UCI Grad Gets With the Program

Michelle Latiolais, a 1988 graduate of UC Irvine’s graduate program in writing--the only student in the program’s history to earn a master’s in both poetry and fiction--has joined the school as a full-time faculty member.

Latiolais, 41, will lead the spring writing workshop for the dozen fiction writers in the program in addition to teaching an advanced undergraduate writing workshop and a contemporary-literature class on the stylistic use of violence.

Latiolais, an associate professor of English, taught undergraduate writing and literature classes at USC for six years. She has also taught at the University of Denver and is the author of “Even Now,” a 1990 psychological novel about a girl dealing with the effects of her parents’ divorce. A large section of the novel appeared in her master’s thesis at UCI.

“I am immensely flattered to be back here in this capacity and delighted to get back to a program that gave a lot to me,” says Latiolais, who fills the full-time position vacated by Judith Grossman in the spring of 1996. That slot was filled temporarily last year by novelist Wilton Barnhardt.

“Michelle is a wonderful writer and smart as a whip,” says Geoffrey Wolff, director of the fiction segment of the graduate program. “She was actually a very easy pick once she threw her hat in the ring.”

Latiolais, he says “has all the virtues we were looking for. She’s an extremely attentive writer, which I like a lot, and it’s great for students: Every object, every sentence is kind of weighed and measured and there is almost religious care brought to the writing. That’s a really wholesome influence on our MFA writers.”

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Aimee Bender, who completed the two-year UCI writing program in June, has sold the collection of 16 short stories she wrote for her MFA thesis.

“The Girl In the Flammable Skirt” will be published by Doubleday in August. It’s part of a two-book contract that Bender, 28, signed with Doubleday. The other book will be a novel, her first, to be turned in by June 1999.

The book deal came by way of the Santa Monica Review, a literary journal based at Santa Monica College.

Bender, now a Los Angeles resident, had sent one of her short stories to the journal in the spring of 1996. Her story was among those selected for inclusion in an anthology of Los Angeles writers published in January.

Then in April, the anthology was featured at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA, where an editor from Doubleday picked up a copy and read it on his return flight to New York. He immediately called Bender at UCI and was also interested in the novel she had just started.

This Week

* Renee B. Horowitz, author of “Deadly Rx,” will speak and sign at 7 p.m. Tuesday at Coffee, Tea & Mystery, 13232 Springdale St., Westminster.

* Kathy Hogan Trocheck, author of “Strange Brew,” will sign at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Book Carnival, 348 S. Tustin Ave., Orange.

* Bill Morrison, the artist for “Bart Simpson’s Treehouse of Horror” comic book and Jesse McCann, writer of the “Pinky & the Brain” comic books and “Chaos Nightmare Theater” comic books, will sign at 5 p.m. Wednesday at Comics Unlimited, 16344 Beach Blvd., Huntington Beach.

* Denise Fleming, author and illustrator of “Time to Sleep,” will sign and present a papermaking exhibition at 10 a.m. Saturday at Lorson’s Books, 116 W. Wilshire Ave., Fullerton.

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Send information about book-related events at least 10 days before the event to: Dennis McLellan, O.C. Books & Authors, Life & Style, The Times, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.