Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology

Description

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology

edited by Julie E. Bloemeke & Dustin Brookshire

BEST BOOK AWARDS FINALIST 2023
& Selected as a Book All Georgians Should Read (2024)

ISBN: 978-1-956440-51-5 paperback $20.95
ISBN: 978-1-956440-52-2 eBook $9.99

Launched January 19, 2023. Happy Birthday, Dolly!

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology offers 54 poets’ takes on often-unsung facets of this diamond in a rhinestone world—calling in Dolly’s impeccable comedic timing, her lyric mastery, her business acumen, and her Dollyverse advocacy. These poems remind us to be better and to do better, to subvert Dolly cliché, and they encourage us to weave Dolly metaphor into our own family lore. Within these pages, Dolly takes the stage and the dinner table; readers see the public Dolly of the silver screen and the private Dolly of identity contemplation. Dolly raises praise and question, and she butterflies into our hearts to unabashedly to claim the mantra In Dolly We Trust.

With Dolly poems from 54 contributors:

Kelli Russell Agodon – Nin Andrews – Lana K. W. Austin – David-Matthew Barnes – Nicky Beer – Julie E. Bloemeke – Emma Bolden – Dustin Brookshire – Phillip Watts Brown – Marina Carreira – Denise Duhamel – teri elam – Rupert Fike – Diamond Forde – Chad Frame – Makayla Gay – Tyler Gillespie – Kari Gunter-Seymour – Robert Gwaltney – Beth Gylys – Karen Head – Raye Hendrix – Collin Kelley – Dorianne Laux – Chin-Sun Lee – Arden Levine – Katie Manning – Kelly McQuain – Lynn Melnick – Jenny Molberg – Rachel Morgan – Caridad Moro-Gronlier – Carolyn Oliver – Dion O’Reilly – Jeffrey Perkins – Stephen Roger Powers – Steven Reigns – Linda Neal Reising – Benjamin Anthony Rhodes – Micah Ruelle – Anna Sandy-Elrod – Roberta Schultz – Maureen Seaton – Gregg Shapiro – L.J. Sysko – Nicole Tallman – Kerry Trautman – Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer – Dan Vera – Isaiah Vianese – Donna Vorreyer – Julie Marie Wade – Jennifer Wheelock – Yvonne Zipter

Dustin Brookshire (he/him) a finalist for the 2021 Scotti Merrill Award, is the founder/editor of Limp Wrist, curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series (a Zoom-based poetry reading series), program director for Reading Queer, and founding chapter president of the South Florida Poets. He is the author of three chapbooks: Never Picked First for Playtime (Harbor Editions, 2023), Love Most of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Visit him online at www.dustinbrookshire.com.

Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her) is the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist for Poetry. Her debut full-length collection Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) was also chosen as a 2021 Book All Georgians Should Read. Winner of the 2022 Third Coast Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2020 Fischer Prize, her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications including Writer’s Chronicle, Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, EcoTheo Review, and others. An associate editor for South Carolina Review and a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts fellow, she is also a freelance writer and editor. Visit her online at www.jebloemeke.com