fellows

Hannah Sanghee Park wins Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship

Congrats, dear Hannah! 

Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships

The Poetry Foundation and Poetry magazine are pleased to announce the five recipients of 2013 Ruth Lilly Fellowships: Harmony Holiday, Matthew Nienow, Hannah Sanghee Park, Natalie Shapero and Phillip B. Williams. Among the largest awards offered to aspiring poets in the United States, the $15,000 scholarship prize is intended to encourage the further study and writing of poetry and is open to all U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of age.

“Since Harriet Monroe's founding of Poetry in 1912, to Ruth Lilly's endowment of these fellowships in 1989, to our constant search for fresh new voices today, Poetry has always sought work that enlivens our sense of what poetry is worth and what it can do,” said Don Share, editor of Poetry magazine, in announcing the 2013 winners. “This year's group of fellows—which includes poets whose passions range from community service to woodworking to scholarship—is especially inspiring because their extraordinary talents are so deeply informed by the way in which they have composed their lives.”

Harmony Holiday was born in Waterloo, Iowa and educated at the University of California at Berkeley and Columbia University. Her debut collection of poems, Negro League Baseball (Fence, 2011), won the Fence Books Motherwell Prize. Go Find your Father/A Famous Blues, a “dos-a-dos” book featuring poetry, letters and essays, is due out from Ricochet Editions in fall 2013. Holiday lives in New York City.

Matthew Nienow was born in Los Angeles in 1983 and spent most of his youth in Seattle. He holds an MFA from the University of Washington and a degree in Traditional Small Craft from the Northwest School of Wooden Boatbuilding. His work has appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, New England Review, Poetry and two editions of the Best New Poets anthology (2007 and 2012). He has received awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Elizabeth George Foundation and Artist Trust, among others. He lives with his wife and two sons in Port Townsend, Washington where he builds boats and custom wooden paddle boards.

Hannah Sanghee Park was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1986. She earned a BA from the University of Washington and an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her chapbook, Ode Days Ode, was published by the Catenary Press in 2011. She is the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Fulbright Program, 4Culture, the Iowa Arts Council/National Endowment for the Arts and the MacDowell Colony. Her work is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2013 and Poetry Northwest. Park lives in Los Angeles and is currently studying at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Natalie Shapero was born in Chester, Pennsylvania in 1982. She received a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, an MFA from the Ohio State University and a JD from the University of Chicago Law School. She is the author of the poetry collection No Object (Saturnalia, 2013) and her writing has appeared in The Believer, The New Republic, Poetry, The Progressive and elsewhere. Shapero is a 2012-2014 Kenyon Review fellow at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio.

Phillip B. Williams was born 1986 in Chicago. He is the author of the chapbooks Bruised Gospels (Arts in Bloom Inc., 2011) and Burn (YesYes Books, 2013). Williams is a Cave Canem graduate and the poetry editor of the online journal Vinyl Poetry. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Blackbird, Callaloo, Kenyon Review Online, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Southern Review, West Branch and others. Williams is currently a Chancellor’s Graduate fellow at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri and is working on his MFA in creative writing.

These five emerging voices will be featured in Poetry magazine’s November issue and on poetryfoundation.org.

The Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program is organized and administered by the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, publisher of Poetry magazine.

Note: In 2014, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowships will become the Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowships and the current $15,000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship prize amount will nearly double. This increase is the result of a generous gift from the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Memorial Fund.

* * *

About the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship Program
Established in 1989 by Ruth Lilly to encourage the further writing and study of poetry, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship program has dramatically expanded since its inception. Until 1995, university writing programs nationwide each nominated one student poet for a single fellowship; from 1996 until 2007, two fellowships were awarded. In 2008 the competition was opened to all U.S. poets between 21 and 31 years of age, and the number of fellowships increased to five, totaling $75,000.

 

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

BestNewPoets.jpg

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

BEST NEW POETS 2013

Melissa Barrett, “The Invention of the Metal Detector”

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

Evening Will Come)

Debbie Benson, “Memory”

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

Michelle Bonczek, “Entering the Body”

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

Micah Chatterton, “Now, Someday”

Darin Ciccotelli, “Superpower”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

John James, “Chthonic”

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

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

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

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

Jason Macey, “Love Song for Cesar Vallejo”

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

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

Peter Mishler, “Fludde”

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

Lisa Allen Ortiz, “Confection”

Elsbeth Pancrazi, “What's penciled in”

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

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

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

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

Stephanie Rogers, “How It Kept On”

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

Michael Simon, “Interstate”

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

Max Somers, “The Narrative Poem”

Benjamin Sutton, “from Footnotes on the City”

L.J. Sysko, “Just Try”

Kenny Tanemura, “Expulsion”

Chad Temples, “Waking, Waking, Singing”

Emily Van Kley, “Physical Education”

Angela Voras-Hills, “Preserving”

Corrie Lynn White, “Gravy”

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

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

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

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

 

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

lappheader2.png

Congrats, dear fellows!

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

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

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

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

Bushra Rehman is Poets & Writers' August Writer in Residence

Congrats, dear Bushra! 

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

bushra-rehman600-620x350.jpg

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

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

Congrats, dear Jai!

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

by Jai Arun Ravine and Lucas de Lima

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

Read the rest of the piece here.

  

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

Congrats, dear Eugenia and Ocean! 

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

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

 

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

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

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

Congrats, dear Sejal!

 

Street Scene

by Sejal Shah

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

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

. . . 

Click here to continue reading this essay.

Sejal Shah.jpg

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

 

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

Congrats, dear Jennifer! 

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

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