was selected for Best Gay Stories 2008 published by Lethe Press. The story was also translated into Spanish and appears in Los Otros Cuerpos, the first queer Puerto Rican anthology of fiction, non-fiction and poetry published by Tiempo Nuevo press out of Puerto Rico.

 

Current Student Kristen Ringman’s book Eyes of Desire 2: a Deaf GBLT Reader is being published and includes a chapter of her novel/thesis Makara, titled "Darkness: Coming of Age in India."

 

Program Alum David Robson's play Killing Neil LaBute ran at Grande Olde Players Theatre in Omaha, Nebraska. The play was recently presented at the Great Plains Theatre conference hosted by Edward Albee.

 

Program Director Paul Selig was commissioned by South Africa’s Market Theater and the Colonnades Theater Lab to do a credited rewrite of Truth in Translation, a musical about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Truth and Translation is currently on international tour and will be produced in the United States this fall. He was commissioned to write a full-length treatment for Poe: The Haunted Musical, based on the life of Edgar Allan Poe, for One Light Productions of Los Angeles. His one-woman play Mystery School was produced by the 20% Theatre Company in New York City. He represented Goddard at the annual Associated Writing Programs Conference in New York City and served on two panels: “Innovative Internships & Practice in Teaching: Public Arts & Publishing: Preparing the Low-Residency Student for Life after the MFA” and “Mentorship vs. Workshop: The Pedagogy of Low Residency Programs.”

 

Program Alum Martha Southgate published an essay in the New York Times Book Review about the apparent scarcity of African-American writers of literary fiction.

 

Faculty Member Darcey Steinke’s book reviews appeared in the LA Times and on the front page of the NY Times Book Review. 

 

Current Student Donna Stuccio had two of her short plays, Tesoro and The Box, and her thesis play, Elegy in Blue, presented as staged readings at the Redhouse in Syracuse, NY.  Donna stepped into the position of Artistic Director of Armory Square Playhouse, a playwrights collective in Syracuse.

 

Current Student Toni Thayer's story "Gene Vincent Speaks to Me" was published in the April issue of Muse, the journal of The Lit, Cleveland's Literary Center.

 

Program Alum Jean Wertz's play, Queen of the River, was a semi-finalist in the Fifth Annual Ten Minute Play Festival at the Secret Rose Theatre in North Hollywood, CA.

 

Current Student Cynthia Wilson's poems "Purgatory" and "Murder in Frogtown" will be published in The Taj Mahal Review.

 

Current Student Dana Yeaton announces that a film based on her short play Helen At Risk was selected for the Independent Features Film Festival in New York. Her play Redshirts has been nominated for a Helen Hayes Award, the "Charles MacArthur Outstanding New Play or Musical Award."