Of Poetry

Read: Shelley Wong's poem "To Yellow," which she reads on Episode 24.Shelley Wong is the author of As She Appears (YesYes Books, May 2022), winner of the 2019 Pamet River Prize. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, Best American Poetry, Kenyon Review, and New England Review. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. She is an affiliate artist at Headlands Center for the Arts and lives in San Francisco.Purchase: As She Appears(YesYes Books, 2022). 

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhereRead: "Unicorn Kidz Dance Under the Moonlight, Too" at SplitLipjason b. crawford (They/Them) is a writer born in Washington DC, raised in Lansing, MI. Their debut chapbook collection Summertime Fine is out through Variant Lit. Their second chapbook Twerkable Moments is out from Paper Nautilus Press. Their third chapbook, Good Boi, is out from Neon Hemlock press. Their debut Full Length Year of the Unicorn Kidz will be out in 2022 from Sundress Publications. crawford holds a Bachelor of Science in Creative Writing from Eastern Michigan University and is the co-founder of The Knight's Library Magazine. crawford is the winner of the Courtney Valentine Prize for Outstanding Work by a Millennial Artist, Vella Chapbook Contest, and Variant Lit Chapbook Contest. They were a finalist for the Tom Howard/Margaret Reid 2021 Poetry Contest and the 2021 OutWrite chapbook contest winner in poetry. Their work can be found in Split Lip Magazine, Glass Poetry, Four Way Review, Voicemail poems, FreezeRay Poetry, HAD, among others. They are a current poetry MFA candidate at The New School.Purchase: Year of the Unicorn Kidz(Sundress Publications, 2022)

Read: "Hurricane Family," published at Moist Poetry Journal.Marlanda Dekine's debut full-length poetry collection, Thresh & Hold, is the winner of Hub City Press's 2021 New Southern Voices Poetry Prize and is forthcoming in March 2022.MARLANDA DEKINE'S WORK HAS BEEN PUBLISHED OR IS FORTHCOMING IN OXFORD AMERICAN, POETRY, EMERGENCE MAGAZINE, BEESTUNG, ANNULET, SHUDDHASHAR MAGAZINE, AND ELSEWHERE. THEY ARE THE 2021-2022 CASTLE OF OUR SKINS SHIRLEY GRAHAM DU BOIS CREATIVE-IN-RESIDENCE, A RECIPIENT OF THE 2022 PALM BEACH POETRY FESTIVAL LANGSTON HUGHES FELLOWSHIP, A 2021 TIN HOUSE SCHOLAR, AND A WATERING HOLE FELLOW. CURRENTLY, MARLANDA SERVES AS HEALING JUSTICE FELLOW WITH GENDER BENDERS AND IS WORKING WITH THE AWARD-WINNING COMPOSER/PERFORMER COLLECTIVE, COUNTER)INDUCTION, ON A MUSO-POETIC WORK ENTITLED ARS POETICA. THEY ARE A GRADUATE OF FURMAN UNIVERSITY (B.A. PSYCHOLOGY) AND THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (MASTER OF SOCIAL WORK). THEY LIVE IN GEORGETOWN, SOUTH CAROLINA WITH THEIR AMAZING DOG, MALACHI. Purchase: Thresh & Hold (Hub City Press, 2022)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and moreRead: a selection of haiku by Lenard D. Moore at the North Carolina Haiku SocietyLenard D. Moore is an internationally acclaimed poet and anthologist. His literary works have been published in more than sixteen countries and translated into more than twelve languages.His poems, essays, short stories and book reviews have appeared in more than 400 publications. His poems have appeared in more than 100 anthologies.  He has taught Creative Writing and African American Literature.  He is a U.S. Army Veteran.  Moore is the author of Long Rain; The Geography Of Jazz; A Temple Looming; Desert Storm: A Brief History; Forever Home; The Open Eye, among other books.  He is the editor of All The Songs We Sing; One Window's Light: A Collection of Haiku, and other books.  He has collaborated with poets, visual arts, musicians and dancers on several projects.  He is the founder and executive director of the Carolina African American Writers' Collective and co-founder of the Washington Street Writers Group. He also is the longtime Executive Chairman of the North Carolina Haiku Society.  He is the First African American President of the Haiku Society of America, serving two terms. Among his numerous awards are the North Carolina Award for Literature; Furious Flower Laureate Ring; Haiku Museum of Tokyo Award; Margaret Walker Creative Writing Award; Cave Canem Fellowships, and a Soul Mountain Retreat Fellowship.  He earned his Master of Arts in English and African American Literature, from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. He also earned his Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Studies with a minor in English (Magna Cum Laude) from Shaw University.Purchase: Long Rain (Wet Cement Press, 2021) and The Geography of Jazz (Blair, 2018)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere. Read: Amanda Moore's poem "Labor as an Exotic Vacation," which she reads on Episode 20.Amanda Moore's debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center's blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Poetry Co-editor at Women's Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. Purchase: Requeening (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2021)Check out: Aganetha Dyck's collaborative sculptures with bees!

