"This work is unlike any other, in its range of rich, conjuring imagery and its dexterity, its smart voice. Carroll-Hackett doesn’t spare us—but doesn’t save us—she draws a blueprint of power and class with her unflinching pivot: matter-of-fact and tender." —Jan Beatty

Archive for the ‘Must Read Monday’ Category

Monday Must Read! Karen Craigo: No More Milk

karen craigoThis week meet the fabulous Karen Craigo. Karen is the author of the poetry collection No More Milk (Sundress Publications, 2016), as well as the forthcoming collection Passing Through Humansville (ELJ Publications, 2017). Her poetry and essays appear in numerous journals, and she is the author of two chapbooks,Someone Could Build Something Here (Winged City, 2013) and Stone for an Eye (Kent State/Wick, 2004).

Karen teaches writing in Springfield, Missouri.

Visit Karen’s Website

http://betterviewofthemoon.blogspot.com/

Get Karen’s Books!

No More Milk

https://squareup.com/store/sundress-publications/item/no-more-milk-by-karen-craigo-pre-order?square_lead=item_embed

Stone for an Eye

https://www.amazon.com/Stone-Eye-Wick-Poetry-Chapbook/dp/0873388038/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1471865341&sr=8-2&keywords=karen+craigo

Praise for No More Milk

Despite the seeming refusal implied by No More Milk, there’s vast generosity in these poems, a sense of holiness in even the smallest of gestures. Holy, but not numinous: these are embodied prayers, “in praise of what’s left/ and all the hands it has known,” the kind that makes you “bow beneath the burden of words.” There is a profound personal morality at stake for this poet who loves the people and things of this earth in all their itchy-butt blessedness, “the slugs/ as much as the lilacs,” who manages to sing like “the bird/ that has made us rise…/…yesterday’s anger/ reduced to syllables in the air.” Alleluia.
—Heidi Czerwiec, author of Self-Portrait as Bettie Page and Sweet/Crude: A Bakken Boom Cycle

Read More from Karen Online

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/41424

http://atticusreview.org/featured-poet-karen-craigo/

http://www.connotationpress.com/hoppenthaler-s-congeries/2015-08-19-18-45-41/january-2014/2166-karen-craigo-poetry

http://www.radarpoetry.com/issue-2-contributors/

https://asitoughttobe.com/2013/11/30/saturday-poetry-series-presents-karen-craigo/

http://www.barrelhousemag.com/blogall/2016/2/4/negative-creep-by-karen-craigo

http://www.diodepoetry.com/v7n3/content/craigo_k.html

http://www.tupeloquarterly.com/does-the-road-run-east-or-west-by-karen-craigo/

Interviews

https://sundresspublications.wordpress.com/2016/06/07/interview-with-karen-craigo/

http://www.rappahannockreview.com/interviews/rappahannock-review-contributor-spotlight-interview-with-karen-craigo/

http://mcblogs.montgomerycollege.edu/potomacreview/2015/08/13/duplicated-qa-with-poet-karen-craigo/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Pamela Duncan: Moon Women

 

Pam_Duncan_MHLF_2011This week meet Pamela Duncan! Novelist Pamela Duncan was born in Asheville and grew up in Black Mountain, Swannanoa, and Shelby, North Carolina. She holds a B.A. in journalism from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an M.A. in English/Creative Writing from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. She lives in Cullowhee, North Carolina and teaches creative writing atWestern Carolina University.

