Chess novel The Knight of New Orleans now in paperback with 15% off!

1837. Paul Morphy was born into a wealthy Creole family in the French Quarter of New Orleans and became infamous for his fast and positional chess game. At twenty-one he was knighted world champion after defeating the great European masters-the English and Germans-in New York at the First American Chess Congress. In a short-lived blaze of glory, he defeated opponents in an atmosphere that encouraged gambling, drinking and often led to duels for honor. Soon no one dared play the boy from New Orleans-he even offered Pawn and Move to the world!

As a young gentleman, Paul embarked on a Grand Tour of Paris and London with his manager-servant, Fred Edge. Part proud spectacle and part reluctant circus act, Paul performed feats of memory and blindfold chess, making records that stand today. He even played Emperor Napoleon III (at croquet and chess) and was praised by Queen Victoria. He returned to New Orleans lionized by high society, but misunderstood....

Morphy was in love with the lights down on Basin Street. Returning home, he developed an obsession for 'crib-girl' Clara Young, a professional working girl from an area off Basin Street known as 'The Swamp.' Clara needed money and excitement. Living in a dangerous world of brothels and barrelhouses, is she just playing with Paul for her ticket out? Who is the social misfit, the chess boy or the trick girl? Who is playing whom?

Based on a true story, The Knight of New Orleans shows you all the honest and brutal moves in a gamble of love and survival. Let the best player win!

Paul Morphy is today remembered as the pride and sorrow of chess. After conquering the chess world so young, he became a recluse, a failed lawyer and sanitarium patient, a dark twist on the American Dream. Paul was a strict amateur playing for honor, Clara a professional working for survival. Was Clara's world too different from Paul's, his background too bourgeois, hers too dangerous? Or will love triumph even when the pieces are checkmate? The Mississippi and the Vieux Carré are calling....

Let the games begin!

Title and ISBN	Book Website	Author Website	Publication Date	Buy now!
K 9781937056001 The Knight of New Orleans: The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy (UK hardcover)	The Knight of New Orleans (Homepage)	Matt Fullerty (Website)	28 September 2011 (Parkgate Originals)
K 9781937056025 The Knight of New Orleans: The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy (US hardcover)	The Knight of New Orleans (Homepage)	Matt Fullerty (Website)	28 September 2011 (Parkgate Originals)
K 9781937056018 The Knight of New Orleans: The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy (UK paperback)	The Knight of New Orleans (Homepage)	Matt Fullerty (Website)	1 December 2011 (Dionysus Books)
K 9781937056001 The Knight of New Orleans: The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy (UK hardcover)	The Knight of New Orleans (Homepage)	Matt Fullerty (Website)	28 September 2011 (Parkgate Originals)

Interview for Discovery Channel's "Deadly Women" (February 2011)

 
On 16th February 2011, I will be interviewing as a 'talking head' for Beyond Productions's television show "Deadly Women" in New York, NY. No doubt I will be fitted with a suitable office-like set for transplanting DC to NYC!

I have been invited to speak about the subject of my second novel, Kate Webster, one of an episode's featured subjects. "Deadly Women" will air in the US on Investigation Discovery during this fall's 5th season of the show, from August 2011. You can watch previous episodes of the show here.

To read more about my novel THE MURDERESS AND THE HANGMAN please click here.

I am also writing a non-fiction 'true crime' version of the story called THE LADY, THE MAID AND THE HANGMAN here.

Vermont Studio Center (August 2011)

Having enjoyed my time at the I-Park Foundation as a Writer-in-Residence (fiction) in July 2010, I am pleased to attend the Vermont Studio Center on an Artist's Grant in August 2011. Residencies: you can't beat 'em. The location looks beautiful and I hope to complete my third novel American Con Artist on-site. That would be a fine way to end the summer!

With Skull Found, Crime Novel Becomes Reality for GW English Professor!

George Washington University's Professorial Lecturer in English Matt Fullerty, who is currently teaching ENGL 62 (Comedy) and ENGL 52W (English Literature), recently found himself in the middle of a national news story in the UK.

Last weekend, a human skull was dug up in the garden of broadcaster/naturalist Sir David Attenborough in London. It turns out to be the long-missing head of an 1879 murder victim named Martha Thomas, who was killed by her maid Kate Webster.

In a peculiar twist, Dr. Fullerty has been writing about the murder--in the form of a novel--for the past two years. After the murder, Kate impersonated Martha Thomas around London, wearing her clothes and jewelry, and selling her victim's belongings. After trying to flee to Ireland, Kate was arrested and put on trial at the Old Bailey, eventually confessing to her priest. She was hanged in Wandsworth Prison by the "royal hangman" William Marwood on 29 July, 1879.

When the story broke on Saturday in England, Matt became the go-to source for the British press. The result was a feature in Tuesday's Daily Mail about life of the killer (and the man who hanged her).

You can read more about Matt Fullerty's novel The Murderess and the Hangman here. Matt is currently looking for a publisher for his work, and we hope this strange turn-of-events will help him land a book deal in time for Halloween!

How a skull found in David Attenborough's garden has solved one of Victorian Britain's most gruesome murder mysteries

On a bright, spring morning, coal porter Henry Wheatley and his companion were driving their horse and cart along the Thames.

