Alice James Books - Spring 2014 Newsletter

A l i c e J a m es B o o k s

Spring 2014

INSIDE From

Director’s Desk

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New Titles

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Author Interview Jane Mead

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News

Events

7

AJB at AWP 2014

Donors

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the

and

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2014 Celia Gilbert Fellow 11 The Alice Fund

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AJB Word Scramble

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Alice Asks Cathy Lihn Che

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spring n e w s l e t t e r

A lice J ames B ooks

2014

Volume 19, Number 1

AJB STAFF Carey Salerno

Executive Director Alyssa Neptune

Managing Editor Nicole Wakefield Editorial Assistant Debra Norton

Bookkeeper

editorial BOARD MEMBERS Tamiko Beyer, President & Clerk Sally Wen Mao, Treasurer Angelo Nikolopoulos, Secretary Michael Broek Jan Heller Levi Matthew Pennock Catherine Barnett, Alice Emeritus Anne Marie Macari, Alice Emeritus Ellen Doré Watson, Alice Emeritus

INTERNS Kara Chiasson Kyle Manning Kellsey Metzger Hunter Rowell Molly Cavanaugh Mariah Haggan Front cover from Mad Honey Symposium (4/2014) Image credit: “Secret Jungle,” Angie Wang

Dear Friends, We’ve had a very long and productive winter at the press; I think being snowed in so much in our beautiful new space has been inspiring, even if it’s seemed somewhat relentless this year.

We’ve put the final touches on our amazing spring titles: Money Money Money | Water Water Water by Jane Mead, Split

by Cathy Linh Che, and Mad Honey Symposium by Sally Wen Mao, and all have come together in a unique way. I’m so pleased to see the spring ushering in these very strong and important women poets’ books. And interestingly enough, as varied as their styles and subject matters may be, they all seem to share one commonality: rooting for the underdog.

Daniel Salerno

Suzanne Parker, Vice President

poetry since 1973

The spring books bring you eco-poetics, wild and wandering musings, and deeply felt fractures of the soul. I hope you’ll enjoy learning more about our poets and definitely stock up on their books for spring reading, or summer if it happens to appear this year.

In poetry,

Image of Alice James pf MS Am 1094, Box 3 (44d) By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University

Carey Salerno, Executive Director

new titles

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Cathy Linh Che is a poet from Los Angeles, CA. She has received scholarships and fellowships from The Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, Hedgebrook, Kundiman, Poets & Writers, Inc., and Poets House. She is currently coeditor of an anthology called Inheriting the War and a founding editor of Paperbag. She lives and teaches in Brooklyn.

Raccoon

Katie Bloom

It was hot, covers thrown off. The girl slept on the top bunk with a stuffed raccoon, her brother sprawled on the lower bunk, fast asleep. In the room, a wood-paneled TV, white plastic couch, pale pink carpet turned black in the dark. She was lying on her back when he entered the room, a shadow, a hand undoing the top snap of her denim shorts. She turned away toward the wall, pressed the snap back in. It made a dull pop, her body an S on the bed, head curved forward, legs tucked under.

Blood-red arrows were stitched on her pockets. He reached over, unsnapping the waist again, pulled her zipper down, tooth by tooth.

She shut her eyes. In her mind, a tug-of-war, the red flag moving slowly to his side. He lifted her up. She pretended to sleep.

Her arms hung limp, calves dangled over. He carried her into the next room.

SPLIT

April 2014

Cathy Linh Che Praise for Split: “Cathy Linh Che’s first collection, Split, is a brave, delicate, and terrifying account of what we do to each other. Here’s a voice that has to speak.

Split crosses borders, exposing truths and dreams, violations of body and mind, aligning them until the deep push-pull of silence and song become a bridge. And here we cross over into a landscape where beauty interrogates, and we encounter a voice that refuses to let us off the hook.”

—Yusef Komunyakaa “Cathy Linh Che’s debut examines the complex ways in which the past imperils our present. In these heartbreaking poems, rape and abuse are not private traumas, but a terrible inheritance that continues through generations. Here, the Vietnam War becomes a psychic backdrop against which one family still struggles to heal, reliving past cultural wounds that traumatize, yet never define it.”

—Paisley Rekdal

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new titles (continued)

Sally Wen Mao was born in Wuhan, China, and grew up in Boston and the Bay Area. She is a Kundiman Fellow and 826 Valencia Young Author’s Scholar. Her poetry is published or forthcoming in the Colorado Review, Gulf Coast, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, Passages North, Quarterly West, and West Branch, among others. She holds a BA from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA from Cornell University, where she is currently a lecturer.

