News - Madville Publishing

Posted on February 21, 2026February 23, 2026 by kpdavis

AWP Retrospective

It’s that time of year again, already–AWP!!! We feel like we are hanging on for dear life. Somehow we forget every year how fraught January and February are… no matter how carefully we plan and organize.

What causes chaos at the start of the year?

End-of-year bookkeeping is a beast. Royalty calculations, statements, and then checks going out. It happens every year, and we always think, “next year it’s going to be easy…” But each year brings special challenges. still we’re pretty sure this time. Next year WILL be easier. but the royalty checks went in the mail yesterday. Whoosh! (6 weeks of my life I’ll never get back… and the bookkeeper’s life… You all have no idea how much work goes into getting those statements right. So many small sums of money come and go from so many directions that it takes a specialist or two to get it right, and at the end of the year, no amount of careful recording makes all of it make sense!)

AWPs past

Then there’s the anxiety brought on by memories of AWPs past. So many things have gone wrong. Kim’s first trip to AWP she was very green. She shipped four or five boxes of random books and didn’t read all the convoluted instructions about tax documents and all the rest of it, so spent that whole conference sitting with more experienced poets and authors who published with TRP. We couldn’t really sell books, so we gave a bunch away, and Kim learned plenty just shooting the you-know-what and people watching.

Current Madville authors, Mike Hilbig and Michael Gills stand at TRP's table at AWP 2017. Gills holds his book from that year. There's a bit yellow sign with blue lettering on the front of the table that says Texas Review Press

AWP in Washington DC in 2017. The table for the press with Mike Hilbig standing with Michael Gills.

AWP 2018 in Tampa

In 2018, Kim was at the tail end of her time with TRP, and planning for Madville’s launch. She sat, for the second year in a row, next to Rick Campbell, veteran editor, publisher, and poet, and a friendship developed. It was once more a good time and place to people-watch and learn. An unfortunate connection was made to a printer/distributor who offered what we thought we couldn’t get for Madville as a start-up… full distribution. (Y’all know that old adage about when something seems too good to be true?? But these guys were old school, respected…) At any rate, friendships grew at that Tampa conference and seeds were planted for Madville.

Luanne Smith, Lisa Rose, Kim Davis, Suzanne Heagy, and Laura Leigh Morris

AWP 2019 in Portland

2019 was Madville’s, our big introductory year. And that Thursday morning as Kim was walking into the bookfair to kick the whole thing into gear, she received the email from her printer/distributor that they had filed for bankruptcy and Madville should figure out what to do with their books. We got the books back, but those so-and-sos ate all our money for our first year of operations. But you know… we did what we do… We put a brave face on it and had a good time.

Then there was AWP 2020 in San Antonio

2020 should have been our big breakout year. We were determined to make a grand splash in San Antonio–in our home state. We splurged and took a whole booth space in conjunction with our friends at Kestrel: A Journal of Literature and Art that is put out by Fairmont State University. And wouldn’t you know? March 2020 marked San Antonio, Texas, as ground zero for the Covid-19 Lockdown.

We had fun anyway, not realizing how serious the situation really would become. We saw old friends, breathed in each other’s general directions, and tried to figure out social distancing. And we didn’t make the splash we hoped we would. Many people were sensible and stayed home, but news was breaking while we were driving to San Antonio. We carried on with our plans, and Kestrel shifted over to an empty booth up the way. We had rented a house and made all those plans… sponsorship reception, reading in the bookfair, parties in the house every night. It was a good time… right up until it wasn’t! Yes, some of us did get sick, but we pulled through.

AWP 2021 was virtual

Nobody knew what to do. To be fair, we were learning how to do things remotely, but this one was a waste of our time, and a very cheap way for AWP to get out of reimbursing us for 2020, which they said they’d do, but did not.

