ALICE JAMES BOOKS FA L L
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INSIDE A Letter from Our Director
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New Books
2
Author Interview
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Nicole Cooley
News and Events
7
Young Writers on Campus
9
Donors
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The 2nd Annual Kinereth Gensler Awards Celebration Reading & Book Launch
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From the Cooperative Board
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Laura McCullough
The Alice Fund
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Our Interns
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An AJB Reunion
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Alice Asks
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Chad Sweeney
FALL
A lice J ames B ooks
N E W S L E T T E R Volume 15, Number 2
AJB STAFF Carey Salerno Executive Director
Julia Bouwsma
POETRY¬SINCE¬ Dear Friends: Happy late autumn to you; I trust this newsletter finds you in good health, well-rested—and perhaps traveled—from summer, and ready for new AJB books. The fall list is now upon us, and I hope you’re prepared for three spectacular and gorgeous collections by authors Chad Sweeney, Nicole Cooley, and Laura McCullough.
Managing Editor Editorial Assistant
Debra Norton Bookkeeper
COOPERATIVE BOARD MEMBERS Mihaela Moscaliuc, President Daniel Johnson, Vice President Laura McCullough, Treasurer Nicole Cooley, Secretary Catherine Barnett Joanna Fuhrman Ann Killough Anne Marie Macari Idra Novey Peter Waldor Ellen Doré Watson
INTERNS Shawn Callahan Emma Deans Samantha Ellis Melanie Frank James McCollum Kelsey E. Moore Front cover from Panic (01/2011) Image credit: “La Panique,” Julie Jalil Image of Alice James MS Am 1094 By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University
I also hope you will enjoy this newsletter from cover to cover, learn and get excited about our latest authors and their books, and read about what AJB is doing to raise our profile and promote our authors in the poetry community. This summer, as you can see in the photo, we had some visitors at AJB—36 young and talented writers from many different states (page 9). In May, we also had a wonderful afternoon at the 2nd Annual Kinereth Gensler Awards Reading & Book Launch—complete with delicious wine and cheese—at Poets House in New York City. The event was generously sponsored and highly enjoyed by all (see page 11 for more). We’re hoping to keep doing this event for our KGA winners/new board members each spring. And not only have we been working hard on all of this, but we debuted another updated AJB website, a new AJB totebag, which is made of recycled fabric and features our AJB watermark (page 8), and so much more.
Kelsey Lowe
Tara Gagnon
If you’re happy with what we’re doing, I encourage you to let us know. And to all who have sent handwritten notes on book orders or donation envelopes, acknowledging your happiness with the press’s initiatives, please know we’re so grateful for the feedback and that you are pleased. Thanks for taking the time to let us know we’re making an impact. Last, but certainly not least, autumn marks the commencement of our 2010-2011 Annual Appeal, and we’re hoping to make this our best year yet, capitalizing on the improvements and gains we made last year. Our Annual Appeal goal is set at $15,000, and we’re nearly half way there, so keep the contributions coming—thanks to all who have already given generously. With your continued support and friendship, there’s nothing we can’t accomplish. Yours in poetry,
Carey Salerno, Executive Director
NEW¬BOOKS
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Chad Sweeney is the author of two previous books of poetry, Arranging the Blaze (Anhinga, 2009) and An Architecture (BlazeVox, 2007), and five chapbooks, most recently The Lost Notebooks of Juan Sweeney (Forklift, 2010)—and he is cotranslator, from the Farsi, of The Selected Poems of H.E. Sayeh (White Pine, 2011). Sweeney’s poems have appeared widely, including in Best American Poetry 2008 and American Poetry Review. He is coeditor of Parthenon West Review and editor of the anthology, Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sounds (City Lights, 2009). Sweeney holds degrees from San Francisco State University and Oklahoma University and is a PhD candidate at Western Michigan University where he teaches poetry and serves as assistant editor of New Issues Press. He lives with his wife, poet Jennifer K. Sweeney, and their son, Liam.
The Hangman’s Swamp The hangman has a secret talent. He sings so sweetly the insects gather around him as their queen, the queen of legend with lunar eyes.
Jennifer K. Sweeney
The hangman didn’t want to become a hangman. He took a personality test in third grade and chose the best of three options. After work he hurries into the swamp. Dragonflies ride on the back of his voice. Scorpions sting themselves in ecstasy.
PARABLE OF HIDE AND SEEK September 2010
Chad Sweeney
Praise for Parable of Hide and Seek “The poems in Chad Sweeney’s new book view the world through strangely faceted eyes (perhaps those of a dragonfly?)—actually they behold it, and as such they display a dazzling Rumiesque ecstasy, one that holds the reader as rapt as the creator of these poems is held by Creation. At any rate he is a shaman presiding over—of all things—the wedding of simplicity and sophistication.” —Mary Ruefle “Chad Sweeney’s poems are matryoshka dolls of imagination: strangeness inside longing inside charm. Relentlessly figurative, they read as dreamscapes and translations: if the human soul has peripheral vision, these poems are what it sees. And gentleness, gentleness abounds here and makes the point of fancy to unite, to bring one thing beside another and build a home of their touch.” —Bob Hicok “What to reveal and what to keep hidden? Parable of Hide and Seek dis/solves the problem by complicating it, deliberately revealing the best of our secrets and hiding all that’s obvious in both gravity and lightness. These poems turn the world inside out. Full-throttle forest! Astronaut winging! Whose shadow is that with a heartbeat so crushing? Ready or not, Chad Sweeney!” —Matt Hart
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NEW¬BOOKS
Laura McCullough has three other collections of poems, Speech Acts, What Men Want, and The Dancing Bear, and two chapbooks, Women and Other Hostages and Elephant Anger. She has been a fellow in both prose and poetry for the NJ State Arts Council and has an MFA in fiction from Goddard College. Visit her online at www.lauramccullough.weebly.com.
