Subscriber News: April 2015
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Terri Kirby Erickson. Her poem "After the Explosion" won the 2014 Joy Harjo Poetry Award from Cutthroat Magazine, selected by Martín Espada. The most recent deadline for this $1,250 prize was October 20. Visit her website to read sample poems from her books.
Congratulations to J.C. Todd. She was named a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's 2014 Robert H. Winner Memorial Award by contest judge Alan Shapiro, for a selection of poems from her manuscript in progress, War Zone. She kindly shares a sample poem here. The most recent deadline for this $2,500 prize was December 22. She is a 2014 Pew Fellow in the Arts.
Congratulations to Bracha Nechama Bomze. Her debut poetry book, Love Justice, was recently published by 3Ring Press. There will be a launch party on Saturday, April 18, at 7:00 PM, at BookCulture, 450 Columbus Avenue, New York City. Poet Miranda Field says of this book: "Love Justice can be read as an imperative: we must love—love actively—what sets us free. It might be invisibly hyphenated: when, finally, love-justice extends to same-sex couples, it is a crucial moment in the book...It is a wisely chosen title, appended to a fierce and gentle book, part political/historical narrative, part memoir, and all tender lyric—an erotic and admiring love poem in which lover and beloved are women of conscience." On March 25, Bracha read this excerpt from Love Justice at the 104th Anniversary Official Commemoration of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, hosted by Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and Workers United/SEIU (ILGWU). This infamous industrial accident in Lower Manhattan took the lives of 146 young immigrant women and inspired a movement for workers' rights.
Congratulations to David Kherdian. His memoir Root River Return will be published May 1 by Beech Hill Publishing Company. Pre-orders received before May 1 enjoy a discounted price of $15 (includes shipping), compared to the regular price of $21.95. All pre-orders also come with the gift of a signed copy of Our Neighborhood, David's most recent chapbook. Our Neighborhood is a warm memoir of the neighborhood David grew up in, with some characters and incidents familiar to his readers. Email sales@beechhillpublishingcompany.com for purchasing instructions. David is a leading figure in Armenian-American literature, with 70 published books of poetry and prose.
Congratulations to Jackie Maugh Robinson. Her haiku sequence "Spaces" won the 2014 Rebecca Lard Award from Poetry Quarterly, a journal published by Prolific Press. The next deadline for this $300 prize will be December 31. The contest's namesake was the first published poet in Indiana, and author of the classic ballad "The Banks of the Ohio" (1823).
Congratulations to Lesléa Newman. Her celebrated picture book Heather Has Two Mommies was re-released in March by Candlewick Press in a 25th anniversary edition with updated illustrations by Laura Cornell. It was one of the first children's books to feature a gay family. The updated edition was favorably noted on the Human Rights Campaign's Welcoming Schools blog. Lesléa will be reading from her new poetry collection, I Carry My Mother, on Sunday, April 19th at 11:00 AM at Congregation B'nai Israel, 253 Prospect Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.
Congratulations to Roberta Beary. She won first prize in the 2015 Sharpening the Green Pencil Haiku Contest. Winners of this free contest with an April 1 deadline received books and certificates, and were published online and in an anthology. She kindly shares her poem below:
quiet rain
a robin slips through
my chemo fog
Recent Publications
Winning Writers Editor Jendi Reiter was interviewed about her new poetry collection, Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015), on Trish Hopkinson's poetry blog on March 12.
Carl Bowlby's poem "Hot Wind Someday" was published in the December 2014 issue of The Moth, an Irish literary journal.
Marsha Truman Cooper's poem "The Abandoned Flying Horse Carousel, 1879" was featured in Narrative Magazine as their Poem of the Week for March 23. To read the poem online, create a free account at Narrative and login.
Diana Anhalt's poems "Desaparecido" and "Inventory" appeared in the Kentucky Review and can be read on their website.
Charlie Bondhus's poem "The First Mercy" was published in the online edition of Chelsea Station Magazine on March 9. His poem "The Divining Board" appeared in Mead Magazine, Issue #9 (Spring 2015). Charlie will be reading at the Wilton Library Association's Voices of Poetry event for National Poetry Month at 3 PM on April 18, along with Karen Skolfield, Ravi Shankar, and Nicole Hefner Callihan. The library is located at 137 Old Ridgefield Road, Wilton, Connecticut.
A.M. Thompson's poem "Unavoidable Alchemy" was made into a video by Australian videographer Marie Craven, featuring music by Paul Dementio, at the collaboration website Poetry Storehouse. This unique website accepted submissions of poems that were then made available for free for artists to use in their own productions, without further input from the author. (They are closed to new submissions for the time being.) Thompson's audio file of her poem "Death Meditation", a tribute to her late friend Bob Cunniff, appeared on the site earlier this year, in a video by Paul Broderick.
Published: April 8, 2015
