New Issues Poets Receive NEA Literature Fellowships

Congratulations to Jericho Brown (Please, 2008), Lisa Lewis (Vivisect, 2010), and Donald Platt (Dirt Angels, 2009).  These poets each were awarded a 2011 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts worth $25,000.

2011 Grant Awards: Literature Fellowships: Creative Writing (Poetry)

Happy New Year from New Issues

2009 was a fantastic year for New Issues and our authors. We started off 2009 by announcing that Malinda Markham won the 2009 Green Rose Prize and that Marvin Bell picked Judy Halebsky's Sky=Empty as the winner of our first book prize. These books are at the printer and will be released this spring, just in time for the 2010 AWP Bookfair in Denver.


We published seven books of poetry and one novel:

• Zero at the Bone by Stacie Cassarino
• A Million in Prizes by Justin Marks, Winner of the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize
• Dirt Angels by Donald Platt
• Hilarity by Patty Seyburn, Winner of the 2008 Green Rose Prize
• Talking Diamonds by Linda Nemec Foster
• Missing Her by Claudia Keelan
• Beauty Breaks In by Mary Ann Samyn
• We Agreed to Meet Just Here by Scott Blackwood, Winner of the 2007 AWP Award for the Novel

Here are some of the highlights of 2009:

Myronn Hardy’s The Headless Saints won the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award from the The Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation.

Jericho Brown's book Please continues to heap up honors. Most recently, he was named a winner of the 30th Annual American Book Awards, a rare if not exceptional accomplishment for a writer of a first book, placing him this year alongside such national treasures as Jack Spicer and Linda Gregg. Jericho Brown also received the 2009 Whiting Writers’ Award. Please, released in October of 2008, has become a New Issues best seller, needing to be reprinted twice already.

Katie Peterson (This One Tree, 2007) and Jericho Brown (Please, 2008) each were awarded a Bunting Fellowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and are spending the 2009/2010 academic year at Harvard working on their poetry.

Justin Mark’s A Million in Prizes (Winner of the 2008 New Issues Poetry Prize) was featured in Poets & Writers’ fifth annual Debut Poets Roundup.

Sandra Beasley, whose debut poetry collection Theories of Falling won our 2007 New Issues Poetry Prize, had her second book of poetry (I Was the Jukebox, Norton, April 2010) chosen by Joy Harjo as the winner of the 2009 Barnard Women Poets Prize and her memoir (Don't Kill the Birthday Girl) purchased by Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, for a 2010 publication.

Our first annual Fundraiser Gala exceed our expectations. The Eccentric Café of Kalamazoo’s own Bell’s Brewery hosted the event, which brought many of our authors, friends, and supporters together for an afternoon of music, poetry, and art auctions.

On Deck for 2010:

In a few weeks we expect to announce the winner of the 2010 Green Rose Prize. In April, judge Linda Gregerson will pick a first book to win our 2010 New Issues Poetry Prize.

February: Toads’ Museum of Freaks and Wonders by Goldie Goldbloom will be released. This novel, winner of the 2008 AWP Award for the Novel, selected by Joanna Scott, is set in the Australian outback during WWII and introduces us to the character of Gin Toad, a truly original voice.

We'll see everyone in April at the 2010 AWP Conference and Bookfair. Come by our table for book signings and to see three newly released poetry books:

• Sky=Empty by Judy Halebsky
• Having Cut the Sparrow’s Heart by Malinda Markham
• Tocqueville by Khaled Mattawa

In the fall of 2010, New Issues will publish the following poetry collections:

• Vivisect by Lisa Lewis
• Reliquary Fever: Selected & New Poems by Beckian Fritz Goldberg
• Pima Road Notebook by Keith Ekiss

And check our website soon to see a complete redesign. It's almost done, I swear!

PSA's 2009 New American Poets

Jericho Brown's book PLEASE was among the titles listed by the Poetry Society of America in their list of 2009 debut poetry collections. Check out his page:

Jericho Brown (via Poetry Society of America)

Jericho Brown Wins Whiting Award

Congratulations to Jericho Brown, author of Please, on receiving a 2009 Whiting Writers' Award, given to recognize emerging writers. "The awards, which are $50,000 each, totaling $500,000, have been given annually since 1985 to writers of exceptional talent and promise in early career." Joan Kane and Jay Hopler also received the award for poetry.

"Jericho Brown and Salvatore Scibona Among Whiting Award Winners" on the Poets & Writers website.

Natasha Trethewey Interviews Jericho Brown

Natasha Trethewey interviews Jericho Brown for Southern Spaces: An interdisciplinary journal about the regions, places, and cultures of the American South. This interview was conducted on September 5, 2009, during the Decatur (Georgia) Book Festival.

