Michael Martone

Last week, Michael Martone lunched with us and gave a wonderful, hilarious, compelling reading. We’re excited to present some video from that event! Here he reads a contributor’s note from Michael Martone and the Musée de Bob Ross entry from The Blue Guide to Indiana.

He also read from his latest collection, Four for a Quarter, which explores and challenges and plays with the theme of four.

MFA Master Class with Steve Scafidi

Last week, one of IR‘s favorite contributors, Steve Scafidi, spent several evenings here in Bloomington to write, read, and talk about poetry with us.  Check out some scenes from our time with Steve:

A poem should matter as much as stepping on a nail, or being kissed —
If I step on a nail I could die; if I’m kissed my life could change from such a thing.
Steve Scafidi, IU MFA Master Class

Fact, or Fiction?

See how you fare on our fiction contest quiz:

1. I’ve sent fiction to Indiana Review for regular submissions, but am still eligible to enter the fiction contest.

FACT! IR is currently accepting submissions for the 2011 Fiction Prize judged by novelist Kevin Brockmeier.

2. I have until October 15th to enter.

FACT: There are still 10 days to prime those stories and get them in!

3. The entry fee is a ridiculously good deal.

FACT:  It’s only $15 dollars to enter, and includes a subscription!

4. If I win, I get $1000 and will appear in the journal.

FACT:  Not only will you get an issue, it will have your name on it!

5. IR makes it easy for me to submit.

FACT:  see our contest guidelines here for more information.

6. Indiana Review has spiffy AGEs ready to read your work–one is waiting, as we speak, here, in the office, sporting a Shakespeare tie!

FACT: you will have to trust me on this one.

7. IR wants you.

your FICTION. send some!

 

In Honor of Michael Martone…

We’re all really looking forward to spending some time with Michael Martone this week. In honor of his visit, I’d like to share this interview I did with him for the radio station WFIU, our local NPR affiliate. Michael and I talked for a long time about the new series of books about Indiana and the Midwest that he’s co-editing with another formidable Midwest writer, Susan Neville, for IU Press. Here’s an excerpt from the audio:

The process of leaving a place and re-creating it in a piece of fiction, Martone says, is “probably the big American issue.”

“The big American drama has to do between two worldviews that we hold as Americans—not just Midwesterners or Hoosiers. We really believe in what we call ‘small-town values,’ ‘family values,’ but we also believe in our incredible freedom to move—both spatially and also economically—that we can move up in class and rank. But the truth is, in our country, that mobility won out. And so there’s this kind of lost limb feeling that I think we all have: There is that longing, still, for that other America.”

We’re so pleased to be collaborating with IU Press and Boxcar Books this week in hosting Michael’s visit to Bloomington. We hope those of you who’ll be in the area will drop by the reading at Boxcar, October 5 at 7 pm.