Shape

I received a call today informing me that my poem, "Nothing But the Shape" was awarded honorable mention for the 2008 Bellevue Literary Review Magliocco Prize for Poetry judged by Marie Howe. Exciting!

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The manuscript is going out in exactly two weeks and two days. Gulp.

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My first official Writers In The Schools teaching day is next Tues. I had my planning meeting at the school yesterday, which went well. I have 4 classrooms: 2 of 1st & 2nd graders and 2 of 3rd & 4th.

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I'm in love with this show. Anyone else watch it? So good. It makes me want to smoke, drink martinis, and wear shirtdresses. Gorgeous.

Owl

Thanks to Mary Biddinger and Barn Owl Review for accepting my poem, "The Kiss," for their inaugural issue, which will be released in January 08 @ AWP!

Others in this issue will include: Kelli Russell Agodon, Sandra Beasley, Adam Clay, Denise Duhamel, Jeannine Hall Gailey, Bernadette Geyer, Anne Haines, Brandi Homan, Alex Lemon, Rebecca Loudon, Clay Matthews, Nathan McClain, Steve Mueske, Steven Schroeder, Sarah Sloat, and many more.

Bee

I've been super busy (and blogger-absent): working on poems for my Bennington packet, battling (& now over with, thankfully) a terrible upper respitory infection that knocked me out for 2 weeks, and finalizing my manuscript!

In news, I recently was hired as a writer for Houston's Writers In The Schools program. I will be teaching creative writing to two classes of 1st & 2nd graders and two classes of 3rd & 4th graders at a private Montessori school.

Other goings on during a busy semester: I'm applying to the Houston PhD CWP, which means taking the GRE subject test and rounding up another collection of recommendation letters. I also am writing a 20-page paper for Bennington on ekphrastic poetry. Let's not forget PLR work on the Fall/Winter 2007 issue and preparing for AWP.

Appearances: Thank you, Bennington College for this shout-out and to The Bennington Banner for the article about my being a finalist for the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship.

I love Brian Turner's Here, Bullet. If you haven't heard of this spectacular poet, he got his MFA from Oregon and then spent 7 years of duty in Iraq for the US Army. Here, Bullet is a collection of gritty, beautiful, necessary poems written from his experience. Read it.

I have a lot of email to catch up on. In the meantime, browse the new issue of PLR. The advance copies are selling out fast, so be sure to get yours ASAP!