Office: Keezell 408
Phone: 540-568-1643
Email: martintm@jmu.edu
Office Hours: Fall 2009 MWF 9:00-10:00 & by appointment
Courses: Fall 2009
ENG 393, Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction, MWF 10:10-11:00 and 11:15-12:05
GENG 236, English Literature 18th century-Modern, MWF 8:00-8:50
Fields: Fiction Writing; Modern English and American Literature
Education:
PhD, English, Western Michigan University, 2007
BA, English Language and Literature, University of Maryland, 1985
Teaching Experience:
James Madison University, 2007-present
GHUM 200, Prophetic Writers: DH Lawrence, Dostoevsky, Melville, Emily Bronte, 2 Sections
GENG 236, English Literature 18th century-Modern, 10 Sections
GENG 248, American Literature 1865-Modern, 4 Sections
ENG 393, Introduction to Creative Writing, Fiction, 10 Sections
Western Michigan University, 2003-2007
ENGL 266, Introduction to Creative Writing, Poetry & Fiction, 3 Sections
ENGL 366, Advanced Fiction Writing, 3 Sections
ENGL 566, Graduate Fiction Workshop, 1 Section, co-taught with Dr Jaimy Gordon
Nova Southeastern University, Fall 2002
READ 1000, Developmental Reading, 2 Sections
Florida International University, 2000-2003
ENGL 1101, Freshman Composition, 2 Sections
ENGL 1102, Literary Analysis, 2 Sections
ENGL 1930, Essay Writing, 1 Section
Honors:
Finalist, 2008 Red Hen Press Short Fiction Award, "Live Bait"
Finalist, 2004 Seattle Review Fiction Contest, “Live Bait”
Third Place, Fiction, 2003 New Century Writer Awards, “Live Bait”
Finalist, 2003 Reynolds Price Short Fiction Award, “The Lost Country”
First Place, Fiction, 2003 Flyway Sweet Corn Prize, “Guerrillas”
Finalist, 2002 James Jones First Novel Fellowship
Honorable Mention, 2002 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards
Novel excerpt selected by Chris Offutt
Related Experience:
Essay Reader for James Madison University 2010 Dingledine Scholarship.
Modern Language Association Member, 2007-present
Judge for Western Michigan University Undergraduate Fiction Awards, 2005-2006
Associate Fiction Editor for Third Coast, 2004-2007
Volunteer at WMU Used Book Sale, 2004-2006
Graduate of University of Washington Extension Program in Fiction Writing, 1998
Apprentice to Antiquarian Bookseller at Magus Books, Seattle, 1991-2000
Promoted to Manager in 1995
Publications:
Fiction:
“The Tomahawk Chop.” Passages North: A Literary Journal. Ed. Kate Myers Hanson. (Winter/Spring 2009): 213-221
“Guerrillas.” Flyway: A Literary Review. Ed. Stephen Pett. (Spring 2004): 63-75.
Poetry:
“Vikings.” Calvert: A University of Maryland Literary and Arts Review. Ed. Tom White. (Fall 1984): 36.
“The Watercolor.” Calvert: A University of Maryland Literary and Arts Review. Ed. David Swerdlow. (Spring 1983): 55.
Non-Fiction:
“Violence as an Objective Correlative in the Western Novels of Cormac McCarthy. The Hilltop Review: A Journal of Western Michigan University Graduate Research. Ed. Roy Henry. (Spring 2007): http://www.wmich.edu/gsac/Publications.htm
Work in Progress:
In Guatemala, a novel steeped in the bedlam of civil war, is the story of Henry Foster, a seventeen-year-old from the United States who tries to keep his family together during a crisis in his father’s sabbatical year. Astronomy professor at Johns Hopkins University, Dr Milton Foster uproots Henry and his family from their Maryland home and brings them to a coffee farm beside Lake Atitlan, a body of fresh water skirted by mountains and volcanoes in the Sierra Madres, where he can research the calendars of the ancient Maya. The family arrives in June of 1978—before the presidential inauguration of General Lucas Garcia, whose administration will become a marker for the onset of repression and widespread violence against the indigenous people.
After Henry is accosted by a roadside soldier while defending his nine-year-old brother Jason, their mother insists upon leaving the country at once. But their father refuses to go before his research is complete. In the crossfire the brothers must choose between their parents. Unable to sleep the night after his roadside encounter Henry remembers the time eight years ago when his mother left home for a trial separation, taking his infant brother with her. After she was gone, a blizzard paralyzed Maryland. Snowbound for days Henry read stories with his father, and over the years their bond grew stronger. He resents the possibility of being separated from his mother and brother again, but cannot imagine abandoning his father.
The next morning he plods to the San Bernardo Catholic school with his brother and tries to convince him to stay, thinking that might change their mother’s plans. But Jason is determined to go. That afternoon when Henry is excused from the class of Padre Flores to visit the health clinic, he spots a military assistant harassing Maria Delgado—the twenty-two-year-old Mayan who works at the comedor behind the church—and unleashes his frustrations on the young man in a vicious, back-and-forth fight, ultimately killing him. Consumed with guilt Henry realizes that he has put his family into grave danger. Now his father wants them to return to Maryland right away—before the disappearance of the assistant raises suspicions—saying that he will follow them as soon as he can wrap up his research. When Henry opposes this plan, his father gives him the alternative of traveling into southern Mexico and waiting there for news about how the volatile situation develops.
Maria and Henry travel to San Cristobal, where they share a motel room. While visiting the nearby Palenque ruins Maria resists Henry’s advances, revealing that five years ago she was raped by the soldiers who killed her son and her husband—a member of the EGP, or Guerrilla Army of the Poor. Traumatized by the ordeal and unwilling to bring another child into this world she vowed to become celibate and to avoid any future involvement with the revolution. But when they hear that an American professor and a Catholic priest have been arrested at Lake Atitlan, they feel they must go back despite the risk.
In San Bernardo they split up, having agreed to meet later. Maria heads to the church to ask about Padre Flores while Henry hikes to the coffee farm. His father explains that a different professor and priest are under arrest. Despite his father’s warning Henry returns to San Bernardo, where soldiers interrogate him. He pretends to know nothing about their missing assistant. After his release he discovers that Maria has been butchered, the evidence left for him. He staggers back to the farm but cannot find his father. Fearing for his own life he canoes across Lake Atitlan in a dense fog, not sure whether he is doing the right thing. That night he treks to a Texaco station on the Pan-American Highway and stows away in a truck going to the United States. After crossing the first border, he falls asleep and dreams of snow.
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