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Southern Festival of Books 2023

Map for the 2023 Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tennessee

We will be attending the Southern Festival of Books in 2023 It is in Nashville again this year, and we loved it so much last year, we can’t wait to get back. We look forward to seeing so many friends, especially, our wonderful Linda Parsons has a book that we published featured, Valediction. She’ll be there with us at booth number 27. Come see us there!

This will be the 35th annual Southern Festival of Books–among the oldest literary festivals in the country. It is free to attend with performance stages, food trucks, publishers and booksellers. (We’ll be at booth #27.)

Festival weekend (Oct. 21 and 22) takes place in downtown Nashville. The Festival grounds include Bicentennial Mall State Park, the Tennessee State Museum, and the Tennessee State Library and Archives. Read more at their website: https://sofestofbooks.org/schedule

At the sponsors dinner during the Southern Festival of books 2022. At back are Linda Parsons and Pauletta Hansel, and seated are Susan O'Dell Underwood, Kim Davis, and Jeff Hardin. All are glowing.
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Fantastic Imaginary Creatures

Fantastic Imaginary Creatures: An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina. Cover shows a clay figure painted in bright red and green. The creature has wings and pointy spikes that look like pens coming out of his head, and a big toothy grin.

An Anthology of Contemporary Prose Poems edited by Gerry LaFemina

2023 Acceptances Announced

Anthology publication planned for  Spring 2024.

This is the call Gerry LaFemina put out for this anthology: 

The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures seeks to collect the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows, previously published or brand spanking new. We’re not looking for short short stories, but rather work that explores the liminal space between story and lyric, the luminous spark of possibility in the form.

And of the many fine poets who answered Gerry’s call, these are the poets and the poems Gerry selected:

Valerie Bacharach“Momento Mori”

Ujjvala Bagal-Rahn

“Just Enough House”
Ned Balbo “O Christmas Tree,” and “That Which We Discard We Also Cherish”
Madeleine Barnes “Key Rock,” and “Self Portrait in My Mother’s Closing Lines”
Michelle Boczek Evory “Absolution,” and “Dislocation”
Rick Campbell “Parable of the Forest Pygmy,” and “Forgetting the Nicene Creed”
Joseph Capista “Room for Error,” “Myth,” and “Song”
Gary Ciocco “Being and Becoming”
TS Coody “Mimesis”
Jim Daniels “With Apologies to the Tom Tom Club,” and “At Last”
Anthony DiMatteo “Every Time”
gary fincke “The Hands”
Jeff Friedman “Giver of Gifts,” “Terrorists,” and “Lost Memory”
Molly Fuller “Home Again, Home Again,” and “Tale of the Flopsy Bunny”
Joy Gaines-Friedler “Daffodils,” “Act 20:14,” “Traveling with the Band,” and “The Children’s Ward”
George Guida “Trip Wire,” and “The story of a Life”
Luke Hankins “A Voice out of the Ruins”
Gretchen Heyer“Pasiphae Answers Questions,” “Missionaries Breakfasted on the Word of God,” and “Jute, Two Inches in Diameter”
Tom Hunley “My Chili Recipe (An Ars Poetica)” and “Questions for Further Study”
Anna Jacobson “This is to That”
Peter Johnson “Vaccination, in the Broadest Sense of the Term,” “Crickets,” and “Nice Socks”
Richard Jordan “Jesus in the Café,” “With Feathers,” and “Mackerel Day”
Elizabeth Kerlikowske “At 45th Parallel, Halfway Between the Equator and the North Pole,” and “Tabula Rasa”
Nina Kossman “Kharkiv”
Gerry LaFemina “Fantastic Imaginary Creatures,” “Happy Pigs,” and “Bad Medicine”
Joseph Lerner “The Black Egret”
Geri Lipschultz “Aphrodite in Manhattan”
Lorette C. Luzajic “Feathers,” and “January River”
Gary McDowell “Prose Poem on the Nature of Things; or, Armchair Philosophy,” and “Another Apocalypse”
Kathleen McGookey “Night Sky with Calculus Worksheet”
Jennifer Militello “Identifying the Pathogen,” “Dear B,” and “Antidote with Attempts at Diagnosis”
Robert Miltner “Wolf Dancing,” and “Hopeless”
Erin Murphy “Ekphrasis,” “Gerunding,” and “Hula Dancer”
kerry neville “Decade”
Robert Perchan “The Unselfish Elfins with their Trusty Hammers,” “At Home with Marlboro Jones,” and “The Orgun Box Junkies”
Christine Rhein “Drone Pilot,” and “Sunday Night Retail”
Jane Satterfield “Latin 121,” and “Abbreviated Inventory”
Katherine Smith “Crossword,” and “Quilt”
Joshua Michael Stewart “Yellow,” and “Book of Love”
Virgil Suárez “Chinese Weather Balloon”
Matthew Thorburn “A Hundred Birds,” and “How it Starts”
Eric Torgersen “My Blindness”
Patricia Valdata “Mayfly”
Doug Van Gundy “Sideshow, Barbour County Fairgrounds, 1975,” and “To Join the Circus”
Elinor Ann Walker “Object Impermanence,” and “Fugue State”
Greg Watson “Why I Live in a Cold Climate”
Cathy Wittmeyer “Max Beckmann, Still Life with Fallen Candles, oil on canvas, 1929,” and “Otto Dix, Horse Cadaver, etching & drypoint, 1924”
George Yatchisin “Leap Year”
Michael T. Young “Quoting Blake to Mother,” and “Sweaty Palms”

