"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 Writers’ Category

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

Category:

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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Must Read Monday! Doug Van Gundy: A Life Above Water

 

VanGundyThis week meet Doug Van Gundy, author of A Life Above Water. Doug teaches in both the BA and MFA writing programs at West Virginia Wesleyan College. His poems, essays and reviews have appeared in The Oxford American, Poems & Plays, Ecotone, Appalachian Heritage, Waccamaw and Poetry Salzburg Review. He is currently co-editing an anthology of contemporary writing from West Virginia for WVU Press and working on his second book of poems, tentatively titled, No Dog Inside.

Doug has also has been an elephant keeper, a copywriter, a country radio disk jockey, a letterpress operator, a television game show winner, and is a multi-talented musician. He’s an incredible old-time fiddler (along with playing a kajillion other instruments), performing with Paul Gartner in the duo Born Old.

Buy Doug’s beautiful book!

http://redhen.org/book/?uuid=F6650841-8509-33C3-0C69-129FD872CC95

Praise for A Life Above Water

Doug Van Gundy s poems are pitch-perfect and packed with indelible images, each as striking and distinct as a hawk in a clear blue sky above one of his beloved mountains. This poet has a genius for quick characterization, too; I love his crow-eyed bachelor men/who lived on the hillside and smelled/of fried potatoes and machine oil, for instance. Some of these poems are like whole novels. Doug Van Gundy has captured a culture in this book. –Lee Smith

More about Doug, poetry and music, at his website

http://www.dougvangundy.com/

Learn More About Doug’s Music and Born Old

https://www.facebook.com/bornoldband

http://www.countysales.com/products.php?product=DOUG-VAN-GUNDY-%26-PAUL-GARTNER-%27Born-Old%27

Read More from Doug Online

http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-guest-editor/poetry-october-2009/137-doug-van-gundy-poetry

http://www.storysouth.com/poetry/2008/06/west_virginia_vs_extractive_in.html

http://www.fishousepoems.org/keeper/

http://appalachianheritage.net/author/dougvangundy/

http://www.datelinewheeling.com/blog/2015/10/22/music-and-muse-mountaineer-poet-says-the-two-meld-perfectly

Hear Doug Read

https://soundcloud.com/storyweb/doug-van-gundy-a-beautiful-jar-of-jelly

And Play!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeOj7nLF3_Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnKAOWSO410

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZisqgmidCc

 

 

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

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Monday Must Read! Ace Boggess: The Prisoners

 

boggess-photoThis week meet Ace Boggess, the author of two books of poetry: The Prisoners (Brick Road Poetry Press, 2014) and The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Not Fulfilled (Highwire Press, 2003). His novel, A Song Without a Melody, is forthcoming from Hyperborea Publishing. His writing has appeared in Harvard Review, Mid-American Review, RATTLE, River Styx, North Dakota Quarterly and many other journals. He lives in Charleston, West Virginia.

(I first read Ace’s poetry years ago when I was editing The Dos Passos Review and loved it, the boldness, the elegance, the careful heartbreaking balance between humor and humanity. Good good stuff, y’all.)

Buy The Prisoners!

http://brickroadpoetrypress.com/order-books/the-prisoners-by-ace-boggess

Buy The Beautiful Girl Whose Wish Was Unfulfilled

http://www.amazon.com/Beautiul-Girl-Whose-Wish-Fulfilled/dp/0972180117

Read More From Ace Online

http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/aceboggess/

http://www.rattle.com/tag/ace-boggess/

http://lightningkeyreview.com/blog/life-of-crime-ace-boggess/

https://voxpopulisphere.com/2014/09/27/ace-boggess-four-poems/

http://www.subtletea.com/aceboggesspoetry.htm

http://www.caveat-lector.org/2401/website/poetry/boggess.html

http://www.cortlandreview.com/issue/69/boggess.php

http://www.reduxlitjournal.com/2014/02/118-two-poems-by-ace-boggess.html

https://themuseumofamericana.net/issues/current-issue-7/poetry/two-poems-by-ace-boggess/

Interviews

https://permafrostmag.com/2015/09/09/interview-with-ace-boggess/

http://www.missourireview.com/tmr-blog/2013/10/literature-on-lockdown-ace-boggess/

https://geosireads.wordpress.com/2014/09/24/ace-boggess-on-drug-addiction-life-in-prison-writing-advice-for-drug-addicts/