Shortly before seven o'clock, just before arriving at Barnes Bridge, South London, Wheatley noticed a wooden box lying half-submerged in the water.

He got down from his cart and, with some difficulty, hauled the box on to the bank. Noticing that it was tied with cord, Wheatley took out his knife and cut it open.

He then gave the box a kick and it collapsed. What he saw next turned his stomach. A mass of white flesh fell to the ground. At first, Wheatley's companion suggested they'd stumbled across a box of butcher's offcuts.

Workmen building an extension at the Richmond home of Sir David Attenborough unearthed a skull in the naturalist's garden. The police are almost certain it is that of Mrs Thomas, who was murdered 130 years ago

But Wheatley knew his find was far more grisly  -  in fact, he'd stumbled across the body parts of a dismembered woman. The date was March 5, 1879. Wheatley immediately reported his find to the police at Barnes.

A pathologist identified the body parts as belonging to a short, somewhat tubby woman.
The corpse had been cut up with an ordinary meat saw, and a contraction of flesh away from some of the bones suggested that the pieces had been boiled.

However, the body was missing not only a foot, but also something vital to help with identification  -  its head.
Five days later, another gruesome discovery was made  -  this time on a manure heap in an allotment in Twickenham, about five miles from Barnes. It was a box containing the missing foot, which had been boiled in the same way as the rest of the corpse.

For the next few days, the police could only guess as to the identity of the body  -  which some newspapers speculated could have been used by medical students for dissection.

However, by the end of the month and with help from a key witness, the police and the public learned the body belonged to a 50-year- old woman called Julia Martha Thomas, who lived in Richmond.

 

Kate Webster - who murdered her elderly employer with an axe after she returned home from church on a Sunday evening

She had been murdered by her servant, a 30-year-old Irish woman called Katherine Webster.
Because of the gruesome nature of the corpse, the public were fascinated by the case. Some people even removed pebbles and twigs as souvenirs from the small garden of Mrs Thomas's cottage in Park Road, Richmond.

What was never discovered was Mrs Thomas's head. Its location remaining a secret  -  until last week, a full 130 years later.


On Friday, workmen building an extension at the Richmond home of Sir David Attenborough unearthed a skull in the naturalist's garden, and the police are almost certain it is that of Mrs Thomas.
Should this indeed be the case, then the final chapter of one of the most foul murders in Victorian London can now be written.

As a crime novelist, I've long been fascinated by the tale of the Richmond Murder  -  and I've even written a book based on the killing.

The murderer, Katherine Webster, was born in a small village in County Wexford in 1849. She spent her teenage years in and out of prison. At around the age of 17, she fled to Liverpool, where she lived as a drifter and furthered her skills as a burglar.

However, she soon found herself locked up and was sentenced to four years of penal servitude in 1867.
Released after three years, she made her way south to London, where she apparently attempted to make an honest living.

In 1873, she lodged in Rose Gardens, Hammersmith, West London, next to a family called the Porters, who would play a major part in her fate six years later.

Some time the following year, she gave birth to a son out of wedlock.

Unable to make ends meet Webster once more turned to thieving and, in 1875, she was sentenced to 18 months in London's Wandsworth prison for a staggering 36 offences of larceny.

As soon as she got out, she re-offended, and was locked up for another year in February 1877. In January 1879, she finally appeared to turn her back on a life of crime by taking a job as a servant for Mrs Thomas, at her home in Richmond.

Aged around 50, and recently widowed, Mrs Thomas was a small woman who took her religion seriously and was a devoted worshipper at the local Presbyterian chapel.

Unsurprisingly, the two women did not get along well. Mrs Thomas often had to reprimand her new servant for her violent temper and less than capable serving skills.

 

Gruesome: Builders unearthed a skull, believed to solve a 131-year-old riddle, in globe-trotter Sir David Attenborough's garden

On the evening of Sunday, March 2, Mr s Thomas returned from an evening service at the chapel. She found Webster had been drinking and a row ensued. The drunken servant girl was unable to contain herself and during the course of the argument she pushed her employer down the stairs.

She ran down after her, and seeing that Mrs Thomas appeared to be badly hurt, she decided to strangle her.
What happened next is like something out of a horror film. For the next 24 hours, Webster cut up the body of Mrs Thomas and boiled the pieces in a big copper pan.

Why she decided to boil the pieces is not clear, but it is likely she was hoping to disintegrate the flesh. She was unsuccessful and her attempts to burn the body parts also failed.

At this point , Katherine Webster decided that the only way to dispose of the body was to parcel it up and throw it in the Thames.

She placed the pieces in a box, and put the box into a large black bag. Then she assumed Mrs Thomas's identity.

On the late afternoon of Tuesday, March 4, she walked to her friends the Porters, whom she had not seen for months, and told them that she was now called Mrs Thomas and that her aunt had left her a house in Richmond.

Webster asked Mr Porter if he knew of an agent who could sell the house for her.

A little later, Webster, Mr Porter and his teenage son Robert went for a drink at a nearby pub. Robert carried the black bag, and it sat under the table while the three had ales.

Then Webster left  -  saying that she had to quickly see someone. When she returned, Porter saw that she no longer had the bag.