Her first novel, Moon Women, was a Southeastern Booksellers Association (now Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance) Award Finalist, and her second novel, Plant Life, won the 2003 Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction. She is the recipient of the 2007 James Still Award for Writing about the Appalachian South, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her third novel, The Big Beautiful, was published in March 2007. An excerpt from Pam’s current novel-in-progress, The Wilder Place, can be heard here: http://www.pameladuncan.com/the_wilder_place__a_novel_in_progress__80970.htm

Visit Pam’s Website

http://www.pameladuncan.com/

Buy Pam’s Beautiful Books

Moon Women

https://www.amazon.com/Moon-Women-Pamela-Duncan/dp/0440236487

Plant Life

https://www.amazon.com/Plant-Life-Pamela-Duncan/dp/0385335261/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The Big Beautiful

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/43755/the-big-beautiful-by-pamela-duncan/9780385338387/

Excerpts, Interviews, & Reviews

Moon Women

http://www.pameladuncan.com/moon_women_15139.htm

Plant Life

http://www.pameladuncan.com/plant_life_15138.htm

The Big Beautiful

http://www.pameladuncan.com/the_big_beautiful_52887.htm

More About Pam Online

Publishers Weekly

http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-385-33518-8

Fantastic Fiction

https://www.fantasticfiction.com/d/pamela-duncan/plant-life.htm

BookPage

https://bookpage.com/reviews/2902-pamela-duncan-plant-life#.V7GuHfkrLDc

IndyWeek

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/pamela-duncan/Content?oid=1181965

Hear Pam Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrkiaeMdTEg

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, Family, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Jerry D. Mathes II: Fever and Guts: A Symphony

Had a chance to see my sister and a beautiful cousin I haven’t seen in years yesterday, so we’re a day late, but I promise this writer is worth the wait! 🙂 

___________________________________________

jerry-mathes-author-photoThis week meet Jerry D. Mathes II, author of Fever and Guts: A Symphony, Ahead of the Flaming Front (winner of the North American Book Award), The Journal West, Fall in the Borderland, and the forthcoming collection of short stories, Shipwrecks and Other Stories. Jerry is a Jack Kent Cooke alumnus and is also the author of Still Life: A Novella, winner of the Meadow Prize for the Novella. His photography, poems, essays, and short stories, have won numerous awards. In 2011, he produced a short film, “Drinking Sangria in the Cold War,” which was adapted from one of his award winning short stories. He has worked as a martial arts instructor, an armor crewman, a construction worker, hotel auditor, car salesman, repo-man, delivery guy, cable guy, went logging, worked in forestry, crewed on several types of fishing vessels, fought wildfire on a helicopter-rappel crew, taught writing at the University of Idaho and Stephen F. Austin State University and taught the Southernmost Writers Workshop in the World at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station Antarctica during the 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 Austral summer seasons where he worked in logistics. He also wrote and directed two short films while at the South Pole. In 2012 he produced a video essay about wildfire. He loves his two daughters very much.

Jerry’s Website

http://jdmathes.com/

Buy Jerry’s Books!

Pre-Order Shipwrecks and Other Stories!

https://www.amazon.com/Shipwrecks-other-Stories-Jerry-Mathes/dp/1622881338

Fever and Guts: A Symphony

https://www.amazon.com/Fever-Guts-Symphony-Jerry-Mathes/dp/1936205858/

Ahead of the Flaming Front

http://caxtonpress.com/aheadoftheflamingfrontalifeonfire.aspx

Fall in the Borderland

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=1015

Read More from Jerry Online

http://www.narrativemagazine.com/authors/jerry-d-mathes-ii

https://thesunmagazine.org/_media/article/pdf/436_Mathes.pdf

https://www.guernicamag.com/daily/jerry-d-mathes-ii-three-easter-sundays/

http://www.snreview.org/0108Mathes.html

http://www.boxcarpoetry.com/009/mathes_jerry_001.html

https://spaceslitmag.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/in-fire/

Jerry on Youtube

https://www.youtube.com/user/jdmathes

 

Happy Reading!

Xo

Mary

 

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, Nature, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Marie Manilla: The Patron Saint of Ugly

 

marie manillaThis week meet Marie Manilla, author The Patron Saint of Ugly, winner of the Weatherford Award. Her novel Shrapnel received the Fred Bonnie Award for Best First Novel. Still Life with Plums: Short Stories was a finalist for both The Weatherford Award and ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year. Marie is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, Prairie Schooner, Mississippi Review, Calyx, SouthWrit Large, and other journals. She’s also an incredibly kind and generous person.

