Four Forthcoming Titles Named in Library Journal!

The Library Journal's blog post "What Else is Hot?: More Spring Poetry" names Young of the Year by Sydney Lea, In a Beautiful Country by Kevin Prufer, Blinking Ephemeral Valentine by Joni Wallace, and Torn by C. Dale Young, all forthcoming from Four Way Books in Spring 2011, as titles to watch for.

Two readings to check out in NYC tomorrow:

FARRAH FIELD at Pete's Candy Store:
http://multifariousarray.blogspot.com/2010/12/123-reading-farrah-field-tanya-larkin.html

and

KEVIN PRUFER at NYU, 5pm
Location: Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House, 58 West 10th Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues
http://cwp.fas.nyu.edu/page/readingseries

CONGRATULATIONS Blas and Jennifer!!

Congrats to 2011 NEA Poetry fellowship recipients Blas Falconer and Jennifer Denrow!! A list of all the 2011 recipients can be found here:

http://coldfrontmag.com/news/nea-poetry-fellowships-announced

New Review of Fimbul-Winter in the Huffington Post

Debra Allbery's recently released Fimbul-Winter was reviewed by Carol Muske-Dukes, the Poet Laureate of California, in the Huffington Post's Thanksgiving Book Reviews. Read the reviews here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-muskedukes/thanksgiving-review-books_b_787912.html

Monica Youn on Good Times

Good Times Santa Cruz is featuring Monica Youn in this week's Poetry Corner. If you have yet to read Monica's book, Ignatz, currently a National Book Award Finalist, or you simply can't get enough of it, visit Good Times to read selected poems from the collection:

http://www.goodtimessantacruz.com/component/content/article/15-literature-poetry-book-reviews/1837-the-poems-of-monica-youn.html

Farrah Field Reads in NYC This Week

Come hear Farrah Field read in NYC this week:

Wednesday, November 10, 7 pm
with Bhisham Bherwani and Andrea Baker
NYU Bookstore
725 Broadway, just south of Waverly

Sunday, November 14, 7 pm
with Christie Ann Reynolds
Zinc Bar
82 W. 3rd Street

Farrah Field is the author of Rising (Four Way Books, 2009), which was selected by Tony Hoagland for the Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry. Her poems have appeared in magazines including Chelsea, Harp & Altar, Harpur Palate, Margie, The Massachusetts Review, Mississippi Review, Pool, and Typo. She was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Plath Cabinet Reviewed by Cerise Press

We've received quite a few recent reviews of Four Way Books! Check out Catherine Bowman's review at the link below, and other great reviews in the preceding posts.

http://www.cerisepress.com/02/05/unboxed-secrets-the-plath-cabinet-by-catherine-bowman

More reviews! Belated Heavens in Sewanee Review

Daniel Tobin, who published three poems under the collective title, "A Green Road in Clare," in the summer 2006 issue, has a new collection of poems from Four Way Books to be published in October 2010. "Belated Heavens" Tobin's fifth book, is an exploration in free verse of humanity's violence and endurance that spans prehistory and modern Manhattan. "Violence however, is not the main concern of this collection," Tobin explains. "But rather how humanity thrives despite the volatility of the world." -- Sewanee Review

What the Right Hand Knows Reviewed in LAMBDA Literary

http://www.lambdaliterary.org/reviews/10/14/what-the-right-hand-knows-by-tom-healy/#more-2737

Stories That Listen Reviewed in Publisher's Weekly

Stories That Listen

Priscilla Becker, Four Way (UPNE, dist.), $15.95 trade paper (72p) ISBN 978-1-935536-05-5

This second book by Becker (Internal West) speaks from a stark place beyond heartbreak, after the dust has settled, where "It is a mistake to call logic/ cold: it has no temperature at all./ It merely reveals itself/ when the last of the emotion is gone." Cast in uneven free verse lines, this book begins and ends in resignation; it's less a journey than a confirmation of what its speaker suspected all along, that life is both disappointing and unfailingly interesting. At times these lines echo the lonely brilliance of Sylvia Plath or Louise Glück, and, of course, their forebear Emily Dickinson, for whom the natural world mirrored the inner one. Becker's claustrophobia begets insight--Becker often addresses a hazy "you," a lost beloved, but really this is the self addressing the self, saying what only the self needs to hear or can understand, "the kind of thing/ one notices--/after the extremes-- /a kind of sobriety." (Oct.)