What the Lifeguard Wrote
Michael Broek
That day, the metal held the heat and when the children’s bare feet slapped the surface, the skin crisped against it, and they fell sideways over the edge to the mulch’s obnoxious embrace, small prints left behind and smoking with residue. This happened not once, but three times, each time the child’s parents calling to complain and request a sign be put up. He wrote a warning on the inside of a pizza box and staked it to the closest tree, though all he recalls of the events before the drowning is how he walked around the pool asking if anyone had a pen, how one of the mothers lent him her lipstick to write the word WARNING both large and red and how satisfied he felt both aroused and indicted.
PANIC Laura McCullough
January 2011 Praise for Panic
“Laura McCullough’s Panic is a news broadcast from the edge—literally, the shoreline, the coast where New Jersey’s towns give onto open water, and figuratively, the nervous boundary of contemporary life, with its negligence and violence. McCullough seems to possess a sort of psychic hidden camera: a restless, obsessive eye looking deeper and deeper into occasions of disaster both personal and public. Somewhere between Edgar Lee Masters and C. P. Cavafy, these plain-spoken, character-filled poems will haunt readers with an unsettlingly familiar landscape: the swimming pools and boardwalks and shorelines of our darkest, most anxious American nights.” —Mark Doty
“Lovely and vigilant poems lay bare those seen and unseen forces that expose us again and again to our own mortality, to our daily yearning for beauty and grace. Embracing the narrative range of a novelist, Laura McCullough writes with the razored scrutiny of the fine poet she is, making Panic a timely and important book you simply must read.” —Andre Dubus III
NEW¬BOOKS
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Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. Her third book of poems, Breach, about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast, was published by LSU Press in April 2010. Her first book, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award and was published by LSU Press in 1996. Her second book, The Afflicted Girls (2004), was chosen as one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal. She also published a novel, Judy Garland, Ginger Love. She directs the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College—City University of New York and lives outside of New York City with her husband and two young daughters.
November 2010 Triage Sonnet The self I tried to stamp out will come back, but I don’t know it yet. And I don’t know what’s next, in this white room, the door just cracked open enough to admit each long, low moan from the next bed. Someone else’s pain floods the hall like light. Now, for once, I don’t write it down, don’t step outside myself, brain releasing body, my mind letting go of everything but thought. Instead, I’m here, at the edge of the corridor of dark, praying out loud to no one, no one near: after her birth, when I am split apart, let she and I be one, bodies pressed together like the pages of a book, unwritten, open forever.
MILK DRESS
Nicole Cooley
an interview with Nicole Cooley AJB recently asked Nicole Cooley some questions, and she was kind enought to humor us. In this interview, she gives us insight into her writing, her life, and her views on the state of contemporary poetry:
Alice James Books: Milk Dress seems to be, in many ways, a book of processes: the process of pregnancy, of motherhood, of coming to terms with the risk of danger and the unknown. What can you tell us about your process in writing this book, about its journey from manuscript to book? NICOLE COOLEY: My process of writing Milk Dress was one of interruption and fragments. I started writing the book when my first daughter, Meridian, was born in December 2000. By that I mean, I started throwing scraps of paper—envelopes, receipts, prescriptions, napkins—with pieces of language on them into a box, not trying to write a poem, just trying to get something down, as I entered the
strange and wonderful and difficult world of motherhood. In her essay, “A Wild Surmise: Motherhood and Poetry,” Alicia Ostriker had suggested that the first months of motherhood were a time for just recording. This liberated me—I am always looking for tricks to liberate me in my poems. I was teaching and I was taking care of my new baby. I couldn’t write a poem, but I could always write a fragment. AJB: Much of Milk Dress deals with the ways in which disaster (September 11th and Hurricane Katrina, specifically) influences one’s ideas about motherhood. Are there any references in the book that are specific to you? If so, will you please discuss how those experiences impacted your writing and ideas about writing? COOLEY: Yes, it was the two disasters I encountered in the early
Nancy Bareis
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AUTHOR¬INTERVIEW¬
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years of this century that changed all of this—my writing process, my relationship to language, and my self as a writer. I was living in NYC with my husband and baby daughter when 9/11 occurred, and four years later, when Hurricane Katrina devastated my native city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, I was a mother of two young daughters. During Katrina, my parents had remained in the city as it flooded. It strikes me now that my experience as a mother is defined by witnessing these disasters from afar. But perhaps more importantly, 9/11 and Katrina forever changed my relationship to poetry. I began to think about poetry very differently—to think about the kind of cultural work it could do in the world. AJB: Adrienne Rich says, “In order to live a fully human life we require not only control of our bodies (though control is a prerequisite); we must touch the unity and resonance of our physicality, our bond with the natural order, the corporeal grounds of our intelligence.” Does this statement resonate for you when considering the physicality inherent in the poems of Milk Dress? COOLEY: Milk Dress is a book about the body—the female body in particular. I was interested in writing about the languages used to talk about mothering and birthing and child-raising. I thought about this in structuring the book, for example. The poems about the Harry Harlow wire-mother experiments work as fragments that break and connect the other poems. I was very compelled by the scientific language of that experiment. AJB: How has your experience as a professor of writing (not to mention an administrator of a writing program) informed your own writing? COOLEY: My experience as a teacher has been crucial to the writing of my poems. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have co-founded an MFA program with my beloved colleagues at Queens College in 2007 and to be running that program with them now. Our program is truly a collaborative venture, one which has given all of us invaluable chances to talk about creative writing, pedagogy,
and the teaching of writing. I love teaching, and I love directing the MFA program. To me, it is all about risk and taking chances with your work, and what could be more fun? And more terrifying. I always tell my students: you should always be trying to write the poem you don’t think you can write, the poem you are afraid of writing. And I am trying to do that in my own work. AJB: Who and what are your influences? COOLEY: My greatest influence in Milk Dress is Muriel Rukeyser. I discovered her as an undergraduate, but her work has meant so much to me in my adult life beyond college. The Life of Poetry, her book on poetics, is fantastic, and all of her poems blend history and personal experience with a call for social justice. Her work is of the world in the very best way. Her long poem, “The Book of the Dead,” contains my favorite lines of all time: “What three things can never be done? / Forget. Be Silent. Stand alone.” AJB: Milk Dress and much of your work focus on specific subjects: pregnancy and motherhood in Milk Dress, the Salem witch trials in The Afflicted Girls, Hurricane Katrina in Breach, the personae poems of Resurrection. What is your process for cracking open a subject, for entering it and making it truly your own? And if research is involved, how do you then turn such research into something that sings?
