Coming up in this week’s Sapling

This week, fiction writer Monica Carter offers us an inside look at the Lambda Literary Foundation Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBT Voices in Los Angeles, CA. Think: a gathering of LGBT writers of all ages and genres in a supportive, creative atmosphere amongst the rolling hills of LA. Also, we feature the latest from the likes of: Four Way Books! Conjunctions! Cave Canem!

Sapling goes out via email every Tuesday. To join our growing list of Sapling subscribers and to read a little more about what we do, visit http://blacklawrence.homestead.com/sapling.html.

A New Book by Matthew Gavin Frank

Matthew Gavin Frank, author of the wonderful poetry collection Sagittarius Agitprop, has a new book out titled Pot Farm, published by University of Nebraska Press. Dinty Moore writes “Pot Farm is smart, sly, revelatory, often laugh-out-loud funny, and entirely legal.” Click here to buy a copy, and here to buy Sagittarius Agitprop.

News Poems by Brad Ricca

Brad Ricca, author of the award-winning poetry collection American Mastodon, has three new poems up at Marco Polo. Click here, here, and here to read them; and here to buy a copy of American Mastodon.

A new Poem by Sandra Kolankiewicz

Sandra Kolankiewicz, author of the prize-winning chapbook Turning Inside Out, has a new poem titled “The Doll House” in the Cortland Review. Click here to read it, and here to buy a copy of Turning Inside Out (all chaps ar $5 this month!)

Larry Matsuda Remembers the Japanese Internment

70 years ago this month, as war threataned, Executive Order 9066 forced thousands of Japanese-American Seattle residents to flee their homes or face internment; poet Larry Matsuda, who was born in Minidoka and whose poignant collection A Cold Wind in Idaho addresses the tragic events, is profiled in a recent Seattle Magazine piece. His poem “The Noble Thing” is excerpted (copied below). Click here to buy a copy of this important collection.

 

The Noble Thing

Depression took Mom away
like invisible armed guards. She was
a stranger—a stick-like figure with arms
and legs poking out of a white smock,
    pacing the sidewalk next to the Western
State Hospital turn-around.
Dad never talked about it, none of it.
I never heard him say the word Minidoka…
Gaman, ‘endure the unbearable
    with dignity.’

New Novella by Tina Egnoski

Tina Egnoski, author of the beuatiful fiction chapbook Perishables, has a new book out titled In the Time of the Feast of Flowers. Published by Texas Review Press, Tina’s novella won the Clay Reynolds Prize, and was hailed as “Poetically rendered, originally crafted, artfully revealed, this is the kind of writing that Annie Proulx would envy” by Clay Reynolds himself. Congrats, Tina! (Click here to  buy a copy of In the Time of the Feast of Flowers, and here to buy a copy of Perishables. All BLP chaps are just $5 this month!)

Coming up in this week’s Sapling

This week, Patasola Press editor Lisa Marie Basile talks to us about what it means to be an author-focused press, the bittersweet reality of working alone, and a certain one-footed seductress with destruction on the brain. Also, we feature the latest from the likes of: the first ever CutBank Chapbook Competition! Anti-! Casperian Books!

Sapling goes out via email every Tuesday. To join our growing list of Sapling subscribers and to read a little more about what we do, visit http://blacklawrence.homestead.com/sapling.html.

Katharine Rauk on Verse Daily

A lovely poem titled “January,” from Katharine Rauk’s chapbook Basil, is up at Verse Daily. You can buy a copy of Basil here for just $9!

A New Review of SPEECH ACTS by Laura McCullough

Word For/Word loves Laura McCullough’s poetry collection Speech Acts:  ”[McCullough's poems] confront us with ourselves, our own identities, our own zones of comfort and understanding, our own concepts of self and of language. Ultimately, what McCullough gives us is a concomitance of poetic “speech acts” that are at once provocative, erotically charged, intellectually complex, and shockingly aware. In the context of 21st century Euro–American hyper–sexuality, I count it as quite an accomplishment that a collection of poems can titillate us so mischievously, so daringly, and so affectively while resisting the sordid ease and vacuity of sheer spectacle.” Read the entire review here, and buy yourself a copy of this terrific collection here. It’s the perfect Valentine’s Day gift!

Coming up in this week’s Sapling

This week, poet Laura McCullough looks long and hard at the complex business of manuscript construction, focusing in on titles—book and poem alike. Also, we feature the latest from the likes of: Converse College! Gulf Coast! Poor Claudia!

Sapling goes out via email every Tuesday. To join our growing list of Sapling subscribers and to read a little more about what we do, visit http://blacklawrence.homestead.com/sapling.html.