In fact, she had thrown it off Hammersmith Bridge.

Webster's greed knew no bounds. As well as trying to sell her victim's house, she also attempted to sell all its contents.

A man called John Church offered her £68 for some of the furniture, and she took £18 as a down-payment  -  insisting it be in cash or gold.

However, Webster was worried her crime would soon be discovered, and on or around March 18 she fled back to County Wexford.

Back in London, John Church began to grow suspicious and tracked down a friend of the real Mrs Thomas, who informed him that she was in fact in her 50s  -  and was most certainly not in her 30s with an Irish accent.
Church informed the police and, with evidence from Church and the Porters, they quickly put the puzzle together. On the 25th, Webster was arrested and detained at Clerkenwell prison.
At her trial that April, huge crowds thronged around the Central Criminal Court in London. Webster was found guilty, although she denied the murder.

She finally confessed the night before she was hanged at Wandsworth Prison on July 29.

What she never admitted was the location of Mrs Thomas's head, a secret which she took to her death at the end of the long rope.

Now, thanks to the unwitting help of Sir David Attenborough, the case can be finally closed.

Matt Fullerty's author site is www.mattfullerty.com

His novel based on the crime, THE MURDERESS AND THE HANGMAN, is currently with Watson, Little Ltd, and looking for a publisher. 

--

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323762/How-skull-David-Attenboroughs-garden-solved-Victorian-Britains-gruesome-murder-mysteries.html#ixzz13SfD4KKy

Regrouping After the MFA: How to Find Community Postprogram

After a brief but torrential thunderstorm in mid-June, eight writers of poetry and prose, myself included, huddled around a picnic table crowded with three-buck beer and leaves of printed-out poems, stories, and essays in the concrete garden of a Brooklyn bar. It had been almost a year since I'd taken a seat at a table with other writers to talk about the stuff, the meat of our writing—inspirations, obsessions, discoveries—and the project at hand every time each of us settles in to confront the blank page. All of us had spent an intense two years together at the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, a small liberal arts school nestled in woody Bronxville, north of New York City. Many of us had migrated to the city after graduation, and while we saw one another often enough, touching base at parties and readings, our writing lives had become privatized, with only the most dramatic aspects—I haven't been excited by a word in three months! My thesis is moldering!—shared among us. So, about thirteen months after graduating, a group of friends and I, guided by our assiduous organizer, Hossannah Asuncion, decided to create a new program in order to reestablish the connection that the MFA experience had provided. We would get together once a month to check in with one another, warm ourselves up with a few brief free-writes, and discuss a predetermined topic on which we had all read a few essays before meeting. We could also bring works-in-progress to share, though workshop-style critiquing would not be on the agenda—our gatherings would celebrate our writing as art, and our work as artists.

Perhaps the shocking burst of rain was an apt metaphor for the two brief years we'd been ensconced in, and saturated by, a lively stream of words. The way whole days of digging in to work felt like a deluge after which the world often shone. The way words became new again in the voice of a classmate, and how the dross would be purged by the workshop process, revealing the tender bones and pulse of a piece. A creative writing program had offered to many of us an ideal experience—and then it was over. Of course, a workshop-heavy curriculum can have debilitating effects as well: Participants can tire of their work's being scrutinized in its infancy; differences in critical approaches can stifle discussion; and the compounded anxieties of the final semester can weigh on relationships, especially as solitary time to write becomes precious and staunchly defended. I'm sure the capacity for inducing this exhaustion informs our universities' having limited the MFA track to two or three years. After a while we're inundated and need to move out on our own. But writing programs don't tend to teach the skill set required to work fruitfully—and joyfully—beyond their gilt walls.

The MFA experience does not necessarily prepare us to be writers in the world. Our time as students is set apart as a sacrosanct period during which we perform the very important work of honing and polishing our craft, but little guidance is given as to how we might preserve that sacred lifestyle (as well as the more profane, yet necessary, moments of criticism and editing) once outside the bubble. On the other hand, no one could have told us then that our devotions would flag and that distractions—such as earning a living and making our way in the world—would threaten to prevent us from writing altogether.

This is not to say that constant connection to a writing community is necessary, or even entirely healthy. Once I'd successfully cast off those workshops and conferences, a momentary sense of liberation washed over me. When my thesis crossed over into the hands of my advisers, I was immediately walloped by a profound exhaustion, and there was freedom in that fatigue. I needed a break from the intensity of the MFA experience—from workshops, and even from writing. The project I had immersed myself in for two years (at times a desperate, sinking immersion) had worn me out, and I required some time to let the omnipresent criticism, however sparkling or seductively constructive, settle within me. It was like recovery after a marathon, when my legs were ripped and clunky and I needed to cross-train for a while, to teach myself how to move again. But the respite from writing and talking about writing soon devolved into a drab routine. Instead of slowly starting over, I had let myself stiffen, and the loss of my teammates—and our shared field—made the process of resuming the race profoundly difficult.

Excuses abounded. At first, no amount of time seemed long enough to sit and work, and when I'd attempt to write in short spurts, the words danced only on the surface of ideas and questions. Sometimes language simply felt inert. I often had the sense that I was playing with plastic blocks rather than textured, living things. Some pleasure had seeped out of the project of making art with words—a joy that I have discovered came from sharing both my poetry and the process of writing it. While I can't say this perception was common to all my peers, it seems that each of us has experienced an occasion—however extended—of craving community.