“
O
h, fixed form is endlessly fascinating...most interesting to me when it is rebellious...
”
COOLEY: That is a very interesting question. I love research— as I discovered while getting my PhD—and in particular, I am interested in archival work. Many poems in my first book were, in their first incarnations, PhD seminar papers! AJB: Subject matter poetry can be a controversial topic for contemporary poets. What is your take on the benefits and risks inherent in writing toward a specific subject? COOLEY: But subject matter can only be a way into the work not the work itself. Otherwise the poem will become an exercise in “Isn’t that interesting?” I use subject matter to find a new language, to discover a new lexicon. In my book on the Salem Witch Trials, [this new lexicon] was the language of trial transcripts where most people could not sign their names and the courts spoke for them. In Milk Dress, I am interested in the language of mothering and the language of disaster and how those two discourses shape experiences.
AUTHOR¬INTERVIEW¬
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AJB: What is your personal experience with writing in received forms? COOLEY: Oh, fixed form is endlessly fascinating! I think it is most interesting to me when it is rebellious—as in, say, Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art,” that fabulous villanelle. Or in the work of Marilyn Hacker. In Milk Dress, I wanted to set received fixed forms alongside open prose-like forms, to show that there is no one single truth or way of getting at the truth of what I was writing about. AJB: There are so many different schools, movements, and monikers in the poetry world today. How do you position yourself within these? Are there any particular schools or styles to which you subscribe? COOLEY: In terms of schools of poetry, I follow my other favorite poet, CD Wright, in her book, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil, when she writes, “There is not much poetry from which I feel barred, whether it is arcane or open in the extreme. I attempt to run the gamut...” I think it is important to read poems you don’t love—even poems you hate—not just work you are immediately drawn to. AJB: Milk Dress is your fourth published poetry collection, and you have published a novel as well. How do you feel your writing has evolved over the years? Where do you see it going? COOLEY: My writing has evolved since my first book, Resurrection, was published in 1996. I go back to what Frank Bidart says in an interview at the back of his book In the Western Night. He talks about “finding the necessary subject for me at that time.” I think we are all doing that, at every moment we are writing, finding that subject matter that we need now. And it is always changing. After I wrote The Afflicted Girls, my book about Salem, I thought, “What will it be like to return to more personal subject matter now, and see how it is inflected by this work on history I’ve done?” I wanted to challenge myself, as I do with each book I write, to write something different, to push myself in a new direction. AJB: What do you think the future holds for emerging poets, and poetry, in this country? What do we have to look forward to? COOLEY: I believe it’s a great time for American poetry. I have a lot of hope for its future and believe that the internet, the growth of MFA programs, and all the magazines out there are wonderful! I often hear all of those things disparaged, as if we could return to some kind of pure poetry. I don’t believe that at all. More and more, I think we are discovering the ways in which poetry can become a larger part of the world and how much we need poetry to be citizens of that world.
Congratulations to our 2010 Kundiman Poetry Prize Winner
Janine Oshiro for her book
Pier forthcoming from AJB in fall 2011 The next contest deadline is February 11th, 2011. Visit www.kundiman.org or our website for details & guidelines.