VPR Reviews PLEASE

Susanna Childress reviews Jericho Brown's Please for Valparaiso Poetry Review, Vol XI, No. 1. A taste: "The poems are smart and raw, but readers will recognize this as distinct from clever or pitiable, in part because the writer does not ask his readers to recognize them as such. Any insight, any complexity here is the result of intricate tonal and metaphorical maneuvering, crafting, nuance: questioning and requiring all at once, the way the word please is both a desire and a demand." For the complete review, visit www.valpo.edu/vpr

Jericho Brown's PLEASE Wins American Book Award

The Before Columbus Foundation is pleased to announce that Please by Jericho Brown has been selected as a winner of the thirtieth annual American Book Awards for 2009. Other winning poetry collection for 2009 include Linda Gregg's All of It Singing and Jack Spicer's My Vocabulary Did This to Me.

The authors will be presented with the awards at a ceremony and reception on Sunday, October 11th, 7:30, at the Nuyorican Poets Café, 236 East 3rd St., New York, NY. Authors attending will read selections from their works and a reception will follow the ceremony. This event is open to the public.  For more information, call (510) 642-7321.

The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America's diverse literary community. The purpose of the awards is to recognize literary excellence without limitations or restrictions. There are no categories, no nominees, and therefore no losers. The award winners range from well-known and established writers to under-recognized authors and first works. There are no quotas for diversity, the winners list simply reflects it as a natural process. The Before Columbus Foundation views American culture as inclusive and has always considered the term "multicultural" to be not a description of various categories, groups, or "special interests," but rather as the definition of all of American literature. The Awards are not bestowed by an industry organization, but rather are a writers' award given by other writers.

Please, released in 2008, recently sold through its second printing. A third printing is underway and books will be available again in early October.

Rain Taxi Reviews Jericho Brown's Please

Pick up the Summer 2009 issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books to read Virginia Konchan's review of Jericho Brown's debut poetry collection Please. "Erotic and grief-stricken, ministerial and playful, Brown offers his reader a journey unlike any other in contemporary poetry: a book in which moral and cultural relativism does not form the pillars of its foundation."

WMU: New Issues Reading

Patty Seyburn and Jericho Brown will be reading from their New Issues titles as part of Western Michigan University's Gwen Frostic Reading Series on Thursday April 2 at 8 p.m. in Little Theater.

Patty Seyburn’s third book of poems, Hilarity, won the 2008 Green Rose Prize given by New Issues Press. She has published two books of poems: Mechanical Cluster and Diasporadic, which won the 1997 Marianne Moore Poetry Prize and the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award for 2000. Seyburn grew up in Detroit, earned a BS and an MS in Journalism from Northwestern University, an MFA in Poetry from University of California, Irvine, and a Ph.D. in Poetry and Literature from the University of Houston. She is an Assistant Professor at California State University, Long Beach and co-editor of POOL: A Journal of Poetry, based in Los Angeles.

In a time when there’s little to laugh about, Patty Seyburn’s Hilarity is an epic punch line: sparkling and smart. —Carol Muske-Dukes

Jericho Brown is the author of Please, selected as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry as well as the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. He worked as speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. He also holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and a BA from Dillard University, and he has served as poetry editor at Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. The recipient of a Cave Canem Fellowship, two scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and two travel fellowships to the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is currently an Assistant Professor of English at the University of San Diego where he teaches creative writing.

Fresh, deeply felt, formally adventurous, Please is a stunning debut. —Mark Doty


The 2009 Gwen Frostic Reading Series
Western Michigan University

PLEASE Named Finalist for a Lammy

Jericho Brown's debut poetry collection Please has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry.

Other finalists include:
* Want, Rick Barot, Sarabande Press
* Fire to Fire, Mark Doty, HarperCollins
* Now You're the Enemy, James Allen Hall, Univ. of Arkansas Press
* My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, Jack Spicer, edited by Peter Gizzi & Kevin Killian, Wesleyan University Press

The 21st Annual Lambda Literary Awards (Lammys) will take place on Thursday, May 28, 2009.

The Lammys recognize and honor the best in GLBT literature. The nominated books reflect a diverse range of distinguished voices from the GLBT community and highlight the full range of achievement in 2008 GLBT literature. Eighty judges, representing a broad cross-section of the GLBT literary world, will select a single book in each category to win the prestigious Lambda Literary Award, considered to be the highest accolade for a book from the GLBT community. Spanning 22 categories, 105 finalists are picked from 397 books representing 72 publishers.

Finalists in all categories are now listed on the Lambda Literary Foundation Website.

March is Small Press Month

Happy Small Press Month! Here at New Issues we're very proud of our writers, and our writers have all been very busy lately. Here are just a few examples of the awards and attention our writers have received recently:

Jennifer Perrine, author of The Body is No Machine (New Issues, 2007) won the 2008 Ledge Poetry Award for “A Transparent Man Is Hard to Find.” She received $1,000, and her poem will be published in the Ledge.