The Unraveling Saline Satin. Wavelike cusp. Bare shoulder kissed by leaf, mother of organdy. In autumn, the grenadier spills grenadine on a girl’s pale stomach. Slits the hem of her corsetry. Breaks its whalebone. The inseam undoes iteself. Lingerie, her appendage for performance, not pleasure. Paillettes. Latticework. The window designs titillation. No buttress for nudity, artless hiss.

Somewhere on the road home, she molts, pale Photo © Mariamma Kambon

anaconda. Why is red a lurid color? That it evokes innards? Belt-leash. The stain hangs laundry. O cold netting made of lace, raveling down thigh on burnt grass. Somewhere a wish chokes under its stap.

Mad Honey Symposium May 2014

Sally Wen Mao

Praise for Mad Honey Symposium: “[Mad Honey Symposium] has all the delicacy of [Mao’s] earlier writing— but now there’s also a gritty, world-wise sense of humor that gives her work heavyweight swagger.”

—Dave Eggers “In Mad Honey Symposium, Sally Wen Mao offers delicious diction: ‘archipelago . . . arpeggios;’ ‘horntails / swarm the wax leaves;’ ‘Fetal and feral, we curl;’ ‘mouth on your pendulum;’ ‘in the rigmarole of lucky living—!’ She also offers a heightened attention to how words work and work out in various contexts. The poet takes us all over the place in time and geography—from her mother’s bed to Audubon’s dreams to sputnik to hive and back again—all in the service of feeling deeply. A lovely debut collection.”

—Kimiko Hahn

author interview

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Jane Mead is the author of three previous collections of poetry, most recently The Usable Field, also from Alice James Books. Her poems have been published widely in anthologies and journals and she is the recipient of grants and awards from the Whiting, Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations. For many years Poet-in-Residence at Wake Forest University, she now farms in northern California and teaches in the Drew University low-residency MFA program in Poetry and Poetry in Translation.

STALKING THE PLEASURES The pleasures are the can-be and the want, the abundance of water before the well went dry. The pleasures are primitive stalks of might-be and aftermath, shaded

Katherine Van Acker Photography

and bamboo-like grasses on the arduous walk to the waterfall: first brush so think we crawl, then down into the dense and muggy grasses, muddy elbows and no idea where the path is—stalking the pleasures: heart-beat can-be, stone’s-throw, want.

Money Money Money Water Water Water An Interview with Jane Mead

Jane Mead

In a recent discussion with Jane Mead, AJB asked the author about the inspiration for her latest collection. Here, she discusses the friction between economics and ecology, “foursies”, and the role of punctuation in poetry.

much better luck if I let the intellect with its curiosity, the body with its music, the unpredictable intuition with its complete ignorance of convention, do their thing and don’t let that conductor, the ego, get in the way. The ego always wants to conduct the music before it’s written.

ALICE JAMES BOOKS: A distinct appreciation for nature is clearly visible within Money Money Money | Water Water Water; this appreciation often arises from passionate views on human destruction of nature. How did this book come to be? Did you set out to write a collection based on this theme, or did the poems lead you there?

That said, the poems do germinate within the context of one’s world-view, and so it is no surprise that there are themes that weave through the book. I grew up with naturalists and come from many generations of scientists, so I take an utterly necessary nourishment from what we call the natural world; I’m also extremely interested in systems and their evolutions. My formal studies were focused on economic theory and political science---in some sense, a natural extension of the study of ecosystems. That these are for the most part competing systems is an utter catastrophe.

JANE MEAD: The poems lead the way; the collection materialized only in retrospect. And the writing of poems is itself an unguided exploration for me. I have

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author interview April 2014

(continued)

AJB: The collection begins with an epigraph from Theodore Roethke’s “The Lost Son,” which states your title: “Money money money / water water water.” What specifically drew you to these lines and how do you feel they encompass the collection?

MEAD: The juxtaposition of money and water creates a complex tone for me—on one level, water is our life’s blood, and money is an abstraction created to facilitate commerce and, of itself, has no elemental place in animal survival.

On the otherhand—in a world in which pure water is increasingly scarce—it, and its transport systems, have become commodities—those countries and individuals with the most money get the best access to water. Period.

So the title embodies two truths, ecological and economic, if you will,—and so emphasizes the complexity of our reality. The title’s not ironic, but it can be read on two levels. The fact that the words are repeated gives additional tonal resonance of course---both with chant, which is a way of calling something into existence, and with dismissal—chant’s opposite.

