Two upstreet authors published in2008 Best of the Net Anthology

Two authors whose work has appeared in upstreet have had pieces that were published in online magazines chosen for the Best of the Net 2008 anthology. “His Wife,” a story by Barry Jay Kaplan that was published in Apple Valley Review, was one of five stories chosen, and “To a Motion Activated Paper Towel Dispenser,” a poem by Paul Hostovsky that was in Thick with Conviction, was one of the 17 poems selected.

Barry’s story, “His Brother Calls,” appeared in upstreet number three. His stories have also been in Descant, Bryant Literary Review, Central Park, Brink, Appearances, and the Northern New England Review. He has written the novels Black Orchid (with Nicholas Meyer), That Wilder Woman, and Biscayne. His book of interviews, Actors at Work (with Rosemarie Tichler) was published in August 2007. His plays have been produced in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Key West. Landscape of Desire, published by Smith and Krause, was the American representative to the 25th Australian National Playwrights Conference. He lives in New Haven, CT, and is currently working on a novel, The Body in Exile.

Paul’s poem, “A Woman Taking off Her Shirt,” was published in upstreet number four and another, “The Sadness of Dads,” will be in the upcoming number five. His poems have also been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and The Writer’s Almanac, and have been published in Carolina Quarterly, Shenandoah, New Delta Review, Atlanta Review, Poetry East, and many other journals and anthologies. He won the Comstock Review’s Muriel Craft Bailey Award for 2001 and the White Pelican Review’s Hollingsworth Prize in 2005. He has three chapbooks, Bird in the Hand (Grayson Books, 2006), Dusk Outside the Braille Press (Riverstone Press, 2006), and The Best Lunches (Frank Cat Press, 2008), as well as one full-length poetry collection, Bending the Notes, (Main Street Rag, 2008). Paul’s poems have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize 13 times; he has won once. He makes his living in Boston as an interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing where he specializes in working with the deaf-blind.

Two upstreet authors to teach at Postgraduate Writers’ Conference

upstreet authors Michael Martone and Robin Behn will be on the faculty of the fourteenth annual Postgraduate Writers’ Conference, which will take place at Vermont College of Fine Arts, Montpelier, from August 11-17, 2009. The Conference will offer fourteen workshops in fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, and young adult literature.

Michael Martone will facilitate a workshop on The Short Story, for the fifth consecutive year. His essay “Hermes Goes to College” appeared in upstreet number four, in which he was also the subject of the author interview. He is the author of thirteen books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Blue Guide to Indiana, Alive and Dead in Indiana, and Racing in Place. His 2005 book Michael Martone gathers fifty fictions in the form of “contributor’s notes,” and Double Wide: Collected Fiction of Michael Martone was released in 2007. He co-edited The Scribner Anthology of Contemporary Short Fiction and The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Creative Nonfiction. The Flatness and Other Landscapes, a collection of his own essays about the Midwest, won the AWP Prize for Creative Nonfiction in 1998. He teaches at the University of Alabama.

Robin Behn will lead a Poetry Manuscript workshop; this will be her third time teaching at the Conference. Her poem “Elegy and Lament” will appear in upstreet number five. She is the author of Paper Bird, which won the AWP Award Series in Poetry, The Red Hour, Horizon Note, which won the Brittingham Prize, and the chapbooks The Oboist and Naked Writing. She is also co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach. The recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and Guggenheim Fellowships, she teaches in the MFA programs at The University of Alabama and Vermont College of Fine Arts.

For more information about the program, including accommodations, fees, and how to apply, contact Conference Director Ellen Lesser at (802) 828-8835 or e-mail: pgconference@vermontcollege.edu

Eight upstreet poets publishedin Wom-Po listserv anthology

Eight of the 259 poets, or one out of every 32 (3%) whose work appears in the new anthology of poems from the Women’s Poetry Listserv, have had or will have work published in one or more of the first five issues of upstreet. Wom-Po is an international listserv devoted to the discussion of Women’s Poetry. Membership is open to all individuals who are interested in discussing poetry written by women. The discussion covers women poets of all periods, aesthetics, countries, and ethnicities.

Letters to the World: Poems from the Wom-Po Listserv, edited by Moira Richards, Rosemary Starace, and Lesley Wheeler (Red Hen Press, 2008), contains the following work by upstreet poets:

—Jeanne Marie Beaumont (upstreet #4), “Home in the World,” p. 57
—Nicole Cooley (#5), “Grief As Is,” p. 98
—Lisken Van Pelt Dus (#1, 2, & 5), “Broken Things,” p. 131
—Eve Grubin (#5), “Modesty,” p. 174
—Marilyn Hacker (#5), “Ghazal: In Summer,” p. 180
—Maryanne Hannan (#1), “To You Who Speak of Audre Lorde,” p. 184
—Elaine Sexton (#3 & 4), “Public Transportation,” p. 338
—Yerra Sugarman (#4), “To Miklós Radnóti,” p. 354

The anthology also includes an introduction by D’Arcy Randall and a preface by Wom-Po founder Annie Finch. This one-of-a-kind international collection of 259 poets (258 women and one man) was shaped by consensus-based feminist collaboration over the internet.

Lisken Van Pelt Duspublishes poetry chapbook

Everywhere at Once, a chapbook by upstreet poet Lisken Van Pelt Dus, has been published by Pudding House Press. It is a collection of twenty poems, unified by bird imagery. In poems that travel the globe, the book deals with themes of immanence, identity, the human condition, and, of course, love. The cover illustration is by the poet’s brother, John Van Pelt. The book is available in Berkshire County (MA) bookstores, from the publisher, or directly from the author.

