The shortlist for the Best Translated Book Award has been announced! Hagar Before the Occuapation, Hagar After the Occupation by Amal al-Jubouri, translated by Rebecca Gayle Howell with Husam Qaisi is one of six poetry collections to be named a finalist for the award! For more information, click here.

Read about and listen to Reginald Dwayne Betts and his impact on the recent Supreme Court decision about juvenile incarceration in the article "No More Life Without Parole--It's About Time" here: http://www.youthradio.org/news/no-more-life-without-parole-its-about-time

We are proud to announce that Joanna Fuhrman, author of Pageant, has been featured in the 2011 edition of Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses! You can find her poem, Stagflation, on page 415.

Other AJB authors also appeared in the book. Those featured are: Timothy Liu, Lia Purpura, Laura Kasischke, and Jean Valentine.

Monica A. Hand's Readings and Events for me and Nina

Suzanne Matson, who has published two fantastic collections of poetry with AJB, is among the recipients of the 2012 Creative Writing Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts! Congratulations Suzanne! Click here for more details.

Shara McCallum is one of this year's recipients of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Out of 1,063 entries, she and 41 other poets were selected for the award.  Congratulations, Shara!

Shara McCallum will be reading on September 20, 2011 at Bucknell University.  For more information click here.

Shara’s McCallum  2011-12 Readings

updated February 14, 2012

 Spring 2012

·  Paterson Poetry Center, Paterson, NJ—February 4, 2012

·  University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, Aetna Writer in Residence—February 15-17, 2012

·  AWP, Chicago, IL—March 1-4, 2012 (may be on a panel; attending either way)

·  River Styx at Duff’s, St. Louis, MO—March 19, 2012

. Virginia Festival of the Book, Charlottesville, VA—March 24, 2012

. Conference on Caribean Literature, Leeds, UK—April 13-15, 2012

. BOCAS Literary Festival, Port of Spain, Trinidad—April 26-29, 2012

. University of West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica—May 14-18 

Laura McCullough's Panic is a finalist in ForeWord Review's Book of the Year contest! Laura's book is one of 13 finalists in the poetry category. Congratulations Laura! 

Stephen Motika and Alice Jones will be reading from their new work on Thursday, April 26 at 7 p.m. at the Diesel A Bookstore in Oakland, CA. Stephen will be reading from Western Practice, and Alice Jones will be reading from her new book Plunge (Alice published The Knot with AJB in 1996).  Additional information available at the link.  

www.dieselbookstore.com/event/oakland-poetry-reading-alice-jones-and-stephen-motika

We are pleased to announce that Idra Novey has been featured in this edition of AGNI (Published at Boston University)! Look for her poem "If Vallejo Hadn't Died in Paris." Congratulations Idra!

Kundiman and Alice James Books are delighted to announce the winner of the 2011 Kundiman Poetry Prize: Matthew Olzmann. 

AJB is proud to announce that University of Southern Maine's Words and Images journal has named its inaugural annual Betsy Sholl award for excellence in poetry! Find out more about the aware by clicking the link below!

http://waldo.villagesoup.com/ae/story/inaugural-betsy-sholl-award-announced/361814

AJB is proud to announce that chad Sweeney is the recipient of a competitive Graduate Student Research and Travel Grant by the WMU Graduate College. Congratulation Chad!

http://wmuenglishevents.blogspot.com/2010/10/sweeney-receives-graduate-college.html

Chad Sweeney's poem "Wet Little Monster" is featured in this year's Pushcart Prize Anthology!  Congratulations, Chad!  For more information about the Pushcart Prize, click here.

Brian Turner, Iraq war veteran, reads poetry and speaks with James Winn (Boston University) on WBUR's On Point with Tom Ashbrook.  Read more and listen to this insightful, poignant Memorial Day interview: http://www.onpointradio.org/2010/05/in-memoriam-of-war-and-poetry

We are pleased to announce that Brian Turner's Phantom Noise is a finalist for Britain's TS Elliot Prize for Poetry. Chair Anne Stevenson remarks, " The judges have found this an exceptional year for poetry, with a record amount of entries, and have agreed on a strong shortlist which is unusually eclectic in form and the....me." Congratulations!

http://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/projects/4/

Brian Turner will be reading on June 23, 2011 at The Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea, UK.  For more information click here.