 

Visit Marie’s Website Here: http://www.mariemanilla.com/

 

Buy Marie’s Beautiful Books!

The Patron Saint of Ugly

https://www.amazon.com/Patron-Saint-Ugly-Marie-Manilla/dp/0544146247/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470053896&sr=8-1&keywords=patron+saint+of+ugly

 

Still Life With Plums: Short Stories

http://www.wvupressonline.com/manilla_still_life_with_plums_9781933202600

 

Shrapnel

https://www.amazon.com/Shrapnel-Marie-Manilla/dp/1579660843/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470054659&sr=8-1&keywords=shrapnel+marie+manilla

 

More from Marie Online

http://tetheredbyletters.com/fronline-short-story-laser-beam/

http://www.cleavermagazine.com/belle-fleur-by-marie-manilla/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNVI2ki_6KE

http://wvupressonline.com/author_bio/manilla

http://monkeybicycle.net/dragonfly/

http://dev.writersdojo.org/author/mariemanilla/

 

Interviews, Reviews, and Blogs

http://www.mariemanilla.com/interviewsreviewsblogs.htm

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love

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Monday Must Read! Monty Campbell Jr: A Large Dent in the Moon

monty campbellMeet Monty Campbell Jr, author of Train through the Video Game (Shabda Press) and A Large Dent in the Moon(Foothills). Monty is a member of the Cayuga Tribe of the Six Nations. He grew up in and around Gowanda, NY, the Cattaraugus Reservation and Rochester, NY’s inner city. His work is also included in the indigenous poets anthology, I was Indian (FootHills Publishing, 2009) and Simpatico, On the Road (Simpatico, 2009).

Buy A Large Dent in the Moon!

http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2011/id21.htm

Praise for A Large Dent in the Moon

Erupting from the junkyards, dead eyed alleys and psycho-babble of our raped and compromised Turtle Island, Monty Campbell, Jr., incandescently stands for truth in all its flawed magnificence. A Large Dent in the Moon is a clarion call to non-Indians and Indians alike to get it together before we drown in a tsunami of exploitation, lies and mediocrity. Monty Campbell is a wichasha wakan for our times.  I’ve had the great fortune of reading through his book three times now and each time I was left shattered, awed and breathless.  May these poems be the first of many such incantations.~Paul Hapenny

This first book by Monty Campbell, Jr. makes a large dent, indeed.  Careening around every corner the reader finds startling metaphors, precision line-breaks, and enough poetic arsenal to supply NASA’s next mission.  Monty’s “music slides / through the genetic / garbage of a / Rochester alley…” His poems are Manifestos / written on / cell phones / portraits of / everyday / struggle” and “Rez Photos” where “all the skin is brown, / weighed / and forgiven…”  These poems are alternately sensual, despairing, angry, hopeful, but always crafted with love out of three decades of survival on the real side of America’s tracks.  If Lou Reed is correct that it takes a “Busload of Faith to get by,” here it is, achieving lift-off.~John Roche

From the Introduction:

I think that never have I read work by an indigenous writer in which so much is said about the beauty of Earth filtered through palimpsest-images of city, ghost streets, train tracks, and litter forced upon Turtle Island and our planet altogether.  It is beauty conveyed through loss.  I literally hurt when I read Monty’s poetry.  Yet, as I state in my blurb, Monty’s poems have led me to understand something about love which I never understood before.  When you read this book, I trust you will get why I cannot paraphrase any poems herein; doing so would strip the tropes, deep song, and enfolding spaces of their haunting realness, evocations and dreamscapes (if not nightmare-scapes).  It would do dishonor to that love.~Susan Deer Cloud

Read More From Monty Online

http://www.alestlelive.com/lifestyles/article_da20c15c-2faa-11e3-9855-0019bb30f31a.html

https://spaceslitmag.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/writers-reading-monty-campbell-jr/

http://www.amerinda.org/talkingstick/15-2/

 

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Jonathan Moody: Olympic Butter Gold

iv_jonathanmoody_headshotThis week meet Jonathan Moody. Jonathan holds an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh and a BS degree in Psychology from Xavier University of Louisiana. Author of The Doomy Poems (Six Gallery Press, 2012) and Olympic Butter Gold (Northwestern University Press, 2015), winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, his poetry has appeared in such publications as African American Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Borderlands, Boston Review, The Common, and Harvard Review Online. He lives in Fresno, Texas, with his wife and son.

