Subscriber News: April 2016
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Jeanne Julian. Her poetry chapbook Blossom and Loss won the 2015 Longleaf Press Poetry Chapbook Contest and was published in December. She kindly shares a sample poem here. This $200 prize from Methodist University is now accepting entries through April 16. It is open to residents of North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Tennessee, Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, Delaware, and Florida who have not yet published a full-length collection of poetry. In other news, Jeanne's poem "Mascot" was one of 13 finalists for the 2015 Lascaux Prize in Poetry and will be published in the winners' anthology. This $1,000 award from Lascaux Review will re-open for submissions July 1-September 30.
Congratulations to Laurie Klein. Her debut poetry collection, Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography, was recently published by Cascade Books. She kindly shares a sample poem here. Brian Doyle, author of Mink River, says of this book: "I cannot remember the last time I read a poet with such burly, thrumming, love-addled music—dense and real and salty and singing, adamant and muscular and sharp."
Congratulations to Gisela Woldenga. Her new novel Chords of Dissension, a sequel to her mystery/romance Broken Strings, has been accepted by Black Opal Books.
Congratulations to Jaime Martínez-Tolentino. His fantasy fiction collection 13 After 12 is forthcoming this month from ReAnimus Press. He was also nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by the Puerto Rican playwright Roberto Ramos-Perea, Executive Director of the Puerto Rican Atheneum's Conservatory of Dramatic Arts.
Congratulations to Evelyn Krieger. Her essay "Liar, Liar" was runner-up in the 2016 Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative and was published in their magazine and website. The most recent deadline was November 30 for this $1,000 award for essays about creative writing and arts education.
Recent Publications
Ruth Thompson's poem "Losing the Words", from her chapbook Crazing (Saddle Road Press, 2015), was featured at Verse Daily.
Dan Klefstad's "fictional memoir" Shepherd & the Professor is available on Wattpad. Sign up to read new installments as they are written. Shepherd is a town-versus-gown thriller about Susan Shepherd, a Gulf War veteran and cop who is dying of cancer. In the process of writing her memoir, she uncovers corruption at a university. Find out more and hear an excerpt on YouTube.
Nancy Christie, author of Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories, recently had two short stories accepted for publication. "To Whom It May Concern" will appear in the September/October 2016 online edition of Bethlehem Writers Roundtable, and "Memories of Music" will appear in an upcoming print issue of St. Anthony Messenger. A third story, "Remember Mama", appeared in the latest edition of Talking River, the literary journal of Lewis-Clark State College. Visit her website to find out about her published fiction and nonfiction and her professional writing services.
Mary Lou Taylor will be reading from her poetry collection Bringing Home the Moon (Aldrich Press, 2015) on Tuesday, April 19, at 5:00 p.m., at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library, 150 E. San Fernando Street, San Jose, CA; and on Friday, April 29, at 11:00 a.m., at the Saratoga Library, 13650 Saratoga Avenue, Saratoga, CA. Her poem "The Valley of Hearts Delight" appeared on March 11 in the Saratoga News. She kindly shares it with us here.
Lance Johnson's winning stage play "Community Service" will be presented at the 7th Annual Palisades Playwrights Festival at 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, April 19, at Theatre Palisades, 941 Temescal Canyon Road, Pacific Palisades, CA. Call (310) 454-1970 for advance ticket orders. From the press release: "An irascible judge in a rundown 1947 New York City courtroom sentences six people to perform community service in Central Park in this delightful ensemble play with a touch of Miracle on 34th Street, a dash of It's a Wonderful Life, and a pinch of How to Succeed in Business."
Kathleen Spivack will be reading with other contributors to the anthology Lay Bare the Canvas: New England Poets on Art on May 5, at 7:00 p.m., at the Brookline Public Library. This collection of ekphrastic poetry was edited by Denise Duhamel and published by The Poetry Loft. Spivack is also offering a workshop on the prose poem on Saturday, April 30, from 3:15-4:15 p.m., at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival in Salem, MA.
Mingzhao Xu's short story "Mr. Kim", originally published in the weekly literary journal Day One, is available as an Amazon e-book.
Alan Tarica's "Forgotten Secret", an online critical analysis of William Shakespeare's 154 sonnets, received notice on the National Book Critics Circle Roundup Blog and in the Beaufort Island News. Tarica's project examines the poems for clues to the writer's true identity and possible political reasons for concealing it.
Mark Fleisher's new poetry chapbook Obituaries of the Living, co-authored with Dante Berry, is available from the author at markfleisher111@gmail.com. His full-length collection Moments of Time is available in print and e-book editions at Amazon.com. He kindly shares a sample poem here. From the book blurb: "Writing in an approachable and accessible manner, Fleisher remembers his youth in the 1950s and 1960s of New York City, the horrific inhumanity of Vietnam and a major personal loss, to finally find new life in an unfamiliar place across the continent."
Robin Coste Lewis's debut poetry collection Voyage of the Sable Venus (Knopf, 2015), a National Book Award winner, was favorably reviewed by Christopher Soto at Lambda Literary: "Seldom does one come across a work of art that is so intelligent and expansive that it makes us pause and question and rethink and wait more and reimagine language and history and beauty and the self. Voyage of the Sable Venus is a long journey through thousands of years of art history, meditating on representations of black womanhood."
Published: April 10, 2016
