San Diego-based P&W-supported poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Dancing in Odessa and co-editor of Ecco Anthology of International Poetry, blogs about Southern California's Red Hen Press. 

It is impossible to begin a conversation about literary presses and happenings in Southern California without instantly mentioning P&W-supported Red Hen Press, which is a great deal more than just a literary press. Red Hen’s Kate Gale and Mark Cull, both talented authors in their own right, have created something very special with Red Hen—it is a press, a community force, an organization behind several reading series in Southern California, an outreach program for writing in schools, and many other things.

One Red Hen book I read recently moved me, the new novel by P&W-supported writer David Matlin, “A HalfMan Dreaming”—a second installment in his epic trilogy about the beauty and violence of the American landscape. Lupe, a protagonist is taken from the world of rose farms and egg ranchers in post-World War Two America, from a town haunted by the Enola gay and the nuclear Bomb, to prison in Detroit. The book is as terrifying as it is gorgeous, with beautiful, sensuous prose.

Another book of contemporary prose that I have read in recent months that just won’t let me be is Garth Greenwell’s “Mitko”—winner of Miami University Press’s 2011 Novella Contest (one of the very few such novella prizes in the country), this is a book about betrayal, forbidden desire, where sentence structures are as engaging as the plot lines and prose is musical, meditative and evocative; this is the story of an American who finds himself in Sophia, Bulgaria. A new take on Thomas Mann’s “Death in Venice” Greenwell’s novella is able to ask hard questions about loss, sexual desire, and loneliness. In Southern California, where I have heard many a writer complain of loneliness and absence of literary community, this work, somehow, particularly resonates. Garth Greenwell will read from his new workon April 16 at San Diego State University.

Photo: Ilya Kaminsky.

Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association has announced the winners of its 2012 book awards, honoring authors from Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, and Washington. Among the winning titles are a semiautobiographical novel by a Bosnian expat, a memoir by an Olympic hopeful swimmer, and a contender for last year's Booker and Giller prizes.

Patrick deWitt, born in Canada and now living in Oregon, won for his second novel, The Sisters Brothers (Ecco), which was shortlisted for last year's Man Booker Prize and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Ismet Prcic, who fled war-torn former Yugoslavia in the nineties and now lives in Portland, Oregon, won for his semiautobiographical debut novel, Shards (Black Cat). Prcic's novel was also shortlisted for a major award last year, the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Award.

Washington author Jonathan Evison, whose first novel, All About Lulu (Soft Skull Press, 2008), received the Washington State Book Award, won for his second novel, West of Here (Algonquin Books). Portland-based graphic novelist Craig Thompson, author of Blankets (Top Shelf, 2003) and Goodbye, Chunky Rice (Top Shelf, 1999), won for Habibi (Pantheon Books).

In nonfiction, memoirist and lifelong swimmer Lidia Yuknavitch of Portland was honored for The Chronology of Water, published by Portland indie press Hawthorne Books. Washington State biologist Thor Hanson won for Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle (Basic Books).

The book awards have been given annually since 1984 and judged by representatives from regional booksellers. For the 2012 award, the nine-person jury considered more than two hundred ninety nominated titles.

The video below is a book trailer for Yuknavitch's winning memoir.

On November 30, 2011, Urban Possibilities held a culminating reading for Dorothy Randall Gray’s nine-week, P&W-supported poetry workshop, which served men and women living at the Los Angeles Mission on Skid Row.

Urban Possibilities, a nonprofit organization that brings inspiration and a variety of services to homeless men and women, held a reading for their Published Writers Program, taught by Dorothy Randall Gray. The event began with a warm reception and an introduction by Eyvette Jones Johnson, founder and executive director of Urban Possibilities.

There is a “sea of untapped potential in the inner-city,” Johnson said. “No matter where you are or what you’ve been through, [you] have gifts and talents to share.”

To write about their struggles, Johnson said, the participants had to have their “hearts wide open.” She asked that audience members reciprocate.

Gray was so proud of her students and the writing they produced that she said, “I feel like I almost gave birth.” She dedicated the piece she read, “You and Me, Me and You,” to her students. She described being “stranded at the corner of walk and don’t walk” and “invisible to those who will not see.” The poem repeated the phrase “they fly.”

All of the workshop participants came to the mission after living on the streets. Many have dealt with substance abuse, gambling, addiction, prison, and abusive relationships. “I felt like I was failing life,” participant Anthony Tate said. Another student said of the workshop: “It just sort of woke up my dream…I had put it on a shelf.”

To close the reading, the students stood together on stage and had the audience participate in an exercise. Each student said one word or phrase, and the audience said it back. After reciting the phrase “carpe diem” back, the whole auditorium burst into laughter when the voice of one young child echoed the phrase back a few moments afterward, provoking a whole new meaning and a sense of hope.

At the reception, participant Michael T. Williams reflected, “I was sleeping in graveyards, ‘cause I thought that was the safest place to be. Now I feel like Pinky and the Brain, and I’m ready to take over the world.”

Photo: Dorothy Randall Gray (center) with workshop participants. Credit: Craig Johnson Photography.

Major support for Readings/Workshops events in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets & Writers.

In honor of Robert Walser's Microscripts, write a story (in as small as print as possible) on previously used paper, allowing whatever use the paper previously served (letter from a family member, etc) be the inspiration for the new story.

Publishers Lunch reports today that literary agents Amy Hughes and Ethan Bassoff have moved to new agencies. Hughes moves from McCormick & Williams to Dunow, Carlson and Lerner where she will specialize in representing nonfiction writers, including memoirists; Bassoff moves to Lippincott Massie McQuilkin from InkWell Management and will continue to focus on literary and commercial fiction, as well as narrative nonfiction.

London-born poet Jo Shapcott has been awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, an occasional honor given since 1933 for either a single poem by a U.K. writer or a poet's entire oeuvre. Shapcott received the prize for her body of work, the most recent addition to which is Of Mutability (Faber & Faber, 2010), the poet's award-winning chronicle of her battle with cancer.

"The award of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry is the true crowning of Jo's career," said U.K. poet laureate Carol Anne Duffy, who headed up the judging panel. "The calm but sparkling Englishness of her poetry manages to combine accessibility with a deeply cerebral engagement with all the facets of being human—alert to art and science, life and death."

Shapcott, who teaches at the University of London, is also the author of Her Book: Poems 1988–1998 (Faber & Faber, 2000); My Life Asleep (Oxford University Press, 1998), which won the Forward Poetry Prize; and Electroplating the Baby (Bloodaxe Books, 1988), which won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize.

In the video below, Shapcott reads from her most recent collection.

Make your New Year’s resolution the title of a poem. Write a poem exploring the dimensions of the resolution, perhaps considering what would happen if you kept to it strictly for an entire year or if you broke it right away. Read Mark Halliday’s “Refusal to Notice Beautiful Women” for inspiration. 

Using John Ashbery's poem "And Ut Pictura Poesis Is Her Name" from Houseboat Days as a model, tell a story by telling us how to tell a story. Scaffold the narrative by meditating on the nature of storytelling.
This week's creative nonfiction prompt comes from Vijay Seshadri, director of the nonfiction program at Sarah Lawrence College and author, most recently, of The Disappearances (Harper Collins, 2007).

Ruminate on the past year, remembering both your achievements and your failures. Write a story about one of your failures or regrets from the perspective of someone other than yourself. Consider rewriting the past, to transform this incident into an achievement by changing the facts around it or by changing the way your protagonist perceives it.