Celtic spirituality. White-collar crime. Tequila. Evolution. UMass Amherst alumni publish many books on many subjects. On these pages, we’ve gathered class notes that mention publications. While these notes focus on the writer rather than the work, you can visit our books page online—umassmag.com/books—to learn more about the books and to order them. To see all class notes and to submit your own, go to UMassAlumni.com.
Plaudits for Poets
Want a sense of the poems they’ll be teaching in the future? Lucky us, we get an early glimpse. Recent alum Andrew Michael Roberts ’07G and current grad student Zach Savich ’11G won both 2008 Iowa Poetry Prizes, released by University of Iowa Press in April. For more than 20 years, the prize has been revered as among the most prestigious for collections by new and established poets. What are the chances this year’s two winners are from the MFA Program at UMass Amherst?
Roberts’s book, something has to happen next, is full of unexpected, succinct, and playful poems—most only a few words on a few lines. Their weight comes from both galactic imagery and a largeness of simple-seeming meditations. Roberts says that during his last year in the UMass Amherst MFA program, “I was really alive with the creation of very, very short poems.” About 30 of them came together into a chapbook, Dear Wild Abandon, (winner of the 2008 Poetry Society of America National Fellowship), which was the first half of something has to happen next. This spring semester, English faculty James Haug is teaching Roberts’s book in an MFA poetry workshop.
Full Catastrophe Living , Savich’s debut collection, sets out to capture a spirit of living. While the topic here is “the self as an instrument to investigate art, love, and the hardest honesty,” the real kneading that goes on in this book is in Savich’s sensitivity and respect for sensuality. Savich says, “I feel lucky to be a citizen of our MFA program during the book’s release. It has helped me focus on writing new poems.” Savich’s Full Living Catastrophe is being taught in an undergraduate poetry workshop.
you can hear it through the cumulative heartbeats
you, and a skyful of swallows
schooling like fish.
then the planets’ heavy whir
through space.
—Andrew Michael Roberts
Excerpt from Fool
I touch each stair
first with my face.
Hold myself
by a single finger up
against the mailboxes’
names. I keep lifting
the mailbox’s
flag so the postman
will grasp inside.
—Zach Savich
Book Marks
Michael Bisceglia ’72G, of Hampton, New Hampshire, drew on his 25 years of teaching and administrative experience to write Room 600 (Sterling House, 2008), a novel about a public school classroom for middle school students with diverse disabilities, ranging from blindness to severe retardation.
Joanne (Tenanes) Weir ’75 is the star of the PBS series Joanne Weir’s Cooking Class. She has published recipes from her latest 26-episode season (along with great photos and wine pairings) in Wine Country Cooking (Ten Speed Press, 2008). Her next book, due in May, is Tequila: A Guide to Types, Flights, Cocktails and Bites (Ten Speed Press, 2009). Joanne says, “I had so much fun researching and writing this reference book—tasting all the different brands of tequila, visiting Mexico to see the agave fields and learn how tequila is produced, meeting the bartenders and mixologists around the country who contributed cocktails, and of course coming up with my own cocktails and recipes!” Joanne holds cooking classes in California, Italy, and other sumptuous locales. For more information, visit joanneweir.com.
Anne V. Buchanan ’77 co-wrote a book on evolution, The Mermaid’s Tale: Four Billion Years of Cooperation in the Making of Living Things (Harvard University Press, 2009), with her husband, Kenneth M. Weiss. She took her first anthropology class at UMass Amherst the summer after her junior year in high school, and is now a senior research scientist in anthropology at Pennsylvania State University. Anne writes, “I still remember vividly the description of evolution as it was taught then. It took me a while to get back to the subject, but back I am. We thought of the title when we were on sabbatical in Cambridge (UK), and we were walking into town to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the lawn of one of the colleges. We had just written a chapter about why evolutionary principles make creatures like mermaids so unlikely, and probably the combination of the fanciful play we were about to see and this place steeped with so much history inspired us.”
Brian McGowan ’80 writes, “After nearly two decades operating a nursery in Montague with my wife, Alice, we decided to write a book for gardeners. One of our nursery’s specialties was tender perennials, and Bulbs in the Basement, Geraniums on the Windowsill (Storey Publishing, 2008) is a guide to the storage and culture of 165 tender perennial plants.” Brian now works in Orleans for a firm that specializes in coastal bank restoration and invasive plant management. He writes, “To some extent, Cape Cod is the canary in the coal mine, as its fragile ecosystem so readily reflects the negative impacts that people have on the environment.”
Catherine Brady ’81G has published her third short-story collection, The Mechanics of Falling and Other Stories (University of Nevada Press, 2009), which includes 11 stories set in and around San Francisco. She says, “I’m still trying to get away with writing a story that doesn’t fit neatly into the box, even though I know that everything astonishing and heartrending in a story depends on that box being there.” Brady’s work has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.
John Gartner ’82G, ’85G, a psychologist on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University, wrote In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography (St. Martin’s Press, 2008). Gartner’s expertise is treating patients with hypomanic temperaments, which can lead to success as well as issues with impulse control and judgment. His book uncovers new information about Clinton’s mother, revelations surrounding Clinton’s birth, and the effects of having an abusive alcoholic stepfather. The American Library Association’s Booklist named it one of the best books of 2008.
