Tarfia Faizullah, Kenny Tanemura & Hannah Sanghee Park & Kundiman/Alice James Books Prize winner Lo Kwa Mei-en included in the Best New Poets 2013

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Congrats, dear Tarfia, Kenny, Hanna & Lo Kwa!

BEST NEW POETS 2013

Melissa Barrett, “The Invention of the Metal Detector”

Oliver Bendorf, “Wagon Jack” (previously published under a different title in 

Evening Will Come)

Debbie Benson, “Memory”

Michael Boccardo, “What No One Told Me About Autumn”

Michelle Bonczek, “Entering the Body”

Claudia Burbank, “TGIF” (previously published in The Antioch Review)

Micah Chatterton, “Now, Someday”

Darin Ciccotelli, “Superpower”

Meg Day, “Taker of the Temperature, Keeper of the Hope Chest” (previously published in Adrienne)

Aran Donovan, “two left feet” (previously published  in Rattle)

Tarfia Faizullah, “Self-Portrait as Slinky” (previously published in Ninth Letter)

Jennifer Givhan, “Karaoke Night at the Asylum” (forthcoming in Indiana Review)

Andrew C. Gottlieb, “Portrait: Parsing My Wife As Lookout Creek”

Mikko Harvey, “Cannonball” (poet nominated by The Ohio State University, poem previously published in Juked)

Anna Claire Hodge, “Where We Have No Business” (previously published in Copper Nickel)

Anna Maria Hong, “Four Barrels, Jaw & Locket” (nominated by Unsplendid, where it originally appeared. Also previously published in Verse Daily.)

Erin Hoover, “On the Origin of Species” (forthcoming in Gargoyle)

Rochelle Hurt, “Poem in Which I Play the Runaway” (previously published  in The Collagist)

John James, “Chthonic”

Josh Kalscheur, “Katari” (previously published in The Iowa Review)

Courtney Kampa, “Ars Biologica” (previously published  in TriQuarterly)

Elizabeth Langemak, “An Apology” (previously published  in C4)

Sarah Levine, “Birds are loosely folded napkins thrown into the sky”

Jason Macey, “Love Song for Cesar Vallejo”

Lo Kwa Mei-en, “Romance in Which Open Season Changes Everything” (previously published in APARTMENT Poetry)

Scott Miles, “Ode to the Gods of French Cinema”

Peter Mishler, “Fludde”

Gloria Muñoz, “Your Biome Has Found You” (nominated by the University of South Florida)

Lisa Allen Ortiz, “Confection”

Elsbeth Pancrazi, “What's penciled in”

Hannah Sanghee Park, “Bang” (previously published  in 32 Poems)

Laura Passin, “The Egon Schiele Art Center, Cesky Krumlov”

Jade Ramsey, “She Lives in a Pat of Butter” (previously published in Gargoyle)

Kyeren Regehr, “Eversion” (previously published  in Prairie Fire)

Stephanie Rogers, “How It Kept On”

Justin Runge, “History” (previously published  in  Rattle) 

Michael Simon, “Interstate”

Meighan L. Sharp, “Beyond Measure” (previously published in DIALOGIST)

Max Somers, “The Narrative Poem”

Benjamin Sutton, “from Footnotes on the City”

L.J. Sysko, “Just Try”

Kenny Tanemura, “Expulsion”

Chad Temples, “Waking, Waking, Singing”

Emily Van Kley, “Physical Education”

Angela Voras-Hills, “Preserving”

Corrie Lynn White, “Gravy”

Derek JG Williams, “Ode to the Tongue” (previously published in Knockout Literary Magazine)

Cori A. Winrock, “Débridement” (previously published in Versal)

Amy Woolard, “A Girl Gets Sick of a Rose” (nominated by Smartish Pace, where it originally appeared)

Javier Zamora, “This Was The Field” (nominated by New York University)

 

George Yamazawa, Paul Tran, and Cathy Linh Che to present at LAPPFest DC

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Congrats, dear fellows!

