Subscriber News: February 2014
Recent Honors
Congratulations to Robert Walton. His novel Dawn Drums, set during the final year of the American Civil War, was recently published by Moonlight Mesa Associates.
Congratulations to Joan Gelfand. Her poetry collection The Long Blue Room was released this month by Benicia Literary Arts. From the publisher's press release: "With poetry drawn from the canvas of the mind, Gelfand paints a world inhabited by a world community, that while in the throes of economic and environmental crises, still yearns for love and deep connection. This yearning to explore transports Gelfand to the rocky terrains of the global financial crises, hunger in America and the not-always-comfortable inner worlds of being a human alive in the third millennium. Her fertile words envelop the reader in worlds of incomprehensible beauty, finding serenity amidst the chaos." Scheduled book tour dates are as follows: February 14-16, San Francisco Writers' Conference; March 2, Poetry Unbound, Berkeley, CA; March 29, City of Benicia; April 5, Rockridge Public Library, Oakland; April 9, Norwalk Public Library, Norwalk, CT; April 12, Nuyorican Poets Cafe, NYC; April 13, Parkside Lounge, NYC; April 17, Boston Public Library; September 21, Central Coast Writers' Conference, San Luis Obispo, CA. Find out more on her website.
Congratulations to Anna Scotti. Former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky selected her poems as a finalist for the 2014 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Poetry Prize. The most recent deadline for this $1,000 award was August 15.
Congratulations to Kerry Rawlinson. Her poems "fear of falling" and "shark's teeth" were finalists in the National category of the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest from the Midwest Writing Center, and will be published in an upcoming issue of Off Center. This contest, with prizes up to $250 in National and Regional categories, is now open through May 15. In other news, her poem "In Flanders' Shadow" will be published this summer in Vol. 26 of War, Literature and the Arts. Her poems "connections" and "it's hot and cold" were published in Ditch Poetry, and "birds on wires" appeared in Postcard Poems and Prose.
Congratulations to Noble Collins. He won second prize and honorable mention awards for poetry in the Arizona Literary Contest. This award series from the Arizona Authors Association gives prizes up to $100 in various genres; the submission period is January 1-July 1 each year. In other news, he won first prize for humor poetry in the Arizona State Poetry Society contest. He won the State/Regional Senior Poet Laureate Prize for Arizona in the 2013 Senior Poets Laureate Contest, an award series for poets over age 60, from the Amy Kitchener's Angels Without Wings Foundation. The next deadline will be June 30. Mr. Collins tells us, "Being accepted for an entry in [the Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest anthology] Sailing in the Mists of Time, several years ago, for my poem "Old Hawk", was my first real encouragement to try to write good poetry—a goal I seek constantly. Winning Writers has been my leading source for information and direction for a long time."
Congratulations to Helen Leslie Sokolsky. Her debut poetry chapbook, Two Sides of a Ticket, will be published by Finishing Line Press on March 14 and is available for pre-order. The collection includes her poem "The Coat", which won third prize in the 2012 Tom Howard/John H. Reid Poetry Contest hosted by Winning Writers. Other poems in this book have appeared in Poet Lore, Poetry Canada Review, Confrontation Magazine, California Poetry Quarterly, The Poetry Review, and Seven Circle Magazine, with two poems forthcoming in the next issue of the Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry. She kindly shares a sample poem.
Recent Publications
Charlie Bondhus's latest poetry collection, All the Heat We Could Carry (Main Street Rag, 2013), was favorably reviewed by Charles Rammelkamp on the literary website Chamber Four. "Shifting scenes from the home front in America to Afghanistan and back again, these poems expose the emotions and perspectives of soldiers, in the midst of conflict in the strange, alien terrain of war and in the familiar, but now no less alien, environs of home."
Lesléa Newman's poem sequence "The Deal", about her mother's illness and death, was published in the online journal At Length Mag.
Glenn Dahlem recently had two articles published in national magazines. "Hobby Tree That Pays You", about American black walnut trees, appeared in the Winter 2013 issue of Farming. "Build Language Skills With Almost Homophones", a methods article for teachers, appeared in the Winter 2014 issue of Teachers of Vision.
David Kherdian's book David of Sassoun: An Armenian Epic Retold, with illustrations by Nonny Hogrogian, is now available from Tavnon Books. Send a check for $20 (includes shipping in the US) to 281 Main Street, Kingston, NY 12401, or email tavitnonny@gmail.com for PayPal instructions. From the publisher's blurb: "David of Sassoun is about nothing less than the rise and fall of a civilization. Written in the 9th century, it is comprised of a series of individual legendary tales that have been coordinated into a unified narrative, consisting of four cycles, linked together through genealogical succession. It is a stupendous epic, but not a forbidding one, told with great humor and compassionate understanding of man's triumphs and failures, foibles, and unattainable ambitions, related with great inventiveness, that includes betrayals, twists of fate, and amazing mythic battles, not over territories, but in defense of national values, composed with beautifully crafted language as common as the earth, as lofty as the sky, as enduring as the shadows of eternity."
Sally Bellerose read from her novel The Girls Club (Bywater Books, 2011) on the Liz McMullen Show, an online radio program of author interviews. The novel is a coming-of-age and coming-out story about three working-class Catholic sisters in the 1970s.
Mi West's flash fiction "Feng Shui Advice by an Interior Designer about Lifecycles of Messware" was published in January in the Newer York.
Judy Juanita's lyric essay "The Gun as Ultimate Performance Poem" was published at The Weeklings.
Trina Porte will read her poetry from the new Codhill Press anthology A Slant of Light: Contemporary Women Writers of the Hudson Valley on Saturday, March 8, at 7 PM, at Deyo Hall, 6 Broadhead Avenue, New Paltz, NY. More information is available at the Historic Huguenot Street website.
Published: February 10, 2014