Catherine Bowman reviewed by Cerise Press

Read Cerise Press' review of The Plath Cabinet here: http://www.cerisepress.com/02/05/unboxed-secrets-the-plath-cabinet-by-catherine-bowman

Huffington Post Names Daniel Tobin's Belated Heavens One of "The Coolest Book Covers This Year"

Congratulations to Daniel Tobin, whose new book, Belated Heavens, which will be officially launched THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4th at McNally Jackson Bookstore in Soho, was named one of the 21 coolest books covers this year by Anis Shivani in The Huffington Post. You can view this cover, and the other winners here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anis-shivani/coolest-book-covers-2010_b_775990.html#s168334.

And if you want a taste of what's inside, you can view yesterday's selection on Poetry Daily: http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14915.

Debra Allbery on Poetry Daily

If you missed two poems by Debra Allbery from Poetry Daily this weekend, you can still view them here:

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14907

CORRECTION: NYU Bookstore Reading Tomorrow at 7pm

Don't forget to come to the NYU Bookstore at 726 Broadway at 7PM to hear Priscilla Becker read for the first time from her new book, Stories That Listen, along with Paul Legault and Timothy Donnelly.

NOTE THE NEW TIME: 7PM

http://www.bookstores.nyu.edu/events/index.html/#new

Priscilla Becker, Tim Donnelly, and Paul Legault at the NYU Bookstore

Come to New Poetry Night at the new NYU Bookstore at 726 Broadway on Wednesday, October 27th at 6pm to hear Four Way Books author Priscilla Becker read for the first time from her new book, along with Tim Donnelly and Paul Legault.

Timothy Donnelly, The Cloud Corporation (Wave Book)
Timothy Donnelley is poetry editor for Boston Review and teaches at Columbia University; this is his second collection of poetry.

Paul Legault, The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn)

Paul Legault holds an MFA in creative writing and a BFA in screenwriting. He is the winner of the Omnidawn Poetry Prize, and his poems have been published in theDenver Quarterly, Pleiades, and other journals.

Priscilla Becker, Stories That Listen (Four Way Books)

Priscilla Becker, whose first book of poems, Internal West, won The Paris Review Book Prize, has written an astonishingly precise second collection, Stories That Listen. These poems attempt to come to terms with absences personal and global.

http://www.bookstores.nyu.edu/events/index.html/#new

Belated Heavens Reviewed in today's Image Journal newsletter

Belated Heavens by Daniel Tobin

In “An Orange Tree in Redlands,” one of the poems in Daniel Tobin’s just-released fifth volume of poetry, Belated Heavens, he writes: “Time’s an eye / that remakes the world just by looking.” If it is true that any observation changes that which is being perceived, “remakes” it, then all artists literally change the world, and perhaps Tobin more than most, for his observations are of an uncommon depth and precision. Under his eye, an Easter connect-the-dots puzzle forming the words “He is Risen” carries the weight of a heavenly sign, swept by the wind into the hedge lining his lawn. A mouse spotted the day after his mother’s death becomes a “fleet-footed messenger from the afterlife,” who came at night “in stealth to whisper the momentous, / then, turning back, thought better of it.” A wailing siren is a “coroner-crooner.” Throughout the book, Tobin probes the portentous, but never in the heavy-handed way of a zealot. Sure, God is in these poems, as is Mary, and Daniel, whose “best self longed for God,” but you will also find Babylonian gods, Koko the Gorilla, and “The Great Cow,” who can heal afflictions with one great, rough lick. Tobin’s sense of form is just as diverse as his cast—Belated Heavens runs the formal gamut from free verse to paradelle (a strict form invented by Billy Collins to poke fun at modern poets who employ strict forms, intended as a joke but now quite popular in its own right). The paradelle is titled “Prayer,” and according to the strictures of the form, doubles its opening lines: “There is something to be praised in repetition, / There is something to be praised in repetition...,” and with that, Tobin has tidily combined tradition and innovation, while echoing liturgical style. Do not miss the culmination of these queries into the nature of life and what lies beyond it in “Heaven,” the penultimate poem in the book, in which heavens of various traditions are considered, and longed for, although at the end, the poet settles for an eternity that is “only a short walk together / to that still, small place where memory is healed.”