Check the schedule here: http://lappfest.org/schedule/

Cathy Linh Che is the author of Split (Alice James, 2014), the winner of the 2012 Kundiman Poetry Prize. She received her MFA from New York University and is the recipient of fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, and Poets House.  

Paul Tran  is a rising senior at Brown University and a graduate of The Preuss School at the University of California, San Diego. He is a first-generation college student and aspires to pursue a Ph.D. in American Studies. Currently concentrating in History, Africana & Ethnic Studies, Paul’s work as a twentieth-century U.S. social & cultural historian-in-training, activist and spoken word poet attempts to illuminate the complex relationships between race, empire and the production of knowledge. With the past as his battleground, Paul is determined to excavate new understandings of human existence. His scholarship, poetry and leadership seeks to create communities compelled towards love and social justice. Inspired by the notion of America as “a land without ghosts,” Paul specifically aims to exhume this nation’s dead, to find what moves in the margins, and respectfully articulate their stories in the hopes of making meanings for our lives.

At 22 years old,  George “G” Yamazawa is widely considered one of the top young spoken word artists in the country. A Kundiman fellow, National Poetry Slam Finalist, two-time Individual World Poetry Slam Finalist, and three-time Southern Fried Champion, G has performed at numerous venues and universities across the nation including the Sundance Film Festival, Bonnaroo Music Festival, as well as overseas in England, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Bushra Rehman is Poets & Writers' August Writer in Residence

Congrats, dear Bushra! 

To check out her blog posts, click here and here.

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Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn. Her father is not so sure. Since there are no definitive records of the time of her birth, there is no real way of knowing, but it would explain a few things. Bushra is a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems. Now, she performs her poetry regularly in theaters and colleges around the world. Lately, she’s been spending her time flying through the streets of Brooklyn and writing an on the road adventure novel for Muslim girls.

Jai Arun Ravine's investigative review / encounter with Bhanu Kapil's Humanimal, in collaboration with Lucas de Lima, is live at Tarpaulin Sky Literary Journal

Congrats, dear Jai!

Half [ ]-half [ ]-half [ ]: Trauma and Transformation in the Humanimal
Letters to Bhanu Kapil

by Jai Arun Ravine and Lucas de Lima

Note to reader: In 2010, Ching-In Chen asked Jai Arun Ravine to interview Bhanu Kapil for a speculative literature issue for Asian American Poetry and Writing. At the time, Bhanu was in India and unavailable for an interview, so she asked Lucas de Lima to answer Jai’s questions as an interpolate. The result of Lucas and Jai’s collaboration constitutes part one of this piece. Lucas’s replies to Jai — substituted for potential statements or responses by Bhanu — appear in italics: below. The dirty starlings are his, just as the triplicate, mutating calf is Jai’s. In 2013, Bhanu, Lucas and Jai re-convened with Bhanu asking Jai and Lucas questions. The feral appendix they created appears in part two of this piece. Even though the original interview was never published in AAPW, Jai thanks Ching-In for instigating this collaborative exploration.

Read the rest of the piece here.

  

August 27: Tamiko Beyer, Matthew Olzmann, & Jamaal May read at Word for Word in Bryant Park

Word for Word Poetry welcomes Alice James Books
Bryant Park Reading Room
(mid-block on the 42nd Street side of Bryant Park)

Tuesday, August 27, 2013
7:00pm – 8:30pm

More here: http://tamikobeyer.com/readings-and-events/ 

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Tamiko Beyer spent the first ten years of her life in Tokyo, Japan, and has since lived in cities near the water on the West and East coast. She is the author of We Come Elemental (Alice James Books) and bough breaks (Meritage Press). She received her MFA from Washington University in St. Louis where she was awarded a Chancellor's Fellowship. Beyer has received grants and fellowships from Kundiman, the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, and VONA/Voices. She is the Senior Writer at Corporate Accountability International in Boston.