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.Purchase: To Everything There Is (Sundress Publications, 2020) and Donna's other full-lengths at Sundress Publications.Also Donna's visually collaborative chapbook Encantado, which we talk about on the episode, from Red Bird Press.Check out Christine Shank's art as well as Claire Morgan's art, featured on Donna's first and third full-length covers)

Twila Newey has an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa. Her poems were finalists for the 2019 Coniston Prize at Radar Poetry and won honorable mention in the 2019 JuxtaProse Poetry Contest. You can read recent work at Interim Poetics, Sugarhouse Review, Green Mountains Review, and Moist Poetry journal. Twila lives in Northern California at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.Read: Twila's poems "honeycomb" and "Theories of Heaven" at Green Mountain Review.Natalie Solmer is the founder and Editor In Chief of The Indianapolis Review, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to Clemson University in South Carolina and majored in horticulture. Before her return to grad school and career in teaching, she worked in the horticultural field, primarily as a grocery store florist for 13 years. Her poetry has been published in numerous publications such as: Colorado Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, and Pleiades. She also has published her visual poetry and visual art in places such as Yes, Poetry and Babel Tower Notice Board. Read: Natalie Solmer's poem "Girl of Water, I could Swallow a Garden" at EcoTheo Review.

Read: Kasey Jueds' poem "Kittatinny," which she reads on the episode.Kasey Jueds a poet living in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Kasey poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Cave Wall, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Ninth Letter, Pleiades, Provincetown Arts, River Styx, Salamander, The Southampton Review, Tinderbox, and Waxwing.Kasey has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation; and a visiting poet at the University of Pennsylvania, LaSalle College, and the University of Northern Colorado. Kasey's first book Keeper first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in fall, 2013. Kasey's second book, The Thicket, is has just been published by Pittsburg Press this month, November, 2021.Purchase: The Thicket by Kasey Jueds (UPitt Press, 2021).

Read: "Mandala of the Soapy Water," that Chloe reads on the episodeChloe Martinez is a poet and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College. Purchase: Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021)

Read: Angie Mazakis's poem "Oh, My Kidneys," which she reads on the episode, and Han's review of I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First.Angie Mazakis's first book of poetry, I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First, was chosen by Billy Collins as a finalist for the 2020 Miller Williams Prize and was published by University of Arkansas Press in March 2020. The book was also a finalist for the National Poetry Series and was named by The Boston Globe as one of the Best Books of 2020. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets, Washington Square Review, Columbia Journal, Indiana Review, Conduit, Lana Turner Journal, Nat. Brut and other journals. She is a PhD student in creative writing at Ohio University.Purchase: I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First (UAPress, 2020).Check out: Jeremy Geddes' Art

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere.Read: Alina's poem "Apologia," which she reads on Episode 14.Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina's poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America's Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature. Purchase: Dor (signed copy) directly from Alina Stefanescu.