“The Lost Son” is Roethke’s howl from Woodlawn. A brilliant, lonely man—he addresses the worms and the toads. He doesn’t address a single human in that poem, but manages to keep at least two opposing truths in his mind at the same time, and to feel them with the whole of his being. It tears you apart. It tore him apart.

He came back.

AJB: Many of these poems reference places: historical and current, and events, political and personal. How much research aided in your writing?

MEAD: Spellcheck.

Although, seriously, sometimes more. For example, after I wrote the poem “WE APPROACH MAGNA CARTA,” I got on the internet to make sure my memory, form college, of Magna Carta was accurate. In doing that, I got interested in the language of the thing—so I patched together that later poem in the book in which I tried to bring forward the beauty of the language as well as the emphasis on commerce, which I’d forgotten about.

AJB: In the first section of your book there is the recurrence of the Magna Carta. Could you describe your inspiration for using this piece of history and how you came to relate it to the themes found throughout the poems?

MEAD: While it would be false for me to suggest intentionality here in terms of how the more overt references to Magna Carta

might give context to the other poems, the poems are all born of the same obsessions. The poems referencing Magna Carta bring certain themes into focus through the lens of that document: the way in which “universal” freedoms have been, historically, necessarily, doled out within a particular socioeconomic context; the question of what we have done with our collective freedoms and how that has affected the planet, etc.

Environmental destruction as a way of life, within the context of global capitalism—is only one of the darker and interconnected consequences of our collective choices. I mentioned earlier the emphasis in Magna Carta of easing commerce through standardization of weights and measures. This seems like a reasonable thing, but that the early codification of rights for selected individuals also concerns itself with facilitating commerce, raises a lot of questions. Most immediately, if you look at where we are today, as exemplified by, say, Citizens United, you have to wonder whether democracy and capitalism are, in the end, compatible. Abstract questions about power structures and resource distribution are not the place of poetry, but the following is: “there was only one egg One hard-boiled egg And Akhmatova” Gave it to Mandelstam That the freedoms in Magna Carta are limited to barons (it’s a t start!) is a selectivity echoed in the U.S. constitution, raises the question of whether such distinctions are self-perpetuating (or worse, inevitable). That’s an abstract debate but “Serfs one minute, slaves the next—// and where’s the shore from there?” is a question poetry can ask.

That neither fish nor streams are represented as one of the “stakeholders” of the water they carry is, in the abstract, a fight for legal activists. But the world shaped by those laws is ours, the world out of which poetry comes. I guess you could say that the poems are a spiritual reaction to the world as seen through the lens of these questions—and since those questions are knocking around in my head, it is not surprising that many of the poems reflect them.

AJB: Throughout the collection, the relationship between man and nature is carefully examined; in your poem “The Narrows,” there seems to be an admission of ignorance and an acknowledgement of not being fully connected with nature. What is the importance of these views in regards to the collection, as a whole?

MEAD: Well, we think we are separate from nature, and of course we are not. Or we think we are one with it, and we are not that either— in that poem, nature is in “angry mourning,” while the wildness of the rain is experienced from inside a car. There’s connection and the impossibility of connection,—recognition and separateness.

AJB: A unique feature of Money Money Money | Water Water Water is the use of quatrains—or “foursies,” as you say—on each

author interview

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(continued)

left-hand page. These “foursies” seem to read as almost an echo or I hope to reproduce a sense of thinking one has finished what there afterthought. Can you explain the measoning behind this particular is to say on the matter (the period) and then suddenly taking a formatting and how you feel this format impacts the reader’s experience? sharp breath and hurling into the next idea.

Do you feel there’s more than one way to read through the collection?

In a couple of poems (“EXPERIENCE AS VISITATION,” and MEAD: Although they are not spoken in one single voice, many of “MAGNA CARTA,” for example) this movement is formalized. the foursies represent a more interior voice than that of the longer poems, and often push back at those poems that proceed them, or push deeper into the material,—or nod, one way or another.

Others of the foursies are found poems, notations from ag journals, for example, about the threat to vineyards of European Grapevine Moth, or the sale of water rights between agricultural and environmental interests. Those are facts which affect my everyday planning as a farmer,—pushing back, or wedging deeper into the world and thinking of the longer poems.

I always spend a lot of time on ordering poems in a book— it’s a process that happens over one or two years—but when I read a book of poems I begin in the middle more often than not. I guess you want a collection to hold up either way.

AJB: There seems to be one predominant speaker narrating the poems, though there are other voices and characters that emerge (such as “Toby the Stray” and “Alice”). How did you hone these characters? What do they bring to the collection?

