NEWS

My new collection of short stories, Magpies, was published  Sept. 1, 2011 by Carnegie Mellon University Press.

Publishers Weekly review.
"Barrett portrays adult lives with minimal flourishes and a powerful command of setting. Florida is electric with the tension of "all that can happen"--hurricanes, sinkholes, and a boom-and-bust history. It becomes as eerie as it is richly imagined..."

My piece on The Story Prize blog.

About Magpies:

"It is entirely impossible to predict what you’re going to get when you start a Lynne Barrett story: a taut tale of adultery and murder, a wry evocation of romance amid the dot.com bubble, a gossip columnist who spits toads. What you do know is that you’ll keep reading—for the vibrant prose, the keen insights, and the remarkable depth of feeling. Magpies is a stone cold triumph."

            —Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life

"Lynne Barrett belongs in the top tier of short-story writers in America today. Her unforgettable characters, poker-face wit, and sly plots make for an intensely enjoyable experience. The title story should be snapped up by anthologies. Barrett’s male characters are every bit as believable as her female characters, and the breadth of detail is both natural and mind-expanding. You want to read her work: it’s hilarious-funny and sophisticated-funny and moving-funny, and withal shines a clarity that comes from the subtle beauty of her sentences."

            —Kelly Cherry, author of The Woman Who

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I'm 2011 guest editor of Tigertail, A South Florida Annual, which focuses on flash forms: prose poems, flash fiction and flash nonfiction. The issue came out in October. More on Tigertail: Florida Flash on the Tigertail website.



An e-book version of Delta Blues, with my story "Blues for Veneece," is now available.












The Review Review published my essay, "What Editors Want," and it "went viral." As editor Becky Tuch reported in their weekly newsletter: "Over at The Review Review, things have been more than a little insane. For one thing, Lynne Barrett's article ... "What Editors Want..." spread around the globe and back, earning us coverage in the L.A. Times and The New Yorker. Yeah, we were pretty excited."


"Black Velvet" is in the inaugural issue of  The Written Wardrobe, which is housed within the Modcloth website.  I got to attend  the  launch party at Chef Ike's Mambo Room, during the AWP in Washington, D.C.


"Alchemy," a short short from a series I'm working on, all set in the same slightly magical neighborhood, has  been published in the online magazine Pig in a Poke.

My reading of "Macy is the Other Woman" is in the  great audio literary magazine The Drum

"The Borges Cure" is online at Night Train Magazine.





Kristi Peterson Schoonover blogged about the story here.  (Best to read the story first!)

          "Blues for Veneece" is included in the Tyrus Books  anthology Delta Blues, edited by Carolyn Haines, with an introduction by Morgan Freeman.     A percentage of the receipts for this book go to assist the Rock River Foundation in its work for literacy in Mississippi.

Oline Cogdill named Delta Blues one of the best mystery books of 2010.

 Great review of Delta Blues in the Mobile Press-Register, with attention to  "Blues for Veneece."

The launch weekend included a reception hosted by the Delta Writers chapter of the Mississippi Writers Guild, and an awards ceremony for  a writing competition for high school students where the winners were thrilled not only with their awards but with the presence of Morgan Freeman.

I sang a couple of numbers with the authors' blues band, The Blues Muse, as well as being a Boomette backup singer  at the launch for Delta Blues,  March 27, 2010 at Ground Zero Bl

ues Club in Clarksdale, Mississippi.  One number is now up on YouTube.

Billy Howell's interview with me about my Delta Blues story and the anthology, as well as coverage of the launch events,  at the Clarksdale Press Register.

Emily Bingham of U. South Alabama interviewed me on writing and my story "Blues for Veneece." The interview  is online. 

Sun-Herald review of Delta Blues here.

My short story "When, He Wondered" appeared in  March/April 2010 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. 

My poem "The Preservation & Vice Tour" is  in 6¢, the sixth issue of Cent Journal from the Miami Poetry Collective.

The Southern Women's Review's Summer/Fall 2010 issue includes my poem "Hatteras Bride,

Knitting."











 "How to Make a Crazy Quilt, 1906-1917," appears in their Winter/Spring 2010 issue.  SWR issues are  downloadable as beautiful pdfs  at http://www.southernwomensreview.com/

Lynne Barrett

 

 

Photo by Suzie Dugan, Lady in Pink Photography, taken at the Sanibel Writers Conference.

 

August 23 at 5:30 I'll be speaking at the Southwest Harbor Public Library, Southwest Harbor, ME.

August 23rd I'll be reading from Magpies at the Southwest Harbor Public Library in Southwest Harbor, ME, at 5:30 PM.

The Rosemary Beach Fall Writers Conference will be Sept 21-24 in Rosemary Beach, FL.

