{"title":"Moore Bowen","description":"\u003cp\u003eMoore Bowen is the pen name under which the Maine poet Alice Bolstridge (born 1938 in Portage Lake, Maine) writes fiction. Both names are public: the Library of Congress Name Authority File records the pen name as Bowen, Moore, 1938-, citing her JEF novel as the documenting work. Bolstridge is a retired English teacher who lives in Presque Isle, in Aroostook County at the northern edge of the state.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe came to academia in her mid-thirties, after raising children, and earned a B.S. in Education from the University of Maine at Presque Isle (1970), an M.A. in English from the University of Maine, Orono (1982), and a Ph.D. in English Literature from Oklahoma State University (1987). She taught for more than four decades, from Ashland and Millinocket elementary schools to the University of Cincinnati and, until her 2012 retirement, the Maine School of Science and Mathematics in Limestone.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eUnder her own name she has published more than 100 poems, stories, and essays, and two poetry chapbooks: \u003cem\u003eLetters to a Lover\u003c\/em\u003e (Gold Wake Press, 2009) and \u003cem\u003eChance \u0026amp; Choice\u003c\/em\u003e (Finishing Line Press, 2017). She won the Maine Writers \u0026amp; Publishers Alliance Poetry Competition in 2005 and 2011 and was named Maine Senior College Network Poet Laureate for 2013.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs Moore Bowen she won the 2013 Kenneth Patchen Award for Experimental Fiction for \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.experimentalfiction.com\/products\/oppression-for-the-heaven-of-it\"\u003e\u003cem\u003eOppression for the Heaven of It\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e, a dialogue-driven docu-fiction novel about a young man named Moonway and his mother. The book grows out of Bolstridge's experience as the mother of the artist Alan Mountain (1956-2015), who lived his adult life with paranoid schizophrenia; proceeds are donated to the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care. It is her single title on the JEF list and one of the press's \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.experimentalfiction.com\/collections\/kenneth-patchen-award-winners\"\u003eKenneth Patchen Award winners\u003c\/a\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eStart with \u003cem\u003eOppression for the Heaven of It\u003c\/em\u003e, the Patchen-winning novel that is her fiction in full.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"oppression-for-the-heaven-of-it","title":"Oppression for the Heaven of It","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eOppression for the Heaven of It\u003c\/em\u003e is a dialogue-driven novel about a son and a mother. The novel is drawn from the author's experience as the mother of a painter who lived his adult life with paranoid schizophrenia and died in 2015. Proceeds from the book are donated to the Foundation for Excellence in Mental Health Care.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe protagonist is Moonway, an orphan in conversation with the mother who is also the novel's named writer. The structure is the conversation itself: the book runs as sustained exchange, the form of two people trying to reach each other across an exile that neither has agreed to.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe 2013 Patchen judge, Harold Jaffe, named first what is rarest about the book: that it addresses schizophrenia from the subject position, not the observer's, and addresses it frankly. \u003cem\u003eOppression for the Heaven of It\u003c\/em\u003e won the 2013 \u003ca href=\"https:\/\/www.experimentalfiction.com\/pages\/patchen\"\u003eKenneth Patchen Award\u003c\/a\u003e for the Innovative Novel, recognized for the rarity of that subject-position address and for the frankness with which the conversation form holds it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Moore Bowen","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":39350595289245,"sku":null,"price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0537\/8480\/5533\/products\/oppression-for-the-heaven-of-it.png?v=1641450637"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.experimentalfiction.com\/collections\/moore-bowen\/kenneth-patchen-winner.oembed","provider":"The Journal of Experimental Fiction","version":"1.0","type":"link"}