About the editor, Gerry LaFemina

Gerry LaFemina’s flash creative nonfiction essay collection, The Pursuit: A Meditation on Happiness, came out in 2022. His poetry collections include Baby Steps in Doomsday Prepping, The Story of Ash and Little Heretic. His essays on prosody, Palpable Magic, came out in 2015 and Kendall Hunt recently released his textbook, Composing Poetry: A Guide to Writing Poems and Thinking Lyrically.

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AWP 2023 Recap

The Madville Publishing booth at AWP23.

We had a wonderful time at AWP 2023 in Seattle

Poet Rick Campbell reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Poet Rick Campbell reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Andrew McFadyen-Ketchum reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Queen Dolly regally awaits selfies with fans at the Book Fair! Photo by Lee Zacharias. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Queen Dolly regally awaits selfies with fans at the Book Fair! Photo by Lee Zacharias. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Wondra Chang reads from her Sonju during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Wondra Chang reads from her Sonju during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jenny Molberg reads during the Madvillans Read Event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jenny Molberg reads during the Madvillans Read Event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author and photographer Lee Zacharias takes a photo with authour Michael Gills. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author and photographer Lee Zacharias takes a photo with authour Michael Gills. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Mike Hilbig reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Mike Hilbig reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Anna Sandy-Elrod reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Anna Sandy-Elrod reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Michael Gills reads from The Green Mage during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Michael Gills reads from The Green Mage during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis take a photo with Dolly at the Book Fair. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Maurice Carlos Ruffin and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis take a photo with Dolly at the Book Fair. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Poet Rick Campbell reads from his collection Gunshot, Peakcock, Dog at Madvillans Read. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Poet Rick Campbell reads from his collection Gunshot, Peakcock, Dog at Madvillans Read. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Kari Gunter-Seymour reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Kari Gunter-Seymour reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Writer Cherise Pollard reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Writer Cherise Pollard reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Former Texas Poet laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Former Texas Poet laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Writer Troy E. Wilderson reads during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Writer Troy E. Wilderson reads during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Bruce Overby reads from The Cyclone Release at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Bruce Overby reads from The Cyclone Release at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Ulrick Casimir reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Ulrick Casimir reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Lisa Lanser Rose reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Lisa Lanser Rose reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Mike Hilbig reads during the Madvillains Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Mike Hilbig reads during the Madvillains Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jodi Angel speaks during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jodi Angel speaks during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Poet Raye Hendrix reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Poet Raye Hendrix reads during the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Former Texas Poet laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Former Texas Poet laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Lisa Lanser Rose reads at the Madvillans Read event.
Author Lisa Lanser Rose reads at the Madvillans Read event.
Michael Gills reads from The Green Mage during the Madvillans Read event.
Michael Gills reads from The Green Mage during the Madvillans Read event.