October 1st, 7 PM, I'll be reading at Books and Books, Coral Gables, FL for the South Florida launch of my new story collection, Magpies.

October 5th, 7 PM, I'll be reading at The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, MA.

October 20-22, I'll be part of the Books & Books FIU Conference on Grand Cayman.  Info here.

Oct. 27 I will be reading at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, MA.

Nov. 1 I'll be at Bookstsore1Sarasota, in Sarasota, FL.

November 3-6,  I'll be among those teaching at the Florida Gulf Coast University Sanibel Island Writers Conference, held at Big Arts on beautiful Sanibel.  Read here for more on  the Sanibel Island Writers Conference.

I'll be reading at Miami Book Fair International during the festival of authors, November 19 & 20. Information about this year's Book Fair will be available on their website.

Recent events (a sampling)

The International Women's Writing Guild annual conference, this year took place at Yale University, New Haven, CT, June 24-July 1.

Grub Street's Muse & the Marketplace, Boston, April 30-May 1, 2011.

Info here.

April 8 & 9, 2011, I read and was part of two panels at the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers conference at the University of South Alabama's Fairhope, AL campus. This is a great organization for writers in the Gulf States who teach, or aspire to. Check out the website to learn more.

My workshop "Haunted: Ghost Stories and the Use of the Uncanny," Oct. 30th , 2010 at FIU's BBC Campus was a benefit for Gulf

Stream Magazine, and drew a great crowd of writers ready to think about what's eerie. To learn about GS's other workshops, visit their site.






July 29-Aug. 1, 2010, Mendocino Coast Writers Conference, CA.  Coverage
in

the San Francisco Examiner.  I had the pleasure of teaching a master class in revision, a class in flash forms, and giving a keynote address on the last night.  And I got to see whales spouting off Point Cabrillo.

In April 2010, at the Associated Writing Programs Conference, in Denver, I was on a panel on plot and form, "Plot as Ritual Not Representation,"  with John Dufresne, Debra Monroe, and Antonia Nelson.  Tamara Linse blogged the session I was part of at the 2010 AWP: "Plot as Ritual Not Representation." And the Lavademon blog covered the panel in detail.

Jan 16-17, 2010  Workshop and Master Class in Structure, Geneva Writers Group, Geneva, Switzerland. 

Saturday class: Fundamentals of Narrative Structure (morning) and Creating a Strong Story Structure for Your Novel (afternoon). 

Sunday Master Class.

  

Alice Baudat of the Geneva Writers Group did this watercolor of Lynne teaching in Switzerland in April 2008. 

For info, photos, and coverage of recent (and ancient) appearances, please check out my Events & Photos page. 

Bits & Pieces

Some nice words for "Blue Vandas" and A Hell of A Woman. More from Booklist Online.

You can read my reviews at

www.floridabookreview.com

Teaching

At Florida International University, I teach graduate  and undergraduate workshops in fiction and creative nonfiction, and  graduate seminars.   In recent years I've taught classes in Mystery & Suspense and Plot. In Fall 2010 I am  teaching Creative Nonfiction, Graduate Fiction, and in Spring 11 I'll be teaching Narrative Techniques.  I'm directing MFA theses: novels, story collections, memoirs.  I also teach at writers' conferences and travel to lead master classes for smaller groups. 

In January 2010, I went to Switzerland to speak to the Geneva Writer's Group on plot and structure, and to teach a Master Class in revising books of fiction and nonfiction.

                                           Geneva Press Club 

Recent and upcoming publications by former students

Norma Watkins' memoir The Last Resort: Taking the Mississippi Cure is just out from the University of Missippi Press.  The book was Norma's thesis, which I'm proud to say I directed.

Lynn Kiele Bonasia's third novel, and first young adult novel, Countess Nobody, has just been published. Her previous novels are Summer Shift ( Booklist, here) and Some Assembly Required.

Emma Trelles's Tropicalia, winner of the  Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, has been published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Steve Almond interviews Emma at The Nervous Breakdown. And  Read more at the Letras Latinas blog.

Ginny Rorby's fourth young adult novel Lost in the River of Grass has been published. Just last year Rorby's The Outside of a Horse came out. Ginny read from both in April at Books & Books, where her audience was delighted by the surprise visit of an albino Burmese python and its handler from the Museum of Science.

Patricia Engel's first book, Vida (linked stories), has been published by Grove/Black Cat to critical acclaim. It's among a New York Times Notable Book and a Barnes and Noble Best Book of the Year. In May, Patricia was honored as one of five finalists for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Award.  Read Michiko Kakutani's New York Times review here.  Her short story "The Bridge" is  available as an e-book by the Atlantic Monthly for Kindle.

Heather Newton's Under the Mercy Trees has been published by Harper Collins.  Listen to a wonderful interview with her on WUNC.org.  