In Asuncion's experience, it has been a struggle to continue the writer's life after leaving an MFA program. In a society that often diminishes the value of the written word, students of fine writing can find their ventures trivialized as flighty or idealistic. "More often than not, I feel like the world is telling me that doing an MFA program was a bad decision," she says. "And more often than not, I'm like, ‘Yeah, time to start studying for the LSATs.'"

"I often feel stuck in my writing life," fellow salon member Rena Priest recently told me. "I have long patches of time where nothing I write is satisfying to me, and I have periods where nothing I read is resonating. When I am with other writers talking about writing and all the triumphs and struggles it involves, the ennui recedes." For Hila Ratzabi, another member of our group, connecting with other writers forces her to think about writing and to return it to the forefront of her mind where it belongs—but from which it can quietly slip as the static of the world interferes with our creative frequencies. "Thinking and talking about writing are not the same as writing, but having a community where it's safe to say, ‘I haven't written in months, and it sucks, but here's who I read when I can't write' is a blessing," Ratzabi says.

Without the meeting of friends and colleagues to help reframe myself in my project—and in the living portrait of us all doing this work together—writing began to feel like a secret game of limited consequence. I felt as if my contributions to anything larger than myself were nil. In fact, at our second salon, the question was posed, "To whom do you write?" For several months, I noticed, I had been writing primarily to words themselves, fiddling with language with nothing much at stake. My work on the page was reflective of my practice: scrawling on the train or for a few minutes at lunchtime, or making mental notes while running. I didn't feel I had an audience, and, curiously, my writing had even receded from conversation with my imaginary listeners, Dickinson and Stein among them. During my time at graduate school, the writing process itself had induced an exceptional sense of accomplishment, a purposefulness that comes from knowing that one is doing the work that one is supposed to be doing.

At times, the validation that we achieve through being and acting—in this case, writing—genuinely wavers, and we are compelled to look to one another not for appraisal but for support. Asuncion, who had rounded us up with the aid of a Google group she and others had created for Sarah Lawrence MFA alums, was inspired to start the salon by a similar series of gatherings she'd been attending that had been organized by Kundiman, the Asian American poets organization, whose members began running informal salons in January. She experienced the salon format as more of a generative field than an editing session for pieces in assorted stages of existence. Asuncion herself has written several pieces this year as a result of short salon exercises. For our group, exercises have ranged from creating a portrait based on a character we frequently noticed at our meeting spot—the mustachioed fellow leaning over his Belgian ale doesn't know how many weird narratives were spun about him—to drafting radical rewrites of work we'd each brought to the table. But most central to the salon, and for me its most vital aspect, is topical discussion.

I have always thrived in arenas that celebrate and engage ideas in all their intricacy and malleability, particularly ideas relating to perceptions of language. While not all classrooms are equally conducive to such vigorous exploration, the MFA roundtable at which I participated provided such a space and, ultimately, fed my writing. The salon reinvigorated that part of me that had been too easily neglected after leaving school, quelled by the seeming urgency of daily routines and pursuits unrelated to writing. In several of our conversations we've discussed how we can each create a space, physical and mental, where writing matters and can thrive after the intensity of the MFA experience. I've found that before establishing that room of one's own, separate from the mesh of the world, one needs to acknowledge that each of us is not alone in our endeavor; we are part of both a tradition and a living multitude of others.

As the very act of coming together on equal terms for a salon has reminded us that we are not isolated as writers, the material of our discourse has illuminated the fact that, despite having distinct styles and drives, we share a mutual human project. For discussion during our second meeting, Asuncion chose two essays on spirituality: Federico García Lorca's 1933 lecture "Theory and Play of the Duende" and Fanny Howe's "A Leaf on the Half-Shadow," published in the journal English Language Notes in 2006. These works stimulated a conversation that took off from group members' personal accounts of having sensed attunement to the spiritual while engaged in the process of writing—feeling the pull of flow, not knowing from where words were arriving; being moored in a mind state so lush and tangible, but beyond the realm of the known; approaching meditative clarity while working. My most gratifying writing hasn't been fed by my head, but by a universal, oceanic "something" exterior to ego. Without clear language to discuss phenomena such as this, experiences can feel ephemeral, or even inconsequential. But gathering with a group that understands and empathizes with the challenges posed by the shifting creative mind, and the elations that arise from meeting those challenges, I see that the importance of my work becomes more resonant.

In her essay "Survival in Two Worlds at Once: Federico García Lorca and Duende," Tracy K. Smith writes, "There are two worlds that exist together, and there is one that pushes against the other, that claims the other doesn't, or need not, exist." She refers to the capacity of duende, or the dark spirit (which some in our salon group perceived as death itself, the palpable movement of our own mortality within us), to both pull us toward and repel us from what some might call a higher state, a vaster consciousness, a discovery. In some ways, our lives outside of writing facilitate that centrifugal pushing away, and as I and many of my compatriots have found, a community that validates the opposite—a fearless movement toward the dark other—encourages the writing to approach those uncomfortable places. Talking about the act of writing has helped each of us to realize how much that wilder world does need to exist, and to negotiate its importance in our lives.

According to that Psych 101 standard, Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, when certain basic human requirements are met, our minds are free to explore more philosophical realms. Granted, as graduate students none of us was living a plush life, but we were able to focus less on the minutiae of survival and ego-driven pursuits (notwithstanding the occasional lovesick breakdown or ravenous scavenge for leftovers after a school event) and more on larger pursuits. There was art to be served, and it was our one and only job to serve it. In some respect, many of us joined an MFA program believing that if we wanted our writing to evolve from the fruit of our labor into art, it had to enter the public realm. It had to take a place at the table and enter into discourse with all of the other works that have been and continue to be written. While submitting pieces for publication and seeking opportunities to read remain excellent means of propelling the work into the world, nothing beats offering the tiny body of a poem or story to the live hands of a reader, or feeling that your quietest, most shuttered of lives is in conversation with another. Our postprogram salon has offered us not only a lively arena for sharing our writing with others, but, more important, it's given us a renewed opportunity to share our writing selves with a community of kindred minds each encountering distinct but similar challenges, as emerging artists in the wider world.

--

Send us a glimpse of your post-MFA story: your toughest—or brightest—transitioning moment, the virtues and vices of your program in retrospect, or a way you found to keep your community solid. Include "Post-MFA Story" in the subject line of an e-mail to editor@pw.org.

Jean Hartig is the editorial assistant of Poets & Writers Magazine. Her chapbook, Ave, Materia, won the Poetry Society of America's New York City Chapbook Contest and is forthcoming in 2009.

Edith's War - author interview

Below is an interview I conducted with Andrew Smith about his novel EDITH'S WAR (recently released on March 26 2010).

"EDITH'S WAR is a story of hardship, love, passion, and motherhood during Liverpool's Blitz of World War II. In early summer of 1940 young Edith Maguire witnesses the internment of her Italian neighbours following Mussolini's declaration of war against Britain. Edith is swept up in the unthinkable event of her Italian friends' deportation to Canada on the Arandora Star and experiences first-hand the hardships and grief that ensue as a result of the ship's fateful voyage..."

Andrew Smith tells how he wrote the book, his inspiration and the connections between Britain, Canada and Italy below:

1

EDITH'S WAR tells a little-known story about Italian internment in Britain during WWII. How did you first encounter this information (new to me), and decide it would make a good novel?


I knew I wanted to write about how WWII changed British society, how the war was the mechanism that caused people to examine the way society worked and to call into question many of the conventions that had existed for centuries. I was researching this at the Imperial War Museum in London when I stumbled across the story of Italian internment in UK. The addition of Italians to the book, who are generally viewed as easy-going and uninhibited, especially compared to the British, fulfilled a welcome contrast to the depiction of an uptight British population. Also the accounts of their internment by harmless Italian men were classic examples of the stupidity of war and also of the way normal standards can change and deteriorate during wartime. This wartime shift in morality in relation to how the British Italians were treated, so different to how they might have been treated in peacetime, appalled and fascinated me.

2

I greatly enjoyed your evocation of place in the book - Liverpool, Venice (I am from Warrington, a town near Liverpool). Why/how did you choose these cities in particular to tell the story?

As you know, Liverpool was one of the hardest hit cities in Britain during bombing by the Germans. Liverpudlians suffered greatly during WWII. It was also the port from which many "aliens" were shipped to Canada or Australia, including hundreds of British Italian men. And the juxtaposition of the easy-going hedonistic and sensual city of Venice with the somewhat stiff and proper character that the younger brother had become, made him seem even more inhibited. And I made Venice the original home of the Italian couple who had lived in Liverpool during the war as a device to move the plot along. And finally you tend to write about what you know. I grew up on Merseyside, in Huyton, not far from Warrington, in the 40s and 50s. And I also know Venice well having spent a lot of time there during the last twenty years.

3

What was the greatest struggle you faced in writing the book?


There are good struggles and bad struggles. It's a huge struggle to write a novel like Edith's War because I had to do so much research and then the struggle that all author's face in developing characters, evolving a plot, etc. etc. But these are good struggles; I loved every minute of the research and writing stage. Then there is another huge struggle to get published. I tried long and hard to find an agent and a publisher and experienced many rejections along the way. This part of the process is excruciating and can be depressing if you start to take the rejections personally. One has to be strong, stick by the courage of your convictions, and realize that publishing is a business like any other.

4

Do you feel you are making a political point in writing this story? You decided to address the subject matter in the form of a novel. Why not non-fiction, or some other form?

If I'm making a political point it has to do with emphasizing the omnipresence and senselessness of war, and the fact that society seems unable to change in any significant way. I've written and published two non-fiction books, which I enjoyed writing, but I think it's difficult to impose passion and a distinct point of view into non-fiction. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I think it's easier to do it more effectively in fiction. I wanted to state very clearly how humankind seems unable to avoid war (witness the presence of wars constantly throughout history), yet how senseless and unfair war always is. Even WWII, which might be seen as justified from the Allies' perspective, has hundreds if not thousands of examples of inhumanity and unnecessary suffering imposed by all sides. The novel form allowed me to portray actual events and have the reader make no mistake that I viewed them as senseless and unnecessary. I also wanted to imply how difficult it is for any of us to change, on a personal level but also on a larger scale, as a society. A non-fiction book usually only tells the story, whereas a novel can show the effects of a story and be so much more emotive in the telling.

