2009 Robin Becker Chapbook winners

Many thanks to all who've made the second annual Robin Becker Chapbook Prize such a success. Ruth L. Schwartz has selected the winning manuscripts. For a poet with previous chapbook publication, Ruth has selected "Inland Sea" by Erin Bertram. For a poet without previous chapbook publication, Ruth has selected "Scavenge" by RJ Gibson. The winning poets will each receive $100, and their chapbooks will be published this coming winter. We are delighted to publish both these poets, and want to extend special thanks to Ruth for serving as this year's judge.

Erin M. Bertram is the author of seven chapbooks, including The Most Wild, Kindly Green (Achiote Press, 2009) and Body of Water (Thorngate Road, 2007), which received the Frank O'Hara Award.

RJ Gibson is a student in poetry in the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers. In 2008 he was a Poetry Fellow in the Lambda Literary Foundation’s New & Emerging Writers Retreat. His work has appeared in Knockout, OCHO, BLOOM, qarrtsiluni, Ganymede, Six Sentences, and the anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them. He lives and works in West Virginia.

Daniel M. Jaffe - News & Events:

[Find more news about Dan on his web site.]
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Jun 22: Please check out Dan's article over at Kim's Craft Blog discussing how he published his story, "One-Foot Lover," with Seven Kitchens Press!
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Nov 30 update: "The Zen of Butchery," a short story, was accepted by Guest Editor Felice Picano for an upcoming issue of VAN GOGH'S EAR (Paris).
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Kudos - Jeremy Halinen

Cheers to Jeremy Halinen, whose manuscript was a semifinalist for this year's Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. Jeremy will be reading his poems and interviewed by Joe Milford on the Joe Milford Poetry Show on 8/15/09 (7-8:30 pm EDT).

Kudos - Ocean Vuong

Our congratulations to Ocean Vuong, who will be a featured poet at this year's Jackson Heights Poetry Festival. Ocean's manuscript was a contender for this year's Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. See the JHPF schedule here.

Mss. logged for the 2009 Robin Becker Series:

• The Answer Is a Shudder **
• Arrival by Fire
• Bachelor Buttons
• The Bees Have Not Yet Left **
• The Beheading *
• Big Sur Docent Tells All **
• Camouflage
• A Childhood as Mythology
• Closer **
• cosas/things
• Cry Me a Lorca **
• Curl **
• Deviant
• Edge of the Touchstone
• Floating in an Eddy of Femme
• Fragile: Do Not Touch
• From the Last Days *
• Ghost Girl *
• Grace
• The Graffiti Poems
• The Healing Power of Desire
• Homoneurotica *
• Hours
• I Should Write Soap Operas
• In Absentia
• In Bed with Nuns
• In the Distance **
• In the Time It Takes to Build
• Inland Sea (1)
• Inland Sea (2) [co-winner]
• Kahikinaokala: The Rising of the Sun
• Last of the Happy-Go-Lucky
• A Lie, a Farce, and a Fake
• Light Stream
• Love, or Whatever It Was *
• Love in Idleness **
• Meditation Medley
• Men in Groups *
• Metanoia
• The Museum of Natural History
• Nest **
• Notes on a Silver Print *
• O, Reader **
• Of a Bed Frame *
• Old News--The Bond Between My Father and Me
• On Beauty and the Beautiful Señor
• Pascal's Wager *
• Pirate Radio *
• The place on high was our shared mystery
• A Pock. A Lip Cyst.
• The Poet's Zodiac **
• Rain Leaping Up When a Cab Goes Past **
• Scavenge [co-winner]
• Shadows Undone by Light: Reframing Paul Cadmus *
• Shelter *
• Shift **
• ships in the night **
• Sisterhood **
• 60,000
• Smoke and Mirrors *
• Some Queer Poison *
• Soot *
• Spectrum
• The Spiderboi Files
• Spit It Out
• Suite Sixteen
• The Takeaway Bin *
• Talk of Virgins
• Tense
• this now is that then (a membrane) (a notebook)
• To the Refrigerator Gods **
• The Triangle Quartet: Poems of October and November *
• True Nature
• Under the placid moon
• Undressing **
• Undue Attachments
• Upon Necessary Things
• versions of lissome becoming pure let
• Waxwings **
• What I Am Is Vibration, Irritation, and Stillness
• What the Dust Has Made
• Zamioculcas
  

*- semifinalists

**- finalists