November 25, 2008

Novelist Adam Braver will help launch a new Fresno State literary journal, The Normal School, with a reading Dec. 4 at the university. The Normal School is a semiannual publication under the co-editorship of Steven Church, an assistant professor of English at Fresno State.

Braver, a contributing editor of the new publication, will speak at 7:30 p.m. at the Alice Peters Auditorium in the University Business Center. He also will be celebrating publication of his newest book, “November 23, 1963,” a novel about the assassination 40 years ago of President John F. Kennedy.

There is no charge for the reading, after which copies of The Normal School will be available for sale for $5 (two-year subscriptions $20).

The event is co-sponsored by the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing, the Press (the university’s publishing arm) and the College of Arts and Humanities.

Braver is a California native, whose earlier novels are “Crows Over the Wheatfield,” “Divine Sarah” and “Lincoln's Wars.” He edits the Miscellaneous section of the literary magazine Post Road and reviews books for the Providence (R.I.) Journal. He teaches at Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I.

The inaugural issue of The Normal School includes poetry, fiction and nonfiction, with poems by Pulitzer Prize winner Philip Levine, an emeritus professor of English. The publication’s editors are English Department faculty David Durham, Alex Espinoza, Dr. Corrinne Clegg Hales, Dr. Tim Skeen, Dr. John Hales, Dr. Lillian Faderman (emerita) and Steve Yarbrough.

Church’s co-editors are writers with whom he has collaborated: Sophie Beck of San Francisco and Matt Roberts of New Orleans. He, Espinoza, Corrinne Hales, Beck and Roberts work together on each issue’s content. MFA students are journal interns.

Submissions are accepted from the public, but not the work of Fresno State faculty or students. Among the inaugural issue’s writers are a Pulitzer Prize winner, a New York Times bestselling author, Pen Award finalists, Harper’s magazine contributing editors and a Guggenheim Fellowship winner.

Church added, “We also have young, emerging writers who are bursting onto the scene in our pages. Our submissions have quickly become very competitive. Our goal is to be a magazine where the best writers in the country clamor to have their work published.”

Church recently concluded a deal with Ingram, the nation’s largest book and magazine distributor, to put The Normal School into bookstores across the United States.

For more information, contact Church at swchurch@gmail.com or the MFA blog at mfafresno.blogspot.com.