THE 2011 BEATRICE HAWLEY AWARD Open to emerging and established poets residing in the United States for an unpublished, book-length manuscript of poems ~ The winner recieves $2000, publication, and distribution through Consortium ~ Submission deadline is December 1st, 2010 ~ For complete guidelines or to submit your manuscript electronically, please visit our website: www.alicejamesbooks.org
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NEWS¬AND¬EVENTS
Kazim Ali read at Austin Peay State University with Brett Eugene Ralph on September 23rd; at the Cleveland Botanical Gardens with Michael Dumanis, Ilya Kaminsky, Erika Meitner, and Phil Metres on October 3rd; at the University of Michigan on October 7th; at Park University on October 20th; and at West Village, Manhattan on October 29th. He will be reading at the University of Wyoming on November 12th and 13th; in Seattle, Washington with Sarah Vap on November 18th; at the Newport Visual Arts Center with novelist Naseem Rakha on November 20th; at St. Johns Booksellers in Portland, Orgeon on November 21st; and at the New School in NYC with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon on November 30th. Robin Becker visited the following Penn State campuses as the 2010-11 Penn State Laureate: Western Campuses, including Beaver, Greater Allegheny, New Kensington, and Fayette (September 28-October 1); Eastern Campuses, including Brandywine, Abington, Berks, and Lehigh Valley (October 2529); and Southeastern Campuses, including York, Harrisburg, Hershey Medical School, and Mont Alto (November 8-12). At each, she attended a writing or literature class, gave a poetry reading, and met with alumni. She will read at the Penn State Forum on January 14, 2011, and also in the Mary Rolling Series on April 30th; both take place at University Park in Pennsylvania. Her weekly video series, The Poet’s Perspective, will air on Penn State Live beginning in August 2010, and will run through May 2011. She received the 2010 Shestack Award from American Poetry Review for ten poems published the previous year. Cindy Cruz will be the Hodder Fellow in Poetry at Princeton University from fall 2010fall 2011. She was a featured reader at The New Yorker Festival on October 3; she read at Princeton University on October 6th; and read in Sante Fe, New Mexico on October 14th. She will be reading with Tyehimba Jess on November 16th as part of the reading series at Rutgers Newark Master of Fine Arts Program. Deborah DeNicola was a finalist in Nimrod’s Pablo Neruda Poetry Contest, and she will have two poems in their forthcoming issue. Recent poetry has appeared in Melusine Online, Umbrella Online, Lunarosity, New Millenium Journal, and Tiferet. Deborah’s award winning analytical essay, on a poem from Paul Hoover and published in Packingtown Review, is available on her site. Her website for editing and Dream Image Work is www.intuitivegateways.com. Her new book, Original Human, is forthcoming in December from WordTech Communications. The Future That Brought Her Here: Memoir of a Call to Awaken came out from Nicholas Hays Inc/Ibis Press in September, 2009, and hit #1 on Amazon in the category of Psychology and Social Science. Joanna Fuhrman has poems in the current issues of Ping Pong, The Brooklyn Rail, and Quarterly West, as well as online at trickhouse.org and paperbagazine. com. She will read on November 14th at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago. Her poem “Stagflation” (from Pageant, AJB, 2009) won a Pushcart Prize, and will be included in a 2011 Pushcart anthology. She will read on March 25, 2011, at the Plan II 75th anniversary reading at the University of Texas. Henrietta Goodman’s poem, “Hungry Moon,” is forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review. Marie Harris’s The Girls Who Heard Colors a picture book, is forthcoming in 2011 or 2012 (Penguin). Lesle Lewis recently had or will have poems in Congeries, Ying Yang, Notnostrums, Talking River, and Tygerburning. She recently read at New England College. Alessandra Lynch’s work is forthcoming from Ploughshares. Recent poems were published in 5 A.M. and Greensboro Review. Her poem “Carousel” (from It Was a Terrible
Cloud at Twilight) will be included in the anthology, New Hungers from Old: One-hundred Years of Italian-American Poetry (Star Cloud Press, forthcoming, 2011). She presented a poetry craft session at the 2010 Indiana Gathering of Writers in October. Alice Mattison’s short memoir, “Three Bartlett Pears,” appeared in the Summer issue of The Threepenny Review. Her literary essay, “What Killed The Queen? And Other Uncertainties that Keep a Reader Reading,” is forthcoming from The Writer’s Chronicle. Shara McCallum’s This Strange Land is forthcoming in April 2011 from AJB. She has a panel presentation and reading scheduled for the Americas Society Conference on November 17th and 18th, as part of their Symposium on Bob Marley. She will read on November 20th at The Forum Poetry Festival in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She will also be at AWP in February, 2011, where she may take part in a panel discussion. Laura McCullough’s Speech Acts was published in September (Black Lawrence Press). In the spring of 2010, her chapbook, which placed second for the Flip Kelly Award, was published (Amsterdam Press). Her essay, “The Chapbooks of Tony Hoagland,” alongside her interview with the author, will appear in New South this fall. Her interview with novelist Andre Dubus III appear ed in The Writer’s Chronicle. Her review of Tony Hoagland’s new book appeared in The American Poetry Review. She is editing an anthology of essays by contemporary writers on the work of Stephen Dunn. Laura read in The Dodge Poetry Festival, and she will teach a poetry workshop at the Peter Murphy Winter Poetry and Prose Conference in Cape May, New Jersey, on Martin Luther King weekend. Jane Mead’s new poems are in Poetry, Passages North, Inscriptions of the Seizure State, and Margie. Mihaela Moscaliuc will visit classes in St. Thomas, US Virigin Islands, and will read at The Forum Poetry Festival, which runs November 18-21, 2010. She will also read on February 8, 2011, at the Stadler Center, Bucknell University. Idra Novey has poems forthcoming in Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, and in the anthology Love Rise Up. She also has two books of translations forthcoming—a volume of poems by the Brazilian writer Manoel de Barros, Birds for a Demolition, and a novel by the Argentine writer Emilio Lascano Tegui, On Elegance While Sleeping. She was on The Leonard Lopate Show on NPR; she read on July 15th for the Academy of American Poets Poetry on the Rooftops Series; and on October 4th for the Words Works Reading series in Washington, DC. In April 2011 she will participate in the Princeton Poetry Festival, organized by Paul Muldoon. Lia Purpura’s poem, “Net,” is in the May 5, 2010 issue of The New Republic. A collection of essays is forthcoming (Sarabande Books, 2012). Her essay, “Verb,” was featured online in October in The New York Times Magazine’s “On Language” column. She won a Pushcart Prize for her essay in Orion, “On Coming Back as a Buzzard.” She will read and will host a panel at the Nonfiction Now Conference in Iowa City in November. In January she will be the Writer in Residence at The Santa Catalina School in California. On April 5, 2011, she will read at Austin Peay University. Donald Revell has just completed a new translation of Jules Laforgue’s Derniers Vers, to be published by Omnidawn. His own most recent poems have appeared in The Harvard Advocate, Poetry, American Poetry Review, and The Nation. On March 2nd and 3rd, 2011, he will speak and read at the University of Richmond, in a program entitled “Faith and Pilgrimage.”