Read: Christian's poem "when my days fill with ghosts" at Hayden's Ferry Review, which Christian reads on the episode.Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden's Ferry Review,The Michigan Quarterly Review, Atlanta Review, Grist Journal, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest.Pre-order Christian's chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade (Bull City Press, 2022)

Read: Amorak Huey's poem "CHILDHOOD GOES KALEIDOSCOPE, KALEIDOSCOPE, KALEIDOSCOPE, GUN" at American Poetry ReviewAmorak Huey is a poet and professor, a writer and sometime journalist, a decent dad and a mediocre slow-pitch softball player. He pronounces his first name uh-MOR-ack.Amorak is author of four poetry collections: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021); Boom Box (Sundress Publications, 2019); Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015), as well as as two poetry chapbooks: The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016). In addition, he is co-author, with W. Todd Kaneko, of the textbook Poetry: A Writer's Guide and Anthology, published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2018, and the poetry chapbook Slash / Slash (Diode Editions, 2021). Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021).

Read: Lyd Havens' poem "I only mis-gender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on" (flypaper lit), which they read on Episode 11Lyd Havens is a reader and writer currently living in Boise, Idaho. Their work has previously been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Foglifter, among others. They are the author of the chapbook I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018), the winner of the 2018 ellipsis… Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Their chapbook Chokecherry was published by Game Over Books in May 2021.Purchase: Lyd Havens' Chokecherry(Game Over Books, 2021).

Read: Anuja Ghimire's poem "Orlando" and Burgi Zenhaeusern's "Self-Portrait as Granatöpfel"Anuja Ghimire is a Nepal-born writer of poetry, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction. She is the author of Kathmandu (Unsolicited Press, 2020),  fable-weavers (Ethelzine, 2022),  and two poetry books in Nepali. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, Anuja works as a senior publisher in an online learning company. She reads poetry for Up the Staircase Quarterly and enjoys teaching poetry to children in summer camps. Most recently, her work found home in Bending Genres, Chestnut Review, and Moist Poetry Journal. Anuja lives near Dallas, Texas with her husband and two children. Find Anuja on twitter @GhimireAnuja.Burgi Zenhaeusern [‘borghee ‘tsenhoisern] (she/her/hers) grew up in Switzerland. She majored in English and Spanish Literature and Linguistics at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and attended workshops led by Rose Solari, Jean Nordhaus, Laura Fargas, and Yvette Neisser at the Writer's Center in Bethesda, MD. Her chapbook Behind Normalcy (CityLit Press, 2020) won the 2019 Harriss Poetry Prize, chosen by Erica Dawson, final judge, and Kwame Alexander, series editor. She co-edited the translations of the bilingual poetry anthology Knocking on the Door of the White House  (Zozobra Publishing, 2017, J. Ballesteros et al., editor), which was selected by Beltway Poetry Quarterly as a “2017 Ten Best” book. Her writing appears in various print and online journals. She volunteers behind the scenes for the Cafe Muse reading series and is a poetry consultant for River Mouth Review. She lives in Chevy Chase, MD. Find Burgi on twitter @Burgi323.Purchase: Kathmandu (Unsolicited Press, 2020) by Anjua Ghimire and Behind Normalcy(CityLit, 2020) by Burgi Zenhaeusern

Read: Several poems from The Valley.Esteban Rodríguez is the author of five poetry collections, most recently The Valley (Sundress Publications 2021), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press 2021). He is the Interviews Editor for the EcoTheo Review, Senior Book Reviews Editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and Associate Poetry Editor for AGNI. He currently lives in central Texas.Purchase: The Valley and Before the Earth Devours Us.

