AUTHOR NEWS
Anna Maria Hong’s first book of poetry, Age of Glass, received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was recently named one of Entropy’s Best Poetry Books of 2018. Age of Glass was recognized on the Kenyon Review blog and Poetry Foundation’s spring reading list for the magic of its subversive sonnets. In Green Mountains Review Anita Olivia Koester says “Hong’s innovative sonnets elevate the natural and human world by preserving it, and yet these sonnets also… allow for deeper truths about sexism, misogyny, and power structures, to emerge.”
Find out more about Hong’s work in interviews at Literary Bennington and Speaking of Marvels, where Hong says “The writing of this book was driven by the question of how or whether one can be a responsible and ethical member of empire, particularly in the face of white, hot reversals and upheavals.”
In American Literary Review, Brian Clifton writes of Nicholas Gulig’s second book, Orient, that “By looking at noise and sound (as they collide in human language), Gulig attempts to understand how we define ourselves and how we define others. In this way, the book becomes both a thing that speaks and a thing that listens.” In Poetry Northwest Jane Wong observes “Gulig’s collection is all encompassing—all heart, all terror.”
Orient was named one of Entropy’s Best Poetry Books of 2018 and Gulig discusses his process, ethics, aesthetics, and form at Speaking of Marvels.
Shaelyn Smith’s collection of essays, The Leftovers, was one of Poets & Writers’s featured debut collections of literary nonfiction in 2018 as well as an “SPD Recommends” title, and one of Entropy’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2018. Learn more about The Leftovers in a review at the New Orleans Review and an interview with James Allen Hall at Essay Daily.
We’ve also been happily catching up with new books, reviews, or awards for our previous authors: Leora Fridman, Jane Lewty, Dora Malech, Shane McCrae, Phil Metres, and Sandra Simonds.
The Poetry Center staff is hard at work on our forthcoming titles, which will be released in September 2019: Anne Lesley Selcer’s Sun Cycle; Oliver Baez Bendorf’s Advantages of Being Evergreen; Amy Long’s Codependence; The Selected Poems of Russell Atkins, edited by Kevin Prufer and Robert E. McDonough; and Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s Scorpionic Sun, translated by Conor Bracken.
CSU POETRY CENTER GRADUATE ASSISTANTSHIPS
The CSU Poetry Center offers graduate assistantships in small press editing and publishing for CSU-based students in the NEOMFA (Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing). If you're researching MFA programs you might consider Cleveland State where we’re lucky to host the Lighthouse Reading Series, Playwrights Festival, and Whiskey Island Magazine, among other exciting programing. The NEOMFA is the nation's only consortial MFA program and boasts four schools’ worth of creative writing faculty and a great visiting writers series (this year includes Sloane Crosley, Suzanne Buffam, Srikinth Reddy, and Paula McLain). Application deadline: January 15th.
ANISFIELD-WOLF FELLOW IN WRITING AND PUBLISHING
It’s been a delight to welcome Leila Chatti, our inaugural Anisfield-Wolf Fellow in Writing in Publishing, to Cleveland. Check out new work by Leila in Kenyon Review online, Narrative, Willow Springs, and Frontier Poetry.
LIGHTHOUSE READING SERIES
This year’s Lighthouse Reading Series has hosted Nicholas Gulig, Brian Blanchfield, Leila Chatti, and Lindsay Turner, all of whom blew us away with their performances. Spring readers include Jason Koo and Shaelyn Smith (2/22/19), and Caren Beilin and Anna Maria Hong (4/12/19). If you live in Northeast Ohio, we hope to see you in the spring!
SUPPORT THE CSU POETRY CENTER
If you'd like to DONATE to our mission of publishing 3-5 collections of contemporary poetry, prose, and translation each year in addition to running The Lighthouse Reading Series, the Anisfield-Wolf Fellowship in Writing and Publishing, and providing pedagogical and outreach opportunities for CSU and NEOMFA students please know that your support is what allows us to continue our work throughout the year.