Ignatz Announced as Finalist for the National Book Award

We are excited to announce that Monica Youn is a finalist for the 2010 National Book Award for her poetry collection, Ignatz, published in March 2010 by Four Way Books. Congratulations Monica!!

You can view the complete list of poetry and fiction finalists here: http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2010.html

In Case You Missed It!!

In case you were out celebrating the long holiday weekend and missed the Poetry Daily selection on Saturday, it was our own Meg Kearney! See Meg's poem "1970" in the Poetry Daily archives via the link below:

http://poems.com/poem.php?date=14892

Upcoming Readings with Farrah Field!

Venice! San Diego! Tucson! Marfa! Stop in and hear Farrah Field read if you're nearby.

Oct. 8th with Jared White, Maureen Alsop, and Louise Mathias, 7:30 p.m., Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center, 681 Venice Bl., Venice, CA

Oct. 9th with Jared White, 7 p.m., Agitprop Gallery, 2837 University Avenue in North Park, San Diego, CA

Oct. 10th or 11th with Jared White, 6 p.m., Casa Libre en la Solana, 228 N. 4th Avenue #2, Tucson, AZ

Oct. 14th with Jared White, 6 p.m., Marfa Book Company, 105 South Highland, Marfa, TX

Four Way Books Author Sandy Tseng reads at Moonstone Arts Center

If you are in the Philadelphia area this Thursday, 10/30, check out Sandy Tseng and Alicia Ostriker at the Moonstone Arts Center, 110A S. 13th Street.

Thursday September 30, 5:30pm – Poetry

Sandy Tseng & Alicia Ostriker

In Sandy Tseng's first collection, Sediment ($15.95 Four Way Books), leaving is both what remains and the act of going to another place, a different lifestyle, an unknown afterlife. This book recounts the pleasures and terrors of transition, of being "in between languages." Sandy’s awards include the 2006 Discovery / The Nation Award, Crab Orchard Review's 2005 Richard Peterson Poetry Prize, and scholarships from the Heinz Foundation and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. She lives in Denver, Colorado.

Alicia Suskin Ostriker is author of twelve collections of poetry including The Book of Seventy ($14.95 University of Pittsburgh Press). Ostriker seizes the opportunity to take us where too few poets have been able to take us: into a domain of what our fabulists like to call the “golden years.” as we live longer, we become inevitably curious about the actual texture of these late years, curious about what happens in the soul. Out of that curiosity is a new kind of poetry born, an elderstile that has passion and irony, wisdom, folly, clarity and tenderness. In her keen engagement with the self and the world, Ostriker offers us a voice and a perspective that explore the territory of seventy and beyond. She has received the Paterson Poetry Prize, the William Carlos Williams Award, the San Francisco State Poetry Center Award, and has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award. Ostirker is Professor Emeriti of English at Rutgers University and teaches in the low-residency MFA program of Drew University.

Kevin Prufer's National Anthem Earns Special Mention on Oxford American's Top 10 Apocalyptic Lit List

The Oxford American's Kevin Brockmeier recently released his list of "Ten Great Novels of the Apocalypse," including the haunting work of David Markson and Kurt Vonnegut, among other notables. And though it isn't a novel, Brockmeier can't pass up Kevin Prufer's poetry collection, National Anthem (Four Way Books, 2008): "This is the one (good) post-apocalyptic poetry collection I know...even the most naturalistic poems seem touched with a terrible wreckage."

Check out the list, and the rest of Kevin's praise here:

http://www.oxfordamerican.org/articles/2010/aug/27/ten-great-novels-apocalypse/

Farrah Field and the New Gothic: An Interview

Farrah Field explains her topsy-turvy relationship with the south and the ravenous beauty that arises from anger in a discussion with M.L. Martin on her new book, Rising.

