Announcing the first issue of , a semi-annual tabloid of poetry, fiction, essays, statements, provocations & other extensions of the whole art. Featuring new English translations of Adonis, Jorge Amado, Ahmed Barakat, Mohammed Dib, Horace, Ko Un, Giovanna Sandri, as well as a report on “The Position of Things,” the March 2008 celebration in Los Angeles, honoring the life and work of Italian poet, editor and critic Adriano Spatola. Also featured is new work by Amiri Baraka, Art Beck, Guy Bennett, Brian Blanchfield, Gillian Conoley, Ray DiPalma, Peter Gadol, Owen Hill, Lewis MacAdams, Barabara Maloutas, Ken McCullough, Douglas Messerli, Laura Moriarty, Yann Perreau, Dennis Phillips, Nick Piombino, Martha Ronk, Iris Smyles, Domenic Stansbery, Frederic Tuten, and more.

Free-of-charge and distributed nationally, is a publishing project of Otis College of Art and Design’s Graduate Writing program, replacing the critically acclaimed New Review of Literature, which published ten issue from 2003-2008. To be on our list of free subscribers, or to contact us, write to the editor: pvangel@otis.edu.

BOARD OF GOVERNOR'S FELLOWSHIP

Each year Otis College of Art and Design’s Graduate Writing program offers, in addition to its other forms of aid, a Board of Governors Fellowship in the amount of $20,000 per year. The fellowship is renewable for a second year, given the student’s satisfactory academic progress.

A student writer will be selected according to his or her demonstrated potential, experience, skills and goals. Although a student need not be published, the fellowship will be awarded to a writer with a clear notion of why he or she wishes to study writing and what one hopes to accomplish with these MFA studies.

For more information, please contact department chair Paul Vangelisti, 310 665-6891.

Paul Vangelisti, Chair of the Graduate Writing Program

"For too long the serious study of contemporary poetry and fiction has been consigned to the English Department or to other disciplines that fail to consider the primary and complex practice of writing as a verbal art. Otis is uniquely positioned to introduce a new and comprehensive approach to the graduate writing degree. In asking “why Otis?” it is important to view our MFA program not only distinctive in the institutional market but also as an extension of Otis's historical mission to bring innovative arts education to Los Angeles. Our multi-disciplinary approach—writing, literary seminars, publishing and translation—is the ideal complement to the program's international emphasis, providing a singular opportunity to look at American writing in relation to other contemporary world literatures. We prepare verbal artists to make their way in a profession that increasingly involves teaching or other institutional affiliations (publishing, arts organizations, museums, etc.), along with the more traditional, individualized role of the creative writer. As a writer, specifically a California writer, I find that where I live grows daily more curious and fascinating: what is of and in the world speaks with an eloquence beyond any voice I can imagine."