NEWS¬AND¬EVENTS¬
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Willa Schneberg’s work will appear in the forthcoming anthology, “Knocking at the Door: Approaching the Other.” She facilitated a workshop in October at the Write on the Sound Writers’ Conference in Edmonds, Washington. Adrienne Su’s poems are forthcoming in Northwest Review and Asian American Literary Review. Chad Sweeney read as a part of the Wellspring Literary Series in Michigan on October 11th; at the Kalamazoo Public Library, also in Michigan, on October 14th; at Brookdale College in New Jersey on October 20th (bilingual reading) and 21st (subtropics magazine reading) at the ALTA conference in Philadelphia; and at Moonstone Arts Center, Philadelphia, on October 22nd. Chad will be reading at Moe’s Books in Berkeley, California on November 4th; at Sacramento State University in California on November 5th; at the Felix Kulpa Gallery in Santa Cruz, California on November 7th, at the Fire Café in Michigan on November 18th; and at Kalamazoo College on January 20th. Cole Swensen recently collaborated with the visual artist Thomas Nozkowski, Yale Gallery of Art, to produce Flare (fall, 2009). Upcoming projects: Greensward (Ugly Duckling Press, 2010) and Noise That Stays Noise, a collection of essays (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming, 2011). Ellen Doré Watson received a fellowship to the MacDowell Colony and the Zoland Poetry Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center (July and August 2010, respectively). Her poems have recently appeared in American Poetry Review and Green Mountains Review. Her fourth full-length book, Dogged Hearts was published with an accompanying audio book in September (Tupelo Press). This fall, she has given readings at Smith College, the Concord Poetry Center, and Suffolk University, and in January she will read during the MFA residency at Drew University, where she teaches poetry and translation.
Attention Alices DON’T SEE YOUR NEWS LISTED BUT HAVE SOME YOU WANT TO SHARE?
Be sure you’re included in the Spring 2011 Newsletter by contacting the AJB office today. WRITE TO US
ajb@alicejamesbooks.org OR CALL
(207) 778-7071 We want to hear from you!
Coming spring 2011 lie down too Lesle Lewis Available in April
This Strange Land Shara McCallum Available in April
Heart First into the Forest Stacy Gnall Available in May
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DONORS YOUNG¬WRITERS¬ON¬CAMPUS
Kelsey Lowe
This summer, AJB was a proud sponsor and participant in the inaugural Longfellow Mountains Young Writers Workshop at the University of Maine at Farmington...
AJB’s director teaching her A.M. poetry workshop.
A happy writer...published!
AJB staff teach students one-on-one about binding their workshop chapbook.
AJB APPLAUDS THESE HIGHLY CREATIVE YOUNG WRITERS.
Kelsey Lowe
The Longfellow students also participated in a tour and chapbook construction project at the AJB office, learning about publishing, formatting documents in InDesign, making last minute corrections, and putting putting togethert their own lasting impression of everyone’s written accomplishments during their time on campus.
Kelsey Lowe
Approximately thirty-five high school students from New England and the Tri-State area attended this intensive, week-long session— workshopping poetry, fiction, and nonfiction in the mornings, attending craft lectures in the afternoons, and gaining inspiration at featured readings by faculty and guest writers each evening at The Landing.
their work is fascinating and strong. we can’t wait for the rest of the world to someday read them too!
DONORS
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AJB THANKS THE FOLLOWING INDIVIDUALS FOR THEIR GENEROUS CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE PRESS FROM 2009 TO PRESENT*
I The Frank M. Barnard Founda on Franklin Savings Bank The Na onal Endowment for the Arts Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Theo Kalikow Nancy Lagomarsino Alice Ma son
S : $75-$149 Anonymous S : $2500 M
Robert Bense Anonymous Julia Bouwsma and Walker Fleming Anonymous Bob Brooks David Harvey Hugh Coyle and Maynard Yost Beverly Davis P : $1000-$2499 Carl Dennis Celia Gilbert Jeannine Dobbs Anne Marie Macari Laura Edwards Peter Waldor Forrest Gander Patricia Gibbons B
: $500-$999 Hugh Hennedy Ma hea Harvey Alice Jones Gloria Robinson James Joslin Mary and William Joslin D : $250-$499 Ann Knox Kazim Ali Lesle Lewis Catherine Barne James Longenbach Joan Joe Hall Diane Macari Laura McCullough and Michael Broeck Shara McCallum Nina Nyhart Jane Mead Dorothy Robinson Mihaela Moscaliuc Marc Waldor Idra Novey Jean-Paul Pecqueur C : $150-$249 Joyce Pesero Robert Ellis Donald Revell and Claudia Keelan Harriet Feinberg Bill Roorbach Joan and David Grubin Beverly Salerno