Former Texas Poet laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, during the Madvillans Read event.
Former Texas Poet Laureate Karla K. Morton reads from her collection, Turbulence and Fluids, during the Madvillans Read event.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis, author Lisa Lanser Rose, unknown, and writer Cherise Pollard take a group photo.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis, author Lisa Lanser Rose, unknown, and writer Cherise Pollard take a group photo before setting up the Book Fair booth.
Author Kari Gunter-Seymour reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Author Kari Gunter-Seymour reads during the Madvillans Read event.
All the books ready to go to the Book Fair!
All the books ready to go to the Book Fair!
Author Jenny Molberg reads during the Madvillans Read Event.
Author Jenny Molberg reads during the Madvillans Read Event.
Author Anna Sandy-Elrod reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Author Anna Sandy-Elrod reads during the Madvillans Read event.
The view from the conference hotel in Seattle.
The view from the conference hotel in Seattle.
Writer Cherise Pollard reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Writer Cherise Pollard reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Our beautiful booth, stocked with books for AWP 2023!
Our beautiful booth, stocked with books for AWP 2023!
Bill Davis sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Bill Davis sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Author Stephanie Powell Watts during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Author Stephanie Powell Watts during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Michael Gills speaks during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Michael Gills speaks during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Poet Raye Hendrix reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Poet Raye Hendrix reads during the Madvillans Read event.
Sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Sightseeing in Seattle before AWP 2023.
Cat Smith and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis pose in front of the Madville Publishing booth poster at AWP 2023.
Cat Smith and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis pose in front of the Madville Publishing booth poster at AWP 2023.
Author Bruce Overby reads from The Cyclone Release at the Madvillans Read event.
Author Bruce Overby reads from The Cyclone Release at the Madvillans Read event.
Francine Rodriguez laughs as Jodi Angel speaks during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Francine Rodriguez laughs as Jodi Angel speaks during the The Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jodi Angel reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Author Jodi Angel reads at the Madvillans Read event. Photo by Lee Zacharias.
Cat Smith and author Francine Rodriguez eat dinner at Ristorante Barolo Ristorante.
Cat Smith and author Francine Rodriguez eat dinner at Ristorante Barolo Ristorante.
Former Texas Poet Laureate Karla K. Morton and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis pose in front of the Dolly poster. Karla is holding a stack of copies of her poetry collection, Turbulence and Fluids.
Former Texas Poet Laureate Karla K. Morton and Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis pose in front of the Dolly poster. Karla is holding a stack of copies of her poetry collection, Turbulence and Fluids.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis and author Stephen Powers take a photo in front of the Dolly poster.
Madville Publishing founder Kim Davis and author Stephen Powers take a photo in front of the Dolly poster.
Lana K. W. Austin, author of Like Light, Like Music, reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press.
Lana K. W. Austin, author of Like Light, Like Music, reads at the Offsite Reading at The Chieftain Irish Pub: Madville Publishing, Iris Press, and Stephen F. Austin State University Press.
Author Susan O’Dell Underwood reads at the Madvillans Read event.
Author Susan O’Dell Underwood reads at the Madvillans Read event.
Author Mike Hilbig reads during the Madvillains Read event.
Author Mike Hilbig reads during the Madvillains Read event.
Author Francine Rodriguez gets a photo with the Dolly poster at the AWP Book Fair.
Author Francine Rodriguez gets a photo with the Dolly poster at the AWP Book Fair.
Francine Rodriguez reads from A Woman's Story during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
Francine Rodriguez reads from A Woman’s Story during the Urban and Rural: Writing about Poverty panel.
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2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize Winners

A photo of poet Linda Ravenswood.