5

How are you enjoying the publishing process, having your first book released? If there's one thing you could change about publishing a novel, what would it be?


It's very rewarding to hold the finished product of so much work in one's hands. But, to go back to my point about publishing being a business, I don't think many authors are prepared for the dog-eat-dog commercial side of publishing. I'm fortunate because I was somewhat prepared by my work in publishing, I'm a book designer, but even I wasn't ready for the alarming truths of how difficult it is to get one's book noticed and into the bookstores. If there's one thing I could change it would be that books are sold on their merit alone, and not because a publisher paid for a prominent position in a bookstore, or because the author has a TV show, or has won a literary prize, or one of the hundred other reasons a book gets noticed other than for the quality of writing or cleverness of plot, etc. But I'm sounding cynical. I'm really not, and I do still believe that if a book is good it'll get the readership it deserves.

6

A good amount of the novel is set in and about Italy. Do you feel personally connected to Italy?

Not particularly, other than I've spent a lot of time there since I was in my twenties and have quite a few Italian friends whom I love, and I like Italy better than almost anywhere else.

7

Do you remember when you first wanted to be a writer?


Yes I do, because I started writing late in life. It was 1988 and I was forty-years-old, when I took my first creative writing course. Just previous to that I had taken a bus trip over the Himalayas from Kashmir to Ladakh in Northern India and written a magazine article about it, the first piece of writing I'd ever published. The article won an award for travel writing, which inspired me to write more. So I took some courses and started writing short fiction, which I love writing. I don't know why it took me so long. I don't think being a writer was presented as an option at the school I went to in Liverpool so I never thought of it. So I went to art school and became a graphic designer. I've been lucky to have found writing, and to have another profession that allows me time to write but also keeps the wolf from the door. Because, as we know, books rarely provide much of an income.

8

How important are family relations in telling a good story?


I think human relations of any kind are crucial to a good story. We all need something we can relate to and human relations provide a great deal that is familiar to us all. I suppose family relations are often the most intense and usually the most influential on our lives so they hold a certain gravitas that no other relations hold, they're what forms us. So, while not necessary to a good story, family relations are certainly wonderful additions to a story.

9

What is your work schedule like when you're writing?

Once I've done research and am into the writing stage I tend to get up fairly early in the morning and write solidly for four to six hours. Once I actually sit down and put fingers to keyboard the time usually flies by. But I'm as bad as most writers about starting, I'll make a cup of tea I don't really need or thumb through a magazine I've already read. I don't know why many writers find it hard to actually start writing; maybe because it's so intense, it's hard work to write, and it's rather tiring. Often when I eventually stop I'm fairly drained. But once I start I rarely look up, except to check research, until I just run out of steam some half-a-dozen hours later.


10

What are you working on right now? A departure, or something related to historical fiction across different times and places like EDITH'S WAR?


Some months ago, at a stage when Edith's War was out of my hands with an editor, I wrote the first two chapters of a book set in contemporary London. Unlike Edith's War it'll be a straight single time period narrative. The story is about a paparazzi photographer who is down on his luck having lost his business and his wife. He's a recovering alcoholic, estranged from his family, and broke. But he has a cache of photos of celebrities that might be worth a great deal. But because of his alcoholism and past indiscretions nobody wants to know. There's a whole plot in my head about how an opportunity to get exclusive photos of a drugged-out music star falls in his lap. Actually it's a ploy by the recording company to get publicity, etc. etc. The idea comes from a fascination I have with the symbiotic relationship that celebrities often have with the press. Princess Di being a prime example. I'm also interested in the whole phenomenon of celebrity, especially in our society with the proliferation of shows like American Idol and with people like Paris Hilton who have no talent or skill (they don't even model) but who have become celebrities earning millions. I'm keen to get back to writing it, but first we have to get out there and sell Edith's War.


Thank you for your time, Andrew. You can read more about EDITH'S WAR at http://www.edithswar.com/ and on Facebook here.


I'll also be posting this interview on http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/ and a link from my website http://www.mattfullerty.com/.

Biography
Andrew Smith was born in Liverpool, England. He moved to Toronto, Canada in 1974 since when he's worked in magazines and book publishing. Andrew Smith's writing has been included in the Journey Prize Anthology, has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards, and has garnered a Western Magazine Award for Travel Writing. He has published two non-fiction books: Highlights, an illustrated history of cannabis (co-author) and Strangers in the Garden, the secret lives of our favorite flowers. He's enjoyed writing fiction since 1990, which, fortunately, is when he began.

Literary Journals Associated With MFA Programs

As an MFA student, helping to put out a literary magazine—whether you’re an editor, a reader, or a publicity volunteer—offers a valuable glimpse into the realm of professional publishing and another means of learning about your community of writers. If, as part of your graduate experience, you’re interested in contributing your time or writing to a school-sponsored journal, check out this listing of institutions whose MFA programs produce literary magazines.