MLM: Let me first say, congratulations on winning the Four Way Books Levis Poetry Prize and on the publication of Rising. How did you learn of Four Way Books and of the contest, and had you entered the manuscript in other contests before winning the Levis prize?

FF: Thank you so much, Meghan. I knew about Four Way Books because of their involvement in the local (and beyond) poetry scene. Martha Rhodes teaches and visits various schools, so she makes the press very visible. Four Way also runs a local reading series. What I particularly admire about the press is its versatile approach to emerging and established writers. I once attended a reading that Four Way put together for the poet and boxer David Lawrence, which was held at Gleason's gym near my apartment. Poetry can be anywhere and should be everywhere, even in a gym where you smell that day's sweat and imagine yourself letting loose on one of the punching bags hanging in the corner.

MLM: How much time did it take to write the poems in Rising and when did you realize, or decide perhaps, that these poems were the ones that would comprise the book?

FF: Who said that you have your whole life to write your first book? I forget. I wrote many of the poems while I was in graduate school at Columbia and although I started sending the manuscript out to various contests and publishers, I added poems here and there, tweaked some and that sort of thing, all the while sending and sending it out. This went on for about three years.

I tend to write through thematic projects. I even put them in different piles on my desk. I set up some rules, figure out what I can do to be naughty, then start putting in things that totally don't belong at all. Rising, was the first time I did this— took some brutality and ran with it. Martha and company went to great lengths to make it a better book by taking out the section divisions I'd originally had (and hated) and created something with, I think, a more hard-hitting arc.

MLM: The book opens with a poem called “Self-Portrait in Toad Suck, Arkansas,” a self-portrait which is delivered in third person, and even though the title divulges a specific location, it is a remotely known place, “a gravel road/ not even on a map.” Another poem, later in the book, “Mosquito Hawk” asks the question “is love renewal or distance?“ Can you discuss the significance of distance and of anonymity in these two poems, and in the book at large?

FF: I never thought about anonymity and "Self-Portrait" in the way that you have called it to attention, but in using the third person I was trying to attain a feeling of the speaker addressing the self by watching the self. (I think I talk to myself a lot; you may see evidence of this if you ever bump into me on the subway.) Even though the place seems remote, the details are very particular to a southern scene: heat, gravel road in the middle of nowhere, rice fields, the Devil, and candle lit trees. (By the way, I have a friend whose dad installed a chandelier onto one of his massive oak trees.) So this quasi-anonymity and particular distance says that the whole southern thing will be used with, as you say, anonymity and distance, with trepidation and certitude, with boldness and confusion, with nostalgia and a little distaste. The speaker in "Mosquito Hawk" wants someone else to be there so badly that it could just as easily be the mosquito hawk. So a bug flying around the room is being addressed as the lover, but the lover is also being addressed. So a kind of anonymity is created in this two-for-one "you."

MLM: You said that you often begin creating poems along a theme. Does your focus naturally gravitate to such a theme, or is there a degree of premeditation in such a theme? What theme were you initially attracted to when you began writing the poems in Rising?

FF: It's difficult to pin down exactly how it all starts. I'm currently working on a series about four sisters who run away from home. I was thinking about sisterhood, sisterhood as the collective, and girls being daughters, being "the girls." This rather large project has grown to encompass why the girls ran away (because their mother is a witch who has witch orgies) and where they find shelter (with the detective assigned to their case and he's having an affair with their former teacher). So the poems begin to take their own shape around the project.

With Rising, I initially wanted to explore my topsy-turvy relationship with the south, a place where everything takes longer and nothing makes sense (read Flannery O'Connor or a biography on Huey P. Long) yet where everything, even run-of-the-mill silly stuff is spoken with beautiful accents and intonations. All southerners sound flirty to me. Where else can you hear email spoken with three syllables?