Carey and Dan Salerno Lisa Sewell Sue Standing Mary Szybist Thomson-Shore, Inc. Rita Waldor Eleanor Wilner R : $1-$74 Tom Absher Kathleen Aguero Elizabeth Ahl Mary Anderson Lewis Ashman Suzanne Berger Cliord Bernier George Blecher Henry Braun Lisa Breger Ann Browning Nancy Bryan Susan Calabrese Mary Beth Caseiro Ronald Cohen MaryLisa DeDomenicis Deborah DeNicola Amy Dryansky Denise Duhamel Lynn Emanuel Presco Evarts, Jr. Mary Feeney Rebecca Gambito Sarah Gambito
Dobby Gibson Renee and Robert Gibson Mimi Gilpin Michael Glaser Anna Goldman Marilyn Greenberg Jim Haba Rhonda Hacker Therese Halscheid Marie Harris Penny Harter Beata Hayton Sarah Heller Judy Hendren Angela Hicks Nancy Jean Hill Maurice Hirsch Michele Anne Jaquays Daniel Johnson Ronald Karr Lisa Kershner Ann Knox Joan Larkin Evelyn Lauchenauer Ruth Lepson Colleen Lineberry Richard McCann Julianna McCarthy Margare a Jill McKay Helena Minton April Ossmann Judith Pacht Suzanne Parker
Jean-Paul Pecqueur Shelli-Jo Pelle er Joyce Pesero Carol Po er Newton Press Mike Puican Lia Purpura Ruth Ann Quick Susan Raby-Dunne David Radavich Bill Rasmovicz Carlos Reyes John Rippey Janet Robinson Kimberley Ann Rogers Beth Ann Royer Betsy Sholl Jody Stewart Allen Strous Adrienne Su Terese Svoboda Alice Taylor Mona Toscano Cliord Tyler Ellen DorÊ Watson Florence Weinberger Jennifer Whitaker Dara Wier Mary Sherman Willis Ken and Lois Wisman Marilyn Zuckerman
*If you do not see your name listed but have donated to AJB or have found an inaccuracy, please accept our apologies and no fy us right away by calling or emailing. AJB makes every eort to keep this list current and accurate up to the me of publica on.
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2nd annual kinereth gensler awards
On Saturday, May 8th 2010, at Poets House in New York, AJB hosted
Valentin Moscaliuc
Valentin Moscaliuc
our 2nd Annual Kinereth Gensler Awards Celebration Reading & Book Launch. The event featured readings from our 2008 KGA winners Mihaela Moscaliuc, Joanna Fuhrman, and Daniel Johnson, and guest readings by AJB authors Catherine Barnett, Anne Marie Macari, and Jean Valentine. We raised just over $1,000 at this event for Alice James Books!
Guests peek at AJB books and other goodies at our table.
Derek Young
Mihaela Moscaliuc reads from her collection collection, Father Dirt. Dirt
Derek Young
Anne Marie Macari signs her book, Gloryland.
Derek Young
Derek Young
Joanna Fuhrman talks poetry with party guests.
Catherine Barnett works the Ravenswood wine bar and chats.
Laura McCullough jokes with Michael Waters.
Many thanks to our two photographers, Valentin Moscaliuc and Derek Young, for their beautiful work and for donating their time and talent to AJB for this event.
celebration reading & book launch
Derek Young
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Valentin Moscaliuc
Carey Salerno and Joan Larkin catch up at the busy AJB book table.
Derek Young
Peter Waldor lets down his guard while Jean Valentine steals a strawberry.
Derek Young
Poets cleaning up after poets!
Derek Young
Derek Young
Daniel Johnson lends an ear after his stunning multi-media performance.
Carey Salerno talks with Daniel Gensler about Kinereth and the state of the press.
Daniel Gensler, with wife Miriam, sports an AJB tote.
Our KGA event was made possible by a special paid arrangement with Poets House (a huge thanks to all their lovely staff) and by the partnership of our incredibly generous sponsors. AJB thanks and acknowledges: Mihaela Moscaliuc & Michael Waters www.ravenswoodwinery.com
www.flowersbycaroleny.com 257 York Hill Road New Sharon, ME 04955 (207) 778-9741
100 Morris Avenue Springfield, NJ 07081 (973) 346-8400
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FROM¬THE¬COOPERATIVE¬BOARD
Fundraising: more fun than you think T
o some unfamiliar with the territory of fundraising, the word alone can sound like torture, yet, when I became a Cooperative Board member and an Alice, I knew two things: 1) I wanted to find ways to contribute to the financial health of the press, and 2) one thing I enjoy is a good reading and a party. When I found out AJB author Reginald Dwayne Betts was going to be in town to read, I invited him to stay at my house and asked him to be the guest poet for a fundraising reading/brunch too.
If you don’t yet know Dwayne or his work, you should. His new book, Shahid Reads His Own Palm (AJB, May 2010), was published just after his memoir, A Question of Freedom: A Memoir of Learning, Survival, and Coming of Age in Prison (Avery/ Penguin, 2009), and both books examine Dwayne’s experience as a youth in adult prison. So, when my community college needed a speaker to engage our more disenfranchised students, I immediately thought of Dwayne. He agreed to speak to students on Friday night and then join friends, faculty, local merchants (books stores, galleries), local teachers at high schools, and local writers for an AJB fundraising brunch the next day to listen to Dwayne read and talk. Not only did our local students benefit (Dwayne’s story is inspirational), but we raised awareness and money for the press, as all guests at the brunch made suggested donations.