Read: "Dear Hannah," and other poemsLaura Wetherington's first book, A Map Predetermined and Chance (Fence Books 2011), was selected by C.S. Giscombe for the National Poetry Series. The Brooklyn Rail called the book “humble, folksy, romantic, tough, inventive, and not over-programmed.” Her second book, Parallel Resting Places, was chosen by Peter Gizzi for the New Measure Prize, was released with Free Verse Editions in January 2021. She has published three chapbooks: Dick Erasures (Red Ceilings Press 2011), the collaboratively written at the intersection of 3 (Dancing Girl Press 2014), and Grief Is the Only Thing That Flies (Bateau Press 2018), which Arielle Greenberg selected for the Keel Chapbook Contest. Her poem “No one wants to be the victim no one when there is a gun involved and blue” was adapted as an artist book by Inge Bruggeman.Her poetry appears in Narrative, Michigan Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, FENCE, VOLT, Anomaly (Drunken Boat), among others, and in three anthologies: Choice Words: Writers on Abortion (Haymarket Books 2020), The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat Books 2012), and 60 Morning Talks (Ugly Duckling Presse 2014). Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The Volta, Hyperallergic, Full Stop, Jacket2, and 1508.Laura co-founded and, for a decade, co-edited textsound.org: an online journal of experimental poetry and sound. Poets & Writers named textsound an “indie innovator,” one of a small group of “groundbreaking presses and magazines that are redrawing the publishing map.” She developed an integrated curriculum for graduate and undergraduate students working on the Sierra Nevada Review and for four years taught those classes. In 2014 she joined Baobab Press as their poetry editor.Wetherington is a graduate of University of Michigan's MFA program, UC Berkeley's Undergraduate English Department, and Cabrillo College. She has taught for the French Ministry of Education, the University of Michigan, the New England Literature Program, Eastern Michigan University, Sierra Nevada University's Humanities Department and Low-Residency MFA Program, and for the Nevada Arts Council's writers in the schools program. She currently teaches creative writing at Amsterdam University College and with the International Writers' Collective. Grants include a 2017 & 2015 Artist Fellowship in Literary Arts from the Nevada Arts Council and a 2014 Artist Grant in Literature from the Sierra Arts Foundation. She has attended residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and Camac.Purchase: Laura Wetherington's Parallel Resting Places (Parlor Press, 2021)And the two collections Laura reads from on Episode 8:Milla Van der Have's Ghosts of Old VirginnyMustafa Stitou's Two Half Faces

Read: Jessica's poem "The Ballad of the Red Wisteria"Jessica Q. Stark is a California-native, Vietnamese American poet, editor, and educator that lives in Jacksonville, Florida. She holds a BA from UC Berkeley and dual MA Degrees in English Literature and Cultural Studies from Saint Louis University's Madrid Campus. She received her PhD in English from Duke University. She has published scholarly articles on poetry and comics studies and teaches writing at the University of North Florida.Her poetry has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Society of America, Pleiades, Up the Staircase Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, Poetry Daily, The Boiler, The Southeast Review, Hobart Pulp, Verse Daily, Tupelo Quarterly, Potluck, and for the Glass Poetry Journal: Poets Resist series. Her first poetry manuscript, The Liminal Parade, was selected by Dorothea Lasky for the Double Take Grand Prize in 2016 and was published by Heavy Feather Review. She is the author of four poetry chapbooks, including her most recent titled INNANET (The Offending Adam, 2021). Her full-length poetry collection, Savage Pageant, which was a finalist for the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Book Prize, the 42 Miles Press Book Prize, and the Rose Metal Press Hybrid Book Prize, was published by Birds, LLC in March 2020. Savage Pageant was named one of the “Best Books of 2020” in The Boston Globe and in Hyperallergic. Her third poetry manuscript, Buffalo Girl, explores a short time in her mother's life, Vietnamese-diasporic wolves, and different iterations of Little Red Riding Hood. She occasionally writes poetry reviews for Carolina Quarterly and is currently a Poetry Editor for AGNI and the Comics Editor for Honey Literary. She has lived in several cities across the globe, including Seoul, South Korea, Madrid, Spain, and for a short time in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, where she ran a backpackers' hostel with her partner and learned how to crack a coconut with a machete. In her free time, she is a cat-lover and has been trained as a Level Two Reiki practitioner. Purchase Jessica Q. Stark's Savage Pageant (Birds LLC, 2020).