The title Rising, besides its overt sexual reference, refers to the redneck motto: the south will rise again. I saw it on a bumper sticker when I first moved down there. It's funny because it will never happen, and you sort of hope the person with the bumper sticker also knows it's never going to happen, but they feel the need to say it anyway. What's so backwards is that Louisiana has some of the highest rates of reported domestic violence. Also, Louisiana is where my sister died. I find it all unsettling to say the least.

MLM: At the end of the opening poem, the speaker stumbles onto a birthday celebration and positions herself in a photograph that she doesn't belong in, so that the speaker creates a portrait of herself by disrupting and appropriating what seems to be someone else's portrait. Similarly, to what extent is the poem, or even parts of the book, an accurate portrayal of something that wasn’t meant to happen?

FF: Wow. I hope any teacher reading this brings this writing exercise to class: write an accurate portrayal of something that wasn't meant to happen. The first poem of any book of poetry should teach its reader how to read the rest of the poems in the book. In that regard, my first poem focuses on the quality of the outsider, the girl by herself, who makes an entrance into a place with people. So there's a shift from a haunted rural place into a community, over-heated and gothic as it must be to exist there. What drew me to the image of the birthday party is this idea of celebration even when the mode of doom and tragedy is the place itself, with its ruined history and self-aggrandizing mythology. It's easy in that humidity to imagine the fantasy of "something that wasn't meant to happen." It's a bold move to step into the middle of a picture (maybe it was her party after all), but a move that doesn't necessarily say that the girl belongs there--the south there.

MLM: When writing poetry on personal experience, how do you navigate between an allegiance to the actual experience, the ‘true story,’ so to speak, and an allegiance to craft, or to the composition of an effective and moving poem? Is it ever difficult to balance the roles of truth-teller and poem-maker?

FF: A British folk singer I like named Kathryn Williams has a song called, "Tell The Truth As If It Were Lies." One lyric to the song is: you say I feel dead. I like that we don't really know if the you is having a bad weather day and is feeling kind of dead, hungover maybe or feeling ignored. Or is you telling someone else that they feel dead underneath them, isn't bringing any excitement to the table or wherever, or isn't being responsive to what's going on?

Poetry begins with an active imagination, one that goes where it wants, one that isn't satisfied with all the mainstream crap in the world. There is always more than one thing happening at a time in a poem and it was interesting and useful to write about my sister's death, for example, because I can't really talk about it very well. People talk about siblings all the time and when someone asks if I have any, I have to say that I used to. It's awkward and it makes everyone feel uncomfortable. When I write about it, I don't feel awkward. Someone else can make sense of it for a change.

Straight forward language doesn't necessarily constitute a line-by-line, this-is-how-it-happened account of anything. After my dad read the book, he reminded me that my mother wasn't washing the dishes when a tornado flew over our house (from "Peel an Orange for Me"). What would it mean if she had? That's she's crazy enough to clean the house for anybody, even if it's a tornado? That's she's stubborn and unflappable?

In "Murder, An Ancient Mystery," I mention cemetery grounds keeping. What do I know about that? Is it a personal experience because I saw it? I didn't see it, but I heard it happening in the distance once. Would it be personal if it had been my job? It wasn't. It's personal, actually, because it's a terrible thing to think about, that we stuff our people into the ground then figure out how to mow and hedge around their markers. Was someone supposed to have mowed over my sister's grave while I was standing there in order for me to write about a poem about it? In Louisiana, it's hot outside and I sometimes ride my bike to my sister's grave. Poisonous bugs fly all around and I can't help but wonder if I'll make it home without getting run over by an idiot unaccustomed to bikers. The truth is, I really don't want to die on my bike.

MLM: I’d like to continue our discussion of distance, and distancing, for a moment, because it seems to be integral to how many of the poems operate, and also one of their main concerns. You described how a figure such as the mosquito hawk allows the speaker to address someone who is not overtly present in the poem, thereby endowing the absentee with anonymity. I am curious if you consciously created similar masks for the speaker, in poems such as “In Le Compte Bayou” and “Vixen,” in which the speaker uses the second person voice to speak about herself. In these two poems, and perhaps also in “Self-Portrait in Toad-Suck, Arkansas,” in which a ‘self’-portrait is delivered through third person, I’m curious if this shifting of point of view acts to preserve, or even create, an emotional distance, or to carefully traverse it.

