Summer 2025 TWH Contributors’ Newsletter
This was going to be a spring mailing, but your editors got distracted by the same things
you did: accidents, books, chores, events, family, headlines, medicalia, politics,
readings, sick days, traveling, writing, etc. So, it’s Summer. Probably the last newsletter
(I know, I said that last time). Thanks to all who sent updates and warm wishes to all.
T.J. Banks has been publishing fiction, mostly about cats. Her latest is Moonlight &
Grace (Booklocker.com), available from her directly as well as from the usual giants.
Booklocker also took on her earlier novels, Houdini, Catsong, and A Time for Shadows.
Roselee Blooston’s Including the Periphery (Apprentice House), a book of personal
essays, launches Sept. 30. Pre-order from Bookshop.org, the big guys online, or locally.
Susanne Braham spent almost two months visiting family in L.A., seeing (and smelling)
wildfires but fortunately not in their path. Now she’s mulling how to preserve and publish
her grandfather’s biography—and “training” a new cochlear implant.
Gail Comorat has two poems in Summerset Review (Fall ’24), three in Canary, one in
Willawaw Journal (Spring ’25), and more forthcoming, amid various vacation trips.
Mary Pacifico Curtis has three poems in MatterMonthly.com (March ‘25), a journal of
political poetry and commentary.
Jessica deKoninck read at Puffin Cultural Forum in February, then with six women
(Terrapin poets) attending AWP, off-site in L.A.; at local festivals in April and May, and
on Zoom with poets from What the House Knows (Terrapin 2025) and Midwest Review
(Oct. ‘24 issue). She has poems in Image, Lips, Tofu Ink, and New Jersey Poets, and a
reading Sept. 29 at the duCret Center of Art, Plainfield (NJ).
Sandra M. Gilbert died Nov.10, 2024, at 87. The New York Times and many other
periodicals published obituaries honoring her life as poet, teacher, feminist, and
advocate for women neglected in life and/or literature. A memorial gathering, April 5 at
the Berkeley City Club, was livestreamed for guests attending remotely. (I couldn’t.)
Donna Hilbert’s new collection, Enormous Blue Umbrella (Moon Tide Press), launched
in January. She’s been signing copies at bookstores and AWP and giving readings and
workshops. She has new poems in periodicals and she’s “painting” with her iPhone.
Jacqueline Lapidus has given up on her book-length ms of old poems—but not on
you! She’s decluttering, seeing old friends, and kvetching about inequities and injustice.
Lise Menn, far more adventurous, went snorkeling in warm waters, flew to Norway to
see the Northern Lights and to Hawai’i for volcanoes, which erupted just after she left.
Pat Savage is working on a children’s book about the primatologist Jane Goodall—in
England, assisted by her granddaughters! Pat’s African Dreams is due out this fall.
Ellen Steinbaum read at the Grolier Poetry Bookshop in Cambridge, Mass., with three
other notable poets, on December 4, ‘24. The historic bookshop is being kept open by
its late owner’s family and generous donors.
Tammi Truax has just been named National Beat Poet Laureate for 2025-26 and
scheduled to read at the three-day National/International Beat Poetry Festival, Labor
Day weekend in Barkhamstead, CT. Full schedule and further info from the Events
menu at nationalbeatpoetryfoundation.org, or nbpf15@gmail.com.
More new books, just out and forthcoming:
Pat Savage’s African Dreams is circulating (see her Facebook page and NH bookstores)
Barbara Crooker’s new book of poems, Absence, will be published by Fernwood Press early in 2027. Blurbers include James Crews and Jacqueline Lapidus.
Jessica deKoninck, who moved across the Hudson to New York last year, is traveling in Australia now (Jan. ’26) where the temperatures are often 100+F.
Several contributors have poems in periodicals–applause to all!