​ EAD: Mostly, it’s just me talking. Speaking from different M places of my being. My poems mostly start as notes, phrases in my thinking that catch me unaware, and those often set the tone of the poem, though they may not survive revisions. I’m a brutal reviser, so it would be most actuate to say the poems are an interior voice which has been relentlessly urged into becoming a thing in its own right. Direction, pacing, balance, shape—that all comes from the conversation I have with the initial material. For me, revision is a collaborative process between myself and the poem. And, in that process, whatever is most distinctive about the voice gets honed, so feel passionate about the subject matterh that, in the end, I guess you could say that the collection gives you many facets of a self. and I speak it as well as I can. . .

The poems about Toby “the stray” and the burial of Alice are villanelles, so that contributes to certain elements of the voice.

AJB: Another distinctive quality of your poetry is that it utilizes a variety of deliberate punctuation that strays from normal usage (for AJB: How do you feel Money Money Money | Water Water Water example: “.—” and “,—”). How do you envision this punctuation challenges the poetry world? functioning and sounding?

MEAD: Oh, I don’t know. I hope it speaks to people. I hope it

“I

”

MEAD: As with all punctuation, that double punctuation is meant to serve as a precise notation of pacing—the pace at which a thought develops. Often times a dash alone can indicate a kind of break and/or rush in logic in a way that no other punctuation available to us can. Combined with other punctuation it conveys even more information about the process of thinking. The danger, of course, is that it can seem affected. But communicating that extra information feels essential and natural to me, so that I have to constantly cut it out of my prose. In my poems, I allow it. That’s partly my allegiance to the poem, partly assumption that readers of poetry are open to nuance and willing to work a little if something isn’t immediately understandable. So, to look at a couple of examples, in “THE ELEPHANTS IN THE OCHRE CLAY” I say The ochre elephants did not fail me,--I failed to meet them half way

contributes to the conversations we are all having. I feel passionate about the subject matter and I speak it as well as I can—it’s central to who I am, the subject mater and the speaking. You put it out there, and hope it is heard, hope it contributes. And maybe the best contributions are, in a sense, always a kind of challenge.

and the punctuation is meant to convey the mind pausing before rushing into the thought that occurs to it during that pause. Or, in “DUST AND RUMBLE”:

Winner recieves $2,000, publication, and distribution through Consortium.

The only break, the break as forgotten.— I saw it in my own mind with you on the other side as a mistake.

THE 2015 BEATRICE HAWLEY AWARD Open to emerging as well as established poets residing in the United States for an unpublished, book-length manuscript of poems.

~

Submission deadline is December 1, 2014

~ ~

For guidelines visit our website www.alicejamesbooks.org

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news and events

Kathleen Aguero recently published a book of poems, After That, from Tiger Bark Press. She will be reading at St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Chatham, MA, on April 27 at 1 P.M. for Voices of Poetry.

Kazim Ali has a forthcoming novel, Wind Instrument, from Spork Press, and will be teaching at the Napa Valley Writer’s Conference July 27 through August 1.

Doug Anderson’s poems have recently been featured in Poetry Island Review and Stone Canoe, and others are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Cutthroat, Cimarron Review, and The Massachusetts Review.

Robin Becker published a new book of poems, Tiger Heron, from the University of Pittsburgh Press’ Pitt Poetry Series. She recently read at the Seattle Public Library and at the 2014 AWP conference in Seattle. Robin will be running a poetry workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA in August 2014.

Tamiko Beyer recently had poems featured in The Margins and has others forthcoming in Adrienne.

Amy Dryanski recently published Grass Whistle in the US, from Salmon Poetry. She read at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, the Art Market Provincetown Gallery, the Greenfield Area Word Festival, the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, and the Collected Poets Series in Shelburne Falls. She recently participated in the Tupelo Press 30/30 Project and has poetry forthcoming in The Alaska Quarterly Review.

B.H. Fairchild’s new book of poetry, The Blue Buick, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.

Janet Kaplan has recently published Dreamlife of a Philanthropist, from Notre Dame Press, which won the Ernest Sandeen Prize, and Chronicles from PressBoardPress.

Claudia Keelan’s verse-drama, “O, Heart,” which was recently performed at UNLV, is forthcoming from Barrow Street Press. Truth of My Songs: Poems of the Trobairitz is forthcoming from Omnidawn Press.

Ruth Lepson recently published an article for Let the Bucket Down: A Magazine of Boston Area Writing, as well as a piece for the Washington-based literary journal Spoke. She also recently hosted an event at the Woodbury Poetry Room at Harvard on Robert Creeley’s Selected Letters.

Lesle Lewis recently published a book of poetry, A Boot’s a Boot, from Cleveland State University Poetry Center. She has poems forthcoming in The Massachusetts Review and jubilat.

