Resources
From Category: Recommended Authors
A Hundred Falling Veils
A Hundred Falling Veils is the poem-a-day blog of Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. Her poetry collections include Naked for Tea (finalist in the Able Muse Book Award), Even Now, The Less I Hold, The Miracle Already Happening: Everyday Life with Rumi, Intimate Landscape, and Holding Three Things at Once (Colorado Book Award finalist). Visit her Word Woman site for information on her writing workshops and speaking engagements.
Amanda Auchter
Richly textured, passionate poems on birth, loss and discovery from the editor of the Pebble Lake Review. Visit her Twitter for news of publications and readings.
Anna K. Scotti
Anna Scotti is a poet, writer, teacher, and public speaker living in Southern California. Her work has been awarded prizes by numerous literary magazines including Chautauqua, Compass Rose, The Comstock Review, and Crab Creek Review. In 2015, Nikky Finney selected Anna's poem "Tanager" for the Pocataligo Prize (Yemassee), and Aimee Liu chose Anna's story "They Look Like Angels" for the Orlando Prize for Short Fiction (AROHO). Anna is working on a collection of poems which will include her award-winning poem from the 2010 War Poetry Contest, "This Is How I'll Tell It When I Tell It to Our Children". She earned an MFA from Antioch University in 2007. Visit her website.
Barbara Lefcowitz
Barbara Lefcowitz (2935-2015) wrote 10 books of poems and lyrical essays on themes from nature, spirituality, and the body.
Ben Leib
The blog of this innovative short fiction writer features links to numerous online journals where his work can be found.
Christine Rhein
Ms. Rhein became an award-winning poet after a career in mechanical engineering. Her poetry collection Wild Flight won the Walt McDonald First-Book Competition from Texas Tech University Press. Visit her site for sample poems and ordering information.
Clayton Eshleman
We especially liked the poem on his website titled 'Deeds Done and Suffered by Light', which blends humor, philosophy and the macabre in a manner reminiscent of Ginsberg's 'Howl'. His book Conductors of the Pit, an anthology of surrealist and experimental verse, has just been reissued.
Clemens Starck
Clemens Starck's books include Cathedrals and Parking Lots: Collected Poems (Empty Bowl, 2018). Awards include the Oregon Book Award and the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. New York Times critic Dana Jennings calls him "an essential plainspoken poet of work". Critic Louis Simpson says, "The poetry of Clem Starck is an American Works and Days...This is the kind of poetry Whitman called for: an expression of the individual—original, moving, refreshingly unacademic."
Cyree Jarelle Johnson
Cyree Jarelle Johnson is a poet, librarian, teacher, and activist in New York City. He is a founding member of the Deaf Poets Society (an online journal of disabled literature and art) and the Harriet Tubman Collective, and an editor at TransFaith. His writing touches on themes of sexuality, blackness, autism, disability, and social justice. His first book of poetry, Slingshot, will be published by Nightboat Books in Fall 2019.
David Kherdian’s Day Book
David Kherdian is a notable Armenian-American author whose poetry books and memoirs chronicle mid-century immigrant life in Wisconsin and the intergenerational legacy of the Armenian genocide. Taking the form of an online diary, his blog features reminiscences and poems inspired by daily life.
Diane Gilliam Fisher
Fisher's stark, plain-spoken verse shows a gift for inhabiting the voices of her characters and the world they inhabit. We especially recommend her second book, Kettle Bottom, which tells the story of the West Virginia coal miners with tenderness and a quiet rage for justice.
Don Schaeffer
Blog offers concise and thought-provoking lyric meditations
Dora McQuaid
Poet, spoken-word artist, and activist.
Duane L. Herrmann
Duane L. Herrmann is an American prairie poet based in rural Kansas. His books include the poetry collection Prairies of Possibilities and the historical work By Thy Strengthening Grace, published in 2006 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Topeka Baha'i community.
Elisha Porat
Born in an Israeli kibbutz in 1938, winner of Israel's Prime Minister's Prize for Literature, Porat often explores themes of war. Elisha Porat writes in Hebrew, but much has been translated into English. Says one reviewer, "Elisha’s works are not items to be read, they are items to be experienced. You will walk away exhausted with tears in your eyes, and aching legs from the many roads you have traveled, but with a sense that your life has been enriched through the experience." Bio, reviews, new stories and poems.
