Subscriber News: April 2024
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Tawanda Mulalu. His debut poetry collection, Please make me pretty, I don't want to die (Princeton University Press, 2022), won the 2023 Luschei Prize for African Poetry. This award from the African Poetry Book Fund gives $1,000 to a debut book by an African writer published in the previous year. The next submission period, for books published in 2023, will be May 1-October 1. Contest judge John Keene said, "As if in lucid dreams, these poems' speakers—teachers, students, thinkers, readers, lovers, sons—explore their contemporary reality as diasporic Black Africans in White spaces throughout America, utilizing deadpan irony, rhetoric, humor, pathos, a great deal of literary and musical reference, and a range of poetic forms (songs, elegies, prayers, film studies, arias, near-sestinas, and more) Mulalu has invented or remade. Mulalu, originally from Gaborone, Botswana, does so in part with the aim of a world-making that, even when in conversation with prior poets and poems, when tackling personal issues such his isolation and exile or public events such as the police murder of Philando Castile, or when riffing on Shakespeare or Pokémon, feels distinctly his own." Read Tawanda's poem "Aria", which won an Honorable Mention in our 2021 Tom Howard/Margaret Reid Poetry Contest.
Congratulations to Roberta Beary. Her poem "After Long Absence", first published in Contemporary Haibun Online 18.3, won the 2022 Touchstone Award for Individual Haibun from The Haiku Foundation. "Sonnet #1: My Way" was a finalist for the 2023 Rattle Poetry Prize and was published in their Winter 2023 issue. The most recent deadline for this $15,000 award was July 15. She received an Award for Excellence in the 32nd ITO EN Oi Ocha Shinhaiku contest. The winners of this contest, which received over 29,000 English-language entries, will have their haiku published on a bottle of ITO EN iced tea. She was also the Grand Prize winner of the 28th annual Kusamakura Haiku Competition, her second time winning this award.
Congratulations to Maurya Kerr. Her poetry chapbook tommy noun. was recently published by C&R Press as the winner of their 2022 Winter Soup Bowl Chapbook Awards. Her poem "give" won the 2024 RHINO Editors' Prize. Her poem "Banjo Be" was first runner-up for the 2023 Resistance & Resilience Prize from Palette Poetry. The deadline for this prize was October 15.
Congratulations to Gary Beck. His novel Until the Bell is now out from Cyberwit. It follows a Puerto Rican boy from the Bronx who escapes gang life by becoming a boxer and a film actor, until COVID-19 changes everything. In other news, his novel Rescue Me is available on Amazon. In this thriller, a teen runaway is recruited to join a team of special law enforcement operatives. Purple Unicorn Media recently released Agamemnon: The Play by Aeschylus, translated by Gary Beck and Dr. Carl Caravana.
Congratulations to Alice McVeigh. Her novel Darcy: A Pride and Prejudice Variation was shortlisted for the Adult Fiction category of the 2024 Selfies Book Awards, a self-published book contest sponsored by BookBrunch. Category winners receive 750 pounds. Visit Alice's website for all the books in her Jane Austen series.
Congratulations to Tong Ge. Her debut novel, The House Filler, published by Ronsdale Press, won the New Fiction category of the 2024 Independent Press Award. The House Filler is a family saga set in China during the mid-20th century, a period beset by the turmoil of the Japanese invasion and the Communist takeover. The next deadline for this award series for self-published and small press books is April 30.
Congratulations to Terri Kirby Erickson. Her poem "Rainy Day, New Orleans" won the poetry category of the Key West Art and Historical Society's 2024 Tennessee Williams Writing Contest. The deadline was March 10 for this contest with prizes up to $300 for poetry and short fiction. In other news, Terri's poem "Drag King" was published in One Art.
Congratulations to Gloria Mindock. Her poetry collection Grief Touched the Sky at Night (Glass Lyre Press, 2023) won first prize in the Contemporary Poetry category of The BookFest Spring 2024 Book Awards. She will be reading at 7:00 pm on April 25 at the Russian Samovar, 256 W. 52nd St., 2nd Floor, New York City, with Andrey Gritsman, Tim Suermondt, and Pui Ying Wong.
Recent Publications
Robbie Gamble's essay "Marta" was published in Tahoma Literary Review. It is based on his volunteer work with an organization providing humanitarian aid to migrants in the Sonoran Desert along the Arizona/Mexico border.
Lori Jakiela was March's Humor Writer of the Month in the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop newsletter. A 2018 honoree in our Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, Lori writes the regular column "Let Yourself Go" for Pittsburgh Magazine.
R. Bremner has several poetry publications to report. His poem "transient" will be published in the Calling All Poets (CAPS) 25th Anniversary Anthology. "Impacts persist" appeared in Open: Journal of Arts & Letters. "Stopping By Whores on a Crowded Street", first published in the Journal of Formal Poetry (Spring 2015), will be reprinted in Rhyme and Punishment, an anthology of comedic verse. "Life Suite in 4 Parts" was published in Hear We Are, an anthology from Rogue Scholars Press. "Maple leaf" appeared in Fregoli, a publication of Between Shadows Press.
Samantha Terrell's poem "Succumbing to Suffocation" was published in Masque & Spectacle. Other poems are forthcoming in publications from Open Shutter Press, 100Subtexts, and Fevers of the Mind.
Koss's poem "Gratitudes" was published in March at Scissors & Spackle. Their essay "Affection" was published in SugarSugarSalt. Three poems appeared in Diode Journal's 17th anniversary issue. Their other recent publications and acceptances include: one poem in Ovation, an anthology edited by Jimmy Broccoli; five poems, two Wuthering Heights erasures, and two photos in Anvil Tongue; two micros in BULL; one poem in Action, Spectacle; one poem ("Three For") in San Pedro River Review's Shapes and Secrets; three poems ("Max Carries Mother [No Wonder]", "Dead People Don't Dream Hamburgers", and "Conversions: I Appeared in Your Suicide Dream") in Querencia Press's Winter 2024 Anthology; two poems ("A Modern Highway Death" and "February") in Dead of Winter III, an anthology from Milk and Cake Press; one poem published in Duets, a visual/written collaborative anthology produced by Amy Marquez; 14 fiction-like pieces in the Mythic Picnic Twitter series; one poem in Bulb Culture Collective's arbor issue; a craft essay in Reckon Review in April; two poems in Hyacinth Review; one flash fiction ("No One Knew") in Midway Journal; a poem in Amethyst Review's anthology, Thin Spaces & Sacred Places, forthcoming in July; and five photos in Anti-Heroin Chic.
Lesléa Newman's flash essay "Horror Films and Poetry Readings", about how she matched with her wife of 36 years, was published in the Tiny Love Stories column of the New York Times style section on March 5. Lesléa was also profiled in the Boston Globe (paywalled link) about Always Matt, her book about Matthew Shepard for middle-grade readers. Her poems "Hell Bent in High School, 1973" and "The Reading of My Life" were published in Pangyrus. Her poem "Little Bird" appeared in SWWIM.
Published: April 10, 2024