Marc Sheehan of Grand Haven, MI, author of Greatest Hits (New Issues, 1998) won the 2008 Richard Snyder Publication Prize for his poetry collection Field Guide to the Native Emotions of Michigan. He received $1,000 and publication of his book by Ashland Poetry Press. Elton Glaser judged.

Katie Peterson, author of This One Tree (New Issues, 2006), and Jericho Brown, author of Please (New Issues, 2008), have both received a Bunting Fellowship at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.

Sandra Beasley's memoir Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life was taken by Crown. Poet and American Scholar editor Beasley is the author of the poetry collection Theories of Falling (New Issues, 2008). Crown's pub date is late 2010.

Lewis Horton, a contributor to the Art of the One-Act anthology, just released his novel, The Writing Class, published by Aberdeen Bay Books.

Elaine Sexton's Causeway (New Issues, 2008) has been named a finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry. Jericho Brown's Please (New Issues, 2008) has been named a finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. The Publishing Triangle hands out both awards.

NewPages Posts Review of PLEASE

Wayne Johns reviews Please by Jericho Brown: "Brown is particularly adept at exposing the duplicity inherent in both experience and language. In fact, the double-entendre of the collection’s title sets the stage for what’s to come since one might utter the word 'Please' in either a begging or a dismissive manner."

Read the full review on NewPages.

Jericho Brown's Please in the Small Press Spotlight

Critical Mass, the blog of the national book critics circle board of directors, posted an interview with Jericho Brown about his new book Please.
Jericho says this: "When I write and revise, I imagine myself in the middle of a conversation, often a disagreement, with someone I love."

Visit bookcriticscircle.blogspot.com for the full interview.

Corduroy Books Reviews Jericho Brown's PLEASE

Follow this link to read Weston Cutter's new review of Jericho Brown's debut collection Please: Corduroybooks.com

"Just read this book. Seriously. Everybody should be reading Jericho Brown." --Weston Cutter

Review of Jericho Brown's PLEASE

Read Missy McEwen's review of Jericho Brown's new book on the blog Immunization Against Invisibility: "The poems in Jericho Brown's Please hit you right away and make you say, "Wow," make you pause, make you close the book to take a break to recuperate from the blow. Please is a strong book of poems -- strong like a man's fist, strong like love, strong like music."

New Poetry from New Issues

New Issues announces the publication of two new poetry books: Please, a debut collection by Jericho Brown, and Tall If by Mark Irwin.

Claudia Rankine says this about Please: "To read these poems is to encounter the devastating genius of Jericho Brown." Read more reviews on the New Issues website. Read "Beneath Me" and "Your Body Made Heavy with Gin" from Please.

The American Book Review has called Mark Irwin's poetry “ . . . vibrant and alert, a poetry to contend with . . ." and Publisher's Weekly had this to say about Irwin's earlier work: "Brilliant, Irwin’s intellect and the urgency of his words remain traditionally steadfast." Read "Doors" and "Theory" from Tall If.

Both books are available online from Amazon.com and Spdbooks.org.

Jericho Brown's Upcoming Poetry Readings

In 2008:

Thursday, November 6, 6:30 p.m.
Gemini Ink's University Without Walls Reading Series
The Local Brook Hollow Library Branch, 530 Heimer, San Antonio, TX

Friday, November 14, 7:00 p.m.
Lindsay J. Cropper Living Writers Series
Institute for Peace and Justice Auditorium, University of San Diego

Wednesday, November 19, 7:00 p.m.
Uncalled-For Reading Series
Unnameable Books (basement),456 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217

In 2009:

Wednesday, January 21, 4:30 p.m.
UCSD New Writing Series
Visual Arts Facility Performance Space, University of California, San Diego

Thursday, February 26, 7:30 p.m.
Cleveland State University Poetry Center Reading Series, with TERRANCE HAYES
Cleveland State University

Thursday, March 5, 8:00 p.m.
Observable Reading Series, with MICHAEL DUMANIS
Schlafly Bottleworks, 7260 Southwest Ave. (at Manchester), Maplewood, MO 63143

Wednesday, March 18, 7:30 p.m.
Agnes Scott College Reading Series
The Fireplace Lounge, Agnes Scott College, Decatur, Georgia

Thursday, March 19, 7:00 p.m.
University of Georgia at Athens/VOX Reading Series, with JEFFEREY RENARD ALLEN
Location: TBA

Thursday, March 26, 7:00 p.m
Brazos Boookstore Reading Series, with BRADFORD GRAY TELFORD
2421 Bissonnet Houston, TX 77005

Jericho Brown Gets Broadsided

Visit the Broadsided Press website to download the new broadside of Jericho Brown's poem "Open," beautifully illustrated by artist Kevin Morrow. Jericho Brown's poem will appear in his debut poetry collection Please, coming out this Fall from New Issues.