AWP 2022 in Philly

Or… the 2022 SNAFU! We were traveling large to Philly. Luanne Smith splurged again, and bought us the nice sponsorship package with all the bells and whistles. She had a book coming out, you see… I think it was Muddy Backroads that time. And she is one of our board members. Kim, meanwhile read all the instructions from the material handling company, and they suggested quite strongly that we should palletize the books we shipped there because otherwise we would be forced to pay exorbitant fees per box delivered to the booth. Cutting the story short, FedEx were extremely difficult to deal with and didn’t get the books there in time. We had no books to sell at the booth. We had fun anyway, but we really wished they would have just allowed us to claim a loss. But no. They found the books, sent them home, and had the gall to bill us again–several thousand dollars for the pleasure of dealing with them. For future reference, FedEx has no live humans running things anymore. They answer the phone and read from prompts on screen. No decision making capabilities at all. It was really an expensive trip for nothing other than camaraderie, and poor Lu, who paid for it all, barely got to attend due to family issues.

AWP 23 in Seattle

AWP23 in Seattle was a blast. Once again, we had help from Madville board member Luanne Smith, who splurged on a fancy sponsorship package for us. We had a a fabulous location for our booth on sponsors row with Dolly Parton, larger than life to celebrate the launch of our Dolly Parton anthology, Let Me Say This. We had a fun, fun panel about writing poverty, a reception, and an “off-site/on-site” reading that was really nice in one of the hotel conference rooms. Many of the contributors to the Dolly anthology came out to read their work to us, as did the rest of our Madville authors who attended AWP that year.

AWP 2024 in Kansas City

Thanks to Michael Simms and Vox Populi for sharing their space with Madville in 2024 in Kansas City. And thank you to Lee Zacharias for the photos!

AWP 2025 in Los Angeles

Dolly had proven such a success, we attempted something similar with Honkeytonk Sue, a character created by Bob Boze Bell originally, and used to illustrate several poems in our Santa Fe Trail: Chasing the Big West. She was great, but no where near the attraction that Dolly was. The most fun, we think, from Los Angeles, was the University of Utah honors college students who helped out at the booth. They’re all novel-writing students of our Michael Gills.

We’ll be updating with plans for #AWP26 in Baltimore soon!

Posted on February 14, 2026February 14, 2026 by kpdavis

Mad Barnstorming

Gerry LaFemina, Michael Simms, Kerry Neville in script on a forest green background. Beneath each name is a picture of that person. LaFemina has a cheeky grin and peers over wire rimmed glasses. Simms wears a cowboy had and a white beard, and Neville cuts a side-eye at the audience. She is lovely with shoulder-length dark hair

Madville’s first in-person writing workshop

June 25-28, 2026
Spatterdock Guesthouses
Uncertain, Texas

We chose the name “Mad Barnstorming” for our writing workshop for several reasons. Mad is part of our name, and we are kind of mad (as in crazy) to do what we do at all. Kerry Neville (faculty member) has a memoir out with Mad in the title (Momma May Be Mad.) But most of all, the largest cottage at Spatterdock, where we will be staying and conducting the workshops is named “Barnstormer Cottage.” That will be our home for three days.

Uncertain, Texas? Is that really the name of a town?

Yes. Uncertain, Texas, is a place that spawns stories. We don’t want anyone to misunderstand where we’re going. And we loved this documentary film that was made about the place in 2015. Here is the trailer to give you a flavor of the place. (The full-length documentary is available to rent from Amazon Prime, and while you’re there, look for Bernie starring Jack Black and Shirley McClean. If you love dialect the way we do, that film will make you happy. It was shot near Uncertain, and the locals they recorded as research were better than any actor they could have hired, so they used those original interview reels. It’s brilliantly done.) The guest houses where we will be staying are nestled within giant cedar trees, right on the water, but it is a gentile neighborhood. There are quirky art cars parked around the place in purpose-built carports. It’s a place where artists come to relax. We’ll be right at home.

We are trying to share a place unlike any other. It is unspoiled. Getting there isn’t as difficult as you might think.

Our faculty are amazing! You have heard us talk about them before. They are Gerry LaFemina, Michael Simms, and Kerry Neville. All are multi-genre authors who also teach creative writing at the university level.

The location is rustic, atmospheric, awe-inspiring. We’ve booked all the space at Spatterdock guesthouses, but we hope also to attract more writers than that, either from the local area, or from elsewhere. There are quite a few guesthouses and cabins in the area. We will also be near Jefferson, Texas, and Marshall, Texas, where additional guesthouses are plentiful. READ About Caddo Lake State Park.

We’ve created a dedicated website about the event. MadBarnstorming.com
please share!

