Episode 20: Amanda Moore (Of Bee Keeping, California Light, and Haibun)

Amanda Moore, author of Requeening (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2021)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and elsewhere.

Read: Amanda Moore’s poem “Labor as an Exotic Vacation,” which she reads on Episode 20.

Amanda Moore’s debut collection of poetry, Requeening, was selected for the 2020 National Poetry Series by Ocean Vuong and published by HarperCollins/Ecco in October 2021. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies including Best New Poets, ZZYZVA, and Mamas and Papas: On the Sublime and Heartbreaking Art of Parenting, and her essays have appeared in The Baltimore Review, Hippocampus Magazine, and on the University of Arizona Poetry Center’s blog. She is the recipient of writing awards, residencies, and fellowships from The Brown Handler Residency, In Cahoots, The Writers Grotto, The Writing Salon, Brush Creek Arts Foundation, and The Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Poetry Co-editor at Women’s Voices for Change and a reader at VIDA Review and INCH, Amanda is a high school English teacher and lives by the beach in the Outer Sunset neighborhood of San Francisco with her husband and daughter. 

Purchase: Requeening (HarperCollins/Ecco, 2021)

Check out: Aganetha Dyck‘s collaborative sculptures with bees!

Episode 19: Donna Vorreyer (Of Love, Ritual, and Ordinary Joy)

Donna Vorreyer, author of To Everything There Is (Sundress Publications, 2020).

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google and beyond!

Read: Donna’s poems “In the Encyclopedia of Human Gestures” at Flypaper and “To Everything, There Is” at Penn Review.

Donna Vorreyer is the author of To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Ploughshares, Waxwing, Poet Lore, Cherry Tree, Salamander, Harpur Palate, and other journals. She lives in the suburbs of Chicago where she serves as an associate editor for Rhino Poetry and hosts the monthly online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey.

Purchase: To Everything There Is (Sundress Publications, 2020) and Donna’s other full-lengths at Sundress Publications.

Also Donna’s visually collaborative chapbook Encantado, which we talk about on the episode, from Red Bird Press.

Check out Christine Shank’s art as well as Claire Morgan’s art, featured on Donna’s first and third full-length covers)

Episode 18: Twila Newey and Natalie Solmer (Of Water, Gardens, and Caretaking)

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and Streaming

Twila Newey has an M.F.A. in Writing and Poetics from Naropa. Her poems were finalists for the 2019 Coniston Prize at Radar Poetry and won honorable mention in the 2019 JuxtaProse Poetry Contest. You can read recent work at Interim Poetics, Sugarhouse Review, Green Mountains Review, and Moist Poetry journal. Twila lives in Northern California at the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.

Read: Twila’s poems “honeycomb” and “Theories of Heaven” at Green Mountain Review.

Natalie Solmer is the founder and Editor In Chief of The Indianapolis Review, and is an Assistant Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. She grew up in South Bend, Indiana, went to Clemson University in South Carolina and majored in horticulture. Before her return to grad school and career in teaching, she worked in the horticultural field, primarily as a grocery store florist for 13 years. Her poetry has been published in numerous publications such as: Colorado Review, North American Review, The Literary Review, and Pleiades. She also has published her visual poetry and visual art in places such as Yes, Poetry and Babel Tower Notice Board. 

Read: Natalie Solmer’s poem “Girl of Water, I could Swallow a Garden” at EcoTheo Review.

Episode 17: Kasey Jueds (Of Animals, Silence, and Folk Tales)

Kasey Jueds, author of The Thicket (Univ. Pittsburgh Press, 2021).

Listen: On Apple, Spotify, Google, and elsewhere.

Read: Kasey Jueds’ poem “Kittatinny,” which she reads on the episode.

Kasey Jueds a poet living in the Catskill Mountains in New York. Kasey poems have appeared or are forthcoming in publications including American Poetry Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Bennington Review, Cave Wall, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Narrative, Ninth LetterPleiadesProvincetown Arts, River Styx, Salamander, The Southampton Review, Tinderbox, and Waxwing.Kasey has been a resident at the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Soapstone, and the Ucross Foundation; and a visiting poet at the University of Pennsylvania, LaSalle College, and the University of Northern Colorado. Kasey’s first book Keeper first book, won the Agnes Lynch Starrett Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, and was published by Pitt in fall, 2013. Kasey’s second book, The Thicket, is has just been published by Pittsburg Press this month, November, 2021.

Purchase: The Thicket by Kasey Jueds (UPitt Press, 2021).