Jan Heller Levi was featured February 28 on Poetry Daily, participated in the 2014 ETERNiDAY: Queens Poet Lore Festival, and read at the Bowery Women & Friends event in NYC. She read with Meena Alexander at Hunter College and at Sarah Lawrence College’s NYC Writer’s Night.

She will read with Donna Masini and Tracy K. Smith at Still Waters in a Storm, in Bushwick, on May 10 at 5:30 P.M..

Timothy Liu has three forthcoming books: Don’t Go Back To Sleep: Poems, from Saturnalia Books, Let It Ride: Poems, from Station Hill Press, and Kingdom Come: A Hybrid Novel, from Talisman House.

Margaret Lloyd recently published Forged Light, from Open Field Press. She will be Joanna Fuhrman attending an international writer’s retreat at Hawthorne Castle in Scotland is reading at the Bright Hill Press & Literary Center in Treadwell, NY, on this spring, after which she will give a number of readings in Wales.

August 28 at 7 P.M.. Her collaborations with Toni Simon were published Robert Louthan in Posit and Talisman. has been commissioned by novelist Jennifer Egan to write his memoir.

Allison Funk has published a new book of poems, Wonder Rooms, forthcoming fall 2014 from Parlor Press.

Erica Funkhouser’s poems have recently been published in AGNI. Rita Gabis’ memoir is forthcoming from Bloomsbury. She will be reading with Don Share and Jacquelyn Pope at the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, during the “Boston and Beyond: A Reading for Salamander Magazine” session, in the Wheatley Gallery of the Peabody Essex Museum, on May 3 at 12:15 P.M..

Eric Gamalinda’s novel, The Descartes Highlands, is forthcoming from Akashic Books.

He will be holding a lecture through “Raising The Bar” on April 29.

Forrest Gander has published Fungus Eye Skull Wing: Selected Poems of Alfonso D’Aquino and Pinholes in the Night: Essential Poems from Latin America from Copper Canyon, and Panic Cure: Poetry From Spain for the 21st Century from Seismicity Books. His novel, The Trace, is forthcoming from New Directions.

Stacy Gnall’s poems were recently featured in the anthology The Liddell Book of Poetry.

Alice Mattison will read at the Cornelia Street Cafe in NYC on May 26 at 6 P.M., and will teach a fiction workshop at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA, from July 20 to 25.

Suzanne Matson chaired a tribute panel to poet David Wagoner and read for Terrain.org at the 2014 AWP conference in Seattle. Her poetry appeared in February on the Terrain.org website, and she has short stories forthcoming in The Harvard Review and Ploughshares Solo.

Jane Mead will read with Jean Valentine at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge, MA, on April 28; with Larissa Szporluck and Hiedi Johannsen Poon at Prairie Lights Books on April 30; at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines, IA, on May 3 at 2 P.M.; and with Julia Levine at the Sacramento Poetry Center on May 26 at 7:30 P.M..

Shara McCallum’s poems are forthcoming in Crazyhorse and Best American Poetry 2014, from Scribner. Her poetry was selected for the 2014 Public Poetry Project by Pennsylvania Center for the Book. From June 28 to July 11, she will be participating in the Chautauqua Writers’ Workshop in NY. She will read at La Poesis en Laurel in Granada, Spain on August 12.

Laura McCullough Roxane Beth Johnson published two books of micro fiction, The Smashing House and Ripple & is reading at Cave Canem’s New Works Reading at The New School in Snap, from EmergeLiteraryJournal Publications. Her book of connected, New York City, on April 29 at 6:30 P.M.. dramatic monologues of women, Shutters: Voices: Wind, is also from ELJ.

news and events

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(continued)

McCullough recently read with Suzanne Parker in Frostburg, MD, and will read with Alicia Ostriker at Brookdale Community College in Middletown, NJ, on April 29. She will tour with the Florida Literary Arts Coalition Writer’s Circuit for the fall 2014 - spring 2015 season.

Idra Novey’s collaboration with Erica Baum, Clarice: The Visitor, was recently published by the Cahier Series through the American University in Paris, and by the University of Chicago Press in the US. She recently read at the Split this Rock Poetry Festival in Washington, DC, and gave a reading at Long Island University.

Carole Oles recently had poems featured in two anthologies: Heart of the Order: Baseball Poems, from Persea Books, and Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace, forthcoming from Lost Horse Press. Her new book of poetry, A Selected History of Her Heart, is forthcoming from the University of New Mexico Press. Her poems recently appeared in Bosque.