SPACE IS LIMITED. Please reserve your seat early. You can hold your spot with a nonrefundable $50 deposit.

The photo gallery below shows pictures from a couple of different trips Kim took to Caddo Lake. Most of these photos are by John R. Fortune, who is pictured here alongside the text he contributed heavily to, The Northeast Corner of Harrison County, Texas. John will be our contact person in the region. Kim is pictured at Johnson’s Ranch, in Uncertain, Texas, on a sunrise boat ride, and at the railway museum in Marshall, Texas. The mosaic art and the art cars are all around Spatterdock.

Faculty

We have three authors who have all published in multiple genres, poetry and prose, fiction and nonfiction, popular and literary. All three are professors who also have experience with the business of publishing and
getting published. These are the initial subjects they have suggested speaking about, but we will be
somewhat fluid here and attendees can expect the really rich conversations to happen around the fire pit in
the evenings.

Kerry Neville: “Writing Truth, Writing True: Writing Short (But Not Shortsighted) Meditative Essays”

Michael Simms: “Dragons, vampires and detectives: why genre fiction?”

Gerry LaFemina: “The Poetic Line: Finding Best Words and Best Order”

$995 stay on-site
(we can accommodate 12)

$495 for workshops & meals only
(There are guest houses and cabins near Spatterdock.)

Posted on January 21, 2026January 21, 2026 by kpdavis

Arthur Smith Poetry Prize – 2025

The winners have been named and notified for the 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize. We hope you will join us in congratulating them.

The 2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winners

“All six books [on the shortlist] had strengths, but I kept coming back to these two.”–Jeff Hardin

2025 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winner Medallion

A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body by David Prather

Winner

David B. Prather is the author of three poetry collections: We Were Birds (Main Street Rag, 2019), Shouting at an Empty House (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2023), and Bending Light with Bare Hands: A Journal of Poems (Fernwood Press, 2025). His work has appeared in many publications, including New Ohio Review, Prairie Schooner, Colorado Review, Poet Lore, The Comstock Review, etc. He lives in Parkersburg, WV. Website: www.davidbprather.com

Silver Medallion that says 2025 Arthur Smith poetry prize runner up

My Out-Migrations by Elaine Palencia

Poet Elaine Fowler Palencia. She is a white woman of indeterminate age with dark hair and glasses. She offers a welcoming smile and wears red lipstick to match her red top.

First Runner Up

Elaine Fowler Palencia grew up in Morehead, KY, and Cookeville, TN. She is the author of six books of fiction, four poetry chapbooks, and two works of nonfiction. Her most recent book is On Rising Ground: The Life and Civil War Letters of John M. Douthit, 52nd Georgia Volunteer Infantry Regiment (Mercer U. Press), about her great-great grandfather. Her work has received eight Pushcart Prize nominations and other prizes. She is the book review editor of Pegasus, journal of the Kentucky State Poetry Society, and the longtime moderator of the Red Herring Prose Workshop. Much of her writing is place-based.

Shortlist

This list of Six titles was selected by our preliminary readers, Karen George and Brian Griffin. And we thank them dearly for their time and attention over the months of submissions.

When Body Becomes House by Dianna Henning
Learning to Talk to Birds by Gregory Byrd
A Heart that Stretches the Length of the Body by David Prather (Winner!!!)
My Out-Migrations by Elaine Palencia (1st Runner Up!!!)
Holy Nothing by Beth Anstandig
Bodies of Water by Mary Hawley

a box with a link in the middle of it to all the books that have previously won the arthur smith poetry prize. There's a background image of the appalachian mountains with gray overlay on top and white text.

Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winners

This page links to all the books we have out that have won our annual poetry prize named for beloved Appalachian poet, Arthur Smith. To read about the 2024 winners currently in production and to find out when we are accepting submissions for consideration, visit THIS PAGE.

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Judges for 2025

Tennessee poet, Jeff Hardin. You can just see him from the neck up staring at the camera with a straight, close-lipped mouth. He stands under a tree with green leaves for a background.

Our head judge for 2025 was Jeff Hardin, a long-time friend of Arthur Smith. Jeff made the hard hard decision about which collections should be the “winners.” All three judges said they were truly impressed with the quality of the submissions, which made the decisions really difficult. (Thanks so much to all who submitted!)