Buy Jonathan Moody’s Books

Olympic Butter Gold

http://www.nupress.northwestern.edu/content/olympic-butter-gold

Jonathan Moody grew up during the Golden Ages of hip-hop and listened to rap that was as adventurous and diverse as his military upbringing. When rap’s Golden Ages expired, the music’s innovativeness and variety diminished. Moody’s second book, Olympic Butter Gold, winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, responds to Chuck D’s claim that “if there was a HIP-HOP or Rap Olympics, I really don’t think the United States would get Gold, Silver or Brass.” From the poem “Opening Ceremony,” in the voice of a heroin addict struggling to use Lady Liberty’s torch to cook “The American Dream,” to “Dear 2Pac,” an autobiographical account of teaching Tupac Shakur’s poetry to engage high school students indifferent to literature, Moody shares a worldview that is simultaneously apocalyptic and promising.

The Doomy Poems

https://www.amazon.com/Doomy-Poems-Jonathan-Moody/dp/1926616448

“The Doomy Poems challenges the notion that the blues embodies resignation: a self-imposed suffering in which one chooses to remain stuck at the crossroads of nostalgia and obsession. Through persona poems written in the voices of three characters, Jonathan Moody illustrates that in both the South (Houston) and the North (Pittsburgh) the roads to love and integrity, although freshly paved, are strewn with nails and shards of glass.”

Read More From Jonathan Online

http://harvardreview.fas.harvard.edu/?q=features/poetry/inefficiency-burning

https://www.bostonreview.net/poetry/npm15-jonathan-moody-aubade-the-son-rising

http://www.storysouth.com/poetry/2006/07/moody_three_poems.html

http://fplrefdesk.blogspot.com/2013/12/2-poems-by-featured-poet-jonathan-moody.html

Interviews

http://thecommononline.org/features/topical-poetry-interview-jonathan-moody

http://1839mag.com/profiles/observing-the-wider-universe-through-hip-hop-a-look-at-jonathan-moody/

http://thecommonmag.tumblr.com/post/109985371108/topical-poetry-an-interview-with-jonathan-moody

Hear Jonathan Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l10VqL4VSZ8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMJNpbW8W6Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4lkbkp4e1w

Happy Reading, y’all!

xo

Mary

 

 

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Amy King: The Missing Museum

amy kingThis week’s Monday Must Read is The Missing Museum, winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize, by Amy King.  John Ashbery described Amy’s poems in I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press, 2011) as bringing “abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living.” The book was named one of the Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books of 2011. King is also the author of the poetry collections Slaves To Do These Things(Blazevox, 2009), I’m the Man Who Loves You (Blazevox, 2007), and Antidotes for an Alibi (Blazevox, 2005). Her chapbooks include Kiss Me with the Mouth of Your Country(Dusie Press, 2007), The Good Campaign (2006), The Citizen’s Dilemma (2003), andThe People Instruments (Pavement Saw Press, 2002). Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and her essays have appeared in Boston Review, Poetry, andThe Rumpus.

King joins the ranks of Ann Patchett, Eleanor Roosevelt, Rachel Carson, Barbara Bush, and Pearl Buck as the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association).  She was also honored by The Feminist Press as one of the “40 Under 40: The Future of Feminism” awardees, and she received the 2012 SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

King serves on the executive board of VIDA: Woman in Literary Arts and is currently co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change.  She also moderates the Women’s Poetry Listserv (WOMPO) and the Goodreads Poetry! Group. She teaches English and Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College.  Her poems have been nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, and she has been the recipient of a MacArthur Scholarship for Poetry.  Amy King was also the 2007Poet Laureate of the Blogosphere.  Check her latest blog entries at Boston Review, Poetry Magazine and the Rumpus.