Susan Briante's second book of poetry, Utopia Minus, has been published by Ahsahta Press which also brought out her first,  Pioneers in the Study of Motion.

Jesse Millner  has won the Wordrunner electronic chapbook award for The Bus Driver's Book of the Dead. Read it here. His poetry collection, The Neighborhoods of Past Sorrow,  published by Kitsune Books, won a bronze metal in the 2010 Florida Book Awards.

 Ian Vasquez's third novel, Mr. Hooligan, has been published by St. Martin's. Publisher's Weekly says, "Vasquez has crafted a crime novel that unfolds like a Greek tragedy with his flawed, unbowed hero bravely facing everything fate throws at him." His previous novel Lonesome Point, got great reviews. Here's one from Oline Cogdill in the Sun Sentinel.  His first novel, In The Heat, came out in 2008 and WON  the Shamus award for best first P.I. novel.  Reviewed in the St. Pete Times.

Preston Allen's Jesus Boy, published by Akashic Books.  Reviewed in the New York Times here.  Kat Meads' review in the Florida Book Review.

Jeff Zaslow's The Girls from Ames is now out in paperback. Jeff is also the co-author with the late Randy Pausch of The Last Lecture.

At the 2009 Shamus Awards, Ian Vasquez's In The Heat won for best first P.I. Novel and Mitch Alderman won   best short story for "Family Values" which appeared in the June 2008 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Dennis Lehane is the editor of Boston Noir, published by Akashic Books.  The book includes a new story by Dennis as well as one by my colleague John Dufresne.  The film Shutter Island, based on Dennis's novel of the same name, will be opening soon.  The Miami Herald interviewed Dennis about his studies at F.I.U.

J.J. Colagrande's novel Headz is out from BlazeVox books.  The webpage for the book contains some of the outtakes, and other wonderful sidelights.

Anjanette Delgado's The Heartbreak Pill was published by Atria (Simon & Schuster). Anjanette has won the 2009 Latino Book Award for Best Romance in English for The Heartbreak Pill.   The Spanish language version, Pildora del Mal Amor, came out in August 2009.

Dennis Lehane's historical novel The Given Day came out last fall.  On his website, you can see photographs of some of the dramatic events from 1919 that the book weaves together.  Here's the New York Times review by Janet Maslin. A wonderful excerpt from the novel appeared a couple of years back in an issue of Gulf Stream Magazine that should be a collector's item.

Lots more:

Preston Allen, All or Nothing (Akashic Books)  was reviewed in The New York Times.   (Preston's blog is full of news of writing and gambling, both risky enterprises.)

Best American Mystery Stories 2007 includes "T-bird" by John Bond.  

Joe Clifford's story "Favors," is online in Dark Sky Magazine and "Red Pistachios" in Thuglit.

Anthony Gagliano, Straits of Fortune, was published by HarperCollins. 

Christine Kling, Wrecker's Key. 

Dennis Lehane's collection of stories, Coronado, is out in paperback. And Gone Baby Gone is on dvd.

Rita Maria Martinez, Jane in the Box.

Mark M. Martin's creating Dada Comics at Europiummm.

Jesse Millner's I Give You This Ghost, Pudding House Press, just came out, on the heels of The Saturday After the Rapture, Main Street Rag Press.

Between Water and Song: New Poets for the Twenty-First Century, an anthology edited by Norman Minnick will be published by White Pine Press in March 2010.  Norm's book of poetry To Taste the Water was published by Mid-list Press.

Diane Mooney, MFA student, is teaching in China and has a blog about her adventures eating there: Have You Eaten Yet?

Leonard Nash, You Can't Get There From Here, Kitsune Books.  Leonard's book has won the Silver Medal for Fiction from the Florida Book Awards.

John Parras's Fire on Mount Maggiore won  the Peter Taylor Prize and was published by the University of Tennessee Press.

Neil Plakcy, Mahu Fire, Mahu Surfer.  And Neil has edited the collection Paws and Reflect.

Sandra Rodriguez Barron, The Heiress of Water, Rayo, a division of HarperCollins.  Winner of the Mariposa Award for Best First Book, 2007 International Latino Book Awards.

Nina Romano, Cooking Lessons, Rock Press   (Nina's blog offers cooking lore and writing adventures.)

Ginny Rorby's young adult novel Hurt Go Happy, Starscape, has been garnering lots of prizes for its wonderful description of a deaf young teen.

Sue Stauffacher is the author of several books for young readers, including Bessie Smith and the Night Riders and Nothing But Trouble The Story of Althea Gibson.  

George Tucker's story "Circle" appeared  in the May 08 issue of  Fantasy & Science Fiction.  And another , "Learning to Fly," is being reprinted in a coming-of-age anthology from New Press.   George's blog takes you inside the writing process.

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