Cooley poetry collection wins Kinereth Gensler Award

Milk Dress, the fourth poetry collection by upstreet poet Nicole Cooley (“Hour of the Pink Flashlight,” upstreet number five) will be published in November by Alice James Books as co-winner of the Kinereth Gensler Award. This award, one of two competitions run by the publisher, is open to poets residing in New York, New Jersey, and New England. In addition to publication, winners of the award receive $2,000 and serve a three-year term on the Alice James Books Editorial Board.

“These are poems of birth and motherhood. They begin with a new life and end in a new self. They probe deep into the places where love extinguishes identity and yet renews awareness. What is so compelling here is that the arc of this journey is described with such music, craft and rigor in this wonderful collection.”—Eavan Boland

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans. Her third book of poems, Breach, about Hurricane Katrina and the Gulf Coast, was published by LSU Press in April. Her first book, Resurrection, won the 1995 Walt Whitman Award and was published by LSU Press in 1996. Her second book, The Afflicted Girls, was chosen as one of the best poetry books of 2004 by Library Journal. She directs the MFA program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, CUNY, and lives outside New York City with her husband and two young daughters.

Nicole was one of the featured readers in the upstreet number five offsite reading party during the April AWP Conference in Denver.

upstreet author Briccetti publishes memoir

Blood Strangers, by Katherine A. Briccetti (“Slow Dancing to a Fast Song,” upstreet number three), was released by Heyday Books on May 1. Kathy describes her new book as “a memoir about searching for my place among the tangles of three generations of adoption and absent fathers in my family.” Excerpts from the memoir have been published in Dos Passos Review, San Francisco Chronicle Sunday Magazine, Hip Mama, flashquake, Unbound Press, and in the anthologies The Maternal Is Political (Seal Press), Herstory (Adams Media) and Who's Your Mama (Soft Skull Press/Counterpoint). One excerpt was nominated for a 2007 Pushcart Prize. To see a video trailer for Blood Strangers, go here.

Kathy, whose work has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, was awarded a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in 2009. She earned a PhD in clinical psychology from the Wright Institute in Berkeley and an MFA in creative writing from the Stonecoast program of the University of Southern Maine. She works as a school psychologist and writer/editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. She can be reached at kathybriccetti.com.

upstreet is having a party—and you’re invited

upstreet will host an off-site party/reading during the 2010 AWP Conference, which will take place in Denver from April 7-10. Our party will be at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday 8 April at the 910Arts Eventgallery, 910 Santa Fe Drive. This event is free and open to the public. The readers, poets and prose writers from upstreet number five, will be Phyllis Barber, Matthew Burns, Nicole Cooley, Tiff Holland, Jay Kauffmann, and Xu Xi. upstreet Editor/Publisher Vivian Dorsel will emcee the festivities. Following the reading, there will be an opportunity for authors to sign copies of upstreet number five, or their own books, which will also be available for purchase. Light refreshments will be provided. Come help us celebrate AWP 2010 in Denver—and don’t forget to visit upstreet’s table (#K21) in the Bookfair.

upstreet poet Hostovsky publishes collection

Dear Truth, a poetry collection by Paul Hostovsky, has been published by Main Street Rag. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in three issues of upstreet: “A Woman Taking off Her Shirt” (number four), “The Sadness of Dads” (number five), and “Frame” (number six). Paul’s poems have won a Pushcart Prize, the Muriel Craft Bailey Award from The Comstock Review, and chapbook contests from Grayson Books, Riverstone Press, and the Frank Cat Press. He has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, The Writer's Almanac and Best of the Net. His first full-length collection, Bending the Notes (2008) is also available from Main Street Rag. Paul works in Boston as a sign language interpreter at the Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Here is the book’s title poem:

Dear Truth
I do not love you.

I am running away
with my beloved
illusions. The sweet
nothings. Nothing
is what it seems.
I love what seems.
I am crazy in love with
the painfully obvious
transparent surface.
I am simply hungry.
You keep the house
and everything in it.
I am taking the dog.
And the windows.
—Paul Hostovsky

“Although the title poem is a sort of Dear John letter to Truth, the book itself is, in fact, dedicated to truth on a larger scale: the expansive and various truth of the imagination. In these touching, finely crafted, and often funny poems, Hostovsky remains true to his lively and inquisitive vision of the world, to beauty, joy, pain, and grief, always displaying a love of language that is contagious and invigorating.” —Jeffrey Harrison

Pushcart Board nominates two upstreet works

In addition to the nominations sent in by independent publishers and literary magazines, Pushcart Press also considers works nominated by its own Board of Contributing Editors. For the third year in a row, the Pushcart Board 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 a poem by Jeffrey Harrison, “Brief Note for April’s Departure,” and a short story by Xu Xi, “Anon.,” from upstreet number five.

It is a great compliment for upstreet to be singled out by this Board, which contains some very distinguished writers. Congratulations to both nominees, and best wishes to them in the competition.

upstreet is going to Bermuda

The second Bermuda Writers’ Retreat, the brainchild of native Bermudian and upstreet author Kim Aubrey (“Notes,” upstreet number one), will be at the Rosedon Hotel, Pembroke, Bermuda, February 17-23, 2010. The retreat will take place during both Poetry Week and the Bermuda Arts Festival, and the schedule includes field trips to museums, galleries, plays and other cultural events, plus four two-hour generative morning workshops:

Postcards to the Edge, with Kim Aubrey
Character Development, with Elaine Batcher
At Home Abroad, with Nancy Anne Miller
The Fictional Environment, with Vivian Dorsel

Kim Aubrey is a Bermudian writer who lives in Toronto and holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Best Canadian Stories, in US and Canadian journals, and is forthcoming in The New Quarterly and Room magazine. She recently completed a memoir, The Girl in the Blue Leotard.

Kim hopes to develop the retreat into an annual event. For further information and to be placed on the mailing list for next year’s retreat, e-mail kaubrey@groupklement.com.

upstreet nominates six for 2010 Pushcart

The editors of upstreet have nominated six works appearing in the journal’s fifth issue for this year’s Pushcart Prize. The nominees are two short stories, “Anon.,” by Xu Xi, and “On Seeing the Skeleton of a Whale in the Harvard Museum of Natural History,” by Maya Sonenberg; two creative nonfiction pieces, “This Place is Literally No Place,” by Jon Chopan, and “Left Behind,” by Wendy Ralph; and two poems, “A Small Obsession,” by Stephen Ackerman, and “The Sadness of Dads,” by Paul Hostovsky.

These six works were submitted to compete for inclusion in the 2010 issue of The Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses, the only annual anthology to showcase work from America’s alternative, literary presses. This is the fourth year that upstreet has made Pushcart Prize nominations.