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
Black Warrior Review

University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Permafrost 


American University, Washington, D.C.
Folio

University of Arizona, Tucson
Sonora Review 


Arizona State University, Tempe
Hayden’s Ferry Review 


Ashland University, Ohio
River Teeth

University of Baltimore
Passager Journal

Boise State University, Idaho
cold-drill
The Idaho Review

Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Mid-American Review

Brooklyn College, CUNY
The Brooklyn Review

Butler University, Indianapolis
Booth

University of California, Irvine
Faultline

University of California, Riverside,
Palm Desert Graduate Center
The Coachella Review

California College of the Arts, San Francisco
Eleven Eleven

California Institute of the Arts, Valencia
Black Clock
Sprawl

California State University, Fresno
The Normal School

California State University, Long Beach
RipRap

California State University, San Bernardino
Pacific Review

University of Central Florida, Orlando
The Cypress Dome
The Florida Review

Chapman University, Orange, California
Elephant Tree

Chatham University, Pittsburgh
The Fourth River

City College of New York, CUNY
Fiction
Global City Review
Promethean

Colorado State University, Fort Collins
Colorado Review
The Freestone

Columbia College, Chicago
F Magazine
Hair Trigger

Columbia University, New York City
Columbia

Cornell University, Ithaca, New York
EPOCH

Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond
Aurora
Jelly Bucket

Eastern Washington University, Spokane
Willow Springs

Emerson College, Boston
Ploughshares
Redivider

Fairfield University, Connecticut
Dogwood

Fairleigh Dickinson University,
Madison, New Jersey
The Literary Review

University of Florida, Gainesville
Subtropics

Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton
Coastlines

Florida International University, Miami
Gulf Stream Magazine

Florida State University, Tallahassee
The Kudzu Review
The Southeast Review

George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
Phoebe

So to Speak

Georgia College & State University,
Milledgeville
Arts & Letters
Flannery O’Connor Review

Georgia State University, Atlanta
Five Points
New South

Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont,
and Port Townsend, Washington
Pitkin Review

Hamline University
Water-Stone Review

Hollins University, Roanoke, Virginia
The Hollins Critic

University of Houston, Texas
Gulf Coast

Hunter College, CUNY
The Olivetree Review

University of Idaho, Moscow
Fugue

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Ninth Letter

Indiana University, Bloomington
Indiana Review

University of Iowa, Iowa City
The Iowa Review

Iowa State University, Ames
Flyway

Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
and Washington, D.C.
The Hopkins Review

University of Kansas, Lawrence
Cottonwood

Lindenwood University, St. Charles, Missouri
Untamed Ink

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Exquisite Corpse

New Delta Review
The Southern Review

Manhattanville College, Purchase, New York
Inkwell

University of Massachusetts, Amherst
CRATE

jubilat
The Massachusetts Review

University of Massachusetts, Boston
Breakwater Review

University of Memphis
The Pinch

Mills College, Oakland
580 Split

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Dislocate

Minnesota State University, Mankato
Blue Earth Review

Minnesota State University, Moorhead
Red Weather

University of Mississippi, Oxford
The Yalobusha Review

University of Missouri, Columbia
Center
The Missouri Review

University of Missouri, Kansas City
New Letters

University of Missouri, Saint Louis
Natural Bridge

University of Montana, Missoula
CutBank

Murray State University, Kentucky
New Madrid

Naropa University, Jack Kerouac School
of Disembodied Poetics, Boulder, Colorado
Bombay Gin
not enough night

University of Nebraska, Lincoln (PhD)
Prairie Schooner

University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Interim

University of New Hampshire, Durham
Barnstorm

University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
Blue Mesa Review

New Mexico State University, Las Cruces
Puerto del Sol

University of New Orleans
Bayou

The New School University, New York City
LIT

New York University, New York City
Washington Square Review

University of North Carolina, Greensboro
The Greensboro Review
storySouth

University of North Carolina, Wilmington
Ecotone

North Carolina State University, Raleigh
Free Verse

Northeast Ohio Universities Consortium (NEOMFA)
Luna Negra
Penguin Review
Rubbertop Review
Whiskey Island Magazine

Northern Michigan University, Marquette
Passages North

University of North Texas, Denton
American Literary Review
North Texas Review

University of Notre Dame, Indiana
The Bend
Notre Dame Review
Re:Visions

Ohio State University, Columbus
The Journal

University of Oregon, Eugene
Northwest Review

Oregon State University, Corvallis
Prism

Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles
OR

Pacific Lutheran University’s
Rainier Writing Workshop, Tacoma
A River & Sound Review

Pacific University, Forest Grove, Oregon
Silk Road

University of Pittsburgh
Collision

Hot Metal Bridge
No 


Portland State University, Oregon
Oregon Literary Review
Pathos Lit Mag
The Portland Review

Purdue University, West Lafayette, Louisiana
Sycamore Review

Queens College, CUNY
Ozone Park

Roosevelt University, Chicago
Oyez Review

Rosemont College, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania
Parlor 


Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey
StoryQuarterly

Saint Mary’s College of California, Moraga
Mary

San Diego State University
Fiction International
Poetry International

University of San Francisco
Switchback

San Francisco State University
Fourteen Hills
Transfer

San Jose State University, California
Reed Magazine

Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, New York
Lumina

Seattle Pacific University

Image

University of South Carolina
Yemassee

Southern Connecticut State University,
New Haven
Connecticut Review
Noctua Review

Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Crab Orchard Review

University of Southern Maine, Portland
Words and Images

Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester
Amoskeag

University of South Florida, Tampa
Saw Palm

Spalding University, Louisville
The Louisville Review

Stony Brook Southampton, SUNY
The Southampton Review

Syracuse University, New York
Salt Hill

University of Texas, El Paso
Rio Grande Review

University of Texas, James A. Michener
Center for Writers, Austin
Bat City Review

University of Texas-Pan American, Edinburg
gallery

Texas State University, San Marcos
Front Porch

University of Utah, Salt Lake City
Quarterly West
Western Humanities Review

Vanderbilt University, Nashville
The Vanderbilt Review

Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier
Hunger Mountain

University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Meridian

Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond
Blackbird

Virginia Polytechnic Institute
and State University, Blacksburg
The New River

Western Connecticut State University, Danbury
Black & White
Connecticut Review
Sentence

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
Third Coast

University of Washington, Seattle
The Seattle Review

West Virginia University, Morgantown
The Loop

Whidbey Writers Workshop, Freeland, Washington
Soundings Review

Wichita State University, Kansas
Mikrokosmos

University of Wisconsin, Madison
The Madison Review

2010 Creative Writing MFA Rankings: The Top Fifty

If this link ever stops working, below is a list of the top 50 MFA programs for Creative Writing in the US (Seth Abramson's list as published in Poets & Writers magazine).

Rank	School	Votes (of 508)	Poetry Rank	Fiction Rank	Nonfiction Rank	Total Funding Rank	Annual Funding Rank
1	University of Iowa in Iowa City	253	1	1	1	21	22
2	University of Michigan, Ann Arbor	169	3	2	*	16	4
3	University of Virginia, Charlottesville	144	2	4	*	21	21
4	University of Massachusetts, Amherst	132	4	5	*	40	41
4	University of Texas, Austin	132	5	6	*	1	1
6	University of Wisconsin, Madison	129	6	11	*	21	22
7	Brown University in Providence	127	8	3	*	19	20
8	New York University in New York City	125	7	7	*	+	+
9	Cornell University in Ithaca, New York	110	9	7	*	10	2
10	University of Oregon, Eugene	104	15	12	*	27	29
11	Syracuse University in New York	97	20	10	*	5	7
12	Indiana University, Bloomington	93	13	14	*	6	8
13	University of California, Irvine	91	26	9	*	26	28
14	University of Minnesota, Minneapolis	85	17	14	8	29	27
15	Brooklyn College, CUNY	81	39	13	*	*	*
16	University of Montana, Missoula	78	17	17	17	47	46
17	Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore	77	11	16	*	30	30
18	Vanderbilt University in Nashville	76	13	18	23	25	26
19	University of North Carolina, Greensboro	75	10	19	*	33	31
20	Washington University, St. Louis	70	15	24	*	12	3
21	University of Florida, Gainesville	67	22	21	*	13	16
22	Columbia University in New York City	66	38	19	10	*	*
23	University of Notre Dame in Indiana	62	34	22	12	+	+
24	Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia	56	32	26	4	+	+
24	University of North Carolina, Wilmington	56	22	25	5	41	42
26	Arizona State University, Tempe	55	19	28	35	15	18
26	Hunter College, CUNY	55	45	22	6	*	*
26	University of Houston in Texas	55	11	34	18	34	34
29	Colorado State University, Fort Collins	53	20	34	*	42	43
29	The New School in New York City	53	47	27	3	*	*
31	Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York	52	27	33	8	*	*
31	University of Washington, Seattle	52	27	28	*	*	*
33	University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa	51	25	31	29	2	18
34	University of Arizona, Tucson	49	32	28	2	+	+
35	Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana	45	22	40	*	9	10
36	University of Arkansas, Fayetteville	41	31	45	*	17	24
37	George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia	40	39	34	12	+	+
38	Boston University in Massachusetts	39	39	38	*	+	+
39	University of Nevada, Las Vegas	38	48	31	*	35	35
40	Ohio State University, Columbus	35	27	+	35	7	9
41	University of Maryland, College Park	34	37	44	*	*	*
42	Florida State University, Tallahassee	33	39	+	*	38	38
42	Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge	33	*	46	*	3	5
42	Rutgers University, Newark in New Jersey	33	*	37	12	*	*
42	University of New Hampshire, Durham	33	39	40	7	*	*
46	Pennsylvania State University, University Park	32	45	46	11	28	14
47	Southern Illinois University, Carbondale	31	27	48	*	14	17
47	Texas State University, San Marcos	31	*	40	*	+	+
49	University of Mississippi, Oxford	31	+	40	*	18	25
50	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign	30	34	+	*	4	6
50	Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond	30	+	38	*	31	32
50	Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg	30	34	+	*	8	10

Note: An honorable mention goes to Bowling Green State University, a two-year program in Ohio that ranks among the top fifty programs in selectivity (#47), total funding (#46), annual funding (#45), and poetry (#48), and received pluses in overall votes and fiction. For a ranking of the additional eighty-eight full-residency MFA programs, click here.