Writing

During this time of social distancing many of us have been looking for thoughtful ways to make the most of the time, and writers in various quarters have been queried for reading lists. When I was asked for suggested “quarantine reading” both by some of our MFA Writing students and by the Otis College Admissions department, I immediately solicited our core faculty for ideas. The list we’ve compiled truly reflects the diversity of our instructors.

Halley Sutton (MFA Writing ’17) was about two-thirds of the way through her manuscript when she hit a wall, unable to figure out how to tie together all the threads of her “modern feminist noir.” So she got a giant piece of poster board, covered it with differently colored Post-it notes representing her various plotlines, and lugged it to the office of Peter Gadol, her thesis advisor at the time, and Otis College of Art and Design’s MFA Writing program chair. “I was like, ‘Peter, I don’t know what to do! Help me!’” Sutton says with a laugh.

Otis Books is accepting unsolicited manuscripts during the month of November. The press publishes works of contemporary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, with a special interest in translations and writings from and about Los Angeles. There is no reading fee and both established and unpublished writers are welcome to submit.

MFA Writing Chair Peter Gadol's new novel, The Stranger Game, was released this week from Hanover Square Press, an imprint of HarperCollins, to sparkling reviews and enviable comparisons.

Otis Books is proud to announce the publication of For an Ineffable Metrics of the Desert, a bilingual edition of the selected poems of the writer Mostafa Nissabouri. The collection was translated from French by Otis College of Art and Design professor Guy Bennett, Pierre Joris, Addie Leak, and Teresa Villa-Ignacio. The book, which was developed, designed, and published by Otis Books and Otis College of Art and Design MFA Writing students, is the first time this particular collection of Nissabouri’s poems have been published together in English.

Becoming a good literary citizen in the world can take all different paths. For two recent Otis College of Art and Design graduates, that path meant partnering with a faculty mentor to create a broadside publication that will publish poetry every other month. Otis College of Art and Design MFA Writing faculty member Guy Bennett and MFA Writing alumni Krystle Statler and Kevin Thomas published the first issue of their broadside, every other, in February 2018, with an original and previously unpublished poem entitled “Icarus” by Nick Flynn.