Elizabeth Bear
Visit her website to read her short stories and find out about upcoming publications.
Ewuare X. Osayande
Black activist, poet and social critic applies his rhetorical powers to fighting oppression in all its forms. Hard-hitting essays on his website include "Spittin' Acid at the Sistahs: Rap(e) and the Assault of Black Women" and "Bling Bling into Oblivion: Hip Hop, Globalization and Third World Oppression". Capitalists and gangsta rappers, beware.
F.J. Bergmann
Non sequiturs like bear traps plunge you through the surface of this poet's world into an absurd, slightly sinister, often funny alternate reality. We especially love the William Carlos Williams parody "An Apology". Buy her prizewinning chapbook, Sauce Robert, from Pavement Saw Press.
Freddy Niagara Fonseca
Poet and spoken-word performer Freddy Niagara Fonseca writes of natural wonders and spiritual questions. His projects include the poetry collection The Bomb That Blew Up God and the anthology This Enduring Gift, a compilation of work by 76 poets from Fairfield, Iowa.
Gail Golden
Activist poet speaks with eloquence and compassion about war and peace, the blessings of family life, and her Jewish heritage. Visit Gail Golden Consulting for her prose writings about racism, domestic violence and social justice.
Gary Introne
Sample Mr. Introne's poems on his blog.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
This fan site maintained by British computer scientist Martin Ward offers the full texts of books and articles by Gilbert K. Chesterton, best known today for his "Father Brown" mystery stories.
Illypsis Poetry: Amina Jordan-Mendez
Amina Jordan-Mendez is a poet, spoken-word performer, and activist in Western Massachusetts. She was the 2019-20 Straw Dog Writers Guild Emerging Writer Fellow. She says, "Much of the intellectual property of Afro people has always been storytelling, poetry, song. I write for my soul. I teach for my heart. In my curriculum I strive to invite young people of color into poetry, wellness, spiritual health, advocacy, radical accountability."
Jendi Reiter
Editor of Winning Writers and author of the poetry books Barbie at 50, Swallow, and A Talent for Sadness. Follow her on Twitter (@JendiReiter) for poetry videos, upcoming readings, blog posts, new book releases, and articles of interest to writers.
Jewel Beth Davis
Jewel Beth Davis is a writer and theater artist who has performed, directed, and choreographed professionally throughout the US and UK. She teaches writing and theater at NHTI-Concord Community College. Visit her website to read her stories and essays, which have appeared in such journals as Compass Rose, Lilith, and Diverse Voices Quarterly. She writes about Judaism, family life, humor, the theater world, and much more.
Jim Landwehr
Jim Landwehr is the author of Dirty Shirt: A Boundary Waters Memoir (eLectio Publishing, 2014) and Written Life: A Poetry Collection (eLectio, 2015). His poetry and essays have been published in MidWest Outdoors, The Tattooed Poets Project, Parody Poetry Journal, Torrid Literature, Wisconsin People and Ideas, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
JJ Peña
JJ Peña (he/they) has won prizes for flash fiction from Blue Earth Review, Cutbank, and Mythic Picnic, and serves as a flash fiction reader for Split Lip Magazine.
Judith Goldhaber
Her collection Sonnets from Aesop, a retelling of 100 fables in verse (beautifully illustrated by Gerson Goldhaber), is available from Ribbonweed Press.
Karen J. Weyant
Ms. Weyant's chapbook Wearing Heels in the Rust Belt was a contest winner from Main Street Rag.
Kathryn Magendie
"Kick-ass woman who says and does what she wants cause she can."
Kwame Dawes
This site, Live Hope Love, features the profound and lyrical poetry of Kwame Dawes as well as video interviews and background stories of the people who inspired him.
Leonard Gontarek
God rubs shoulders with ghosts and mailmen in Gontarek's dreamy verses, which hover on the edge of abstraction like a Turner painting, and are often suffused with the same melancholy golden light. As he writes in "Amnesty": "When the earth & snow is apricot for seconds & your dreams fall fast as water Out the window, wouldn’t you say in the middle of that uncontestable joy, is sorrow, Like a metal sliver?"