She co-edited Poets for Living Waters with Heidi Lynn Staples,  co-edited the PEN Poetry Series and Esque Magazine with Ana Bozicevic and, for many years, moderated the Poetics List, sponsored by The Electronic Poetry Center (SUNY-Buffalo/University of Pennsylvania).  She has also guest-lectured and conducted workshops at a number of colleges and universities, including Goddard College, Naropa University, RISD (Rhode Island School of Design), San Francisco State University, Slippery Rock University, and, forthcoming this spring, the Center for Women Writers at Salem College.

Buy The Missing Museum!

https://tarpaulinsky.com/amy-king/

Find Amy’s Other Books!

http://www.amazon.com/Amy-King/e/B004GEYJGC

Read More from Amy Online!

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/amy-king#about

https://tarpaulinsky.com/Chronic/amy-king.html

http://yr.olemiss.edu/piece/king/

http://www.3ammagazine.com/poetry/2004/sep/king.html

http://therumpus.net/2012/01/death-is-always-a-rumpus-original-poem-by-amy-king/

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2015/08/literature-is-against-us-in-conversation-with-anne-boyer/

http://therumpus.net/2013/07/beauty-and-the-beastly-po-biz-part-1/

http://therumpus.net/2013/07/beauty-and-the-beastly-po-biz-part-2/

Interviews

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_01_015554.php

http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs143/1110349281835/archive/1121363131353.html

https://vimeo.com/37191825

Hear Amy Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3bunzTN3GY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijPfs3WEfbU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3OT8WbxWeQ

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Carter Sickels: The Evening Hour

 

carterThis week meet Carter Sickels, author of the novel The Evening Hour (Bloomsbury), a Finalist for the 2013 Oregon Book Award and the Lambda Literary Debut Fiction Award. He is the recipient of the 2013 Lambda Literary Emerging Writer Award, a project grant from Oregon’s RACC, and an NEA Fellowship to the Hambidge Center for the Arts. He’s been awarded fellowships or scholarships to Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the MacDowell Colony. He is the editor of the anthology Untangling the Knot: Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships, and Identity. Carter has taught in Low-Residency MFA programs at Eastern Oregon University, West Virginia Wesleyan College, and Eastern Kentucky. 

Carter’s website

Learn More About Carter in this Long Bio! Especially love Carter talking about the role of books in his life!

Buy Carter’s stunningly beautiful book The Evening Hour

https://www.amazon.com/Evening-Hour-Novel-Carter-Sickels/dp/160819597X

The Evening Hour On the Way to Film!

http://deadline.com/2016/03/the-evening-hour-movie-cynthia-nixon-brian-geraghty-carter-sickels-novel-1201720860/

Praise for The Evening Hour!

“But no book has captured what Appalachia is like right now better than Carter Sickels’ moving and beautifully wrought novel, The Evening Hour. So up to the minute that it feels as if the novel is being written as you are reading it, the novel takes a long, hard look at the dark, wonderful heart of Appalachia and reveals it in all of its complex beauty, ugliness, joy, and sorrow. . . This is one of the best American novels of the year, and it is a major contribution to Appalachian literature.”-Silas House, Appalachian Heritage

“Absorbing… Nearly every character is an underdog, and readers can’t help but root for them, even knowing all the while that it is futile….Sickels manages to depict the region and its inhabitants vividly, but without condescension… As a backdrop to Cole’s story, Sickels weaves in subtle commentary on the political hot-button issue of mountaintop removal. .  . At a time when it’s easy for outsiders who are living comfortably to speak in terms of optimism and hope, “The Evening Hour’’ doesn’t shy away from the harsh truth that, for some, there simply isn’t a light at the end of the tunnel.”-The Boston Globe

Buy Untangling the Knot:Queer Voices on Marriage, Relationships & Identity

https://www.amazon.com/Untangling-Knot-Marriage-Relationships-Identity/dp/1932010750