Brian Turner's collections, Here, Bullet and Phantom Noise were mentioned in Matt Gallagher's article "Where's the Great Novel About the War on Terror?" in The Atlantic.  Click here to read the full article. 

Brian Turner's latest collection, Phantom Noise, was selected as a winner of ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Award!  Congrats, Brian!  For more information about the award and other award winners, click here. 

Kathi Aguero read at the Blacksmith House in Cambridge, MA on February 28th. She will be teaching at the Skidmore Young Writers Conference and at Pine Manor College’s low residency MFA program in July.

Doug Anderson has had a new poem published in The San Pedro River Review.

Catherine Barnett’s second collection will be published by Graywolf Press in fall 2012.

Dan Beachy-Quick has recently been published in the fall 2011 edition of Wonderful Investigations: Essays, Meditations, Tales (Milkweed Editions). He also has an upcoming publication in the Spring 2011 edition of Circle’s Apprentice (Tupelo).

Nicole Cooley gave readings this year at Arizona State University, Tulane University, University of Pennsylvania, Purdue University, Bucknell University, Gettysburg College, Hamilton College, Brookdale Community College, River Valley Community College, SUNY-Adirondack, and the Queens Public Library. She has recently published “The Poetry of Disaster,” in American Poet (fall 2010) and has worked on Salem Lessons, a mixed-media project in collaboration with visual artist Maureen Cummins. Cooley will be having a book signing and reading at Maple Street Bookstore (New Orleans, LA) in late April. She will also attend the 3rd Annual Kinereth Gensler Awards Celebration Reading & Book Launch at Poets House in NYC on April 23rd, and the Sarabande Reading Series on October 24th in Louisville, Kentucky.

Deborah DeNicola has a brand new book, Original Human, from WordTech Communications. She  contributed an essay on “Healing with Creative Dreamwork” to the anthology, Allow Your Spirit to Soar. Her memoir, The Future That Brought Her Here (2009), is also available on Amazon. Deborah read at Porter Square Books in Boston, MA on March 7th and will be scheduling more readings in Florida. She taught a workshop on Generating Material for Memoir at The Mango Writers’ Conference in Miami, FL on February 12th. She recently won first prize for her poem, “The Tree at Casa Cara,” from the Carpe Articulum Literary Review.

Amy Dryansky had three poems appear in the Dogs Singing anthology, recently published by Salmon Poetry, Ireland. Two of her poems will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Morning Song published by St. Martin’s Press (also availible in e-book and audio format). She also has a poem forthcoming in the fall issue of the Harvard Review.

Joanna Fuhrman will be publishing a chapbook called The Emotive Function in April by Least Weasel Press (an out-growth of Karen Randall’s Propolis Press) in April. She has poems forthcoming in the spring issues of The Believer and Hanging Loose. She has a video poem posted on CA Conrad’s audio journal Jupiter 88, and an audio collaboration/sound piece with text from Pageant that will appear on a new web journal called Lyre Lyre. A long interview by Tom Fink about Pageant will appear in Galatea Resurrects. She will also be talking to classes about Pageant at the University of Pittsburgh and the Writers Studio in NY, and will be reading at LaMama on June 20th with a host of others. She is involved with a new music project called the Sanctuary Project.

Frank Gaspar had his latest novel, Stealing Fatima, published in late 2009. He just finished a manuscript of a new collection of poems, Late Rapturous, which will begin circulating in the spring. He has new poems in The Kenyon Review, Tampa Review, The Packinghouse Review, Chautauqua, and Verdad.  From June 17th-20th he will be reading and holding workshops at the Chautauqua Writers’ Festival in Chautauqua, New York.  From June 19th-July 1st, he will be participating in Disquiet: The International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal.  For more information about upcoming publications and events, visit his website at www.frankgaspar.com. 

Celia Gilbert will be the featured poet in the spring issue of The Tower Journal, an online publication. She will have new poems and a short story in the issue.

Joan Joffe Hall has published a new book, Getting Out of Troy. She gave a reading in Ellington, CT on April 3rd.

