Our Reading Series Coordinator, Dan Tyx, asked me to pass along this news:

"The Sycamore Review’s 2008 MFA Student Reading Series got off to a rollicking start last Tuesday at the Knickerbocker Saloon. The evening highlighted the eclectic talents of Purdue’s MFA students, with the selections ranging from flash fiction, audience participation poems, and studies of superheroes, to lyric poetry and moments of introspection. Last week’s readers were James Xiao, Chad Hardy, Brian Beglin, Theresa Smith, and Ruth Joynton.

"This week’s reading will be held on Tuesday, February 26th at 8:30 in the Knickerbocker. Featured readers will be Erin Blakeslee, Dave Blomenburg, Christopher Feliciano Arnold, Eric Scovel, Kathleen Connor, and Cheryl Quimba."

(That's MFA fiction writer and editorial assistant extraordinaire, Brian Beglin, in the image. Photo courtesy of Andre Venter.)

After a month-long spam attack, we have finally won, it seems.  Your comments will go up right away, as long as you're human.

Continuing with our series of staff introductions, we now introduce Keverlee Burchett, who will be poetry editor this year together with Mindy Gutowski. 

Keverlee grew up in Charleston, South Carolina with her mother, step-father, and a sibling on each hip. She began ignoring schoolwork, employers, and nutrition at a young age to focus on poetry. After studying under Carol Ann Davis at College of Charleston, she was whisked away to scenic Indiana, where she is currently in the third year of her MFA, under the firm tutelage of Marianne Boruch. She's living alone for the first time in her life, and is making up for the lack by obeying the constant demands of her two spoiled dogs, Tree and Maybelle.

Keverlee's poetry idol is Elizabeth Bishop, though she is equally obsessed with Anne Carson, Jorie Graham, James Wright, and Larry Levis. Limited as this list may seem, Keverlee's editorial tastes were broadened this summer having read for a new first book contest (at another magazine). She also reads novels and non-fiction, including most recently: Special Topics in Calamity Physics; The Omnivore's Dilemma; Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; and Setting Free the Bears.

Keverlee is currently living in a small un-air conditioned apartment and is accepting applications for new pets, with special emphasis on handicapped or other special needs animals. Also chickens. Seriously.

Jess Mehr, photographed here with former fiction editor Tadd Adcox at the 2007 AWP Conference, grew up in Union, NJ, where she was taught that New York City is the greatest place on the planet, Florida is pronounced “Flarida,” and one should never pump gas, change a tire, repair brakes, move, cut down a tree, landscape, refinish or build anything without professional assistance. Since graduating from the University of Virginia in 2001, she has worked in London and Dublin, backpacked through 14 countries, and spent 3 glorious years bartending at the Outback Steakhouse. She is currently a third-year in Purdue’s MFA Program and has set up house in Lafayette with her boyfriend Stephen.

Jess just started her first novel, What You Can Live With, which, after several point of view changes and nervous breakdowns, is finally off the ground. As far as creative influences, she plans to marry Lorrie Moore or Tom Perrotta, and the best books she read this summer were The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Falling Man by Don DeLillo, and The Bright Forever by Lee Martin.

She is addicted to Dunkin Donuts Iced Coffee, White Russians, Lucky Charms, text messaging, striped tights, gummy bears, Heroes, Law & Order, Simpsons, and, much more shamefully, Columbo and Matlock. She is terrified of ventriloquist dummies and clowns, and strangely, has never been camping, skiing, hunting, fishing, or swimming in a lake.

Non-Fiction submissions have increased dramatically in the past two years, and Jess hopes that trend will continue. To see what she looks for in Non-Fiction, see the Submissions page.

Mindy grew to 5'2.5" drinking the Fluoride-enhanced waters of her hometown, Elgin, Illinois. Since 2001 she's set up camp in Indiana, first attending Butler University and now Purdue as a 3rd year poet in the MFA program. Her personal heroes include Fran Quinn (a poet publishing with the Blue Sofa Press and running his own independent poetry workshop) and Aussie Bindy Irwin.

Mindy's literary taste is proving democratic; this summer she read and loved equally Rushdie's The Moor's Last Sigh, The Time Traveler's Wife by new author Audrey Niffenegger, and the final (sniff, sniff) installment of the Harry Potter series. She considers the closing line of William Stafford's poem, "Ask Me" to be among the greatest ever written, but otherwise has no poetic favorites (unless you count poet Dave Shumate and Mary Oliver's poem "Members of the Tribe"). Make of that what you will.

She was recently engaged to a fellow poet and is looking forward to their life together eating Ramen and sleeping in a refrigerator box while fighting over whether or not they can write in the margins of their mutually owned books.

This week we are welcoming Jon Sealy, the new fiction editor of the Sycamore Review. He grew up in Central, SC and is in his third year in Purdue's MFA program.  He enjoys southern writers, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, British novelists, and trees and shrubs.  He plans to post with advice for fiction submissions as the reading period approaches, but for now he recommends people check out what past editors have said about publication.  A more detailed flavor of his personality and interests can be found on his blog.

Tee Shirt FrontGet 'em while they're hot!

New Sycamore Review tee shirts are on sale now.

Just check out the Tee Shirts link to the right or click on the image for purchasing details.

It hasn't been nine months, but it feels like it.  Sycamore Review issue 19.1 has arrived, safe and sound.  All subscriptions and contributors' issues have been mailed out.  This is a fun, fun issue, with some stellar interviews: Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone, Tom Benedek, the artist behind the creepily beautiful cover art you see below, and Natalie and Drew of, respectively, Natalie Dee and Toothpaste for Dinner.

Which is not to slight the excellent poetry, fiction and non-fiction in the issue, some of which will be slowly finding its way onto this website.  We've even got the winning poem from the 2006 Wabash Prize for Poetry, Cindy May Murphy's "For My Father Who Thinks I'm Going to Hell." 

If you'd like to purchase a copy, head over here to find out how.  We still can't take orders online, so we'll all have to make do the old-fashioned way.