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Rita Quillen’s Poetry a 2023 Pulpwood Queens Selection

Front cover of Some Notes You Hold: Poems by Rita Simms Quillen. Cover art "Layers (Blue Wings) by Suzanne Stryk shows blue bird wings layered over newspaper clippings and dry leaves. Two awards are on the cover, a silver one and a pink one

Madville Publishing is excited for one of our favorite authors, Rita Quillen. Her poetry collection, Some Notes You Hold, has been selected as an International Pulpwood Queens & Timberwood Guys Book Club bonus pick for 2023!

Front cover of Some Notes You Hold: Poems by Rita Simms Quillen. Cover art "Layers (Blue Wings) by Suzanne Stryk shows blue bird wings layered over newspaper clippings and dry leaves. Two awards are on the cover, a silver one and a pink one

The selection of Some Notes You Hold, Rita Quillen’s beautiful, introspective poetry collection published by Madville in October, 2020, was announced at the International Pulpwood Queen and Timber Guy Girlfriend’s Weekend Book Club Convention on Amelia Island. We are particularly proud of this selection as it is unusual for a poetry book to catch the attention of a book club. In this case, the Pulpwood Queens knew Rita Sims Quillen already, as last year, they read her novel, Wayland.

A little about the book:

Some Notes You Hold: Poems is about surviving what life throws at us as we age. The so-called “golden years” are so named because of the high admission price—the tremendous losses, disappointments, illnesses, and failures we all experience if we live long enough. The first part of the book, called “Letting Go,” focuses on surviving deep grief. The middle section is a musical interlude, exploring the tremendous power of music to heal us mentally, physically, and spiritually and to reorder our thinking and our emotions. The last section, “Holding On,” explores the roads leading to survival: prayer and meditation, communion with the natural world, and writing. The price paid for those “golden years” leads to the prize: insight, joy, and a kind of peace we were incapable of when we were young. read more…


The Pulpwood Queens Girlfriend Weekend 2023 on Amelia Island in Florida. Shows a sepia-toned woman on a moon with a brown background.

In addition to this surprise bonus pick, Madville Publishing is also proud to represent these current and past Pulpwood Queen authors at this convention:

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Southern Festival of Books 2022

Madville Publishing Is proud to be a sponsor at the 2022 Southern Festival of Books NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, at War Memorial Plaza and the Nashville Public Library Friday, October 14: 12:00-5:00pm Saturday, October 15: 10:00am-6:00pm Sunday, October 16: 12:00-5:00pm
Madville Publishing Is proud to be a sponsor at the 2022  Southern Festival of Books NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE,  at War Memorial Plaza and the Nashville Public Library      Friday, October 14: 12:00-5:00pm      Saturday, October 15: 10:00am-6:00pm      Sunday, October 16: 12:00-5:00pm

Humanities Tennessee presents The 34rd annual Southern Festival of Books: A Celebration of the Written Word℠! The Festival is among the oldest literary festivals in the country, annually welcoming approximately 200 authors and 25,000 visitors each October. The Festival is free, and includes performance stages, food trucks, and more than 60 publishers and booksellers. After two years of virtual programming, we look forward to seeing you on The Plaza. 

And Madville is proud to share that we have not one, but THREE TITLES FEATURED in 2022.

These titles are:

Poster for the 2022 Southern Festival of Books.

You can see them listed with all the other wonderful Southern Festival of Books featured authors for 22.

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Katherine, Kathryn! What a beautiful cover!

Three covers with art by Kathryn Smith for a new poetry collection by Katherine Smith entitled Secret City. The image shows three covers side-by-side. One with a white background one more orange, and one blue.

Take our poll to tell us which cover you like best. It doesn’t mean we’ll change our minds about the one WE like, but it’s always fun to see what everyone thinks!

While Katherine Smith writes beautiful poetry, Kathryn also creates collages we can’t stop looking at.

The story begins with the Madville crew doing some online research about a new poet we had just signed, Katherine Smith. (Secret City, Madville, August 2022). Expect a preorder page to become available for this collection in May. You’ll find that on our homepage, https://madvillepublishing.com.

But back to the reason for the search in the first place, we were looking for inspiration for Katherine Smith’s book cover. We like to start by looking at an author’s previous covers, so we started by looking at Katherine’s Woman Alone on the Mountain (Iris Press, 2014). After that, our eyes were naturally drawn to the really striking collage art of Katheryn Smith, who turned up among our search results. We contacted her about her art before even realizing she is also a poet. Learn more about her at kathrynsmithpoetry.com

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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.