2014 April PAD Challenge: Guest Judges
That’s right; I said guest judges! The list is now finalized for our guest judges for the 2014 April PAD Challenge! Have fun learning more about this impressive list of…
That's right; I said guest judges!
The list is now finalized for our guest judges for the 2014 April PAD Challenge! Have fun learning more about this impressive list of line breakers that would make a very formidable reading list on their lonesome.
I'd like to thank each and every one of them for volunteering their time to participate and help make this year's challenge a new level of fun.
Here's how it will work:
- Each day, there will be a new prompt (like usual).
- After a few days have passed, I'll take all the poems attached to that day's prompt (in the comments) and winnow down the list for a specific guest judge...
- Who will then pick his or her favorite poem for the day...
- And that poem will be included in the Poem Your Heart Out anthology published by Words Dance Publishing.
In other words, it's going to be a big-time poetic party on this blog during the month of April. (By the way, click here for some FAQs and tips on the challenge.)
Who are these special guest judges?
Here's the list (in no particular order):
Thomas Lux
Thomas Lux's most recent book of poems is Child Made of Sand (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). Selected Poems is due from Bloodaxe Books this fall.
He is also the author of several other books, including The Cradle Place and God Particles. In addition to poetry collections, Tom is the author of From the Southland, a book of literary nonfiction.
He holds the Bourne Chair in Poetry and is director of the McEver Visiting Writers Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He has been awarded multiple NEA grants and the Kingsley Tufts Award and is a former Guggenheim Fellow.
Traci Brimhall
Traci is the author of Our Lady of the Ruins (W.W. Norton), selected by Carolyn Forché for the 2011 Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the 2009 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, Slate, The Believer, The Kenyon Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, and Best American Poetry 2013 & 2014.
She’s received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, the King/Chávez/Parks Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Learn more at tracibrimhall.com.
Andrew Hudgins
Andrew is the author of seven books of poems, including Saints and Strangers, The Glass Hammer, and Ecstatic in the Poison. A finalist for the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, he is a recipient of Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships as well as the Harper Lee Award. He currently teaches in the Department of English at Ohio State University.
His most recent books are A Clown at Midnight (poems) and The Joker: A Memoir.
Barbara Hamby
Barbara is the author of five books of poems, most recently On the Street of Divine Love: New and Selected Poems (2014) published by the University of Pittsburgh Press, which also published Babel (2004) and All-Night Lingo Tango (2009). She was a 2010 Guggenheim fellow in Poetry and her book of short stories, Lester Higata’s 20th Century, won the 2010 Iowa Short Fiction Award.
She teaches at Florida State University where she is Distinguished University Scholar.
Learn more at: www.barbarahamby.com
Amy King
Of I Want to Make You Safe (Litmus Press), John Ashbery describes Amy King's poems as bringing “abstractions to brilliant, jagged life, emerging into rather than out of the busyness of living.”
Safe was one of Boston Globe’s Best Poetry Books of 2011.
King teaches Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College and works with VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.
Check her latest blog entries at Boston Review, Poetry Magazine and the Rumpus.
Bob Hicok
Bob is the author of several poetry collections, including This Clumsy Living, Words for Empty and Words for Full, and most recently Elegy Owed. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech and before teaching owned and ran a successful automotive die design business.
His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, and Best American Poetry. His collections Elegy Owed and Animal Soul have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Learn more here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1126.
Mary Biddinger
Mary is the author of multiple collections, including Saint Monica and O Holy Insurgency. Her collection A Sunny Place With Adequate Water is due out in May. She's also the founder of Barn Owl Review.
Mary has received two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards in Creative Writing for her poetry: one in 2010, the other 2007.
In addition to all this, she also edits the Akron Series in Poetry and the Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics for the University of Akron Press.
Learn more here: http://www.marybiddinger.com/.
Jericho Brown
Jericho is the author of Please and the forthcoming The New Testament. His first collection Please won the 2009 American Book Award.
Jericho taught at the University of San Diego until 2012, when he became a professor at Emory University (in Atlanta, GA).
A former speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans, Jericho has had his poetry published in several publications, including The Iowa Review, New England Review, and Oxford American.
Learn more here: http://www.jerichobrown.com/.
Kelli Russell Agodon
Kelli is a poet, writer, and editor from the Northwest. She’s the author of the newly released, Hourglass Museum (White Pine Press, 2014) and The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts for Your Writing Practice, which she coauthored with Martha Silano. Her other books include Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room, Small Knots, Geography, and Fire On Her Tongue: An Anthology of Contemporary Women's Poetry, which she edited with Annette Spaulding-Convy. Kelli is the co-founder of Two Sylvias Press and was the editor of Crab Creek Review for the last six years. She lives in a small seaside town where she is an avid mountain biker, paddleboarder, and hiker. She loves dessert, museums, and typewriters.
Learn more about her at her website: www.agodon.com. She also blogs at Book of Kells: www.ofkells.blogspot.com. She can be found on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/agodon.
Her press, Two Sylvias Press, recently launched a Kickstarter Campaign for The Poet Tarot: A Deck & Guidebook into Creative Exploration, which you can learn about and support here: http://bit.ly/PoetTarotKickstarter.
Nate Pritts
Nate Pritts is the author of six books of poetry, most recently Right Now More Than Ever. His poems, and writings about poetry, can be found in American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Poets & Writers and the annual Poet's Market.
He founded H_NGM_N, an online journal and small press, and continues to serve as Director. Nate lives in the Finger Lakes region of New York.
Learn more here: http://www.h-ngm-n.com/nate-pritts/
Jillian Weise
Jillian is the author of The Amputee’s Guide to Sex, the novel The Colony,and The Book of Goodbyes, which won the 2013 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her work has appeared in Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, The New York Times and Tin House.
After fellowships from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the Fine Arts Work Center and the Fulbright Program, she joined the faculty at Clemson University.
She identifies as a cyborg.
Learn more here: https://www.boaeditions.org/bookstore/the-book-of-goodbyes.html
Scott Owens
Originally from Greenwood, SC, Scott holds degrees from Ohio University, UNC Charlotte, and UNC Greensboro. He currently lives in Hickory, NC, where he teaches at Catawba Valley Community College, edits Wild Goose Poetry Review and serves as vice-president of the NC Poetry Society.
His 11th book of poetry, Eye of the Beholder, was recently released by Main Street Rag.
His work has received awards from the Academy of American Poets, the Pushcart Prize Anthology, the Next Generation/Indie Lit Awards, the NC Writers Network, the NC Poetry Society, and the Poetry Society of SC.
Learn more here: http://www.scottowenspoet.com/.
Kristina Marie Darling
Kristina is the author of 17 books, which include Melancholia (An Essay) (Ravenna Press, 2012), Petrarchan (BlazeVOX Books, 2013), and a forthcoming hybrid genre collection called Fortress (Sundress Publications, 2014).
Check out her collaboration, Music For Another Life, with Max Avi Kaplan (BlazeVOX Books) by clicking here.
Her awards include fellowships from Yaddo, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, as well as grants from the Kittredge Fund and the Elizabeth George Foundation. She is currently working toward a Ph.D. in Poetics at S.U.N.Y.-Buffalo.
Learn more here: http://kristinamariedarling.com/.
Shaindel Beers
Shaindel is the author of two full-length poetry collections, A Brief History of Time (2009) and The Children's War and Other Poems (2013), both from Salt Publishing.
She's also the poetry editor for Contrary Magazine (www.contrarymagazine.com).
Find her online here: http://shaindelbeers.com.
Erica Wright
Erica is the author of Instructions for Killing the Jackal (Black Lawrence Press, 2011) and the chapbook Silt (Dancing Girl Press, 2009). Her debut crime novel, The Red Chameleon, will be published this year by Pegasus Books. Her poems have appeared in Crazyhorse, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Gulf Coast, New Orleans Review, and elsewhere.
She is the Poetry Editor at Guernica Magazine and has taught creative writing at Marymount Manhattan College and New York University's continuing studies program.
Learn more at http://www.blacklawrence.com/author/erica-wright/.
Deborah Ager
Deborah recently co-edited The Bloomsbury Anthology of Contemporary Jewish American Poetry (2013) and Old Flame: Ten Years of 32 Poems Magazine (2013).
The latter is a finalist for the Forward Book of the Year prize.
Learn more at: http://www.deborahager.com.
Neil Aitken
Neil is the author of The Lost Country of Sight, winner of 2007 Philip Levine Prize, and the editor of Boxcar Poetry Review. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia and raised in Saudi Arabia, Taiwan, and western United States and Canada.
His poems have appeared in American Literary Review, The Collagist, Crab Orchard Review, Ninth Letter, The Normal School, and elsewhere. A former computer programmer, he is presently pursuing a PhD in literature and creative writing at the University of Southern California.
Learn more here: www.neil-aitken.com.
Patricia Fargnoli
Patricia Fargnoli, from Walpole NH was the New Hampshire Poet Laureate from 2006-2009. She’s published 4 books (including Winter and Then, Something) and 3 chapbooks of poetry and has won The May Swenson Book Award, the Foreward Silver Book of the Year Award, the NH Literary Award for Poetry and the Sheila Mooton Book Award.
She’s published over 300 poems in literary journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Massachusetts Review, Harvard Review et. al.
A Macdowell Fellow and retired social worker she now teaches poetry privately.
Nin Andrews
Nin's poems and stories have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies including Ploughshares, The Paris Review, Best American Poetry (1997, 2001, 2003, 2013), and Great American Prose Poems. She won an individual artist grant from the Ohio Arts Council in 1997 and again in 2003 and is the author of several books including six chapbooks and five full-length collections.
Her next book, Why God Is a Woman, is due out from BOA Editions in 2015.
Learn more here: http://www.amazon.com/Nin-Andrews/e/B001JOVUG.
Lawrence Schimel
Lawrence writes in both English and Spanish and has published over 100 books in many different genres, including the poetry collection Desayuno en la Cama (Egales) and the chapbooks Fairy Tales for Writers (A Midsummer Night's Press) and Deleted Names (A Midsummer Night's Press).
He has published poems in a broad range of periodicals, including The Saturday Evening Post, Physics Today, The Christian Science Monitor, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and his poems have been widely anthologized in The Random House Treasury of Light Verse, Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The Book of Dreams, The Incredible Sestina Anthology, Chicken Soup for the Horse-Lover's Soul 2, Obsessions: Sestinas in the 21st Century, etc.
Lawrence lives in Madrid, Spain where he works as a Spanish->English translator.
January Gill O'Neil
January is the author ofUnderlife (CavanKerry Press, December 2009), and a forthcoming collection, Misery Islands (CavanKerry Press, fall 2014).
She is the executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival and an assistant professor of English at Salem State University.
January blogs at Poet Mom.
Sandra Beasley
Sandra is the author of I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize, and Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize. Recent honors for her work include the Center for Book Arts Chapbook Prize, Cornell College’s Distinguished Writer fellowship, Lenoir-Rhyne University’s Writer in Residence position, and two DCCAH Artist Fellowships.
Her most recent book is Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a memoir and cultural history of food allergy. She lives in Washington, D.C., and is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at the University of Tampa.
Learn more here: sandrabeasley.com.
And here: sbeasley.blogspot.com.
Vince Gotera
Vince is the author of Fighting Kite, Ghost Wars, and other poetry collections, including the forthcoming Pacific Crossing. He also published the lit-crit book Radical Visions: Poetry by Vietnam Veterans. Vince is Editor of the North American Review and also professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa.
Vince's work has appeared in Ploughshares, Amerasia, The Kenyon Review, The Asian Pacific American Journal, Zone 3, and other magazines, as well as in anthologies like Tilting the Continent: Southeast Asian American Writing and Contemporary Fiction by Filipinos in America.
Favorite color? Any flavor of blue—aquamarine, cobalt, sky, robin’s-egg.
Learn more here: http://vincegotera.blogspot.com.
Victoria Chang
Victoria's third book of poems, The Boss, was published by McSweeney's Poetry Series in 2013. Her other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle.
Her poems have been published in Kenyon Review, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, The Washington Post, Best American Poetry, and other places.
You can find her at www.victoriachangpoet.com or @VChangpoet.
Jeannine Hall Gailey
Jeannine recently served as the Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington, and is the author of four books of poetry: Unexplained Fevers, She Returns to the Floating World,Becoming the Villainess and The Robot Scientist's Daughter, upcoming in 2015 from Mayapple Press.
Her work has been featured on NPR’s Writer’s Almanac and Verse Daily.
Her poems have appeared The Iowa Review, American Poetry Review and Prairie Schooner.
Her website is www.webbish6.com.
Tom C. Hunley
Tom is an associate professor of English at Western Kentucky University, the director of Steel Toe Books, and the bassist for the litcore rock band Manley Pointer. Forthcoming are his fourth full-length book, Plunk (Wayne State College Press), and an edited collection of essays called Creative Writing Studies: An Introduction to Its Pedagogies (Southern Illinois University Press).