Several attendees have now expressed interest in coming to more AJB “poetry parties,” and some want to bring Dwayne to read at their schools—how energizing! I held another AJB poetry party in October, which featured poets Chad Sweeney and Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno. AJB authors read in my home as a donation to AJB, and those that attend give a suggested donation and enjoy the company of our very fine poets. I hope to extend invitations to such events to more and more people. Perhaps over time, we’ll hold the events in local cafes or restaurants in town. For now, I’m happy to welcome poets and friends into my home, and though this means the number we can invite is limited, it also keeps the party exclusive and intimate. We keep it real. A poetry party. All proceeds benefit current and future AJB poets. It’s the writing life. Good books being born. And as a new AJB board member, I’m making new friends as well!
—Laura McCullough
Laura McCullough and Reginald Dwayne Betts embrace outside Laura’s home where the fundraising brunch was held on July 30th, 2010. Twenty-seven people attended the event, and together, raised over $350 for the Press. Our deepest appreciation and thanks to Laura, Dwayne, and all who attended the event and gave so generously to AJB.
Throw Your Own AJB Party! We agree—Laura’s work is inspiring. If you would like to know about upcoming fundraising events, or if you are interested in hosting your own, please contact the AJB office. We’ll be happy to advise and provide everything you need to throw your own AJB poetry party.
THE¬ALICE¬FUND¬
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About The Alice Fund The Alice Fund’s mission is to ensure the long term financial stability and realization of strategic goals of Alice James Books. The press is wholly committed to investing the vast majority of any “profits” or “gains” from a given fiscal year directly into The Alice Fund. Though many donors choose to give to both, funds raised for The Alice Fund and our Annual Fundraising Appeal remain separate from each other.
stay alive. “ Just That’s all I ask. ”
—Jane Kenyon on AJB in 1994
About Our Strategic Goals
Fund Management Policy Each year up to 5% of the fund may be distributed to our cash reserve/contingency portion of The Alice Fund to Alice James Books as income for ordinary operations, or for special projects.
Fund Investment Policy Our investment policy is decidedly conservative. AJB currently distributes funds evenly between cash (for contingency/quasi-endowment use), CDs, and moderate growth mutual funds.
All nonprofits plan for growth and aspire toward greatness. Here’s what the Alice James Cooperative Board is committed to: • Hiring more full-time marketing, publicity, and development personnel. • Publishing up to 8 titles per year, including the AJB anthology, books from our new annual publication prize for an Asian American poet, and the AJB Translation Series. • Continuing to publish emerging and established poets. • Accelerating the growth of The Alice Fund.
THE ALICE FUND
...preserving the legacy of
AJB’s deepest thanks for the gifts made to The Alice Fund by the following founding contributors
:
Alice • Anonymous • David and Margarete Harvey • Rita Waldor
Henry • Financial Benefits Research Group
William • Brown & Brown Insurance • Anne Marie Macari • Valley National Bank • Peter Waldor
Robertson • Consortium Book Sales and Distribution • Katherine and Joseph Macari • Privett Special Risk Services • United States Fire Insurance Company
Wilky • Anonymous • Bernstein Global Wealth Management • Lee Briccetti • Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno and David Bonanno • Chubb Group • Carmela Ciurarru • Beverly Davis • Christina Davis • Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company • Franklin Savings Bank Farmington Branch • Peter Gelwarg • Joan Joffe Hall • Jan Heller • Philip Kahn • Ann Killough • Nancy Lagomarsino • Ruth Lepson • Lesle Lewis • Diane Macari • Jane Mead • Idra Novey • April Ossmann • Jean-Paul Pecqueur • Bill Rasmovicz • Lawrence Rosenberg • Carey Salerno • Thomson-Shore
A lice J ames B ooks
7HAT S¬YOUR¬LEGACY¬LEVEL Alice $10,000 or more Henry up to $10,000
William up to $5,000
Robertson up to $1,000 Wilky up to $500
• Jeneva & Roger Stone • Lisa Sherman & Martin Stone • Marla Vogel
Your gift to The Alice Fund
Make a Lasting Impression:
Call us to discuss this opportunity to give the gift of preservation.
may come in many forms. You may give a one-time gift, set up annual contributions, make a gift on a loved one’s or friend’s behalf, or write a plan for Alice James Books right into your estate. Gifts may even be made in stocks or bonds, or you may also wish to consider individual or corporate sponsorship and matching opportunities. However you choose to give, poetry salutes and appreciates your conscientious efforts to preserve this great art, and Alice James becomes your life-long friend.
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OUR¬INTERNS S C is a sophomore Creative Writing major at UMF who, when not creatively writing, enjoys playing and writing music in his spare time (if he has any). He plays four different instruments: the guitar, mandolin, Irish bouzouki, and trombone.
E D is a senior Creative Writing major at UMF and captain of the field hockey team. She spent a semester on exchange at Humboldt State University in northern California, a semester at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, and took a photojournalism course in England and Spain. She enjoys traveling, the outdoors, dogs, and creative nonfiction.
S E is a junior and a Creative Writing major at UMF. Aside from her classes and this internship, this fall she is also volunteering at the Franklin County Animal Shelter. In the spring, she plans to study abroad in France. In her free time she enjoys writing, reading, and singing. She is also a very obsessed Harry Potter fan.
OURÂŹINTERNS
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M F knew she wanted to go to UMF while she was still in the 7th grade. She’s an avid reader and writer of poetry and ďŹ ction. Her favorite pastimes include anything that gets her imagination running. Her friends occasionally visit her just to browse her wide selection of books, and she couldn’t be happier about it.
K E. M is a second year Creative Writing major at UMF from Avon, Connecticut. When she is not at AJB, she is generally dabbling with water colors, drinking her signature raspberry tea, and trying to bake a perfect tart. After graduation, she intends to travel and attend grad school to work on her MFA Someday she hopes to open her own book store or tea house, grow a prize-winning pumpkin, and learn to do cartwheels.