Hear Ace Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N75JaAp963A

And Sing 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ychiXKghuU

 

 

Happy Reading, y’all!

xo

Mary

Category:

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Monday Must Read! Allison Joseph, My Father’s Kites

 

allison jospehThis week, meet one of the most amazing writers and literary citizens in our community, Allison Joseph! Allison lives, writes, and teaches in Carbondale, Illinois, where she is part of the creative writing faculty at Southern Illinois University.  She serves as editor and poetry editor of Crab Orchard Review, moderator of the Creative Writers Opportunities List, and director of the Young Writers Workshop, a summer writers’ workshop for teen writers.

 Her books and chapbooks include What Keeps Us Here (Ampersand Press), Soul Train (Carnegie Mellon University Press), In Every Seam(University of Pittsburgh Press), Worldly Pleasures (Word Tech Communications), Imitation of Life (Carnegie Mellon UP), Voice: Poems (Mayapple Press), My Father’s Kites (Steel Toe Books), Trace Particles (Backbone Press), Little Epiphanies (Imaginary Friend Press), Mercurial (Mayapple Press), Mortal Rewards (White Violet Press), Multitudes (forthcoming, Word Tech Communications), The Purpose of Hands (forthcoming, Glass Lyre Press), Corporal Muse(forthcoming, Lucky Bastard Press). Her next full-length collection,Confessions of a Barefaced Woman, has been accepted for publication by Red Hen Press. She is the literary partner and wife of Jon Tribble.

I go back again and again to Allison’s work, but especially My Father’s Kites.

Buy Allison’s Books!

My Father’s Kites

http://www.steeltoebooks.com/books/39-my-fathers-kites.html

Praise for My Father’s Kites

“‘Tell me about the poet,’ urges Allison Joseph in the very first line of her remarkable new collection — and it is with insight, honesty and extraordinary technical skill that she accomplishes exactly this. My Father’s Kites is a self-revelatory collection of carefully wrought, jewel-like poems that explore the often paradoxical complexities of family relationships. Her strategy is tightly linked to her remarkable expertise as a formalist — a gift that becomes most evident in ‘What the Eye Beholds,’ a series of sonnets about her father’s flamboyant life, his gradual ‘dereliction,’ his inevitable early death, and its poignant aftermath. The arc of this sequence, flanked as it is by graceful villanelles and rondeaus. I cannot think of another contemporary poet who has done a finer job of combining form and content, to dazzling effect.” — Marilyn Taylor

Soul Train

http://www.upne.com/0887482472.html

In Every Seam

https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=34548

Wordly Pleasures

http://www.wordpoetrybooks.com/joseph.htm

Imitation of Life

http://www.amazon.com/Imitation-Life-Carnegie-Mellon-Poetry/dp/0887483860

Voice: Poems

http://mayapplepress.com/voice-poems-allison-joseph/

Trace Particles

http://backbonepress.org/chapbooks/

Mercurial

http://mayapplepress.com/mercurial-allison-joseph/

Mortal Rewards

http://www.amazon.com/Mortal-Rewards-Allison-Joseph/dp/0692657045/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463483270&sr=8-1&keywords=mortal+rewards+allison+joseph

Read More from Allison Online

20 Poems from Allison Joseph

http://www.culturalfront.org/2011/10/20-poems-by-allison-joseph.html

http://www.heartjournalonline.com/joseph/2013/12/1/two-poems-by-allison-joseph

http://atticusreview.org/september-featured-poet-allison-joseph/

https://sliverofstonemagazine.com/running-while-black-by-allison-joseph/

http://rlpoetry.org/extraction-allison-joseph/

http://www.bradley.edu/sites/poet/steel/poems/joseph.dot

Interviews

http://lunchticket.org/allison-joseph-poet/

http://www.thefourthriver.com/index.php/the-mark-of-real-life-an-interview-with-allison-joseph

http://www.midwestwriters.org/2014/06/interview-with-allison-joseph/

Hear Allison Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2TEGGSxUeA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BWP3KtEXpo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h5E1KynLY4

Happy reading!

xo

Mary

Category:

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

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Monday Must Read! Claudine Moreau: Dark Machines

claudine moreau author photoThis week meet Claudine R. Moreau, author of Dark Machines. Claudine is a poet who teaches physics and astronomy at Elon University where her biggest thrill is showing students the cosmos through a telescope.

Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Tar River Poetry, 34th Parallel, PANK, Neon Magazine, Iodine Poetry Journal, Oysters and Chocolate, The Pinch, Segue, The Bitter Oleander, Arsenic Lobster, The GW Review, and Pivot among others. She is currently working on a new collection of astronomy themed poems.

Buy Claudine’s Dark Machines!

http://www.amazon.com/Claudine-R.-Moreau/e/B007L2J2J0/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1462796595&sr=8-1

https://www.createspace.com/3760500

Claudine’s Website

http://facstaff.elon.edu/cmoreau/Claudine_R._Moreaus_Physics_Page/Prof._Claudine_R._Moreau.html

Read More from Claudine Online

http://www.physikgarden.com/interstellar.html

http://www.astropoetica.com/Spring10/cometgirl.html

http://pankmagazine.com/piece/no-witnesses/

Interview

http://www.artvilla.com/plt/poetnewsMay01.html

Hear Claudine Read

https://spaceslitmag.wordpress.com/2013/03/13/writers-reading-claudine-moreau/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

Category:

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

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Monday Must Read! D.M. Aderibigbe, In Praise of Our Absent Father

DMD.M. Aderibigbe was born in 1989 in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds a B.A in History and Strategic Studies from the University of Lagos. He’s the author of In Praise of Our Absent Father, selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the APBF New Generation African Poets Chapbook Series and is a recipient of 2015 honours from The Dickinson House and the Entrekin Foundation. His poems appear in African American Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Normal School, Notre Dame Review, Poet Lore, RATTLE, Spillway, Stand, among others, and have been featured on Verse Daily. His first full-length manuscript, My Mothers’ Songs and Other Similar Songs I Learnt received a special mention in the APBF/Prairie Schooner 2015 Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. D.M. is a 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee. He’s also co-editor of More Than a Number: Poems and Prose for Baga. His essays appear in B O D Y, Blueshift Journal and Rain Taxi. He lives in Boston where he’s studying for his MFA in Creative Writing at Boston University as a BU Fellow.

D.M.’s website: http://damilolapoetry.weebly.com/about.html

Where to Find D.M.’s Chapbook

http://www.akashicbooks.com/catalog/new-generation-african-poets-a-chapbook-box-set-tatu/

http://africanpoetrybf.unl.edu/?page_id=3372#

Praise for In Praise of Our Absent Father

“Here is a poet whose vision and empathy reach into the intimate corners of family history, bearing witness to generations of tenderness, violence, generosity, survival and imagination with rare precision. At the intersection of the public and the personal his politics emerge with integrity – if these stories emerge from the private world of his own family, their resonance and relevance, marked in the title’s naming of our absent father, call his readers to bear witness and join in imagining other possibilities.” Tsitsi Jaji

Read more from D.M. Online

http://www.rattle.com/the-origin-of-kindness-by-d-m-aderibigbe/

http://www.wordriot.org/archives/4730

http://bodyliterature.com/2013/09/02/d-m-aderibigbe/

http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/2485-d-m-aderibigbe-poetry

http://www.hobartpulp.com/web_features/two-poems–41

http://ampersandreview.com/2015/08/last-forever-by-d-m-aderibigbe/

http://thenormalschool.com/to-be-my-father-and-mirror-by-d-m-aderibigbe/

Interviews

https://waleowoade.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/aderibigbe/

http://www.theblueshiftjournal.com/#!Interview-with-DM-Aderibigbe/cltp/FF25B6CA-DB36-4157-A372-B59C8D787A78

Hear D.M. Read

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSdpXPQoaU8

 

Happy Reading!

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! Remica Bingham-Risher: What We Ask of Flesh

Remica-Bingham-FInalRemica L. Bingham-Risher earned an MFA from Bennington College, is a Cave Canem fellow and a member of the Affrilachian Poets. Her first book, Conversion (Lotus Press, 2006), won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award and was published by Lotus Press. Her second book, What We Ask of Flesh, was published by Etruscan Press in February 2013. She is the Director of Writing and Faculty Development at Old Dominion University and resides in Norfolk, VA with her husband and children. She is currently finalizing a book of interviews entitled Blood on the Page—African-American Poets from the Black Arts Movement to the Neo-Urban Modernist Movement: Interviews, Essays and Poems.