FF: I'd like to say first off that second person sounds so soothing. You sounds so much better than I. And if you're kind of southern, you gets two syllables as well as becoming a little sexy. It sits nicely in your mouth (my mouth?) and in a very pretty way, tells the reader to focus right here and over there at the same time. To be honest, I'm much taller as you than as I.

Mask purposefully? Me? I wish I could mask, but I don't use the second person voice to speak "about" rather than to. Most of the poems I write in second person are weird self-addresses. You ate an entire jar of spicy pickles. You're disgusting. You haven't even had dinner yet. See what I mean? Second person has a sense of command, hints at a kind of control that was really never there, but probably is a little bit.

"In Le Compte Bayou" is one of the first poems I wrote using second person point of view and it highlighted the disconnected closeness of the two people in the boat. Second person brought about all this action that was just sort of happening. The snakes became far more interesting and I was seeing them as they had been doing what they were always doing and it didn't matter whether or not I was there. Second person is filled with existential crises: you could be any body, you are you and annoying, you need to know that you will die someday and what exactly will be your contribution to the whole of it. A long time ago I said on a bench in a park that I wanted to reinvent beauty.

MLM: I’d be remiss if I didn’t invite you to expand on that last thought; can you say more about “wanting to reinvent beauty?

FF: I really hate routines and same-dayness. I hate it that no one is willing to admit what a big fraidy cat they are. I feel so hungry all the time for someone to just shake me. I remember waking up right after my appendectomy, asking the doctor where my appendix was. I really thought it'd be sitting in a jar on my bedside table, but they sent it to a lab. The nurse asked me, you really wanted to see it? I understand they had to run tests while my guts were freshly plucked, but damn. Why wouldn't I want to see it?

The corporate mind-set, the corporate approach makes me want to barf. But barfing is kind of beautiful, the whole wretching, stomach acid thing, the whole getting rid of something you've had too much of or something you were never supposed to have. Think of snow, for example. Almost everyone I know complains about snow. Newscasters, the most horrid corporate screwed humans I can think of, complain about it as though we are all supposed to agree that we're put out by snow. The only time we can like snow is during Christmas. I think snow is incredible. I think it's incredible that Greenlandic natives have hundreds of different words that describe snow. Every day is not supposed to be the same.

As Rising was developing, I was reaching for this new kind of beauty, the ravenous beauty that arises from anger, the whole violence of living and dying, the lugubriousness of grief, the beautiful silliness thereof, of feeling so sad that you could hit your own head and laugh at yourself at the same time.

MLM: That last thought draws me to two thematic threads— violence and humor— which dovetail in poignant moments throughout the collection. “Night and Different Night,” for instance, a poem charged with sexual and violent energy, ends in humor: “if I didn’t need your mouth,/ I’d tape it shut.” Can you speak about how humor functions in this collection?

FF: The poet Anne Shaw has a really great line from her poem, "Hymn": "How grief runs/ through me like a pack of eels." There's something in this line that incorporates every which way grief can be defined. It's hidden, it's something you carry like a secret, no one really wants to touch it. I like the idea that she says "pack of eels" indicating that grief is never simply one thing; it's heartbreak, anger, disappointment, etc. What makes Shaw's line such a great one is that the thing about eels is they have such ridiculous faces. They're scary, but clownish, pointy yet plastered with a weird stupid grin. There is a ridiculousness to grief, the fact that you can be so beyond the beyond of sadness; you really have to work hard to stop yourself from letting any one of grief's emotions from totally taking over. I guess that's where humor comes in. It kind of makes me take a step back and realize I'd rather have my mortar made of generosity, forgiveness, and I'd much rather mock myself than become codified by anger and self-pity.

