RECENT POETRY NEWS, Fall 2009

My big fall news is that my newest manuscript, Ideal Cities, was selected by poet Paul Guest as one of the winners 

of the 2009 National Poetry Series, and will be out from HarperCollins in 2010!

I have new poems out in Blackbird and Southeast Review, and forthcoming soon in Anti-, Subtropics, The New Republic,

VQR, The Journal, The American Poetry Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Gargoyle.

The Virginia Tech MFA program is ranked among the top 50 programs in the newly released  2010 Poets & Writers MFA Rankings!

My essay on Rita Dove that originally appeared in Women Poets on Mentorship: Efforts and Affections (U of Iowa Press, 2008)

and was reprinted in Callaloo 31.3 in their issue dedicated to Rita Dove was chosen by editor Randall Kennedy for inclusion in

Best African American Essays: 2010, which will be out from Random House at the start of 2010.  

Hear more about the project from the series editor, Gerald Early, on NPR.

My poem "Slinky Dirt with Development Hat," featured on the blog Starting Today: Poems for the first 100 Days, will be out soon

in an anthology called Starting Today: Poems for Obama's First 100 Days (U of Iowa Press, 2010).

I also have a bunch of poems (and some audio) in the brand new anthology recently out from Persea Books -

From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great.

Academic News, Fall 2009:

Check out my article on mezuzot in American Sanctuary: Understanding Sacred Spaces (out from Indiana University Press),
or my article on Passover in America in The Encyclopedia of American Holidays (Greenwood Press, 2006).

For Archived News, click here...

Kick-Ass Site Alert:  Hear lots of cool young poets read their work (myself included) at From the Fishouse.

Order my book, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore on amazon.com, via Small Press Distributors, or directly through Anhinga Press!