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In this virtual reading and conversation examining the multitude of identities, authors Usha Akella, Manuel Muñoz, and Suzi Q. Smith read their work and speak with Aruni Kashyap for the 2021 Jaipur Literature Festival Colorado. Akella, cofounder of the Matwaala collective, is featured in “Building Solidarity Through Poetry” by Swati Khurana in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
The Matwaala collective was launched in 2015 to create visibility for South Asian poets. Today, Matwaala programs such as the Poets of Color festival foster solidarity between different identity groups through literature.
The first lines of a dozen noteworthy books including The Candy House by Jennifer Egan and Ante body by Marwa Helal.
The author spotlights five journals that published lyric and narrative poems from her debut poetry collection, The Body Family.
“Is a poem a little machine? A firework? An echo? A dream?” In this animated TED-Ed lesson by Melissa Kovacs, the poetic form is analyzed through famous speeches, song lyrics, and tweets.
In a profile of Tracy K. Smith by Renée H. Shea, published in the March/April 2015 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, the Pulitzer Prize–winning poet discusses the “shifting subjectivities” she discovered while writing her memoir, Ordinary Light (Knopf, 2015), in which she includes stories from her childhood. “Tracy the citizen was allowed to engage with these private stories, just as Tracy the mother was allowed in at times,” says Smith. Consider two identities that you hold, then write a poem from one of these perspectives. What is left out, and what is let in?
“To be a writer, the best thing someone can do, in my opinion, is read. Read everything.” —Eloisa Amezcua, author of Fighting Is Like a Wife
“The conundrum of a writer’s life, particularly that of a poet’s, is learning to embody a paradox,” says Rita Dove, winner of the 2018 Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement, in this recording of the Denham Sutcliffe Memorial Lecture at the Kenyon Review Literary Festival. “One has to be fierce and tender at the same time. Loud and quiet. Brash and introspective.”
Submissions are currently open through for the New Ohio Review Literary Prizes. Given annually by New Ohio Review, the three awards honor a poem or group of poems, a short story, and an essay. Kim Addonizio will judge in poetry, Madeline ffitch will judge in fiction, and Melissa Febos will judge in nonfiction. The winning writers will each receive $1,500 and publication in the journal.
Submit a poem or group of poems of up to six pages or a story or essay of up to 20 pages with a $22 entry fee, which includes a subscription to New Ohio Review, by April 15. All entries are considered for publication. Visit the website for complete guidelines.
New Ohio Review is published twice yearly by the creative writing program of Ohio University and is based in Athens, Ohio. Previous contest winners include poet Emily Lee Luan, fiction writer Nicole VanderLinden, and nonfiction writer Tania De Rozario.
“Even when I was starving, I was eating. Inhaling words like a kid with a lunch card, like this is a meal I might miss,” reads Natasha Carrizosa from her poem “ABC ME” at Station Museum in Houston, Texas for Write About Now Poetry.
