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Fall 2019 TWH Contributors’ Newsletter
Thank you for announcing your poems, peregrinations, prizes, publications—especially now, when news reports are so appalling. Your energy encourages all of us! Lise and I send our deepest sympathy to contributors who are mourning again. And to all, our wishes for a sweeter, healthier year.
Judy Bebelaar received a 2018 Northern California Book Award in June for And Then They Were Gone (Silver in General Non-Fiction). She read her own poems on the Jonestown theme for a “Poetry of Witness” event at the Octopus Literary Salon (Oakland), and excerpts from the book in July at Pegasus Books (Berkeley) and Benicia Books. This month, Judy won first prize at the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Circle Banquet (theme: Circle) for a poem called “That Instable Object of Desire.” She also got a framed plaque for winning the Grand Prize last year. That poem was “Ode to Broken Things.”
Roselee Blooston’s first novel, Trial by Family (Apprentice House), launched in October with reading/signing events at Oblong Books Rhinebeck, NY), Watchung Booksellers (Montclair, NJ), and Barnes & Noble (Kingston NY). Available from the publisher, independent bookstores, Amazon, and B&N.
Gail Braune Comorat‘s writing group, “The Muse,” published a poetry collection called Walking the Sunken Boards, from their biannual retreats over the past ten years. The four women read together in Chestertown, MD in July and at several Delaware venues in October: Rehoboth Beach Museum, Newark (DE) Senior Center, New Castle County Court House Museum, and OLLI in Wilmington. To order a copy ($16), send Gail an e-mail: gailcomorat@comcast.net.
Mary Pacifico Curtis’ poem “Ubi Caritas” was a finalist in Tiferet Journal’s annual writing contest.
Patricia Fargnoli is the focus of Innisfree Poetry Journal’s A Closer Look (current issue, Fall 2019), with 22 poems from Hallowed (Tupelo 2017): www.innisfreepoetry.org or http://authormark.com/artman2/publish/Innisfree_29PATRICIA_FARGNOLI.shtml Hallowed also won both the NH Literary Award in Poetry and the Reader’s Choice Award, in October.
Cary Fellman is working on a new book, memoir-ish prose this time, with one of her daughters as proofreader. She gave two readings in the spring and may have other opportunities coming up. Cary also has a poem in the Bard’s Chapbook, a fundraiser for the Hunger Task Force, “telling the truth about those who live on the streets.”
Tess Gallagher’s new collection, Is, Is Not, is now available (www,graywolfpress.org). She gave a reading at Dublin’s Books Upstairs in July. In October, Tess read at Whitman College, where she used to teach. Then she and Alice Derry, also a widowed poet, toured schools and universities in Michigan, on a grant from the Theodore Roethke Foundation, and read at Pelican Bay Books in Anacortes (WA). This month, Tess read at Eagle Harbor Bookstore and at Village Books (Bellingham).
Sandra M. Gilbert received the 2019 Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and Service from the Northern California Book Reviewers. Her latest poetry collection, Judgment Day (Norton), was published earlier this year.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg received an honorary doctorate in New York from the University of Buffalo and spoke at the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival. In September she was interviewed by NPR’s Nina Totenberg at a packed sports arena in Little Rock, AR and spoke at Meredith College in Raleigh,NC. She also officiated at a wedding in Chicago, gave an interview at Amherst College, spoke to supporters of Moment Magazine at the Yale Club in Manhattan, then spoke again at the Library of Congress (honoring Sandra Day O’Connor’s judicial legacy) before returning to work last month. In October she gave the inaugural Herma Hill Kay Memorial Lecture at UC Berkeley Law School, spoke at Georgetown Law, and won the Berggruen Prize for Culture and Philosophy, given annually to a “thinker whose ideas are shaping human self-understanding to advance humankind.” RBG announced that she would donate the prize money to charites and nonprofits. She’ll get a trophy at a private ceremony Dec. 16.
Patricia L. Goodman has almost completed a memoir in poetry about the horse business she and her late husband ran together—“full of hilarious stories, and it’s our story, too.” Next step will be finding a publisher. Her teaching partner at the Osher Institute for Lifelong Learning is traveling, so their writing course is on hiatus. Meanwhile, Pat’s singing with the OLLI chorus in Wilmington (DE), including several solos, with six performances scheduled before Christmas.
Florence Grende’s memoir, The Butcher’s Daughter, was shortlisted for thr 2019 Rubery Book Award. Florence gave a talk and reading in October at the Oregon Jewish Museum and Holocaust Center in Portland. One of her paintings was included in Sacramento’s Bold Expressions exhibit, Oct. 1-27.