Linnea Johnson’s new book, Augury, is now available from The Backwaters Press. 

Janet Kaplan’s third full-length poetry collection, Dreamlife of a Philanthropist: Prose Poems & Prose Sonnets, winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, has just been released from the University of Notre Dame Press. The prize was judged by poets Cornelius Eady, Joyelle McSweeney, and Orlando Menes. She also has a series of prose poems, titled “The Chronicles,” which have appeared or will appear soon online and in print, courtesy of The Prose Poem Project. She read on March 2nd at The University of Notre Dame, and will read at various venues in New York City, including the Cornelia Street Cafe on May 25th.

Ruth Lepson’s poems have recently appeared in, or are forthcoming from, The Tower Journal, The Boog City Anthology, Wood Coin, Anything Anymore Anywhere, poetsforlivingwaters, rogueembryo, and moriapoetry. She will be reading at the Zinc Bar with her jazz/poetry group, Box Lunch, in NYC, at the Newton Public Library (Newton, MA), the Lily Pad (Cambridge, MA), and the 119 Gallery in Lowell, MA. She also will be participating in the MA Poetry Festival (Salem, MA) in May with Box Lunch, as well as XFest 2011 (a music/art/poetry conference) at 119 Gallery with a group of Canadian jazz musicians.

Margeret Lloyd has recently taken up an interest in pairing some of her poems with watercolor paintings that she has painted. She had a poem and a painting published together in Poetry Wales and another pair published in Planet: The Welsh Internationalist. She also has a poem forthcoming in Poetry East, along with two sonnets in Measure.

Margo Lockwood has a new book out, her seventh book of poems, More Than I Want To, published by Pressed Wafer. She wrote a treble chorus oratorio, titled, “Call Across the Generations,” commissioned by the Town of Brookline and composed by Chris Eastburn. It was performed at Jordan Hall in Boston, MA, and will also be performed this summer in Hancock, NH.

Shara McCallum’s book, This Strange Land (April 2011) is new from Alice James Books. At the Water’s Edge: New & Selected Poems, from Peepal Tree Press, is coming out in September 2011. She will be reading at the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA on May 4th, 2011 and at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA on September 20th, 2011. She will also read and teach workshops at the Rehobeth Writers Association in Rehobeth, Delaware on June 10th-12th and at the Chautauqua Writers Instititue in Chautauqua, NY from June 25th-July 2nd.

Idra Novey has recently had poems published in the spring issue of Subtropics, the Telephone Project (a multi-poet sequence with At Length magazine), and in the anthology, A Season of Poetry, with Open Letter Press. She gave a Valentine’s Day reading in New York City and was also a guest poet at Fordham and at Florida Atlantic University in March. She will be participating in the Princeton Poetry Festival on April 29th and 30th with Charles Simic, Sharon Olds, Mark Doty, Kathy Graber, and others.

Carol Potter has two poems in the anthology, Open Field. Her collaboration with sculptor Micki Conroy is in Switched-on Gutenberg. She will be reading at the Green Street Café in Northampton, Massachusetts on April 27th at 7pm.

Lia Purpura has a few recent essays in Orion, Agni, Fugue and Drunken Boat. She gave a reading as a Visiting Writer at Elon University in North Carolina during the first week of April.

Susan Snively wrote a script and narration for Seeing New Englandly, an hour-long documentary about Emily Dickinson for the Emily Dickinson Museum, produced by Ernest Urvater. She has written reviews for Jerome Charyn’s “The Secret Life of Emily Dickinson” and for Daniela Gioseffi’s “Wild Nights! Wild Nights!” in The Emily Dickinson Journal, fall 2010. Susan is working on a script, “The Most Triumphant Bird: Emily Dickinson and Music,” for the Emily Dickinson Museum. She participated in workshops for the NEA Big Read on Emily Dickinson in April 2011. A showing of Seeing New Englandly was held in Royalston, MA on March 20th, and in Westfield, MA on April 13th. She will be attending the Emily Dickinson International Society Conference in Amherst, MA, July 29th-31st.

Spreading the good word of poetry!  Chad Sweeney will begin teaching in the MFA program at California State University, San Bernardino this September.  (Fun fact: AJB author B.H. Fairchild used to teach there, too!)