February’s Good News & Good Reads

(News, reviews, happenings, and readings from our Porkbelly poets & authors)

Ghost Skin by Wren Hanks (cover: Alexandra Eldridge)

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road by Amorak Huey (cover image: Alexandra Eldridge)

Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn (cover: Angie Reed Garner)

The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine, Hilda Weaver

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

How Darkness Enters a Body by Sarah Nichols

Feeding the Dead by M. Brett Gaffney (cover art: Mary Chiaramonte)

Love Me, Anyway by Minadora Macheret (cover artist: Sharmon Davidson)

Bodies in Water, P. Andrew Miller (special edition cover)

My Own Strange Beast by Melissa Atkinson Mercer (cover art by Danial Powers)

Vein of Stone, Sarah McCartt-Jackson (special edition cover)

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Pray, Pray, Pray: Poems I wrote to Prince in the Middle of the Night (Porkbelly Press, 2015) by E. Kristin Anderson » www.ekristinanderson.com

• EKA’s poem “Jumping the Fuck Shark” appears in the new Tinderbox Poetry Journal.
• another erasure, “The light fell in,” appears in Cotton Xenomorph.
• Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture, edited by EKA, is just out!
• Her new chapbook, Seventeen XVII (Grey Book Press, 2018), is available.
• Other achievements, including a chapbook, are listed in her latest blog post!

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The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Hilda Weaver

• a recent micro-review of Hilda’s The Autobiography of a Love Not Mine (Porkbelly Press, 2014) via Christine Brandel’s blog.

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A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Amorak Huey » amorakhuey.net

• Two of Amorak’s poems appear in Tinderbox Poetry Journal: “God, the Father” & “Putting the Fun in Fungible.”

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Ghost Skin (Porkbelly Press, 2016)
by Wren Hanks » tumblr

• Wren’s poem “Dear Ozma,” appears in Pittsburgh Poetry Review.
• Wren’s chapbook The Rise of Genderqueer was selected by Brain Mill Press for the Mineral Point Poetry Series (series editor: Kiki Petrosino). His chapbook is due out in August 2018!

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen » chenchenwrites.com

• Chen Chen in conversation with Francesca Ekwuyasi at Winter Tangerine: “I Forget Myself When I’m Not In Conversation with Other Minds.”
• “The School of Song,” “Elegy While Listening to a Song I Can’t Help But Start to Move to,”  and “One Year Later: A Letter,” and “Summer” appear in Winter Tangerine‘s A LINEAGE OF MIRRORS.
• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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Love Me, Anyway (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Minadora Macheret

• Minadora’s poem “Baba Yaga: Her Almost Origin Story” from Bramble & Thorn (Porkbelly Press, 2017) is nominated for a Rhysling Award.

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Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by M. Brett Gaffney « blog

• Feeding the Dead (Porkbelly Press, 2017) is nominated for an Elgin Award.

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Haunting the Last House on Holland Island, Fallen into the Bay (Porkbelly Press, 2016) by Sarah Ann Winn » bluebirdwords.com

• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly Press, 2018) & How Darkness Enters a Body (Porkbelly Press, 2018) by Sarah Nichols » @onibaba37

• Work in Come As You Are (Anomalous Press, 2018), an anthology of 90s pop culture edited by E. Kristin Anderson.

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My Own Strange Beast (Porkbelly Press, 2017)
by Melissa Atkinson Mercer

• Kanika Lawton interviews Melissa about her new collection, Knock (Half Mystic Press, 2018).
• Featured on Sundress Publications’ The Wardrobe!

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Bodies in Water (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by P. Andrew Miller » pandrewmiller.com

• Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age (Wayne State University Press, 2018), edited by John Alberti & P. Andrew Miller, is freshly pressed and will be available for order in May!

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Vein of Stone (Porkbelly Press, 2014)
by Sarah McCartt-Jackson » sarahmccarttjackson.com

• Sarah’s chapbook Calf Canyon was selected by Brain Mill Press for the Mineral Point Poetry Series (series editor: Kiki Petrosino). Her chapbook is due out in November 2018!