Lisken’s poem “Barn” appeared in upstreet number one, “Entropy” was in number two, and “Light” will be included in number five, which will be released around the Fourth of July.

Lisken is a poet and martial artist who was raised in England, the U.S., and Mexico, and teaches English and other languages at Monument Mountain Regional High School, Great Barrington, MA. Her poetry can also be found in Conduit, Main Street Rag, The South Carolina Review, The Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, and other journals, and has earned awards from The Comstock Review, Atlanta Review, and Writing the River: the 2004 Word Street Writing Contest. She lives in Pittsfield, MA, with her husband, Bob Dus.

Mark DeCarteret is named Portsmouth, NH Poet Laureate

Mark DeCarteret, whose poem “Heir” appeared in upstreet number three, has been named seventh Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH. He will serve for the next two years as the public face of poetry in the community and create a project that supports the mission of the Poet Laureate Program, “building community through poetry.” The Poet Laureate is selected by a committee of seven local writers, community members, and city officials from nominations made by the public.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts in 1960, Mark graduated from Emerson College in 1990 with a BFA in Creative Writing, and was Emerson’s representative at the 1990 Boston Inter-Collegiate Poetry Festival. Since graduating from the University of New Hampshire in 1993 with an MA in English, he has been a fixture in the New Hampshire/Southern Maine poetry scene as a reader, editor, performer and publishing poet. He lives in Stratham, NH, and teaches at the New Hampshire Institute of Art. Mark’s poetry has appeared in more than 150 literary reviews, including AGNI, Atlanta Review, Caliban, Chicago Review, Cream City Review, Gargoyle, Phoebe, Poetry East, Salt Hill, and Sonora Review, and in such anthologies as American Poetry: The Next Generation and Thus Spake the Corpse: An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998. He is the author of three books: Over Easy, Review: A Book of Poems, and The Great Apology.

The Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program, established in 1997 by local arts organizers and writers, appoints and supports an outstanding local poet as Poet Laureate for the city, sponsoring events that feature area poets and authors from outside the New Hampshire Seacoast, and encouraging a love of poetry among people of all ages.

Amy Small-McKinney publishes chapbook

The publication of Clear Moon, Frost, a poetry chapbook by Amy Small-McKinney, has been announced by Finishing Line Press, and is available for pre-ordering. Amy’s poem “Eddie and His Beagle” appeared in upstreet number one.

Amy’s first chapbook, Body of Surrender (Finishing Line, 2004) was showcased at Poet’s House in New York. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2004 and again in 2006. Her work has appeared in on-line and print journals such as Wild River Review, The Cortland Review, The Pedestal Magazine, ForPoetry, Elixir Press, Fox Chase Review, and Blue Fifth Review. She interviewed Pulitzer Prize poetry nominee Bruce Smith for the April 2006 issue of The Pedestal Magazine, and was guest editor for its June 2006 issue. Her poem “Nigeria 2002” was awarded third place in the 2007 Philadelphia Eco Poetry Project. Her essays have appeared in a number of publications, such as The Philadelphia Inquirer and Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal—University of Toronto, and other publications.

When not writing poetry, Amy works as a consulting counselor in local school districts, and facilitates community groups dealing with psychosocial issues. She will soon be joining a private practice as a therapist for children, young adults, and families. She feels that not having an MFA is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that she writes, and educates herself, alone; the blessing is that she permits the poems to emerge without an internal censor or shame. She lives with her husband and daughter in Blue Bell, PA.

“Amy Small-McKinney writes with a commitment to inner life, inner depth, and inner truth.”—Molly Peacock

“Amy Small-McKinney…has secretly and quietly produced some of the most beautiful poems I have ever read.”—Franz Wright

Sirenland 2009 is a smash!

The consensus among the attendees of the 2009 Sirenland Writers’ Conference is that the gathering’s third year was a great success. Held at Le Sirenuse, a five-star hotel in Positano, Italy, it included a three-hour mixed-genre (fiction and memoir) workshop each morning and readings and talks in the evenings, with plenty of time in between to work, relax, or enjoy the sights, food, and shopping in and around this lovely little Amalfi Coast village. There were nine writers in each of three workshops, led by Peter Cameron, Dani Shapiro, and Jim Shepard, the author interviewed for upstreet number one. One of the highlights of the week was a dinner at the home of Carla and Antonio Sersale, owners of Le Sirenuse, which featured an open-mic reading for the workshop participants. For further information on Sirenland, including information on how to apply for next year's conference and a slideshow of photographs by conference co-organizer Michael Maren, go to the Sirenland website.

The photo above, taken by conference co-organizer and One Story founder/ editor Hannah Tinti, shows the members of one workshop: Allison Gehlhaus, Sylvia Mann, Mary Medlin, Kabi Hartman, Robin Maguire, Jim Shepard, upstreet editor/ publisher Vivian Dorsel, Jane Percy, Eric Grunwald, and Mary Mott.

Pushcart Board nominates two upstreet poems

For the second year in a row, the Pushcart Board of Contributing Editors has nominated two works from upstreet to be considered for inclusion in the next Pushcart Prize anthology, along with the six nominations made by our editors. They are two poems by Alan Feldman, “Preparing for Class” and “The Grounding,” from upstreet number four.

It is a great compliment for upstreet to be singled out by this Board, which contains some very well known writers. Congratulations to Alan, and best wishes to him in the competition.