May 2011

This month, author A. Manette Ansay joins me to discuss her life and writing, we stream Chris Bathgate’s beautiful and harrowing new album, Salt Year, Papercuts’ Jason Quever strips it bare to record two rare acoustic tracks, Laura Powers and Simon Perchik debut stirring new poems, Scott Hightower reviews Cynthia Hogue, and much more.

Our May offering also showcases the first installment of award-winning author Alan Drew’s novella, “In the News,” which will be serialized over the course of our next three issues.

Benjamin Evans
Executive Editor, Fogged Clarity

---

• Alan DrewAlan Drew‘s first novel, Gardens of Water, was published by Random House in 2008. To date, it has been translated into eleven languages and published in eighteen countries. In 2004, he completed a master of fine arts degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He lives with his wife and two kids in Philadelphia, and teaches fiction writing at Villanova University. He is hard at work on a second novel. In the News (Part 1 of 4)

• Laura PowersLaura Powers teaches developmental writing at Lewis-Clark State College in Idaho. Her poems have appeared in a wide range of print and online journals, and her chapbook, Speak, is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press. Powers is the former poetry editor of Fugue, and is a graduate of the University of Idaho’s MFA program. The Language of a Marriage
• A Plague of Cottonwoods
• Simon PerchikSimon Perchik is an attorney whose poems have appeared in Partisan Review, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere. For more information, including his essay, “Magic, Illusion and Other Realities,” visit his website at www.simonperchik.com. Celestial Recess 1
• Celestial Recess 2
• Celestial Recess 3
• Michael T. YoungMichael T. Young has published two collections of poetry: Because the Wind Has Questions and Transcriptions of Daylight. He received a Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and a 2008 William Stafford Award. His poetry has appeared in The Adirondack Review, Barn Owl Review, Barrow Street, Iodine Poetry Journal, and The Same, among others. His next collection of poems, The Beautiful Moment of Being Lost, will be published by Black Coffee Press in 2013.Breadcrumbs
• Scrawl
• Chloe N. ClarkChloe N. Clark is a creative writing major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has had poems published in Halfway Down the Stairs, Interrobang!?, Shaking like a Mountain, Sliver of Stone, and Verse Wisconsin. The Credits Say 15th Elf
• He Was Always Almost Something

• Sarah WalkoSarah Walko is a multimedia sculptor, installation artist and writer. She is currently the executive director of Triangle Arts Association, and works within an independent film collective that shows at International Film Festivals around the world. She is currently working on new sculpture, writing and web/film collaborations and has just completed several exhibitions in New York. Her next feature film El Cadaver Exquisito, a collaboration with Victor Ruano and Rossemberg Rivas, will be released this spring and is in festival circuits. Her fiction and non fiction essays have been published by While Whale Review Literary Journal and Hyperallergic Art Blog. Her visual artwork has been published by The Dirty Goat, Redivider, Blood Lotus, Apple Valley Review, 2 River, A Capella Zoo, Bathhouse and Host Publications. She has guest lectured at several colleges throughout the east coast, the Museum of Modern Art in El Salvador and has participated in several artists residency programs in the US. She has just completed her first novel. Sculpture & Boxes
• Christian StollChristian Stoll is a freelance photographer with one foot in New York City and one in Düsseldorf, Germany. Stoll’s photography has been a major influence on the corporate image of global companies like General Electrics, IBM and Microsoft. He works for numerous global companies and their creative agencies. EPIC
• Tatiana Plakhova & Leandro SanchezTatiana Plakhova is an art director, graphic designer and illustrator. She graduated from Moscow State University with a Masters in Social Psychology, and later studied at The Higher Academic School of Graphic Design. Her clientele includes Playboy, Wired Magazine and 33 Across, among others. Her work has been featured in many publications including Designcollector, Electronic Beats, and Redefine Magazine.
  Leandro Sanchez, a native Venezuelan and partner in Repertorium Films NYC, is a fine art photographer, director and painter. His commercial work has been featured in Boards magazine, and has been an official selection of Cannes Cyber Lions. His photography has recently been chosen to be featured by the prominent ABSOLUT Art Network and has also been selected by veteran curator Mark Busacca for the Busacca Gallery in San Francisco. His photography has recently been featured in Lost at E Minor, Photography Served, Fubiz, Saatchi Gallery, iDoll, Laughing Squid, Society 6 and Gazelland, and his film work has shown at numerous festivals, including the Tribeca Underground Film Festival and Woods Hole International Film Festival. Additionally, his paintings have been exhibited in galleries in New York City, Miami and the renowned Basel Art Fair. His first two feature film projects, Bitter Grapes and Narcoticus, are forthcoming from Repertorium Films. He studied French and French civilization at La Sorbonne, as well as Music (percussion). He then attended film school in Paris (E.I.C.A.R) and went on to work on news shows in Boston for the Christian Science Monitor. He is fluent in English, Spanish and French and resides in New York City. Another California

• Chris BathgateChris Bathgate is a singer and songwriter living in Michigan. Since 2003, he has released six full-length albums, the most recent of which is entitled Salt Year.Salt Year
• Jason Quever of PapercutsJason Quever is the lead singer and songwriter of San Francisco’s Papercuts. Since 2000, the band has released five full-length albums, including their most recent, Fading Parade.The Fogged Clarity Session

• A. Manette AnsayA. Manette Ansay is the author of six novels, including Good Things I Wish You (July, 2009), Vinegar Hill, an Oprah Book Club Selection, and Midnight Champagne, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, as well as a short story collection, Read This and Tell Me What It Says, and a memoir, Limbo. Her awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Grant, a Pushcart Prize, the Nelson Algren Prize, and two Great Lakes Book Awards. She lives with her daughter in Florida, where she teaches in the MFA program at the University of Miami.the author discusses her life and work
• Chris BathgateChris Bathgate is a singer and songwriter living in Michigan. Since 2003, he has released six full-length albums, the most recent of which is entitled Salt Year.speaks about struggling to record his album, Salt Year
• Jason QueverJason Quever is the lead singer and songwriter of San Francisco’s Papercuts. Since 2000, the band has released five full-length albums, including their most recent, Fading Parade.the Papercuts’ frontman talks music and mood

• Scott HightowerScott Hightower is a poet living with one foot in New York City, one in Texas, and one in Madrid. His third collection, Part of the Bargain, received the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. His translations from Spanish have garnered him a Willis Barnstone Translation Prize. He teaches at NYU, and has taught poetry, non-fiction, and translation at Drew, F.I.T., Fordham, and Poets House.Cynthia Hogue’s collection, Or Consequence
• Sam SelingerSam Selinger, originally from Chicago, now lives in Manhattan and attends New York University.Christopher Patton’s Curious Masonry