Episode 16: Chloe Martinez (Of Mandalas, Bad Poets, and Claiming Identity)

Chloe Martinez, author of Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021)

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify and elsewhere

Read: “Mandala of the Soapy Water,” that Chloe reads on the episode.

Chloe Martinez is a poet and a scholar of South Asian religions. She is the author of the collection Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works) and the chapbook Corner Shrine (Backbone Press). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in AGNI, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and elsewhere. She works at Claremont McKenna College.

Purchase: Ten Thousand Selves (The Word Works, 2021) or a signed copy here.

Episode 15: Angie Mazakis (Of Prizes, Phonelessness, and Itinerancy)

Angie Mazakis, author of I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First (UArk Press, 2020).

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere!

Read: Angie Mazakis’s poem “Oh, My Kidneys,” which she reads on the episode, and Han’s review of I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First.

Angie Mazakis‘s first book of poetry, I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First, was chosen by Billy Collins as a finalist for the 2020 Miller Williams Prize and was published by University of Arkansas Press in March 2020. The book was also a finalist for the National Poetry Series and was named by The Boston Globe as one of the Best Books of 2020. Her poems have appeared in The New Republic, Boston Review, The Iowa Review, Best New Poets, Washington Square Review, Columbia Journal, Indiana Review, Conduit, Lana Turner Journal, Nat. Brut and other journals. She is a PhD student in creative writing at Ohio University.

Purchase: I Was Waiting to See What You Would Do First (UAPress, 2020).

Check out Jeremy Geddes’ Art

Episode 14: Alina Stefanescu (Of Longing, Teleology, and Labor)

Alina Stefanescu, author of Dor (Wandering Aengus Press, 2021).

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere.

Read: Alina’s poem “Apologia,” which she reads on Episode 14.

Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September, 2021). Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I Tried On, won the Brighthorse Books Prize (April 2018). Alina’s poems, essays, and fiction can be found in Prairie Schooner, North American Review, World Literature Today, Pleiades, Poetry, BOMB, Crab Creek Review, and others. She serves as poetry editor for several journals, reviewer and critic for others, and Co-Director of PEN America’s Birmingham Chapter. She is currently working on a novel-like creature.

Purchase: Dor (signed copy) directly from Alina Stefanescu.

Episode 13: Christian J. Collier (Of Chattanooga, Names, and Horror)

Christian J. Collier, author of The Gleaming of the Blade (Bull City Press, 2022)

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere

Read: Christian’s poem “when my days fill with ghosts” at Hayden’s Ferry Review, which Christian reads on the episode.

Christian J. Collier is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, TN. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review,The Michigan Quarterly ReviewAtlanta ReviewGrist Journal, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest.

Pre-order Christian’s chapbook The Gleaming of the Blade (Bull City Press, 2022)

Episode 12: Amorak Huey (Of Dads, Odysseus, and American Myth)

Amorak Huey, author of Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021)

Listen: On Apple, Google Play, Spotify and more.

Read: Amorak Huey’s poem CHILDHOOD GOES KALEIDOSCOPE, KALEIDOSCOPE, KALEIDOSCOPE, GUN at American Poetry Review

Amorak Huey is a poet and professor, a writer and sometime journalist, a decent dad and a mediocre slow-pitch softball player. He pronounces his first name uh-MOR-ack.

Amorak is author of four poetry collections: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021); Boom Box (Sundress Publications, 2019); Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015), as well as as two poetry chapbooks: The Insomniac Circus (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2014) and A Map of the Farm Three Miles from the End of Happy Hollow Road (Porkbelly Press, 2016).

In addition, he is co-author, with W. Todd Kaneko, of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2018, and the poetry chapbook Slash / Slash (Diode Editions, 2021). 

Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021).

Episode 11: Lyd Havens (Of Form, Similes, and Saints)

Lyd Havens, author of Chokecherry (Game Over Books, 2021)

Listen: On Apple, Google, Spotify, and elsewhere

Read: Lyd Havens’ poem “I only mis-gender myself when Fleetwood Mac comes on” (flypaper lit), which they read on Episode 11

Lyd Havens is a reader and writer currently living in Boise, Idaho. Their work has previously been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and Foglifter, among others. They are the author of the chapbook I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018), the winner of the 2018 ellipsis… Poetry Prize, a finalist for the 2019 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize, and a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee. Their chapbook Chokecherry was published by Game Over Books in May 2021.

Purchase: Lyd Havens’ Chokecherry (Game Over Books, 2021).