Grads

All MALS alumni are invited to the annual MALS Alumni Association luncheon and open meeting on Thursday, July 14. The event, beginning at noon, will be held in the Hayward lounge at the Hanover Inn. A reservation with the MALS office is necessary. Please call (603) 646-3592.

Our speaker will be MALS professor Thomas Powers, whose recently published book, The Killing of Crazy Horse, is receiving great reviews. His talk will be about the process of nonfiction writing. The alumni association meeting will follow the luncheon, and all alumni are welcome to attend and participate. Ideas on what role alumni would like the association to play will be appreciated.

Dave Norman (MALS’07) has just had his third book published, White River Junctions. Dave writes that this project grew out of his MALS independent study work as well as his thesis. He used his interest in regional history to study the social, economic and industrial history of White River Junction, Vermont. His focus is on the lives of four local people. He uses first-person narration and the techniques of investigative journalism to bring history alive and also apply it to the larger concept of the history of Vermont, New England and the United States. After he received his MALS degree Dave spent two years doing additional research and editing his manuscript. It is now a 342-page paperback, published by f/64 Publishing in Portland, Maine.

In Dave’s words, “The release of White River Junctions marks a professional shift for me, away from the paintball journalism that I used to pay my way through the MALS program (though I did tour Asia four times covering paintball… that was fun). It’s high time I turn my MALS- honed skills toward more mainstream and intellectually valuable pursuits.” You can visit Dave’s website at www.davenorman.net.

In April Deborah Scranton’s (MALS’10) documentary Earth Made of Glass was aired on HBO. This film follows a survivor’s search for the truth about his father’s death in the genocide in Rwanda. The documentary also focuses on the efforts of current Rwandan president Paul Kagame to try to heal his nation and the role, to a great extent unknown, of the French in encouraging the violence. In an interview with Nicola Smith of the Valley News, Deborah said, “The greatest take-away of the film is showing a path to stop the cycles of violence and retribution. That’s what resonates most with people. A lot of us have been looking for something we shouldn’t be focused on. You don’t have to forgive someone their crimes. As long as I don’t kill him and I don’t teach hatred to our children, that’s enough. That’s an important delineation to make. It’s about telling the truth and knowing what the truth is.” Earth Made of Glass was Deborah’s MALS thesis project and won the MALS Creative Writing Award for 2010. It is now available on DVD.

Nationally acclaimed artist and current MacArthur fellow Anna Schuleit (MALS’05) exhibited a new work last fall at UMass Amherst. Just a Rumor was a 30-foot-by-40-foot acrylic painting of an upside-down face on the concrete façade of the Fine Arts Center. The work was reflected in the adjacent campus pond. This reflection allowed one to see both the upside-down original and the right-side-up image at the same time. Anna regarded the ducks on the pond as her collaborators, as they swam through and distorted the reflection. Her work was exhibited for three months.

175 Greensboro Road, Hanover, NH 03755; (603) 643-3789; m.jane.welsh.adv98@ alum.dartmouth.org