December 30, 2010
Felix Calvino, a current MPhil student, was the recipient of the inaugural Cecilie Anne Sloane Postgraduate English Creative Writing Research Scholarship …
Media Resources Centre: Industry News
October 17, 2010
Congratulations to recipients of MRC Next StepJoin Us
Congratulations to recipients of MRC Next StepJoin Us
Producer Alexandra Blue and Writer/Director Dimitrios Pouliotis were the successful team selected for $25,000 investment from the MRC for their 15 minute film Unfinished Thoughts, based on a short story by Felix Calvino.
Funding was made up of $15,000 in cash from MRC and $5,000 equipment hire from Picture Hire and MRC, as well as $5,000 in post production equipment and/or facilities from Oasis Post.
Production is scheduled to commence in November 2010.
We wish them all the best for an enjoyable shoot.
http://www.mrc.org.au/follow-it/news/187
Media Resource Centre :: Industry News
THE MIX TAPE FAST FORWARD
July 29, 2010
An Amazing Feat: Startling Stories in Tiny Spaces,
| By | Grady Harp ( |
This review is from: The Mix Tape (Perfect Paperback)
THE MIX TAPE is from the series FLASH FORWARD: A Collection of Flash Fiction - 2010 and is a winner from the cover design, to the concept of dividing the book in two parts - one opens from the front, the other flips the book and turns is upside down for part 2. Inside this little treasure trove are what seem like hundreds of very brief 'novels' compressed into 1 to 4 pages. Within this context the many authors served up here find the ability to create an entire story that because of the abbreviated format carries such a wallop that it takes a moment to breathe before the next one.
The microstories range from high comedy to sensitive melodrama, to bizarre animals, funerals, Holocaust, teen pregnancies, religion - almost every imaginable topic is surveyed with astonishingly fine writing. Some of the stand out works include a brief look at an encounter with possible love angles that ends unexpectedly by Felix Calvino (‘In the Park’), several stories from Nancy Stohlman ('Clowning for Jesus' is bound to become a classic) whose flirtations with being naughty ('Donny and Marie Osmond Barbie') vie with those of Kona Morris ('Confession #3', 'Going Back') or stories by Sophie Rosenblum ('A Terrier's Limits' et al). To have the luxury to savor such creativity within the covers of one book is a feast. Let's hope these 'Fast Forwards' continue! Editors K. Scott Forman, Kona Morris, and Nancy Stohlman have done a superb job in arresting the talents of many terrific writers. Grady Harp, July 10
Antipodes (Brooklyn, New York)
July 17, 2010
Review
Multicultural, pastoral tales hint at the unknown
Félix Calviño. A Hatful of Cherries
Steve Goerger
Echoing the biography of its author, Félix Calviño’s A Hatful of Cherries is perhaps most notable for its intriguing juxtaposition of Spanish and Australian cultures. Of the sixteen short stories collected here, ten are set in
The well-drawn characters and their relationships are the clear highlight of the collection. The Spanish stories are rich with familial love overcoming the bitter experience of life, such as in “The Swallows,” when a young boy is taught of the mystery and beauty of nature by his wise and kind-hearted grandfather.
Stories such as “An Old Sheep” and “Basilio” extend this love into the larger community, gracefully illustrating the mutual generosity necessary to rural survival, while “A Hatful of Cherries” and “Silvia” offer elegant reflections on the beauty and turmoil of romance. The Australian stories offer vivid portrayals of the immigrant experience and of mateship, as in the excellent “
Calviño brings a well-developed craft to the portrayal of these characters, their situations and inner lives. His style is gentle, full of respect for life’s mysteries, with phrase-making abilities that reveal the enigmas of existence concisely and profoundly. In “An Old Sheep,” four sentences describing a shepherd’s home summarize his life’s luck and misery completely: “The room was cold in winter and hot in summer. It was always dark. Tired twinkles of light came through the fissures in the roof tiles. A small window looked out into the trees”(33). In “
At times, however, these moments can feel too few and far between in Calviño’s work. These are stories of reflection; narration is normally at a great remove from events, and exposition is given weight at the expense of scene. “Silvia” concerns a pregnancy creating love triangle between two male friends and the title character, with endless opportunities for languorous scenes which illustrate the emotional joys and conflicts of the situation. One paragraph describes Silvia as “seated in an easy chair in the living room against beautiful tapestries, the colours of which brought deep repose to the mind,” and notes that this is an occasion Alfredo “reminisced many years later” (158). While Alfredo’s memory does paint a lovely image, it also suggests the opportunity for a more fully realized scene, one which might bring readers into that living room, to experience its beauty without the mediation of Alfredo’s mind. Similarly, the story “Basilio”—one of the strongest pieces in the collection—brings home the deadly aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, but it does very little to recreate the atrocities of the war itself. Basilio reminisces about the number of dead and summarizes some of the killings, but never does he experience a flash back or some other trick of narration that might intensify the story’s sorrowful themes. “Ghosts on the Beach” draws in the reader because of its anomalous setting—the afterlife—but it fails to develop its most interesting theme that of romantic love between ghosts. The resolutions of many of the stories feel incomplete or unsatisfactory, unwilling to mine the characters’ lives for their most resonant and lasting legacies.