Jeff Hardin is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Watermark, A Clearing Space in the Middle of Being, No Other Kind of World, and Small Revolution. His work has been honored with the Nicholas Roerich Prize, the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, and the X. J. Kennedy Prize. Originally from Savannah, Tennessee, he has taught for almost three decades at Columbia State Community College in Columbia, Tennessee.

Photo: A. J. Holmes

Karen George is author of the poetry collections Swim Your Way Back (2014), A Map and One Year (2018), Where Wind Tastes Like Pears (2021), Caught in the Trembling Net (2024), and forthcoming Delight Is a Field. She won Slippery Elm’s 2022 Poetry Contest, and her award-winning short story collection, How We Fracture, was released by Minerva Rising Press in 2024. She is the recipient of grants from Kentucky Foundation for Women and Kentucky Arts Council. Her poetry appears in The Ekphrastic Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Lily Poetry Review, and Poet Lore. Her latest book Caught in the Trembling Net, published by Kelsay Books, was inspired by the art, life, and writings of Frida Kahlo, Georgia, O’Keeffe, and Emily Carr. Her website is https://karenlgeorge.blogspot.com/.

Brian Griffin holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Virginia. A former Director of Lifespan Religious Education at Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, he has taught at The University of Virginia, The University of Tennessee, and Pellissippi State Community College. His fiction and poetry appears in a number of literary journals, including Shenandoah, Mississippi Review, New Millennium Writings, Asheville Poetry Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poems and Plays, Snake Nation Review, Clockwatch Review, New Delta Review, The Distillery, Mixitini Matrix, A Tapestry of Voices: An East Tennessee Anthology, Knoxville Bound, Metro Pulse, Number Inc, and elsewhere. He received the Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction for his collection Sparkman in the Sky and Other Stories. Single Lens Reflex, his collection of poems about surviving a domestic terrorist attack, was a finalist in the 2018 National Poetry Series. It was published in 2024 by Iris Press.

Posted on October 7, 2025October 7, 2025 by kpdavis

Ovo – Cirque du Soleil

Opening set of the Cirque du Soleil show, Ovo. The audience sees a giant egg that fills the backstage area. Two tall flowers with bees sway under lights that look like hibiscus flowers.

by Kim Davis

Stand In the Traffic: A Himalayan Adoption Story by Kate Saunders shows a Kathmandu street from a high vantage point. And it displays the Sarton Prize as a finalist in the memoir category

I was invited to attend Ovo, a Cirque du Soleil show that is currently traveling around Texas. It is another instance of the cool stuff that can happen when you get to know and work with interesting people. The most important part of the publishing journey, for me, is the relationships I’ve formed. It is truly delightful to be able to meet up at conferences and events, but perhaps even more fun is spending time with you all outside of our books and our “work.” This past weekend, I had the pleasure of joining one of our 2020 authors, Katie Harris and her family. You will know her as Kate Saunders (her pseudonym), author of Stand in the Traffic: A Himalayan Adoption Story.

If you’ve read Katie’s book, you’ll know that she has a son. Her real son is called Jesse, and he’s the same guy from the book, except now he’s grown. When he was a little boy, he took a journey with his mom to Kathmandu to adopt his sister. They stayed there for a year due to unforeseen circumstances… Katie was too young, as an unmarried woman, to adopt a child, but nobody explained this to her before she arrived in Nepal. She and her amazing 6-7 year-old boy stayed in that foreign country for a year. They survived a little revolution and had some incredible experiences while they were there.

https://www.cirquedusoleil.com/ovo

So, back to Cirque du Soleil!

It was a magical evening. Katie invited me (Kim) to attend one of Jesse’s shows while it’s in Texas. He is one of the Chinese pole performers. My school friend, Shelley, joined us at the last minute along with Katie’s mom, Rhonda, and Dr. Douglas Constance from the SHSU Sociology department. It was fantastic to reconnect with all those people. I didn’t know Dr. Constance before, but we laughed like old friends anyway.

And Jesse was wonderful. It’s great to finally meet this guy along with his fearless girlfriend who is a trapeze artist! Jesse is also fearless in his act as he hangs onto that pole by just his ankles, then drops to inches above the floor. Here are a few photos from the evening.