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Says the Forest to the Girl (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sally Rosen Kindred » sallyrosenkindred.com

• We’ve accepted Says the Forest to the Girl, a chapbook of poetry, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Sara Ryan » sararryan.com

• We’ve accepted Never Leave the Foot of an Animal Unskinned, a chapbook of poetry & creative nonfiction, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Light Experiments (Porkbelly Press, 2018)
by Madeleine Barnes » madeleinebarnes.com

• We’ve accepted Light Experiments, our very first chapbook of photography, for our 2018 line of chaps!

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Bacon (Good Stuff) March

All the good things (we’ve heard about) from our contributors (in March):

Pray, Pray, Pray by E. Kristin Anderson (cover: Nicci Mechler)

Set the Garden on Fire by Chen Chen (cover: Nicci Mechler)

My Heart in Aspic by Sonya Vatomsky (cover: Shannon Perry)

My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Sonya Vatomsky // @coolniceghost

• Multiple haunting/haunted poems up at Potluck: “5 Sonya Vatomsky & Friends“
• 5 poems & an interview in West Trade Review. (Spring 2016 issue)
• Sonya’s at it again with an interview up at Paper Darts: “A Bit of Spellcasting“

I love that traditionally underrepresented groups are able to get exposure through smaller presses/journals and self-publishing, and I love destroying that idea that there’s some kind of difference in “quality” between what’s on a bestseller list or in the canon and what’s being produced online, that some writing is “real writing” or whatever. // more at Paper Darts

• Oh, and guess what else? They’re blogging for the Poetry Has Value project! (In which Sonya reveals their very serious indy press book habit. V. serious.)
• Sonya’s collection Salt is for Curing (Sator Press, 2015) went into its second printing!

via Sator Press

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Set the Garden on Fire (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by Chen Chen // @chenchenwrites

• Chen is a Best of the Net winner! “Write a Letter to Your Mother About Your Longest Winter” (orig. published in Maps for Teeth, also appears in Set the Garden on Fire)
• Linda Ashok reviews Set the Garden on Fire at The Rumpus!

“Each poem in this collection is like a booth with the reader or the poet but one telephone that connects to the world of multifarious affairs. In fact, there’s a pattern that an interested mind may discover which is so intricate and amazing, sharp and endearing.” // more

• Chen’s chapbook Kissing the Sphinx is available for pre-order at Two of Cups Press (and was a 2015 chapbook contest finalist)! Chen gets good blurb:

“There is so much love in these poems it seems Eros is nibbling at the ear of Chen Chen, and through him, at ours. Listen―yes, listen!―closely to this sensuous, tender and bold new voice in American poetry…” —Curtis Bauer

Kissing the Sphinx (Chen Chen) via Two of Cups Press

• Chen’s first full-length book of poems was a finalist for the Anthony Hecht Poetry Prize.
• Chen Chen has won the Poulin Poetry Prize via BOA Editions “for his collection When I Grow up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities. The collection was selected by highly-acclaimed poet Jericho Brown. Chen will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in spring 2017.”

“Chen Chen refuses to be boxed in or nailed down. He is a poet of Whitman’s multitudes and of Langston Hughes’ blues, of Dickinson’s ‘so cold no fire can warm me’ and of Michael Palmer’s comic interrogation. What unifies the brilliance of When I Grow up I Want to be a List of Further Possibilities is a voice desperate to believe that within every one of life’s sadnesses there is also hope, meaning, and—if we are willing to laugh at ourselves—humor. This is a book I wish existed when I first began reading poetry. Chen is a poet I’ll be reading for the rest of my life.” – Jericho Brown //  more

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Pray, Pray, Pray: poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (Porkbelly Press, 2015)
by E. Kristin Anderson // @ek_anderson

• EKA’s chapbook, Fire in the Sky, is forthcoming from Grey Book Press in spring.

via Grey Book Press

via ELJ Publications

• Anderson’s really on fire here—Acoustic Battery Life will make an appearance in spring via ELJ Publications.
• While you’re waiting for those two beauties, you can pick up her short chapbook of Prince inspired poems, sometimes lovingly referred to as the B-side of Pray, Pray, Pray, from ELJ‘s magpies line: 17 Days.

via ELJ Publications