The title, "Murder, An Ancient Mystery," I think, is one of the funniest things in the book. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I wrote it. Often when I read that poem aloud, I say that I think it's a funny title and it usually takes people a moment or two before sort of honing in on its weird humor. A quick punch before, well, total devastation. Besides, murder— are you kidding me? Louisiana, where my sister was murdered, is one of the most impoverished states, ranks number one in gun violence, continually ranks among the lowest ten regarding education, scores the worst in health care, has a legendarily corrupt state government, is second highest in oil consumption per capita, and is considered one of the second to worst states to live in. The tension therein is suffocating. The place where my sister was murdered is known as the sunshine state, filled with beautiful flowers like the Magnolia, marked by charming manners, a slow approach to life, beautiful architecture, and people who believe they are loyal. This here is the set-up for gothic humor: my sister met the man who killed her at my parent's church. I can't ignore weird. I can't ignore the underlying grotesque behind the idea that life is so simple and normal. It's funny sad, or sad funny, which comes out to just about the same thing.

Upcoming Tom Healy Reading in NYC

NEXT WEEK IN CENTRAL PARK: Tom Healy will be reading with Terrance Hayes and Jehanne Dubrow on Thursday, August 19th at 6:30pm on the rooftop of the Arsenal Building at 5th Ave and 64th St.

Patrick Ryan Frank wins 2010 Four Way Books Intro Prize!

Four Way Books is pleased to announce that the winning manuscript of the 2010 Four Way Books Intro Prize is How the Losers Love What's Lost by Patrick Ryan Frank of Austin, Texas. The judge was Alan Shapiro. Mr. Frank's book is scheduled to be released in the spring of 2012. He will receive $1000 and a reading in a Four Way Books sponsored series in NYC. Congratulations to Patrick Ryan Frank and thank you to everyone you submitted.

An Interview with Megan Staffel

Click on the link above to hear Megan Staffel read from two of her stories, as well as her thoughts on writing and raising a family. Megan's newest collection, Lessons in Another Language: a novella and stories, is available for purchase at www.fourwaybooks.com

Monica Youn Interview

Monica Youn, author of Ignatz, is interviewed on "Writing on Demand," an online radio show. Click on the title of this entry to be redirected to Monica's interview.

Debra Allbery wins the Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry

Four Way Books author Debra Allbery has just won the prestigious Grub Street National Book Prize in Poetry for her forthcoming collection Fimbul-Winter. As part of the prize, Debra will give a reading and teach a craft class in Boston on a date to be determined. Look for Debra's award-winning collection out from Four Way Books this fall! Congrats Debra. To find out more about Grub Street National Book Prize click on the title of this entry.

Farrah Field returns from her Four Way Books sponsored residency in Provincetown:

" I have finally returned to the hustle and bustle of Brooklyn. I just wanted to express my deepest gratitude for my stay in Provincetown. Thank you so much. I feel like the luckiest person alive! I wrote so much while I was there. The internet connection in my room was not to be trusted, but it turned out to be a good thing. I wrote free from all distractions--reading blogs and whatnot. I read so much and caught up on a few films I'd been meaning to watch. I feel like a whole new person." To read a sample of Farrah's work, or to order her wonderful book Rising, click on the title of this entry.

Tom Healy in BOMB

Tom Healy (What the Right Hand Knows) is interviewed by Carol Muske-Dukes in BOMB magazine. Click on the link above to read about the inspiration behind several of Tom's poems and to get to know a bit more about Tom.

Upcoming Monica Youn Readings in NYC

Hello lovers of poetry. Four Way Books author Monica Youn (Ignatz) has three upcoming readings in NYC. Fellow Four Way Books author Tom Healy (What the Right Hand Knows) will be joining Monica at the Barnes and Noble reading (see details below). Please come out to support these wonderful poets!

St. Marks Bookstore Series
with Mark Bibbins
Thursday, June 3rd, at 7:30pm
Bar 82, 136 2nd Ave, between 9th Street and St. Mark's Place.

Academy of American Poets
Poetry From the Rooftops
with Jonathan Weinert, George Witte
Tuesday, June 8th, at 6:30 p.m.
The Arsenal Building at Central Park
64th Street at 5th Ave

Tom Healy and Monica Youn
Barnes & Noble
with D H Melham
Wednesday, June 9th, at 7p.m.
2289 Broadway at 82nd Street

An Interview with Four Way Books

Want to know more about what we think, feel and who we are? Check out this interview with Four Way Books at the Hayden's Ferry Review Blog. And thanks to the Hayden's Ferry Review for putting the spotlight on independent presses!

