Interview with Michael J. DeLuca in THE MOSSY SKULL:

The LCRW 33 Interviews: D. K. McCutchen: Star Stuff & Worm Meat

Artwork by Tim Paulson 2015

I’ll be reading, along with several other writers from this issue, from the short story version of JELLYFISH DREAMING on Friday July 10th at 4pm at READERCON in Burlington, MA, at the Boston Marriott

The Immortal Jellyfish

JELLFISH was accepted by guest editor Michael DeLuca for publication July 15th, 2015  in LCRW No. 33 (there is a reading schedule linked to the editors name, above, and also some thoughts on his editing process).

Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet No. 33

MISSION BLUE/SYLVIA EARL ALLIANCE

Has partnered with my family’s outreach conservation project ISLAND REACH

R.V. Llyr

To work with  THE OCEAN FOUNDATION

To raise funds for Island Reach to continue providing R.V. Llyr and her crew, in support of the Vanua-tai in their crucial role conserving their reefs in the Coral Sea.

The Indiegogo campaign: A VESSEL FOR THE VANUA-TAI has videos and a platform for accepting donations. To date, Island Reach has funded its project with its own farm produce and labor, with the crew returning to New England every fall and winter to produce Maple Sugar, and then sailing in the South Pacific summers using the R.V. Llyr as a support platform for farmers and fishers in Vanuatu. They provide donated Aqualung snorkles and masks to help the Vanua-tai conservation group teach and practice reef conservation, Crown of Thorns removal, and many other projects supporting the initiative of the island archipelago’s own conservation groups.

The girls of Sangalai, Meskalyne Islands

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I’d forgotten about this until the interviewer, Eli Sobel, an artist at Byrdcliffe last year, wrote that he’d come back from his studies in Amsterdam. He sent the pic below on his outward journey, because his folks gave him a copy of my book. The visual artists at Byrdcliffe (and VSC this year) were truly inspiring. They were so willing to step outside genre and expectation – and far better than the writers in explaining their work even so!  

Byrdcliffe Artist Eli Sobel, Interviewer…

A.I.R Reflections: Deb McCutchen

Deb McCutchen has her feet firmly planted in two worlds: the nebulous imaginings of writing and earth-bound rationality of science. To name a few of her many preoccupations, she is a full-time lecturer for the College of Natural Sciences at Umass Amherst, a writer, a zoologist, a researcher, and a mother of two energetic children. Deb has been a Puschcart Nominee, Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist Fellowship finalist, and a frequent participant in public readings and workshops, most recently in ArtSake: Commonwealth Reading Series at Forbes library.  She attended Byrdcliffe’s A.i.R program in early May and is working on her next book, ICE.

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ICE won a SPECULATIVE LITERATURE FOUNDATION grant for 2015

JELLYFISH DREAMING made the “Short List for Finalists” for the Novel category in the 2014 William Faulkner-William Wisdom awards, and Semi Finalist in the Novel-In-Progress category. And of course an earlier draft made finalist for a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant in 2012 (which is what led to ICE).

Challenges in Categorizing Creative Work

Lovely little Blog put out by the Massachusetts Cultural Council’s Dan Blask, who asks artists from a diversity of genres how they cope with the challenges of having to categorize their work. Feels like I could have written a whole book on this, but fortunately he gave us a word count!

ArtSake Blog

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Late night surfing and found a gread review on Good Reads for Whale Road by Phillipa Jamieson (she interviewed me when I was fresh off the plane in NZ for book tour and totally jet-lagged, she was very sweet about it!). She originally wrote the piece for the New Zealand Herald. Great to see it up there. Now have to find the next two mss a home, then figure out what to do with Whale Road next:

Phillipa Jamieson, New Zealand Herald

Review published in the New Zealand Herald, 21 August 2004

THE WHALE ROAD                                                                                                      [Random House NZ (Vintage Books), 2004; Blake UK, 2006]
by D.K. McCutchen

Reviewed by Philippa Jamieson

The Whale Road

In the heyday of whaling in the South Pacific, the quarry was so numerous as to form what was described as a black road in the sea. In 1992, ten years after whaling was banned, a scientific expedition set off from Tahiti on a voyage around the Pacific to New Zealand, following the ‘whale road’, to establish whale numbers, and gather other information. Deborah McCutchen, an American, joined the crew as a nanny for the two children of the captain and his wife. Also on board are the First Mate, a saucy Swiss woman, and Simon, a New Zealander.

The Whale Road is a montage of snapshots, layered together in a colourful album of words. There are diary excerpts and ship’s log entries; there is myth, story, and fascinating facts about whales. Deborah McCutchen’s words are interrupted from time to time by her shipmate Simon’s unmistakably Kiwi colloquialisms. The journey ends in Aotearoa, where the author has more encounters with wildlife, does a research project on Hector’s dolphins and marries a New Zealander.
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VANUATU

Island Reach sharing stories and images from work in Vanuatu, South Pacific, May-July 2014:

LATEST VIDEO!

Just out! July 2014. Couldn’t go to the launch in Bantry (so sad) but finally get to see Kakapo Poo in print. I rewrote it after it was too late to include, for a reading at Vermont Studio Center, but hey. Guess that’s what I do. RE-WRITE. A lot.

This is my 3rd Anthology with Fish Publications, out of Cork University Press.