The finest of the stories are those which deliver a heightened sense of irony, proposing some unexpected twist in the beauty of life in villages, in new homelands, and elsewhere. “Winners and Losers,” the story of a lost wallet, is among the best in this regard. After the narrator loses his wallet, his mates at a local pub place bets on how much
of its monetary contents will return. Meanwhile, the narrator, interested in the stories of poor men, is taken on a tour of food missions in the area by his friend Henry. The story becomes an examination of the nature of luck and circumstance in the lives of men, buoyed by the narrator’s generous nature toward others. Just as he seems to have reconciled bad luck as a simple fact of an otherwise good life, his wallet turns up with a surprise of its own. “Basilio,” “Restless Hands,” and “Silvia” are other stories which resolve in a manner addressing life’s complexities, at home and abroad. Here Calviño’s well-crafted folk tales brush against the unexpected and the unusual, giving birth to masterful, illuminating art.
www.australianliterature.org/Antipodes_Recent_Issues.htm
Multicultural, pastoral tales hint at the unknown [Book review of Calvino, Felix. A Hatful of Cherries (2007).]
Full Text PDF (50kb)
A Hatful of Cherries
June 24, 2010
Dear Friends,
A Hatful of Cherries has been reprinted!
My sincere thanks for your support,
Félix
http://www.scholarly.info/allbooks/ .
Dear Friends,
A Hatful of Cherries has been reprinted!
My sincere thanks for your support,
Félix
http://www.scholarly.info/
New York
June 4, 2010
(Note New Venue)
(Note New Venue)
Saturday, June 19th, 8:00-11:00 P.M.
A
The Path Cafe
(212) 243-1311
____________________
New York
Saturday, June 19th, 2-5 pm
A Reading and Release Party to Celebrate Fast Forward (Volume 3): The Mix Tape.
Kona Morris, Nancy Stohlman, Katharyn Grant, Christopher Bowen, Tom Clayton, Meg Tuite, Jon Olsen, Ashley Cowger, April Johnston, Christy Strick, T. L. Barrett , Jarod Rosello, Erik Morsink, Barbara Henning, Patricia Eakins, and Félix Calvino. Musical Guest Nick Busheff. An event in the Uptown Arts Stroll sponsored by the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance.
New York Public Library, Fort Washington Branch
535 West 179th Street
New York, NY 10033
http://www.facebook.com/Fort Washington Library
Tel: 212-927-3533
Island
Short Fiction Survey [Book Review]
Abstract: Felix Calvino' A Hatful of Cherries is an excellent collection of fiction exploring the villages of Franco' Spain, interspersed with tales of life as an older man in Melbourne. By this means Calvino provides an interesting juxtaposition, but a successful one. The eyes of an older, more familiar figure prevent the rural stories from becoming sentimental; they are not just fables, but reflections on a real life lived not so long ago. Review(s) of: A Hatful of Cherries, by Felix Calvino, Arcadia, 2007.
http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=289533035805056;res=IELLCC
They Are Only Dreams
March 15, 2010
Issue 69
Literary Magazine Reviews :: NewPages :: Current Lit Mag Reviews
Issue 69
December 2009
Reviewed by Henry F. Tonn
I read a selection of stories from three different online publications and was bored with the same old same old (I find it hard to believe that editors think anyone is going to read this banal stuff), and then I stumbled on to The Barcelona Review. Thanks goodness! The editors really live in
Right out of the gate is an excerpt from a novel-in-progress set in
In the flash fiction category is “They Are Only Dreams” by Felix Calvino, a quiet, sedate story that eventually turns rather haunting concerning a young child who has precognition. In the book review section, I was quite fascinated by Diana Grove’s Dot.Conned. Apparently the author decided to take on a number of the international con artists who send out emails in which they ask the potential sucker to be a middle man (middle person?) for huge money transactions, the goal being to bilk the gullible patsy out of their money. The author makes up names, sends creative pictures, has a grand time jerking their chains – all with humor.
This is one of the few journals that delivers what it promises. Just click below and give yourself a treat. Fresh from
[www.barcelonareview.com/]
www.newpages.com/magazinestand/litmags
they are only dreams
nose in the books
January 17, 2010
They Are Only Dreams by Felix Calvino
This story in The Barcelona Review is a really quick read- and will give you the chills. Made me wish I had more faith…
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