Spring 2010
Spring 2010 -- Poetz Relaunch Issue
contributor bios
Wendy Barker
Wendy Barker’s novel in prose poems, Nothing Between Us: The Berkeley Years (runner-up for the Del Sol Prize) was released by Del Sol Press in 2009.
Earlier full-length collections of poetry include Poems from Paradise (WordTech, 2005), Way of Whiteness (Wings Press, 2000), Let the Ice Speak (Ithaca House, 1991), and Winter Chickens (Corona Publishing Co., 1990).
Ellen Bass
Ellen Bass’s most recent book of poems, The Human Line, was published by Copper Canyon Press in June 2007. She co-edited (with Florence Howe) the groundbreaking No More Masks! An Anthology of Poems by Women (Doubleday, 1973), has published several previous volumes of poetry, including Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) which won the Lambda Literary Award.Her poems have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic Monthly, Ms., The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and Field. She was awarded the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, The Missouri Review’s Larry Levis Award, the Greensboro Poetry Prize, the New Letters Poetry Prize, the Chautauqua Poetry Prize, a Pushcart Prize, and a Fellowship from the California Arts Council.
Meagan Brothers
Meagan Brothers’ debut novel for young adults, Debbie Harry Sings in French, (2008, Henry Holt & Co.) was a selection in the Kirkus First Fiction special section, an ELLEgirl book club pick and included in the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age 2009. A second young adult novel is due out soon from Henry Holt. Her chapbook of poems, 1978, was published by CafeMo Press in 2001; other poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Meagan has also written film and album reviews for Upstage Magazine, and played guitar with several loosely formed groups in the New York-New Jersey area.
Elizabeth Harrington
Elizabeth Harrington’s poems have appeared in The Hudson Review, Field, Connecticut Review, Nimrod, The Sun, Rattapallax, and other journals, as well as in an anthology about divorce. She was a winner of the Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award and second place winner in The Ledge Poetry Contest. Her chapbook, Earth’s Milk, (2007) was first runner-up in the Main Street Rag Chapbook Poetry contest; another chapbook, The Quick and the Dead, just took first prize in the Grayson Books competition and will be forthcoming from Grayson later this year. She has a Ph.D. in Psychology and recently started Harrington Research Associates, a market research consulting company.
George Held
George Held keeps on keeping on with his poems and stories, with new work coming up in Home Planet News, New York Quarterly, and EZRA (online). his fourteenth collection of poems, After Shakespeare: Selected Sonnets, will appear this fall.
Collin Kelley
Collin Kelley is a novelist, poet and playwright from Atlanta, Georgia. Vanilla Heart Publishing has just released his debut novel, Conquering Venus. His poetry collections include After the Poison, Slow To Burn and Better To Travel. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of the 2007 Georgia Author of the Year Award. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, The Chattahoochee Review, Blue Fifth Review, Hobble Creek Review, Ecotone, LOCUSPOINT, MiPOesias, The Pedestal, Dead Mule, Ouroboros Review and many more.
Jee Leong Koh
Jee Leong Koh is the author of Payday Loans and Equal to the Earth (Bench Press). His poems have appeared in Best New Poets (University of Virginia Press) and Best Gay Poetry (A Midsummer’s Night Press), and in Drunken Boat and PN Review, among other journals. His next book Seven Studies for a Self-Portrait will be out next year. Born in Singapore, he lives in New York City.
Gianmarc Manzione
Gianmarc Manzione’s first collection of poems, This Brevity, was published by Parsifal Press in 2006. Portions of that book appeared in The Paris Review, The Southern Review, Raritan, Poetry Daily and elsewhere. He currently lives in Arlington, Texas, where he works as the Features Writer and Bowling News Manager for BOWL.com, the official website of the United States Bowling Congress.
D. Nurkse
D. Nurkse is the author of numerous collections of poetry, including The Rules of Paradise (2001), The Fall (2003), and The Border Kingdom (2008). His parents escaped Nazi Europe during World War II—his Estonian father worked for the League of Nations in Vienna, his mother was an artist—and moved to New York. Nurkse’s family moved back to live in Europe for a number of years, returning to the United States around the time of the Vietnam War. Nurkse lives in New York and has been named poet laureate of Brooklyn.
He has received a Whiting Writers’ Award, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, and a Tanne Foundation Award. He has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and Riker’s Island Correctional Facility. He has also worked for human rights organizations, writing on human rights issues under his full name, Dennis Nurkse, and was elected to the board of directors of Amnesty International USA.
Jane Ormerod
Jane is the author of the full-length poetry collection, Recreational Vehicles on Fire (Three Rooms Press, 2009), the chapbook 11 Films (Modern Metrics/Exot Books, 2008), and the spoken word CD Nashville Invades Manhattan.
Jane’s work also appears, or is forthcoming, in numerous US, UK and Canadian print and online anthologies and journals including A Cautionary Tale: Seven New York Performing Poets (Uphook Press, 2008), 21 Stars Review, Arsenic Lobster (including the 2007 print anthology), Big City Lit, Brownstone Poets 2007 Anthology, CLWN WR, Dirt, eratio postmodern poetry, Erato, failbetter, Ginosko Literary Journal, Inscribed: A Magazine for Writers, Magma, Night Train, O Sweet Flowery Roses, Poetz.com, Rogue Scholars, Stained Sheets, Take 20, Unpleasant Event Schedule, Whatever Literary Journal, Word Riot, Words and Pictures.
Thaddeus Rutkowski
Thaddeus is the author of the novels Tetched (Behler Publications) and Roughhouse (Kaya Press). Both books were finalists for an Asian American Literary Award; Tetched was chosen as one of the best books reviewed in 2006 by Chronogram magazine. His third novel, Haywire, is forthcoming from Starcherone Books. His stories and poems have been nominated five times for a Pushcart Prize. He has been the fiction and nonfiction editor of the literary journal Many Mountains Moving since 2007.
He teaches fiction writing at the Writer’s Voice in NYC after stints at Pace University, the Hudson Valley Writers Center and the Asian American Writers Workshop. He has been a resident at Yaddo, MacDowell and other colonies.
Hal Sirowitz
Hal Sirowitz is the former Poet Laureate of Queens, New York. He served three years from 2001 to 2004. One of his poems was selected for the Poetry in Motion series, placed on NYC subways. His first book by Crown, “Mother Said,” was translated into 9 languages and became the best-selling translated book of poetry in Norway.
Hal has had Parkinson’s Disease for the last 17 years and is writing a memoir about his experiences called Talking Back to My Arms and Legs: Life with Parkinson’s.