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Arthur Smith Poetry Prize – Winners

The Parting Glass by Lisa Parker

Winner of The 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Look for it September 2022

Jesse Graves, the judge for the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, said:

“… moving and memorable in terms of subject matter… accomplished in form and technique. The individual poems are brilliantly expressed, and they add up to sustained and coherent whole. The poet … captures the experiences living [in Appalachia] and moving away and the feelings about the language, beautifully.”

Lisa Parker is a native Virginian, a poet, musician, and photographer. Her book, This Gone Place, won the 2010 Appalachian Studies Association Weatherford Award and her work is widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Her photography has been on exhibit in NYC and published in several arts journals and anthologies.

Splinter by Susan O’Dell Underwood

Finalist for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Look for it May 2023

Jesse Graves, the judge for the 2021 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize said:

“These poems are wise and generous throughout, and witty at times to provide a balance to the elegiac tone.”

Susan O'Dell Underwood is a native of East Tennessee, where she has lived most of her life. She's the director of creative writing at Carson-Newman University. Besides two chapbooks, she has one full-length collection of poetry, The Book of Awe (Iris, 2018). Her novel Genesis Road is forthcoming from Madville Publishing (June 2022). Her poems and fiction are published and forthcoming in a variety of journals and anthologies, including A Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Oxford American, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Still: The Journal.
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Happy 2022 from Madville Publishing

Jojo-troublemaker-in-chief

We wish you Happy New Year 2022, but first, here is a quick recap of 2021.

We know that many among our subscribers, authors, and staff went back to teaching face-to-face amid Covid fears in 2021. We applaud you all for your hard work and dedication. What you do is a calling.

Lee Zacharias, Wondra Chang, and Francine Rodriguez read from their 2021 Madville Novels.
Lee Zacharias reading from What a Wonderful World This Could Be, Wondra Chang answering questions about Sonju, and Francine Rodriguez reading from A Woman’s Story.

We didn’t get to see one another in person as much as we like in 2021, but we attended a few virtual events, like AWP in March, and there were a few bright pockets of time when the likes of Lee Zacharias, Wondra Chang, and Francine Rodriguez braved the scary world outside between Covid mutations and booster shots to sign books and read their stories in front of live people.

Our 2021 authors have been fabulous. They affirm that despite the daunting nature of the search for one’s audience, worthwhile literature can still find an audience. (All praises to the Indie bookstores that have hosted our authors this year.) While the pandemic has seen book sales industry-wide increase due to the increased demand for children’s books and textbooks, that increase in sales has been more modest for authors of poetry, literary fiction and nonfiction. That said, Madville increased production a little bit this year, to an official 13, with one 2022 title coming out a little early, (All I See Is Your Glinting: 90 Days in the Pandemic Gianna Russo and Jenny Carey.) We also added 8 hardback editions of existing titles in our catalog. You can find those here.

We added two audiobooksWhat a Wonderful World This Could Be, and Sonju, both read by the wonderful Laurie Carter Rose, and of course, every book we publish is available in multiple ebook formats either here on our website, or at most online ebook vendors.

We’re finally a 501(c)(3) nonprofit

We had some good news in February after two long years of going backward and forward with the IRS, we were granted our official 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. That’s huge for a little press like Madville. It allows us to apply for grants and makes any donations we receive tax deductible (retroactive to June 2020). If anyone needs a receipt for a donation, please get in touch. And, of course, we are always able to put donations to good use, producing and promoting quality literature.

Many thanks to all who donated during our recent online fundraiser. And we have to say, it isn’t too late to make a 2021 donation!


Madville Publishing's 2021 book covers.

We accomplished a lot in 2021

We published 13 titles this year, and we couldn’t be prouder of them. 

Note the badges on the award winners… We had some of our 2020 titles winning awards this year as well. We created a new section of the website for Award Winners so you can see them all in one place.


Ron and Alice Kenney
Ron and Alice Kenney.

On a sad note, we lost one of our Madville family this year. Ron Kenney, our beloved English jockey friend, and author of An Englishman in Texas passed away. We hope you will join us in sending love and condolences to his wife Alice. Ron was 91 years old, and one of the most uplifting people you could ever hope to know. He’s bound to be singing and dancing in heaven. 



From Madville Publishing to you,

Happy New Year and all the very best wishes for 2022! 

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Halloween Giveaway 2020

A promotional photo of the 2020 Halloween Book Bundle. From left to right: A goblet with a dragon for a handle has whisps of vapor trailing down its side. Next to it is a little green bottle, also dripping vapor. A gold skull and small red bottle sit on top of a stack of books that are in the bundle. Next to that is a gold statue of a cat. All of this sits infront of white wood panellin with a grey cheese cloth artfully draped across it. Candy corn is sprinkled around the image.
A promotional photo of the 2020 Halloween Book Bundle. From left to right: A goblet with a dragon for a handle has whisps of vapor trailing down its side. Next to it is a little green bottle, also dripping vapor. A gold skull and small red bottle sit on top of a stack of books that are in the bundle. Next to that is a gold statue of a cat. All of this sits infront of white wood panellin with a grey cheese cloth artfully draped across it. Candy corn is sprinkled around the image.

In celebration of spooks, frights, and pumpkin spice, Madville Publishing is running a Halloween giveaway!

You could win five of our spookiest, darkest books including The Memoir of the Minotaur, No Evil is Wide, Fairview Chronicles: A Wayward Propisition, The Autobiography of Francis N. Stein, and What Magick May Not Alter.

“How do I enter to win?”

-you

STEP 1:

Follow @madvillepub on Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter.

STEP 2:

Tell us your favorite Spooky Season Book to read.

STEP 3:

Tag and share this contest with your friends and followers so they can enter as well.

STEP 4:

Have a very Happy Halloween!

Want to cut out the middle man and just buy the 2020 Halloween Giveaway Bundle outright? Order the bundle here.

Winners will be announced Monday, October 26th, 2020.

We have extended the entry period to Halloween Night!

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Contributors Announced for Being Home Anthology

Being Home Front Cover

Editors Sam Pickering and Bob Kunzinger have announced their final choices for inclusion in Madville Publishing’s 2021 essay anthology, Being Home.

And here they are:

CONTRIBUTORS:

• Johnnie Bernhard “Ignorance or Innocence” • Rick Campbell “Celibacy and Ancestry” • Maryah Converse “Becoming Bedouin” • Susan Delgado Watts “Being Home” • John Flynn “Living Between the Leaves” • Debra Frank “The Accident House” • Karin Hedetniemi “Inheritance” • Anndee Hochman “2 Rms, Family View: The Ones We Call Home” • Richard Holinger “Cornwall Village” • Jamie Hughes “Making Room” • Robert Iulo “The Neighborhood”* • Kyle Ingrid Johnson “The House and Its Moments”* • Judy Johnson “My Brothers” • Deb Liggett “Marking Our Place” • Mel Livatino “Going Home Again” • Geoffrey Martin “Birdland” • Robert Miltner “Into the Bargain” • Vicky Oliver “Alice in Motherland” • Lea Page “Everything and the Kitchen Sink” • Rhonda Ray “My Rock” • Claude Clayton Smith “Blue Heaven” • Marsha Lynn Smith “4 Generations of Black Hair Matters” • Bill Stifler “Not From Around Here” • Elizabeth Templeman “In Place” • Elaine Terranova “Being Home” • Lee Zacharias “On a Rocky Inland Coast” • Madelaine Zadik “Triumph”

* asterisks indicate the judge’s favorites.