Read More From Carter Online:

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/features/06/16/carter-sickels-honesty-compassion-and-grace/

https://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/wildlife/

http://appalachianheritage.net/2014/05/01/johnson-city/

https://www.buzzfeed.com/cartersickels/early-in-my-transition-two-teenagers-helped-me-embrace-my-id?utm_term=.hn56bEn4#.cuRWPND4

http://outcity.com/carter-sickels/

http://www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/books/2012/11/09/saving-trans-author-carter-sickels

http://davidabramsbooks.blogspot.com/2012/03/my-first-time-carter-sickels.html

Hear Carter Read!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3driom6OZKk

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, One Love, Writing

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Monday Must Read: Dawn Lundy Martin: Life in a Box is a Pretty Life

 

DAWN-LUNDY-MARTIN-2This week, recommending Dawn Lundy Martin‘s Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life, from Nightboat Books. Dawn earned a BA from the University of Connecticut, an MA in creative writing from San Francisco State University, and a PhD in English from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Martin’s first full-length collection, A Gathering of Matter / A Matter of Gathering(University of Georgia Press, 2007), was selected by Carl Phillips for the 2007 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Her second collection,Discipline, won the 2009 Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, chosen by Fanny Howe(Nightboat Books, 2011). Her most recent collection is Life in a Box Is a Pretty Life(Nightboat Books, 2014).

In 2004, she co-edited, alongside Vivien Labaton, The Fire This Time: Young Activists and the New Feminism (Anchor Books, 2004), a collection of essays on modern theories of activism in America. She also wrote the Afterword, titled “What, Then, is Freedom,” to Harriet Ann Jacobs’ 19th century slave narrative, Incidents of a Slave Girl (Signet Classics, 2010).

Martin is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation in New York, a national grant making organization led by young women and transgender youth, which focuses on social justice activism. She is also a member of the Black Took Collective, a group of experimental black poets embracing critical theory about gender, race, and sexuality. 

Martin has taught at the University of Pittsburgh, The New School, and Bard College. In June 2013, she was a was a featured writer for Harriet.

Buy Dawn’s Beautiful Books

Life in a Box is a Pretty Life

http://www.nightboat.org/title/life-box-pretty-life

Praise for Life in a Box is a Pretty Life

from Fanzine

“Shades of a Bruise: A Review of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life” by Paul Cunningham

“I think of the contorted poems of Life in a Box is a Pretty Life as themselves boxes. Imprisoned voices. Entering one of these boxes might feel more like something akin to giving one’s self over to crisis. Or chaos. How exactly should one feel about their participation in these boxes? I think it depends on the reader. The reader could possibly feel like they’re looking into a mirror; another might feel like they’re gazing down a corridor of Hell. Again, the reflection/refraction depends on the reader. Perhaps a reader will feel like they’re stepping into familiar territory, or they might feel explicitly uninvited once immersed within these boxes. Or even suddenly, violently deformed by these boxes. Defamiliarized and/or re-shaped by these boxes. Strengthened and/or bolstered by these boxes. One might also not know how to feel. These boxes might induce sweat, nausea, discomfort…”

Read the full review here: http://thefanzine.com/a-review-of-dawn-lundy-martins-life-in-a-box-is-a-pretty-life/

Discipline

http://www.nightboat.org/title/discipline

A Gathering of Matter / a Matter of Gathering

(Winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize)

https://www.amazon.com/Gathering-Matter-Canem-Poetry-Prize/dp/0820329916?ie=UTF8&qid=1465815730&ref_=la_B00823WJJW_1_5&s=books&sr=1-5

Read More from Dawn Lundy Martin Online

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/dawn-lundy-martin#about

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poet/dawn-lundy-martin

https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/new_american_poets/dawn_lundy_martin/

