Monday Must Read! Sonja Livingston, Ladies Night at the Dreamland

This week, meet Sonja Livingston, whose first book, the memoir Ghostbread, won an AWP Book Prize for Nonfiction and has been adopted for use by classrooms around the nation. She is also the author of Queen of the Fall: A Memoir of Girls and Goddesses, and her most recent book, Ladies Night at the Dreamland, was published by University of Georgia Press in March 2016. Sonja’s writing has been honored with a NYFA Fellowship, an Iowa Review Award, and an Arts & Letters Essay Prize, as well as grants from Vermont Studio Center and the Deming Fund for Women.

Her work has appeared in many literary journals including the Iowa Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southeast Review, Brevity, and AGNI online, and is anthologized in several texts on writing, including Short Takes, The Truth of the Matter, The Curious Writer, and Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction.

An assistant professor in the MFA Program at the University of Memphis, Sonja is married to the artist Jim Mott and divides her time between Tennessee and New York State.

Sonja’s Website:

http://www.sonjalivingston.com/index.html

Buy Sonja’s Beautiful Books:

Ladies Night at the Dreamland

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780820349138

Queen of the Fall

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780803280670

Praise for Ladies Night at the Dreamland

A vibrant and textured creation of women throughout history, some of them famous, others notable for the bravery of their more private lives. Line by line, the writing sings. What a marvelous collection of essays. What a glorious celebration. (Lee Martin author of The Bright Forever)

A swirling, wise dream of a book, filled with gorgeous writing and a poignant crowd of characters, rescued from the stream of history with ardent insight. (Harriet Scott Chessman author of The Beauty of Ordinary Things)

These essays―sometimes charming, sometimes searing, always revealing―investigate history, gender, and the bittersweet stories of those often veiled or suppressed. Livingston writes with a gentle and inquiring spirit, a keen intellect, and a deeply compelling lyrical voice. (Kristen Iversen author of Full Body Burden: Growing Up in the Nuclear Shadow of Rocky Flats)

Radiant essays inspired by ‘slivers and bits’ of real women’s lives. . . . The author calls her startlingly original essays literary nonfiction, but some read more like historical fiction, spun as they are from documented sources; and some―a brief evocation of Virginia Dare, for example―read like lyrical prose poems. . . . Wise, fresh, captivating essays. (Kirkus Reviews (starred review))

What’s remarkable about [Livingston’s] latest work is how she’s captured the ability to sustain engaging narratives through such vividly reflexive poetic prose. (Hans Rollman PopMatters)

More From Sonja Online

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v13n2/nonfiction/livingston_s/world_page.shtml

http://www.blackbird.vcu.edu/v13n2/nonfiction/livingston_s/cake_page.shtml

http://www.riverteethjournal.com/authors/sonja-livingston-

http://therumpus.net/author/sonjalivingston/

Interviews

https://www.kenyonreview.org/2016/03/every-night-is-ladies-night-an-interview-with-sonja-livingston/

http://composejournal.com/articles/an-interview-with-sonja-livingston-author-of-queen-of-the-fall/

http://www.hippocampusmagazine.com/2014/06/interview-sonja-livingston-author-of-ghostbread/

http://www.bookslut.com/features/2010_03_015957.php

Hear Sonja Read:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ4m8AlzxK0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Ae43RLP8pg

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

Monday Must Read! Susan Deer Cloud: Hunger Mountain

This week meet one of my favorite poets and one of the most beautiful souls in this world, Susan Deer Cloud. Susan is a mixed lineage Catskill Mountain Indian who has traveled to and sojourned in many places. She has a B.A. & M.A. in Literature/Creative Writing from Binghamton University and an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry from Goddard College. She has taught literature and creative writing at the college level. Deer Cloud has been awarded various prizes, fellowships and awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, 2 New York State Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellowships, an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant, a Chenango County Council for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant, Allen Ginsberg 1st Prize in Poetry (twice) & Prairie Schooner’s Readers’ Choice Prize in Poetry . Her books includethe stunning Hunger Mountain (Shabda Press 2014), Fox Mountain (Foothills Publishing, 2013), I Was Indian Before Being Indian Was Cool, I & I (Foothills Publishing, 2012), Braiding Starlight (Split Oak Press, 2010), Car Stealer(Foothills Publishing, 2009), and The Last Ceremony (Foothills Publishing, 2007).

Hunger Mountain (Seriously, you need to own this book!)

Shabda Press: http://www.shabdapress.com/susan-deer-cloud.html

Buy Hunger Mountain!

http://www.amazon.com/Hunger-Moon-Susan-Deer-Cloud/dp/0985315172

Praise for Hunger Mountain

“Native American poet Susan Deer Cloud is the master of the long lament, and Hunger Moon is her mournful and magical masterpiece.  The work is a song of celebration, but at times her pen becomes a low-sounding cedar flute, searching for that sorrowful note at the bottom of all the holes. When Deer Cloud lets loose one of her salty soliloquies about her mixed lineage mountain people and their exuberant and long-suffering lives, she clears the deck and points the finger at us all. But none of the colorful characters that inhabit Hunger Moon receive more poetic punishment than the poet herself. She wields a self-deprecating style of humor that goes beyond the call of humility. Deer Cloud digs deeper into the back-country Catskill mud she flings to find momentary marvels of wisdom and insight that are simply stunning … sentences of solid gold. At those moments … and there are many … readers will feel they have discovered genius and perhaps touched immortality.”–Evan Pritchard, poet and professor of Native Studies (Marist, Pace, Vassar, etc.) and author of No Word For Time, Bird Medicine, Native New Yorkers.

Find Susan’s Other Books!

Fox Mountain

http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2013/id64.htm

I WAS INDIAN (Before Being Indian Was Cool): An Anthology of Indigenous Poetry, Volume II http://foothillspublishing.com/2013/id58.htm

Car Stealer

http://foothillspublishing.com/2010/id48.htm

I WAS INDIAN (Before Being Indian Was Cool): an Anthology of Indigenous Poetry, Volume I

http://foothillspublishing.com/2009/id62.htm

The Last Ceremony

http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2007/id164.htm

In the Moon when the Deer Lose Their Horns

(Clements, Susan) 🙂 The first book I ever read by this poet, back in 1993 🙂

http://www.abebooks.com/Moon-when-Deer-Lose-Horns-Clements/248556198/bd

More About and From Susan Online!

https://sites.google.com/site/susandeercloud/home/featured-poem

http://oddballmagazine.com/2016/01/18/poem-by-susan-deer-cloud-3/

http://www.thethepoetry.com/2014/09/infoxicated-corner-political-punch-poems-by-susan-deer-cloud/

http://www.verse-virtual.com/susan-deer-cloud-2015-november.html

http://aboutplacejournal.org/voices/s1-iii-ii/susan-deer-cloud-iii-ii/

http://spoonfuljournal.blogspot.com/2008/03/poem-by-susan-deer-cloud.html

Hear Susan Read!

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BChqN2rYS4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzq_t3fiT9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80MAk3w3DgQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBC2Y1gJDUE

Interviews

http://www.cervenabarvapress.com/SusanDeerCloudinterview.htm

http://outofboundsradioshow.com/shows/susan-deer-cloud/

Talk with Poet Monty Campbell Jr

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iwLAAj3_sE

Book Susan for Readings and Talks!

http://www.pw.org/content/susan_deer_cloud_3

Happy Reading, y’all!

Susan’s the real deal!

xo

Mary