Jamaal May is a poet, editor, and educator from Detroit, MI where he taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer and touring performer. He is the author of Hum (Alice James Books, Nov 2013), winner of the Beatrice Hawley Award, and two poetry chapbooks (The God Engine and The Whetting of Teeth). His poems have been published widely in journals such as POETRY,Ploughshares, The Believer, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and New England Review.   

 Matthew Olzmann is a graduate of the MFA program for writers at Warren Wilson College. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Kenyon ReviewNew England ReviewInchGulf CoastRattle, and elsewhere. He’s received fellowships from Kundiman and the Kresge Arts Foundation. 

Yes to Eugenia Leigh & Ocean Vuong for making the list of 23 More People Who Made Me Care about Poetry in 2013--now up at HTMLGiant.

Congrats, dear Eugenia and Ocean! 

Check here to view the list, now up at htmlgiant. 

Eugenia Leigh is the author of a full-length collection of poetry, Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014), which was a finalist for both the National Poetry Series and the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications including PANK Magazine, North American Review, The Collagist, and the Best New Poets 2010 anthology.

 

Born in 1988 in Saigon, Vietnam, Ocean Vuong was raised by women (a single mother, aunts, and a grandmother) in housing projects throughout Hartford, Connecticut and received his B.A. in English Literature from Brooklyn College.

He is the author of two chapbooks: No (YesYes Books, 2013) and Burnings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010), which was an American Library Association’s “Over The Rainbow” selection and has been taught widely in universities, both in America and abroad. A recipient of a 2014 Pushcart Prize, other honors include fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, and the Saltonstall Foundation For the Arts, as well as an Academy of American Poets Prize and the Connecticut Poetry Society’s Al Savard Award. Poems appear in Denver Quarterly, Quarterly West, Passages North, Guernica, The Normal School, Beloit Poetry Journal, Crab Orchard Review, and the American Poetry Review, which awarded him the 2012 Stanley Kunitz Prize. Work has also been translated into Hindi, Korean, Vietnamese, and Russian.

Sejal Shah is this week's Kenyon Review Online feature for her essay "Street Scene"!

Congrats, dear Sejal!

 

Street Scene

by Sejal Shah

Parisians call this neighborhood mixed. Mixed is code; it means immigrants. Think Brooklyn, Caitlin says. We are in the 20th Arrondissement, near Père Lachaise. I am here to see the Louvre and the Turkish Baths; I am here to visit my friend, Caitlin. I have a map and some time for wandering. To travel by yourself and enjoy it is a skill; I don't practice enough.

The 20th Arrondissement. Storefronts with fuchsia and blue signs; Senegalese behind tables of patterned scarves, watch caps, and leather bags; music, a low flare around which we warm ourselves at the park, at pool tables, at long wooden bars. LeeAnne isn't here to tell me where she stayed in Paris. When I think of her, I see us talking in my backyard, splashing in the pool, upstate New York summers. It surprises me. She was never there, but I can see it: the blue pool, our hideaway; beach towels; instant iced tea. I imagine we lay ourselves out on the uneven flagstones, waiting to be hot enough to peel ourselves off and fling ourselves into the water. If I close my eyes hard enough, if I squint, I can almost see it, this scene-that we grew up together. She was that kind of friend. As I walk through Paris, I keep expecting to catch a glimpse of her, vanishing into some narrow street.

. . . 

Click here to continue reading this essay.

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 Sejal Shah is a writer and teacher of writing. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in journals and books including the Asian American Literary ReviewDenver QuarterlyIndiana Review, the Massachusetts ReviewPleiades, and Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America (Seal Press). 

 

Jennifer S. Cheng's from "Letters to Mao" published at Web Conjunctions

Congrats, dear Jennifer! 

"Letters to Mao"  are the this week's Web Conjunctions Exclusive! To read the poems, click here: http://www.conjunctions.com/webconj.htm 

Jennifer S. Cheng is the author of a chapbook, Invocation: An Essay (New Michigan Press). Her writing appears in the Seneca ReviewThe CollagistQuarterly West, and Fifty-Fifty, an anthology of Hong Kong writing. She lives in San Francisco.