J M C is a senior at UMF, working towards a BFA in Creative Writing and Mathematics. He hopes to go down south or out west next year to study math at graduate school and to enjoy a change in scenery. He loves writing, music, typography, and a well-played game of jarts.
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AN¬!*"¬REUNION¬ On a beautiful afternoon in September, Suzanne Matson and Joseph Donnellan hosted a reunion potluck
From left to right are Alices: Daniel Johnson, Carey Salerno, Marie Harris, Helena Minton, Christina Davis, Doug Anderson, Sue Standing, Ruth Lepson, Kathi Aguero, Suzanne Matson, and Oscar—the dashing poodle.
C. Salerno
C. Salerno
for Boston-area Alices. Everyone brought a dish to share along with their many fond AJB memories. We ate well, shared in our love for poetry, reminisced about the Press’s time in Cambridge, and saw some new and familiar faces.
Daniel Johnson signs his book, How to Catch a Falling Knife, for Suzanne Matson.
C. Salerno
C. Salerno
Doug Anderson and Ruth Lepson catch up at this year’s reunion potluck.
Christina Davis and Kathi Aguero smile and proudly sport their “Best Friend” AJB buttons.
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alice asks... Chad Sweeney Alice James Books: First, congratulations on being a new father! What have you
AJB: What was
learned since the birth of your son, Liam?
your all time best
CHAD SWEENEY: In a matter of weeks this past spring, my father passed away
Halloween costume? CS:
releasing shocks of grief and joy. Even my eyes were sad, as if the light were sifted
Princess Chadwina
through a curtain between life and death. But that sadness evolved into a nearly
I
unbearable compassion for the temporary nature of living things, including stones
Spanish in San
and ants and clouds. I’ll never recover from either event.
Francisco, and my
Conehead was
teaching
my third-graders could accept that I was an alien and a hairy-legged princess, AJB: What can you tell us about your alter ego, Juan Sweeney? CS: Well, Juan Sweeney is my ancient Irish-Spanish ancestor, a mad troubadour
but they refused to believe that a conehead could speak Spanish. “It’s just not possible,” they said.
poet who possesses me from time to time. I’ve translated a collection of his poems from the “Lost Notebooks” which disappeared in the 13th Century but were later discovered in the walls of Sweeney Castle. Juan loves it when the bull
AJB: Do you have any secret artistic influences that you hesitate to admit? CS: Yes, but I hesitate to admit them: Bruce Lee, Jimmy Carter, and Oz.
kills the matador, as the saying goes. He gets me into trouble within minutes AJB: Where’s the best place to eat in Kalamazoo?
of his arrival.
CS: Our house, definitely, and if you’re in town, please give us a call. We cook AJB: What’s your favorite musical instrument, and why? CS: The forest. Its sounds are different depending on where you stand. When
with organic vegetables and Amish bread from the Farmer’s Market, and we have a lovely front porch to sit on late into the night.
a forest is played by snow...ah...or summer, or the silence of deer! I love a good birch grove at dusk when the swallows are weaving for insects. My second favorite instrument is a construction site, for obvious reasons.
AJB: What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you in public? CS: At the Best American Poetry book release in California, I was reading for a frighteningly large crowd when an infant girl suddenly began to wail. It was
AJB: What’s the worst movie you’ve ever seen?
obvious to everyone that she was criticizing my poem for its excessive pathos
CS: George Bush’s second election, believe it or not, was even worse than the
and awkward prosody. She was right, of course, so I apologized to her, then
first one, though many of the same actors and all the same producers were
began the poem again, incorporating her suggestions—to which she stopped
involved.
crying at once.
AJB: If you could pick any historical period to live in other than this one, which
AJB: What would AJB find if we looked under your bed?
would it be and why? nd
CS: The mid-22 Century was a good period, the Tibetan Renaissance and so
CS: You’d find my wife and me. We prefer to sleep there in case someone breaks into the house—we’ll already be hidden and have no need to wake up.
forth, and the Floating Island poetics which added new verb tenses and polyglot harmonics. And the shoes! Imagine climbing a ladder in shoes like that!
AJB: We ask this of everyone: if you could have a conversation with any deceased poet, who would you choose?
AJB: Both you and your wife are poets. Have you ever stolen a line from her, or vice versa? CS: I do love Jennifer’s poems, and we’re so often together, sharing experiences,
CS: Well, I’m in touch with several already, but the one who refuses to take my calls is Milton. After Milton went blind his daughter read to him, which I find astonishingly tender. With an imagination as vast as his, I’ve always wondered
but fortunately our poetry seldom overlaps, as she tends to write about what
what his daughter’s voice must have looked like, fluttering around in the vaulted
happened, and I write about what didn’t happen.
dome of that great blindness.
Jennifer K. Sweeney
and my son, Liam Greenleaf, was born. The two events were like an earthquake
Alice James Books "EGIN¬9OUR¬3TANDING¬/RDER¬4ODAY
When you choose a standing order, AJB will automa cally mail you each new book we publish (6 books a year), so you’re guaranteed not to miss a tle. The cost is $85/year (two seasons of books, including shipping)—that’s about 50% off the cover price! Take advantage of this great offer now. Call us at 207-778-7071, email ajb@alicejamesbooks.org, or visit our website to enroll. WWW
. A L I C E J A M E S B O O K S . O RG
AN¬AFFILIATE¬OF¬THE¬5NIVERSITY¬OF¬-AINE¬AT¬&ARMINGTON