Read: Four of C.T.'s American Cavewall SonnetsC.T. Salazar is a Latinx poet and librarian from Mississippi. His debut collection, Headless John the Baptist Hitchhiking is forthcoming in 2022 from Acre Books. He's the author of three chapbooks, most recently American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021). He's the 2020 recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters award in poetry. His poems have appeared in The Rumpus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, 32 Poems, RHINO, and elsewhere.Purchase C.T. Salazar's American Cavewall Sonnets (Bull City Press, 2021).

Read: An interview with Kelly Cressio-Moeller at ZYZZYVA.Kelly Cressio-Moeller is a poet and visual artist. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, Best New Poets, Best of the Net and have appeared widely in journals and at literary websites including Gargoyle, North American Review, Poet Lore, Salamander, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Water~Stone Review, and ZYZZYVA, among others. She is an associate editor at Glass Lyre Press. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, two sons, and their basset hound. Shade of Blue Trees is her first poetry collection, the finalist for the Wilder Prize at Two Sylvias Press.www.kellycressiomoeller.comPurchase Kelly Cressio-Moeller's debut poetry collection Shade of Blue Trees.

Read: Carla's Chapbook Ironbound Fados and her craft chap Eat a PersimmonCarla Sofia Ferreira is a Portuguese-American poet from Newark, New Jersey who teaches high school English in Newark today. She's received fellowships from the Sundress Academy for the Arts and DreamYard Radical Poetry Consortium. Her micro-chap Ironbound Fados was published in 2019 by Ghost City Press and in 2020, she self-published a poetry prompt chapbook for high school students and their teachers, Eat A Persimmon. She believes in community gardens, semicolons, and that ICE must be permanently abolished.

Read: Tom's poem Gospel of Thomas, which he reads on Episode 3.Tom Snarsky is a math teacher who writes poetry. He is a former Robert Noyce Teaching Fellow at Tufts University and a Senior Fellow at the Knowles Teacher Initiative. He is the author of two books forthcoming from Broken Sleep in 2022: Speaking Roles, a collection of poetry interviews, and Complete Sentences, a pamphlet of poems about teaching. He is also the author of the chapbook Threshold, published in 2018 by Another New Calligraphy. In addition to his work in print, several of Tom's chapbooks and pamphlets can be found online as free .pdfs: Number Among (Epigraph), WEAKEN (The Argotist Online), 21 small poems (Binbag Press), minimal sonnets with Jo Ianni (Ghost City Press), the pamphlet Two Songs (Fathomsun Press), the self-published Two Notebook Poems, and With Sorrow as My Window and Forgiveness as My Shield, one of the winners of the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Contest at Boston Accent Lit. Along with Kristin Garth he is the co-organizer of Performance Anxiety, a monthly online poetry reading series. He teaches at Lightridge High School in Aldie, Virginia and lives in Bluemont with his wife Kristi, who all this is for.Purchase Tom Snarsky's debut book of poetry Light-Up Swan (Ornithopter Press, 2021).

Conversation with Christopher Kempf, author of What Though the Field Be Lost (LSU Press, 2021).

Read one of the poems Jessica reads on Episode 1: “The Androgynous Christ.”Jessica Cuello's manuscript, Liar, has been selected by Dorianne Laux for the 2020 Barrow Street Book Prize, forthcoming in October 2021. She is also the author of Pricking (Tiger Bark Press 2016), winner of the 2017 CNY Book Award, and Hunt (The Word Works 2017), winner of the 2016 Washington Prize. In addition, Cuello has published three chapbooks: My Father's Bargain (2015), By Fire (2013), and Curie (2011). Cuello was the recipient of The 2018 New Ohio Review Poetry Prize, The 2013 New Letters Poetry Prize, and a 2015 Saltonstall Writing Fellowship. In 2014 she was awarded The Decker Award from Hollins University for outstanding secondary teaching. She teaches French in Central NY and is a poetry editor for Tahoma Literary Review.Of Poetry Podcast is hosted by Han VanderHart.