CLASS OF 1995 | 2018 | ISSUE 2
Katy writes for this issue: I’m very glad to share news from a nice bunch of our classmates. David Aaron writes: “I graduated in May from the Brown University Executive Master in Cybersecurity program. They gave me a nice award too, the Brown Master’s Award for Professional Excellence.”
Jeanne Bonner writes: “I’m the winner of the 2018 PEN Grant for the English Translation of Italian Literature for an Italian novel I’ve begun translating (and hope to publish)—a dream I’ve had since majoring in Italian at Wesleyan! It was an incredible thrill to win the award from such a prestigious organization, which, in addition to supporting the written word, safeguards free speech all over the world. An excerpt of my translation is available at pen.org/from-a-walk-in-the-shadows. I’m teaching Italian at UConn part-time, working as an editor part-time at CNN (where I worked in Atlanta as a contractor before moving—back!—to Connecticut last year), and raising my little boy, Leo, whose curiosity and passion for learning could position him well for the Wes Class of 2034.”
Cheryl Mejia’s ups at the moment are her family life and her job, while the downs are catching up on retirement savings and not bicycling lately. She speaks regularly with Amy Hundley, Lisa McQueen, and Son Tran, the latter who is purported to be moving to Canada in the upcoming year.
Nathalie Pérez-Cino writes: “Even though we’ve lived in Worcester, Mass., for 17 years this is the first time my family vacationed in the Berkshires. Must be the New Yorker in me! Now that our youngest has joined her siblings at Worcester Academy, we are finally on the same school schedule again. Giovanni is 15, Isabella is 13, and Christiana is 11. I still can’t believe we now have two kids in high school! It’s been a great year full of new beginnings and emerging talents for our kids. And, not to be outdone by them, I am learning to play the guitar. Three of us ran our first 5K in May and I am proud to say the youngest, Christiana, bested her parents!”
Carrie Fischer Turner, in NYC, writes: “I’m really psyched to announce that Nite Haus’s second album, Saturation, is being released on June 1! We plan on playing a few shows in the city over the summer, and I am just really proud that I have kept my drive to make music intact as I head into my dotage. I’m still in regular contact with one of my best friends from Wesleyan, Brett Aristegui. He lives outside Pittsburgh with his wife and two daughters.”
Matvei Yankelevich writes: “I’m a founding member of the collectively-run, nonprofit Ugly Duckling Presse (UDP). We’re celebrating 25 years since UDP’s inception as a zine (The Ugly Duckling) at the Russian House at Wesleyan. We publish poetry, translation, essays, performance texts, and books by artists. I teach translation at Columbia University’s MFA and I’m on the writing faculty at the MFA at Bard College. My most recent book of poems, Some Worlds for Dr. Vogt, was published by Black Square Editions. My novella-in-fragments, Boris by the Sea, was republished in a new edition by Octopus Books. I had dinner with Simone White ’93. She’s been the program director for the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church for a while. She’ll be teaching at the University of Pennsylvania next year. We just published her new book of poems and a long essay—Dear Angel of Death—at UDP.”
Keep sending us your news and updates—we’d love to hear from you!
Bo Bell | bobell.forreal@gmail.com
Katy McNeill | mcneill40@gmail.com