For more information on her work and upcoming events, please visit: www.remicalbingham.com.

Buy Remica’s beautiful books!

http://www.remicalbingham.com/publications.htm

Reviews and Praise for What We ask of Flesh

“She sees with a brave eye and hears the music of all our languages, validating each. Her story is the human story; her sharing it an act of great generosity.”  – Lucille Clifton

Remica L. Bingham addresses a woman’s sense of body graced with spirituality in its most powerful or most vulnerable moments in the collection…From the opening poem drawn, from the distant past, to the final three elegiac poems, which beautifully anchor the book to the present, Bingham pursues the female body in all its fierce beauty…with eloquence and urgency in a bitter sweet salute to those women who have paved the way for us all.  – Colleen J. McElroy

What We Ask of Flesh, like the flesh itself, is full of honey and fire. It’s impossible not to feel called by these poems, summoned by their rich sound and vatic voice. Remica Bingham-Risher reckons with the big stuff: the complexities of womanhood, the problem of suffering, family, and childhood’s darker aspects. Every poem is uttered with fervor and a timeless sense of gravity and rapture. – Amy Gerstler

http://www.poetsquarterly.com/2013/10/what-we-ask-of-flesh-by-remica-l-bingham.html

http://etruscanpress.tumblr.com/post/81709836371/flesh-contemplates-social-issues-of-womanhood

http://www.rattle.com/what-we-ask-of-flesh-by-remica-l-bingham/

https://mosaicmagazine.org/2013/07/15/what-we-ask-of-flesh-review/

Read More From Remica Online

http://danmurano.com/poetry/remica-l-bingham-risher

http://etruscanpress.tumblr.com/post/100861154416/remica-l-bingham-risher

http://www.connotationpress.com/featured-guest-editor/february-2011/727-remica-l-bingham-poetry

http://danmurano.com/poetry/remica-l-bingham-risher

http://therumpus.net/author/remica-bingham-risher/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

Category:

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

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Must Read Monday! Laura Long: Out of Peel Tree

laura longThis week meet Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree, a novel in stories, and two collections of poetry, The Eye of Caroline Herschel:A Life in Poems and Imagine a Door. Laura has received a James Michener Fellowship, James River Writers Award, Donald Barthelme Fellowship, PEN-Texas Award, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowships, and has published in magazines including The Southern Review and Shenandoah. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia and with the low-residency MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and has taught in numerous community and university settings.

Buy Laura’s Beautiful Books!

Out of Peel Tree

http://wvupressonline.com/long_out_of_peel_tree_9781940425009

Imagine a Door

http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Door-Laura-Longsong/dp/1934999512

The Eye of Caroline Herschel:A Life in Poems

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

Praise for Out of Peel Tree

“Aside from the gorgeous writing and deeply compelling characters, what I especially value about Laura Long’s Out of Peel Tree is its honoring both the region and the literature out of which it springs, at the same time it brilliantly offers a new vision and shines a light on the path ahead. This is a book to be enjoyed immediately and cherished for years to come.”~David Huddle, author of Only the Little Bone and The Story of a Million Years


“Laura Long has eyes like no other. The world she sees has more dimensions than the mundane 3-D world the rest of us inhabit. In her world even dry leaves and red tomatoes and postcards are sentient.“~Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly and Still Life with Plums

“In an elaborate mosaic that is both moving and uplifting, Out of Peel Tree tells the story of three generations of West Virginia women and their survival against the odds. This vivid, compact work is akin to an unforgiving family portrait that reveals everything—warts and all.”~Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and 2013 recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.

“Laura Long writes with such tenderness for her characters, for place, for the natural world. The images shimmer and the links delight. Out of Peel Tree is tatted into the finest lace—delicate, seamless, and strong. Is it any wonder this is a poet’s novel?”~Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female and Crackpots

Read More from Laura Online!

http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/1680-laura-long-poetry

http://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2015/03/01/untranslatable-writing-fiction-in-the-garden-of-uncertainty-or-being-uncertain-is-a-quality-that-writers-cultivate/

Interview

https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/laura-long/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

 

 

Category:

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

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