Suzanne Parker’s poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her book, Viral, from Alice James Books, was recently reviewed in The Rumpus and The Jewish Current. She has poetry forthcoming from Wide Shore and several other journals.

Carol Potter has poems forthcoming in Hanging Loose and Field.

Bill Rasmovicz has a new book of poetry, Idiopaths, from Brooklyn Arts Press.

Coming Fall 2015

by Juan Antonio González Iglesias translated by Curtis Bauer

Anne Provoost

Eros Is More

Available September 2014

Idoia Elola

Donald Revell will read at the University of Denver on May 1, and at the Harvard Commencement’s Phi Beta Kappa Literary Exercises on May 27.

His poetry will feature in Best American Poetry 2014, from Scribners.

Jean Valentine is reading with Jane Mead at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge, MA, on April 28 Xue Di will be interviewed in the forthcoming 125th anniversary issue of Poet Lore, and in the spring 2014 issue of the Cafe Review. Several poems of Xue’s appear in the same issue of The Cafe Review. His poems have also recently featured in Narrative Northeast.

Attention Alices Don’t see your news listed, but have some you want to share?

Be sure you’re included in the Fall 2014 Newsletter by contacting the AJB office today!

or call

(207) 778-7071 We want to hear from you!

Mary Ann McFadden

Available November 2014

Sand Opera

Philip Metres Available January 2015

Robert Muller

write to us

ajb@alicejamesbooks.org

Devil, Dear Sarah E. McCabe

Willa Schneberg has poems forthcoming in Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place and Muddy River Review. Her new collection, Rending the Garment, is forthcoming from Mudfish/Box Turtle Press.

Betsy Sholl has a new book of poetry, Otherwise Unseeable, from the University of Wisconsin Press. She will read at River Run Book Store in Portsmouth, NH, on May 29 at 7 P.M..

Mary Szybist will participate in “The Life of a Poet” interview series at the Hill Center’s Old Naval Hospital, in Washington, DC, on September 17 at 7 P.M..

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AJB at AWP 2013

A view of our booth at the start of the day.

Tamiko Beyer happily signing copies of We Come Elemental.

The view of the Conference from AJB’s booth.

More than 13,000 writers and readers gathered in the Washington State Conference & Events Center, in rainy Seattle, WA, for the 2014 Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair. AJB celebrated with the writing community by participating in panels, readings, and book signings.

Photos by Alyssa Neptune

Our off-site reading, which was co-sponsored

by Bloom and Nightboat Books, was at the Lobby Bar in Seattle, and featured Alices: Kazim Ali, Tamiko Beyer, Stephen Motika, Suzanne Parker, and Angelo Nikolopoulos.

Brian Turner poses with our Celia Gilbert Fellow, Darrian Church.

Jamaal May and Donald Revell converse during their book signings.

Thank you to everyone who attended and aided in making AWP 2014 a joyous occasion. A special thank you to the Lobby Bar for providing a perfect reading venue and concocting “The Alice” drink special!

A quick photo-op with Angelo Nikolopoulos and Suzanne Parker!

Jamaal May speaking with a fan at his book signing.

Donald Revell signing books for adoring fans amidst the busy AJB booth.

donors

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AJB thanks the following individuals for their generous contributions to the press from 2013 to present* Institutions

The National Endowment for the Arts The Frank M. Barnard Foundation Soderlind Family Giving Fund The University of Maine at Farmington

Sponsors: $2500 or More Anonymous Anonymous David Harvey Anne Marie Macari

Patrons: $1000-$2499 Celia Gilbert Peter Waldor

Benefactors: $500-$999 Nina Nyhart Jane Mead

Donors: $250-$499

Catherine Barnett Tamiko Beyer Patrica Gibbons The Mattison Household Mary Szybist James Tilley

Contributors: $150-$249

Bob & Hester Brooks Harriet Feinberg Daniel & Lesle Lewis Alice Mattison Steohen R. Motika Donald Revell & Claudia Keelan

Supporters: $75-$149 George Blecher Lee Briccetti Carl Dennis Lynn Emanuel Beth Fogel Rebecca Gambito Forrest Gander Dobby Gibson Gail Gnall Stacy Gnall Donald Hall Daniel Johnson David Kirby Theo Kalikow Ruth Lepson James Longenbach Tim Mayo Shara McCallum Mary Ann McFadden April Ossmann Michelle Parker Michael Poage Doug Powell Bill Roorbach Carey Salerno Amy Stolls