Madville is pleased to announce that linda ravenswood‘s poetry collection, a poem is a house, is the winner of our 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, judged by Charlotte Pence!

Yiskah Rosenfeld was the first runner-up with her collection Tasting Flight.

We received 52 total submissions. The first round was read by Candance Reaves and Catherine Pritchard Childress, and winners were chosen from a shortlist of amazing work by 

a poem is a house

by linda ravenswood

Winner of The 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Upcoming publication date Spring 2024

A photo of poet Linda Ravenswood.

“a poem is a house pushes against the borders of poetry to emphasize how all borders are a construct: geopolitical, literary, and personal. Each poem in this outstanding collection reinvents itself, employing a range of forms, such as visual poems and broken poetry cycles, to recreate vivid details of the speaker’s experiences as someone who grew up in California with Mexican ancestry.

Throughout this book, readers experience a state of bardo, a sense of existing between states: between different cultures, between safety and violence, and perhaps most of all, between past and present. Like memory itself, these poems thrive on elision, repetition, and reversal. Take for example an evocative poem placed early in the book: ‘To live at the scene of an accident.’ The two-line poem simple states: ‘To go on living / at the scene of the crime.’ Such sparsity emphasizes the stark reality of the situation and faces it directly without adorned language that could distract from the fact’s horror. What’s more, the book presents readers with four variations of this poem, emphasizing how trauma is not only situated in the past, but something that interrupts the present—and never leaves the body.

One poem tells readers that ‘this is not really a lullaby for the end of the world this is a map to the beginning of the body.’ Such a statement is not a dichotomy, but simply a reality wherein grief and celebration share spaces. a poem is a house is a dazzling accomplishment that presents a new and unique poetic vision.”

—Charlotte Pence, final judge for the 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize, and author of Code

linda ravenswood is a poet and performance artist from Los Angeles and the founder and editor-in-chief of The Los Angeles Press. Her previous books include Cantadora — Letters from California, The Stan Poems, Tlacuilx, X LA Poets, and Hymnal.

Tasting Flight

by Yiskah Rosenfeld

Finalist for The 2022 Arthur Smith Poetry Prize
Upcoming publication date Spring 2024

“A yearning dominates the vibrant poems in Tasting Flight, specifically the desire to be enough. Of course, though, one is always enough. The observant, insightful, and confident speaker in these poems knows this truth intellectually, but searches to internalize such knowledge as in this breathtaking poem ‘Bird Call Koan with Glossary’:

Across the hall I lay in the dark contemplating this, the infinitely expanding universe of what I don’t know. Stars exploding and being born. Moons in our own solar system still uncounted. And yet some things I think I know with certainty: I’m not pretty. I don’t deserve to be loved. 

If I trill my mating call, who will answer me? 

I forget the moon is always whole.

These lines are representative of the well-crafted poetry readers will find in this book, each poem creating scenes with such vivid details, readers feel as if they are with the speaker, perhaps as an adult gazing at the stars or as a child hiding behind the Life cereal box.  Not only are the details engaging, but the form of each poem closely aligns with its subject, be it in the form of a question mark or the dwindling lines in ‘Submission Guidelines.’ All of the poems are deeply rooted in the lyrical tradition, following the switchbacks and curves of a mind always in motion, perhaps contemplating the beauty of moths at night or the intricacies of raising a child. Whatever the subject, Tasting Flight is a book that sings back to the exploding stars.

Yiskah Rosenfeld balances solo parenting with freelance teaching in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her poetry has appeared in The Seattle Review, The Bitter Oleander, Lilith Magazine, Rattle, Cottonwood, Full: An Anthology of Moon Poems, and The Ravens Perch.

The longlist included:

     

      • Only the Finest Track Stars Smoke Newports by Susan Leary

    The shortlist included: