Pushcart mention for upstreet poem

"Live at the Village Vanguard," a poem by Bill Zavatsky that appears in upstreet number two, is listed in Pushcart Prize XXXII: Best of the Small Presses (Pushcart Press, 2008) as one of the notable poems which were nominated for the Prize but were not selected for publication in the anthology. It was nominated for the 2007 Prize by upstreet Poetry Editor Jessica Greenbaum and Editor Vivian Dorsel, and also appears in Zavatsky's poetry collection, Where X Marks the Spot (Hanging Loose, 2006).

Bill Zavatsky grew up in Bridgeport, CT, and holds BA and MFA degrees from Columbia University. He has worked as a journalist and published two previous collections, Theories of Rain and Other Poems and For Steve Royal and Other Poems. A longtime jazz pianist, he has written poems for CDs by Bill Evans and Marc Copland. He has also translated Valery Larbaud, Robert Desnos, and Andre Breton's Earthlight, which won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize. He was the owner and operator of SUN, which gave many fine poets their first publication credits. He lives in New York City and teaches English at The Trinity School.

upstreet is delighted, and congratulates Bill on his well-deserved accomplishment.

upstreet poets featured on Poetry Daily

The work of upstreet Poetry Editor Jessica Greenbaum will be featured on the Monday, January 28 Poetry Daily, the online poetry anthology which spotlights each day a new poem from a book, magazine or journal. Jess’s poem, “The First, Youngest Men,” was selected from The Harvard Review 33, and can also be seen on the journal's website.

Today’s featured work is a new translation of two poems from Federico Garcia Lorca’s Poet in New York (Grove/Atlantic) by Pablo Medina and upstreet contributor Mark Statman, whose “Night Flower” appeared in upstreet number two.

Book Critics nominate upstreet 4 poet

We are pleased to report that the National Book Critics Circle has announced the finalists for its 2007 Awards, and one of the nominees will soon be an upstreet author. Among the five finalists in the Poetry category is Sleeping and Waking, by Michael O’Brien (Flood Editions). O’Brien is a New York City poet whose previous collections include The Ruin and Sills. In the December 9 Sunday New York Times, reviewer David Orr called Sleeping and Waking “a quietly startling collection that ought to earn O’Brien not only poetry-world attention, but actual readers.”

We congratulate Michael O'Brien on his nomination. Three poems from his current work in progress, Avenue, will appear in upstreet number four.

AWP, here we come!

For those of you who have been living on another planet, the Annual Conference & Bookfair of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) will take place in New York City from Wednesday, January 30, to Saturday, February 2 (Ground Hog Day and, more important, James Joyce’s birthday). The conference HQ will be the Hilton New York, and many events will be held across the street at the Sheraton Hotel & Towers. Seven thousand people have signed up for this literary lovefest, which encompasses more than 300 readings, lectures and panel discussions on contemporary writing, publishing, and teaching. Two events we consider especially interesting, both scheduled for Friday, are:

—3:00-4:15pm: Fraud! The Debunking of Experimental Fiction, a panel discussion in which one of the participants is Michael Martone, the author we will interview for upstreet 4.
—4:30-6:15pm: A New Kind of College, a discussion of the creation of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, the nation’s first college devoted solely to MFA programs. Three of upstreet’s four editors are graduates of VCFA’s MFA in Writing Program.

Registrations have been sold out for a couple of weeks now, but the Bookfair exhibit halls, located on the second and third floors of the Hilton, will be open to the public from 8:30am to 5:30pm on Saturday. We hope supporters of upstreet who are planning to be in NYC will stop by and visit our editors (Robin Oliveira, Jess Greenbaum, Harrison Fletcher, and Vivian Dorsel) at the Bookfair table we’ll be sharing with Opium magazine. We look forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones.

Score one for The Touchstone Anthology!

The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: Work from 1970 to the Present, edited by Lex Williford and Michael Martone, brings together fifty works of creative nonfiction selected by five hundred writers and writing teachers from across the U.S. These teachers were asked which essays and personal narratives they chose to give their students as examples of the best creative nonfiction work published since 1970. Their choices include work by such luminaries as Jo Ann Beard, Annie Dillard, Robin Hemley, Jamaica Kincaid, Phillip Lopate, David Sedaris, Sue William Silverman, David Foster Wallace, and—most significantly—upstreet Creative Nonfiction Editor Harrison Candelaria Fletcher.

We are delighted, but not surprised. Harrison’s essay, “The Beautiful City of Tirzah,” appears on page 190, and we encourage you to either buy the anthology or check it out of your local library, so you can read his piece and the other wonderful works in whose company it appears.

Harrison, who holds a BA from the University of New Mexico and an MFA from the newly renamed Vermont College of Fine Arts, has been awarded the 2005 New Letters Dorothy Churchill Cappon Prize for best essay and a New Letters Readers’ Award. He was an essay finalist for the 2007 National Magazine Award, and has been a finalist for the PEN Center USA, Eugene S. Pulliam, Iowa Review, and Gulf Coast Awards. Harrison’s work has appeared in New Letters, Fourth Genre, Puerto del Sol, Cimarron Review, and upstreet. A native New Mexican, he lives in Denver, CO, with his wife and two children, and has recently completed a memoir, Man in a Box.