Donna Hilbert has poems (from her manuscript-in-progress) “My Husband” and “We Don’t Believe in Rain” on the Sheila-Na-Gig blog: https://sheilanagigblog.com/the-poets-volume-4-1-fall-2019/ ; “Since” and “Dear Husband”’ in the Summer issue of Chiron Review; and “Buried” in Golden Streetcar. “Dear John Letter to my Uterus,” and “Once, Time,” appear in Is it Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over 40 Write on Aging (Social Justice Anthologies), forthcoming any day now from the publishing arm of the Beautiful Cadaver Project Pittsburgh. She’s still giving workshops and readings from Gravity.
Jacqueline Lapidus is still trying to find someone who can boost TWH sales by mentioning the anthology on prime-time TV, even though (she admits) she herself doesn’t watch it. Herpoem “Mourning” (from TWH) appears online in the Winter 2019 issue of Anti-Heroin Chic, which focuses on grief and loss: http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/mourning-by-jacqueline-lapidus. Her “Three Paintings by Tabitha Vevers,” accepted for the Winter 2019 issue of Persimmon Tree (featuring East Coast poets), will go live in mid-December: www.PersimmonTree.org
Iris Litt‘s partner of 25 years, retired sociologist Gerald (“Jerry”) Solk, died in mid-August. Iris writes that she misses him terribly and plans to stay this winter in Woodstock, where she has a good home health aide. One bright note amid the sorrow: Iris’s poem “Getting Older” will appear in Is it Hot in Here or Is It Just Me? Women Over 40 Write on Aging (Social Justice Anthologies, see above). Another poem,
“Plastika”, was accepted in August for the Proverse Poetry Prize 2019 anthology Mingled Voices 4, a periodical based in Hong Kong.
Lise Menn has sent almost all of her professional library to a research library in Ukraine, “a tremendous relief.” As a result of moments of clarity during her illness two years ago, and with partner Bruce Kawin’s help, she’s also preparing as much of her old research data as she can for a shared archive, so that other people can use it. Although it will take years to finish the job, Lise says, she’s really enjoying the process.
Pamela Manche Pearce was interviewed by Sharon Israel on “The Writer’s Voice” (Planet Poet–Words-in-Space, The Writers Voice WIOX Radio, then spoke and gave a reading at the NYC chapter of Soaring Spirits (widows and widowers sharing their experiences). Widowland was nominated for a Pushcart Prize, recommended by the US Review of Books, reviewed in Yellow Rabbits Review, (reprinted in Midwest Book Review), US Review of Books, Glass: A Journal of Poetry and The Highlands Current (with an article), and is a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. Now Pamela’s working on new projects, including revision of a novella, The Red Couch, and a memoir, Blue Crete, for future publication.
Helen Ruggieri read from her new book, Camping in the Galaxy, in August at Word Soup in Canandaigua, NY. She has two poems in the anthology Local News: Poetry about Small Towns from MWPH Books (Fairwater, WI), available from the publisher.
Natasha Sajé has a new web site and blog: https://natashasaje.com It includes a long, fascinating biography, recipes (she was a chef earlier in her life), and photos, along with information about her books. She’s still teaching at Westminster College in Salt Lake City and leading seasonal workshops at Vermont College in Montpelier. Last week, Natasha gave a local reading with Boston poet Robin Becker. Her memoir, Terroir: Essays on Otherness, comes out next year.
Aline Soules had two poems, “Gutting” and “Witching Hour” in The Galway Review last fall, and a brief essay, “Forever Dali,” in The Ekphrastic Review this past spring. Now her poem “Bullfrogs” has been published in Loon Magic and Other Night Sounds (https://www.outriderpress.net/publications.html).
Tammi Truax’s novel in verse, For to See the Elephant (Piscataqua Press) appeared on Amazon’s list of bestsellers in poetry for teens and young adults the morning after it came out and stayed there all through May. As Portsmouth (NH) poet laureate, Tammi read in June at the Book & Bar with her counterpart from Orlando, accompanied by the Beat Night Band. She’s been giving readings and talks at other bookstores, libraries and festivals in Maine, NH, Massachusetts and Connecticut throughout the summer and fall. And on her birthday, she landed a two-book contract with Oghma Creative Media for YA novels.
Phyllis Wax had three poems in the December 2018 issue and another in the June 2019 issue of JerryJazzMusician, an online magazine produced in Portland, OR. Read them at www.jerryjazzmusician.com She’s still “writing like mad, inspired by what our country and the world are going through.”