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2014/04/29/five-feminist-poems-for-national-poetry-month-5-modern-frame/

http://www.readab.com/dmartin.html

Interviews

http://lithub.com/on-the-black-avant-garde-trigger-warnings-and-life-in-east-hampton/

https://bostonreview.net/poetry/NPM-2016-karen-lepri-interviews-dawn-lundy-martin

https://pen.org/interview/three-questions-dawn-lundy-martin

https://www.loc.gov/poetry/interviews/dawnlundymartin.html

http://blogthisrock.blogspot.com/2016/02/split-this-rock-interview-with-dawn.html

Hear Dawn Lundy Martin Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5UX66tOxPM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nIpt-B-lA

And So Important Today: Dawn Lundy Martin, Claudia Rankine, and Messiah in Conversation: Readings and Discussion of Justice Poetry

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuFE5ybTFhM

Beautiful reading, y’all ❤

xo

Mary

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Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Books, Creativity, freedom, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing

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Monday Must Read! Michelle Reale: Birds of Sicily

michelle reale photoThis week meet Michelle Messina Reale, author of four collections of poetry including Birds of Sicily, and The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies. She won the Twin Antlers Prize for poetry, along with poets Meg Tuite and Heather Fowler. The winning manuscript, “Bare Bulbs Swinging” was published by Artistically Declined Press in the 2014. She is also one of the authors in the collaborative anthology Shut Up/Look Pretty. Her work has been published in Verbsap, 3711 Atlantic, Underground Voices, Moondance, Lily, Philadelphia Poets, Yellow Mama, Unfettered Verse, Grey Borders, La Fenetre, and others. Michelle is an Associate Professor at Arcadia University. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She conducts ethnography among African refugees in Sicily. Her Italian-American way of life is a prominent source of her research, as well.

She blogs about many of her experiences and topics of research at http://www.sempresicilia.wordpress.com

Buy Michelle’s Beautiful Books!

Birds of Sicily

Praise for Birds of Sicily

Birds of Sicily is an exploration into the geography of proximity. Dipping relentlessly and empathically into the “shadow of lack,” Reale unravels travel to reveal the “life of hard work and paradox” that links us all.—Cameron Conaway, Author of Malaria, Poems


Michelle Reale’s Birds Of Sicily is an outstandingly powerful poetry collection which has personal resonance for me due to our shared Sicilian background. In these wonderfully written poems, Michelle explores themes of migration and finding one’s place in a new, unfamiliar world and culture. Not much literature is written on the Italian-American experience and Reale’s work is a most welcome contribution to that end. This is a work you will come back to again and again.—Julian Gallo, Author of Breathe

Michelle Reale fashions lines that bite and burn. The delicate yet fanged poetry in Birds of Sicily draws from the depths of history and blends voluptuous landscapes with raw depictions of human fragility. Weaving and blending together various poetic forms and structures, the language of each piece sings. This collection, both universal and deeply personal, remains with the reader long after they’ve turned the final page.—Janie Cannarella, Editor-in-Chief, HOOT Review

 

The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies

Bare Bulbs Swinging

Shut Up/Look Pretty

 

Read More from Michelle Online

https://mockingheartreview.com/current-issue/michelle-reale

http://www.thrushpoetryjournal.com/november-2012-michelle-reale.html

http://wickedalicezine.tumblr.com/post/86509383189/two-poems-by-michelle-reale

http://boneorchardpoetry.blogspot.com/2012/04/michelle-reale.html

http://www.wordriot.org/tags/michelle-reale

http://www.connotationpress.com/fiction/1268-michelle-reale-fiction

http://www.undergroundvoices.com/UVRealeMichelle.htm

 

Inteviews

https://anewlookonbooks.wordpress.com/2016/02/18/february-writers-feature/

https://jmwwblog.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/interview-michelle-reales-interiors/

http://www.smokelong.com/smoking-with-michelle-reale/

http://thebirdsisters.blogspot.com/2011/05/introducing-paul-elwork-and-michelle.html

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

Art, Artists, Bless the Day, Creativity, fiction, Gratitude, Love, Must Read Monday, Must Read Writers, nonfiction, One Love, poetry, Writing

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