Readers: $1-$74

Tom Absher Kathleen Aguero Jim & Aimee Beal-Church Oliver Bendorf Robin Becker Susan Bodine Carole Borges Henry & Joan Braun Rick Christman David Cohen Ronald Cohen Jeannine Dobbs Denise Duhamel Erica Funkhouser Michael Glaser Rob Greene Rhonda Hacker Monica Hand Marie Harris Hugh Hennedy Emily Hockaday Michele Anne Jaquays Jill McCabe Johnson Joan Larkin Jeffrey Thomas Leong Adrian Matejka Laren McLung MaryAnn L. Miller Mihaela Moscaliuc Kathleen Motika Pat O’Donnell Mona Paschke Suzanne Parker James & Judy Pennock

Ruth Ann Quick David Radavich Laurie Sewall Lynn Shoemaker Sue Standing Elizabeth Knies Storm Terese Svoboda Edwina Trentham Ellen Doré Watson Ken & Lois Wisman

*If you do not see your name listed but have donated to AJB or have found an inaccuracy, please accept our apologies and notify us right away by calling or emailing.

AJB makes every effort to keep this list current and accurate up to the time of publication.

Wow! Together

we raised over

$24,395 for this year’s annual appeal! ~

Our

sincerest thanks for your generous support.

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2014 celia gilbert fellow

Alice James Books congratulates Darrian Church on being the recipient of the 2014 Celia Gilbert Fellowship, which was founded in honor of Alice, Miriam Goodman, who contributed greatly to the press during her time with us. This fellowship enables an exceptional UMF student to travel with the press to the AWP Conference as our press assistant.

AJB team who helped get the press established. She shared her stories and we were a little too excited to show her a copy of Lit from Inside.

AJB: How did AWP compare to what you had imagined it would be?

CHURCH: Perhaps it was because I was busy at the booth, but AWP wasn’t as hectic and overwhelming as I predicted.

There was a particular serenity in seeing everyone hold onto books and talk about writing.

AJB: What was it like being a press assistant? Did you have a particular favorite part of setting up for AWP?

Alice James Books: Darrian, what are a few things people should know about you?

DARRIAN CHURCH: I’m in my third year at the University of Maine at Farmington as a Creative Writing and English student, my Boston Terrier, Princeton, is my best friend, and I hope to publish a book of poetry in the next five years.

AJB: What has been your most memorable experience at Alice James Books?

CHURCH: Well, I’ll never forget my first day. I was extremely nervous as I packed copies of Tantivy into envelopes, realizing that I didn’t know a single person or what I was doing. I mean, going to AJB soon became my favorite part of my daily routine. Also, the AJB reading at UMF this fall was incredible, I finally met Angelo [Nikolopoulos] after reading his book and I was stunned; it was a night of unforgettable conversation.

AJB: What was the most thrilling moment at the 2014 AWP Conference? The most nerve-wracking?

CHURCH: Truly, it was all an exhilarating experience.

The last day of the conference was a whirlwind; we had book signings and customers coming from every direction, so Alyssa [Neptune] and I were all over the place. I was also thrilled to meet an early member of the

CHURCH: To be one of the people representing the press at the booth was a really proud moment for me, I felt like a part of the AJB team. I definitely had fun arranging and rearranging the books; every day we were there, we were switching things up on the table. Although I was an assistant, I was involved in all the sales, questions, and discussions. It’s not a position that allows you to sit back and kick your feet up, but it’s a valuable experience.

AJB: How would you describe meeting some of the AJB authors for the first time?

CHURCH: Poor Brian Turner, he came up to the booth and told us some really moving facts about his book, Here, Bullet, and I immediately picked up a book and asked him to sign it, then proceeded to get a picture with him. I basically lost all control. So, there’s that.

AJB: What insight do you have for future fellowship recipients?

CHURCH: It’s helpful to familiarize yourself with AJB poets and their books, because you never know when an Alice may come up to the booth!

AJB: After being an intern at AJB and attending the AWP Conference this year, where do you see yourself going from here?

CHURCH: I hope to emerge into the world of writing as a poet and, in the meantime, I am looking into a publishing career at a place similar to AJB. Learn more about the Celia Gilbert Fellowship by visiting: http://www.alicejamesbooks.org/

the alice fund

12

stay alive. “ Just That’s all I ask.

About The Alice Fund The Alice Fund’s mission is to ensure the long-term financial stability and realization of the 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.

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.