Tom's poems have been featured three times on The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor and five times on Verse Daily. Among his publication credits are Atlanta Review, New Orleans Review, Five Points, TriQuarterly, North American Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, and New York Quarterly.
He divides his time between Kansas and Oz.
Learn more here: http://www.steeltoebooks.com/books/70.html.
Adam Fitzgerald
Adam is the author of The Late Parade, his debut collection of poetry from W. W. Norton’s historic Liveright imprint. A 2005 graduate of Boston College, in 2008 he received his Masters in Editorial Studies from Boston University’s Editorial Institute. In 2010, he received his MFA from Columbia University’s School of the Arts.
Adam's poems, essays and interviews have appeared in A Public Space, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is the founding editor of the poetry journal Maggy and contributing editor for The American Reader. In September 2013, he co-curated the immersive-environment exhibit “John Ashbery Collects: Poet Among Things” for Loretta Howard Gallery in Chelsea, New York. Next summer, he will direct The Ashbery Home School in Hudson, New York with Timothy Donnelly and Dorothea Lasky.
He teaches at The New School and Rutgers University, and lives in a pea-sized studio in NYC.
Learn more here: http://www.thelateparade.com/.
Erika Meitner
Erika's first book, Inventory at the All-Night Drugstore, won the 2002 Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry, and was published in 2003 by Anhinga Press. Her second book, Ideal Cities, was selected by Paul Guest as a winner of the 2009 National Poetry Series competition, and was published in 2010 by HarperCollins. Her third collection, Makeshift Instructions for Vigilant Girls, was published by Anhinga Press in 2011. Her newest collection of poems, Copia, is due out from BOA Editions in 2014.
In addition to teaching creative writing at UVA, UW-Madison, and UC-Santa Cruz, Erika has worked as a dating columnist, an office temp, a Hebrew school instructor, a computer programmer, a lifeguard, a documentary film production assistant, and a middle school teacher in the New York City public school system.
Meitner is currently an Associate Professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she teaches in the MFA program, and is also the associate faculty principal of Hawthorn House (one of the residential colleges at Virginia Tech).
Learn more here: http://erikameitner.com/.
Joseph Mills
A faculty member at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Joseph Mills holds an endowed chair, the Susan Burress Wall Distinguished Professorship in the Humanities.
He has published four collections of poetry with Press 53, including Sending Christmas Cards to Huck and Hamlet.
Joseph's fifth collection, This Miraculous Turning, will be released in September 2014.
More information about his work is available at www.josephrobertmills.com and he blogs somewhat regularly at www.josephrobertmills.blogspot.com.
Daniel Nester
Daniel is the author of How to Be Inappropriate, God Save My Queen I and II, and is editor of The Incredible Sestina Anthology.
His writing has appeared in N+1, The New York Times, The Morning News, The Daily Beast, The Best American Poetry, The Best Creative Nonfiction, Third Rail: The Poetry of Rock and Roll, and Now Write! Nonfiction.
He teaches writing at The College of Saint Rose in Albany, NY
Learn more here: DanielNester.com.
Again, thank you so much judges for volunteering your time and energy to this year's challenge!
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Which poets will judge for which days?
That will be released on each day. The guest judge will be announced along with the prompt. So you'll need to show up and be ready to poem every day!
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Get your poetry published!
The 2014 Poet's Market includes articles and advice on the craft, business, and promotion of poetry, in addition to new poems and poet interviews. Plus, this book lists of hundreds of poetry publishing opportunities, including listings for book (and chapbook) publishers, magazines (and journals), contests (and awards), and so much more!
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Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Content Editor of the Writer's Digest Writing Community and author of Solving the World's Problems (Press 53). Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
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Find more poetic goodies here:
Robert Lee Brewer is Senior Editor of Writer's Digest, which includes managing the content on WritersDigest.com and programming virtual conferences. He's the author of 40 Plot Twist Prompts for Writers: Writing Ideas for Bending Stories in New Directions, The Complete Guide of Poetic Forms: 100+ Poetic Form Definitions and Examples for Poets, Poem-a-Day: 365 Poetry Writing Prompts for a Year of Poeming, and more. Also, he's the editor of Writer's Market, Poet's Market, and Guide to Literary Agents. Follow him on Twitter @robertleebrewer.