Meg Kearney: Finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Awards

A big congratulations to Meg Kearney, author of Home By Now, who is a finalist for the Foreword Book of the Year Award in Poetry. Meg also recently won the L.L. Winship/PEN New England award. Way to go Meg!

Kevin Prufer wins Lannan Fellowship

Four Way Books is thrilled to announce that Kevin Prufer (National Anthem, 2008) has been awarded a Writing Residency Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. The residency, which takes place in Marfa, Texas, gives authors precious uninterrupted time to work on writing.

We are also pleased to announce that National Anthem was a finalist for the 2010 Poets' Prize.

Kevin's next book is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2011.

Meg Kearney wins The L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award

Four Way Books is proud to announce that Meg Kearney, author of HOME BY NOW, is the winner of The L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award in Poetry. Established by The Boston Globe in 1975, and co-sponsored by PEN New England, the award is given for the best book of poetry by a New England author or with a New England setting. Congratulations to Meg!

Tom Healy named LA Times Book Prizes Finalist

Four Way Books is so pleased to announce that author Tom Healy has been named a Los Angeles Times Book Prizes Finalist for his debut poetry collection, What the Right Hand Knows. Congratulations to Tom!

Upcoming Readings for Joel Brouwer

Four Way Books poet Joel Brouwer (Centuries, 2003; And So, 2009) has three upcoming readings in New York City, and one in Bronxville, NY. Don't miss this chance to hear Joel's imaginative and striking work firsthand!


2/16:
Sarah Lawrence College
Bronxville, NY
6:30 PM, Slonim House Living Room
Reading with Olena Kalytiak Davis


2/17:
Cake Shop
152 Ludlow NY, NY
7 PM
Reading with Olena Kalytiak Davis


2/18:
College of Staten Island, CUNY
1:30-2:30 p.m.
The Archive Room of the Library (1L)


2/19:
NYU Lillian Vernon Creative Writers House
58 West 10th Street NY,NY
5 PM
Reading with Rachel Zucker and Rebecca Wolff.

AMAZON BESTSELLER

Tom Healy was #11 on Amazon's American Poetry bestsellers list this week for his debut collection What the Right Hand Knows, released Fall 2009. Congrats Tom! To purchase a copy of Tom's book visit www.fourwaybooks.com.

Four Way Books Readings on the Bowery

Four Way Books hosts a wonderful reading series at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, located at 308 Bowery between Houston and Bleeker. We have an amazing winter and spring lineup! For five dollars, you can share in an afternoon filled with literature. For directions to the Bowery Poetry Club, or to check out bios of the readers, click on Four Way Books Readings on the Bowery and you will be directed to the Bowery Poetry Club homepage. The series begins at 2:00 PM. Hope to see you there.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Michael Dumanis

Monica Ferrell

Jay Baron Nicorvo

James Allen Hall

Sunday, February 28 , 2010

Fred Marchant

Dana Roeser
Elizabeth Haukaas
Joan Houlihan

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Tom Healy

Carol Muske- Dukes

Ryan Murphy

Megan Staffel

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Jamie Ross

David Dodd Lee

Susan Wheeler

Lynn Emanuel

Sunday, May 2, 2010

Sara London
Ken Chen
Meg Kearney
Monica Youn

Daniel Simko's The Arrival

Daniel Simko's posthumous collection, The Arrival, receives a wonderful review at LibraryJournal.com! Doris Lynch calls Simko's American debut "beautiful, intense poetry." Four Way Books agrees! To read this review in its entirety, please click on the title of this blog entry, and then scroll down to the poetry section of the reviews. To read Simko's work, or buy his book, return to our home page (www.fourwaybooks.com) and click on The Arrival.

Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry

Our submission period is now open for the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry, and will remain open until March 31, 2010. The contest is open to any poet writing in English who has not published a collection of poetry. Alan Shapiro will judge. For details, see the submission guidelines on our home page, www.fourwaybooks.com. Good luck!