About Our Strategic Goals

All nonprofits plan for growth and aspire toward greatness. Here’s what the Alice James Cooperative Board is committed to: • Hiring full-time marketing, publicity, and development personnel • Publishing up to 8 titles per year, including the AJB anthology and books from our two new series: The Kundiman Poetry Prize 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 Metro Insurance • Anne Marie Macari • Valley National Bank • Peter Waldor

Robertson

• Consortium Book Sales and Distribution • Anonymous • Anonymous • Privett Special Risk Services • United States Fire Insurance Company

Wilky

• Bernstein Global Wealth Management • Lee Briccetti • Kathleen Sheeder Bonanno and David Bonanno • Chubb Group • Carmela Ciurarru • Beverly Davis • Christina Davis • Anonymous • 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 • Anonymous • Idra Novey • April Ossmann • Jean-Paul Pecqueur • Bill Rasmovicz • Lawrence Rosenberg • Carey Salerno • Thomson-Shore, Inc • Jeneva & Roger Stone • Lisa Sherman & Martin Stone • Marla Vogel

Your gift to The Alice Fund

”

—Jane Kenyon on AJB, 1994

A lice J ames B ooks

What’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

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.

13

ajb word scramble

Word Scramble Can you unscramble the names of the seven founders of Alice James Books?

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Answers: 1. Patricia Cumming 2. Jean Pedrick 3. Marjorie Fletcher 4. Lee Rudolph 5. Betsy Sholl 6. Ron Schreiber 7. Cornelia Veenendaal

6.

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alice asks

14

alice asks...

Cathy Linh Che AJB: What’s the last song you sang at the top of your lungs?

CHE: I sing karaoke whenever I get a chance—so it’s

hard to think of the last song that I belted, because there are so many, always! My favorite is Madonna’s “Borderline.” Lately, my heart has been wailing Smokey Robinson’s “You Really Got a Hold on Me,” very loudly.

AJB: What are your favorite “little things” in life?

CHE: I live in New York City. I think the best thing about

AJB: CHE:

Katie Bloom

the NYC is spring time. After a long, cold, and unrelenting winter, the tulips finally burst into bloom, and the air is warm and balmy, and the whole city goes mad—the shorts and sandals and skirts and new haircuts and all the brightness and the birds singing.

That’s probably not a little thing in life, because it feels so big and expansive.

AJB: If you couldn’t be a poet, who would you be?

CHE: If I couldn’t be a poet, I’m sure I’d feel much more

pent up, in general.

I think I’d need an outlet: Perhaps I’d do something visual, and with text. Letterpress or book design, for instance. I could be a counselor, teacher, mentor, or therapist and that might satisfy my need for human connection. Another possibility would be for me to dance or something—anything that lets the inside out... or, maybe, I’d be more of an oversharer than I already am!

But in the end, I’d miss what language gives me.

Poetry allows me a space where I can—or, at least attempt to—name and affix meaning to whoever we are and whatever it is we do. And to do it with beauty, brevity, clarity, and impact.

What’s the best way to start an interesting conversation with a stranger?

I’m fairly introverted and shy so I have no idea how to talk to strangers. But if I weren’t shy, I’d love to be able to approach someone and discuss issues of race, class, gender, sexuality, and politics—and the way that art can or cannot change people’s views of these issues. I’m not particularly good at small talk—sometimes, I just want to go in and figure something out!

AJB: What was the first book you fell in love with?

CHE: I can’t remember falling in love with any books as a

child. I read them with interest, but it wasn’t love!

I think the first book I fell madly in love with was William Faulker’s The Sound and the Fury. It felt exciting to me, like nothing else I’d ever read. I felt like, I get this. This is poetry!

AJB: If you could have lunch with any one person (past CHE:

AJB: You get to pick tomorrow’s weather—what is it?

CHE: Beach weather would be amazing.

AJB: Do you prefer the inside or the crust of a brownie?

CHE: The crust. Of all textures, crunchy is probably my

or present), who would it be and what would you AJB: order?

I’d love to meet Jack Spicer. I think he might be ornery, but I’m sure he’d be incredibly intelligent— CHE: and it wouldn’t surprise me if he were okay with me asking very personal questions. We’d probably eat at a diner somewhere in Berkeley, or near the Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles, close to where he grew up. AJB: I’d have a bacon and avocado turkey melt, fries, and a milkshake. I don’t know what he would eat, but CHE: the meal and setting would be very California.

favorite.

Would you rather take a trip to outer space or to the bottom of the ocean? Why? I think outer space. Sometimes, it’s good to zoom out and see how small we are and what a beautiful world we live in.

You have $25 in your pocket and you want to do something awesome. What do you do?

I would take the bus to somewhere I’ve never been— get off, walk around, and take it in.

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VIRAL S U Z A N N E PA R K E R

When you choose to be an Alice James Books subscriber, AJB will automatically mail you each new book we publish (six books a year), so you’re guaranteed not to miss a title! The cost is $70/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

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