Beth Krommes ’80G won the 2009 Caldecott Medal, given to the illustrator of the year’s best picture book, for The House in the Night (Houghton Mifflin, 2008) written by Susan Marie Swanson. Her illustrations were done using scratchboard, which she likes for its fi ne line work, and watercolor. “I have worked as a public school art teacher, a manager of a fine handcraft shop, and an art director for a computer magazine. I have been working as a full-time freelance illustrator since 1989, focusing on children’s book illustrations for the last 10 years,” Krommes says. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire, with her husband and two daughters. Visit www.bethkrommes.com to see more of Beth’s work.
Bret Lott ’84G lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and has published his 12th book, Ancient Highway (Random House, 2008). Lott drew upon his own family history to write this story. A former editor of The Southern Review, his writing has appeared in The Yale Review, The Iowa Review, Story, and other top literary journals. His novel Jewel was a 1999 Oprah’s Book Club pick.
John Chapin ’87, a consultant, speaker, and sales trainer, co-wrote Sales Encyclopedia: The Most Comprehensive How To Guide on Selling (Eagle View Publishing, 2009). Visit completeselling.com for more on John.
Lee Wicks ’87 founded Singing Dog Press to publish her novel Some Measure of Happiness and to help emerging writers, small bookstores, and local nonprofits. She’s donating profits from her book ($750 so far) to the Dakin Pioneer Valley Humane Society. Wicks writes: “After years of nonfiction writing for newspapers, NPR, and Salon.com, this is exciting. I am hoping book lovers and dog lovers will unite to support this idea.” Lee lives in Montague, and says she writes “when my house is dirty and the garden needs care, when I could be spending time with my family, and when the laundry pile begins to slide off the top of the dryer.”
Joan Cottman ’88G, dedicated her first book to her daughter, Alexis. But Mommy, Why? A Trip Thru History and Foods (Legwork Team Publishing, 2008) explains to children why we eat the foods we do. Cottman is an adjunct professor at Hofstra University, Adelphi University, and St. John’s University.
Hank “HJ” Brightman ’90 is a professor in the war gaming department of the U.S. Naval War College. His textbook, Today’s White- Collar Crime: Legal, Investigative, & Theoretical Perspectives (Routledge, 2009), is an analysis of government corruption, corporate wrongdoing, fraud and its links to terrorism, and the legal aspects of abuse-of-trust crimes. Hank spent 15 years in law enforcement, investigative, and intelligence analysis positions with the Department of the Interior, the Secret Service, and the Navy and eight years as a professor and chair of the criminal justice department at St. Peter’s College.
Ellen Hopman ’90 published two books last year: Her first novel, Priestess of the Forest: A Druid Journey (Llewellyn Publications, 2008) is available as a Kindle book. A Druid’s Herbal of Sacred Tree Medicine (Destiny Books, 2008) is a nonfiction work about Celtic spirituality and trees. She teaches herb classes in the Amherst area and lectures widely in the United States and Europe on Celtic spirituality.
Andrew McNabb ’91 just published a short-story collection, The Body of This (Warren Machine, 2009). He left a business career 10 years ago to become a writer and his stories have appeared in some of the nation’s premier literary journals. He lives with his wife and four young children in the West End of Portland, Maine. Visit www.andrew-mcnabb.com for his book tour dates.
Lisa Fontes ’92G wrote Interviewing Clients Across Cultures: A Practitioner’s Guide (Guilford, 2008). The book serves Fontes’s mission to make the social service, mental health, criminal justice, and medical systems more responsive to culturally diverse people.
Christopher P. Lehman ’97G, ’02G began The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 (University of Massachusetts Press, 2008) as his doctoral dissertation in the W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African-American Studies. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including interviews with former animators, archived scripts for cartoons, and the films themselves, Lehman illustrates the connection between African Americans and animation. Lehman is a professor of ethnic studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota.
Justin Hollander ’00G is the author of Polluted and Dangerous: America’s Worst Abandoned Properties and What Can Be Done About Them (University of Vermont Press, 2009). He is an assistant professor at Tufts University’s department of urban and environmental policy and planning.
Shawn Alexander ’01G, ’04G, wrote T. Thomas Fortune, the Afro- American Agitator: A Collection of Writings, 1880-1928 (University Press of Florida, 2009). He is a professor of African and African American studies at the University of Kansas and the interim director of the Langston Hughes Center.
Jennifer Jensen Wallach ’04G, a history professor at Georgia College & State University, published Closer to the Truth Than Any Fact: Memoir, Memory, and Jim Crow (University of Georgia Press, 2008). Her book began as a UMass Amherst dissertation and she is now writing a biography of Richard Wright.
Robert Lacey ’06G teaches political science at Iona College. He wrote American Pragmatism and Democratic Faith (Northern Illinois University Press, 2008), which traces the history and legacy of participatory democracy.
Daniel Trask ’06 is a graduate student in biomedicine at UMass Boston. He spent last summer on the road promoting his book, DMR, based on his experiences working for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. His travel blog is on lettersontheroad.blogspot.com. Daniel formed his own publishing company, One Tiny Pizza, to publish his first book, My Dog the Meat Eater; his grandfather’s WWII memoir, Harry’s War; and DMR.