Linda McCullough Moore
Winner and finalist of numerous national short fiction awards including New York Stories, the Nelson Algren Award, the Tobias Wolff Award, and the Pushcart Prize XXXV. Ms. Moore is the author of the literary novel The Distance Between (Soho Press), the short story collection This Road Will Take Us Closer to the Moon (Levellers Press), and more than 300 shorter published works, appearing in such places as The Sun, The Massachusetts Review, Glimmer Train, The Boston Globe, The Alaska Quarterly Review, House Beautiful, Queen's Quarterly, The Southern Review, and Books and Culture. She lives and writes in western Massachusetts where she teaches creative writing and mentors aspiring writers. Winning Writers editor Jendi Reiter recommends her workshops.
M. Miriam Herrera
See Ms. Herrera's website for mystical, earthy poems from Kaddish for Columbus and Witch Wife.
Marc J. Frazier Poetry
Marc Frazier is the author of the poetry collections Each Thing Touches (Glass Lyre Press, 2015) and The Way Here (Aldrich Press), and the chapbooks After and The Gods of the Grand Resort, both from Finishing Line Press. Cyrus Cassells calls Each Thing Touches "rich with striking and dynamic questions...refreshingly human, urgent, and disarming." Frazier has had several residencies at the Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, Illinois and received an Illinois Arts Council award in poetry. Visit his website to find out about his workshops.
MEHPoeting: The Writings of Matthew E. Henry
Matthew E. Henry is a Pushcart Prize nominated poet and the author of Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020). He is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal, an online literary magazine publishing high-quality creative writing by high school students. From his website bio: "His writing shines a black-light on the bed of relationships, race, religion, and everything else you're not supposed to discuss in polite company."
Nick Antosca
"Movies and Kids", winner of the 2004 fiction contest from Painted Bride Quarterly, is a brilliant, disturbing story that could have been written by Shirley Jackson or Patricia Highsmith.
Ogden Nash (1902-1974)
Master of American light verse. "How are we to survive?" asks Nash. "Solemnity is not the answer, any more than witless and irresponsible frivolousness. I think our best chance—a good chance—lies in humor, which, in this case, means a wry acceptance of our predicament." Bio. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth.
Patricia Smith
Ms. Smith has won four National Poetry Slam individual championship titles, as well as a National Poetry Series prize for her book Teahouse of the Almighty.
Richard Jeffrey Newman
Richard Jeffrey Newman is a contemporary American poet and essayist, trauma activist, and translator of classical Persian literature. His blog discusses such topics as feminism, healing for male survivors of sexual abuse, literary criticism, and the relevance of classical Persian poetry to our contemporary lives. He is also a contributor to the current affairs blog Amptoons.
Robert McDowell
Poet, workshop leader, and activist Robert McDowell writes and teaches about the spiritual side of creativity and reclaiming the divine feminine. McDowell's books include Poetry as Spiritual Practice and The More We Get Together: The Sexual and Spiritual Language of Love. He has edited anthologies on topics as diverse as cowboy poetry and the postmodern poet-critics of the 1980s.
Russell Edson
A quirky and memorable poet; one of Jendi Reiter's favorites. See selected poems on Web Del Sol.
Saeed Jones
Pushcart-nominated poet Saeed Jones, author of the chapbook When the Only Light is Fire (Sibling Rivalry Press), blogs about writing and contemporary culture.
Sean Patrick Hill
Mr. Hill's poetry has appeared in such journals as DIAGRAM, High Desert Journal, and the Zoland Poetry Annual.
Shelly Jackson
See "The Body" for linked prose poems and short-shorts in a novel use of the Internet.
Stanley Joel Crown
See website for flash fiction and Mr. Crown's favorite sports novels and movies.
Steve Fellner
Mr. Fellner's blog features book reviews and critical essays about contemporary LGBT poets.
Susan Tepper
Ms. Tepper is the author of DEER and Other Stories (Wilderness House Press, 2009) and the poetry chapbook Blue Edge (Cervena Barva Press, 2006).
Tarik Dobbs
Tarik Dobbs is an Arab-American queer poet and visual artist from Michigan. Their poetry chapbook, Dancing on the Tarmac, was selected for publication by G. Calvocoressi (Yemassee, 2021). Read Daniel Lassell's review of this collection in Diode Poetry Journal.
Taylor Mali
Poetry slam champion and teachers' advocate Taylor Mali is also a driving force behind the award-winning Urbana Poetry Slam team, which performs every Tuesday night at the famed Bowery Poetry Club in New York City.
