Mary Carroll-Hackett's Blog, page 94

Must Read Monday! Laura Long: Out of Peel Tree

This week meet Laura Long, author of Out of Peel Tree, a novel in stories, and two collections of poetry, The Eye of Caroline Herschel:A Life in Poems and Imagine a Door. Laura has received a James Michener Fellowship, James River Writers Award, Donald Barthelme Fellowship, PEN-Texas Award, Virginia Center for Creative Arts fellowships, and has published in magazines including The Southern Review and Shenandoah. She teaches at Lynchburg College in Virginia and with the low-residency MFA at West Virginia Wesleyan College, and has taught in numerous community and university settings.

Buy Laura’s Beautiful Books!

Out of Peel Tree

http://wvupressonline.com/long_out_of_peel_tree_9781940425009

Imagine a Door

http://www.amazon.com/Imagine-Door-Laura-Longsong/dp/1934999512

The Eye of Caroline Herschel: A Life in Poems

https://finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id =

Praise for Out of Peel Tree

“Aside from the gorgeous writing and deeply compelling characters, what I especially value about Laura Long’s Out of Peel Tree is its honoring both the region and the literature out of which it springs, at the same time it brilliantly offers a new vision and shines a light on the path ahead. This is a book to be enjoyed immediately and cherished for years to come.”~David Huddle, author of Only the Little Bone and The Story of a Million Years

“Laura Long has eyes like no other. The world she sees has more dimensions than the mundane 3-D world the rest of us inhabit. In her world even dry leaves and red tomatoes and postcards are sentient.“~Marie Manilla, author of The Patron Saint of Ugly and Still Life with Plums

“In an elaborate mosaic that is both moving and uplifting, Out of Peel Tree tells the story of three generations of West Virginia women and their survival against the odds. This vivid, compact work is akin to an unforgiving family portrait that reveals everything—warts and all.”~Clifford Garstang, author of What the Zhang Boys Know and 2013 recipient of the Library of Virginia Literary Award for Fiction.

“Laura Long writes with such tenderness for her characters, for place, for the natural world. The images shimmer and the links delight. Out of Peel Tree is tatted into the finest lace—delicate, seamless, and strong. Is it any wonder this is a poet’s novel?”~Sara Pritchard, author of Help Wanted: Female and Crackpots

Read More from Laura Online!

http://www.connotationpress.com/poetry/1680-laura-long-poetry

http://readherlikeanopenbook.com/2015/03/01/untranslatable-writing-fiction-in-the-garden-of-uncertainty-or-being-uncertain-is-a-quality-that-writers-cultivate/

Interview

https://chapbookinterviews.wordpress.com/2014/08/31/laura-long/

Happy Reading!

xo

Mary

 

 

 

Daily Prompt! Claiming What’s Yours

Happy National Poetry Month!❤ Another favorite poet. This poem’s from an amazing collection entitled Red Sugar. If you haven’t read Jan’s work, do it. Seriously.❤



 


I’ll Write the Girl


Jan Beatty


 


The thing I’ll never write is the green leaf


with its rubbery-hard veins, I’ll never


write the structure exposed, instead


 


I’ll write the girl picking it up, green leaf,


her pudgy hand & her wanting it, that’s it,


because she knows the sky is full


 


of stumbling ghosts, & she’s back in the cold


room, back on the dark floor, & along


so much sky, what does one person do?


 


She says, bring it to me & devours,


hungry girl, breaks it open, tastes


the day’s first plasma of leaf, first blood


 


of green on her city street, she takes it


to her like morning’s first kill, &


owns it, stem to point,


 


& knows her life will always


be this biting open one thing


to leave another, that the only


 


way she’ll get anything is


with this tiny hammer


in her animal brain


 


saying: mine,


& again,


& now.

 

Make art about what you’ve claimed as yours. 

Sometimes the Prompt Is the Body

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Daily Prompt Time!

spring song

by Lucille Clifton

the green of Jesus

is breaking the ground

and the sweet

smell of delicious Jesus

is opening the house and

the dance of Jesus music

has hold of the air and

the world is turning

in the body of Jesus and

the future is possible

Make art about the body of the planet. 

Newest Publication! Thanks to Rogue Agent!

Thanks to Jill Khoury and all the good folks at Rogue Agent[image error] Thrilled to be included in their anniversary issue!

http://www.rogueagentjournal.com/mcarrollhackett

Daily Prompt :-) Poetry and Power

Happy National Poetry Month! 

Celebrating by posting a poem a day, anddddd, if I can, writing a poem a day :-) 

So today’s poem (one of my favorites!) is also our

Daily Prompt :-) 

Power, by Adrienne Rich

Living in the earth-depositis of our history

Today a backhoe divulged out of a crumbling flank of earth

one bottle amber perfect a hundred-year-old

cure for fever or melancholy a tonic

for living on this earth in the winters of this climate

Today I was reading about Marie Curie:

she must have known she suffered from radiation sickness

her body bombarded for years by the element

she had purified

It seems she denied to the end

the source of the cataracts on her eyes

the cracked and suppurating skin of her finger-ends

till she could no longer hold a test-tube or a pencil

She died a famous woman denying

her wounds

denying

her wounds came from the same source as her power

Make art about power. 

 

Super Special Call For Submissions! HeartWood Broadside Contest!

HEARTWOOD BROADSIDE SERIES CONTEST

2016 Judge: Diane Gilliam

Contest submission window: April 1 – June 1, 2016

A writing practice requires us to slow down, reflect, attend. HeartWood Literary Magazine & West Virginia Wesleyan’s MFA Program seek to honor this practice with the launch of an annual broadside series and contest. Partnering with West Virginia artist Diane Radford of Dog and Pony Press, we will print the winning entry (poetry or flash prose) on a limited-edition letterpress broadside featuring an original image inspired by the text. The annual broadside will be an artifact companion the fall issue of the digital magazine. Both the handmade and the electronic HeartWood venues aim to showcase work that gets to the heart of the matter.

Contest Judge: DIANE GILLIAM is the author of four collections of poetry: Everything Ever, Everything After (forthcoming from Red Hen Press in 2016), Kettle Bottom, One of Everything and Recipe for Blackberry Cake (chapbook). She has won a Pushcart Prize, the Chaffin Award for Appalachian Writing, and is the most recent recipient of the Gift of Freedom from A Room of Her Own Foundation.

$500 cash prize + 25 copies of limited-edition letterpress broadside will be awarded to the winner.

Detailed guidelines here: http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/contest/

HeartWood Literary Magazine Inaugural Issue Live!

Thrilled to announce the first issue of HeartWood, a literary magazine in association with the Low-Residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College!

Check out the beautiful first issue, including beautiful words from Rita Quillen, Ace Boggess, Abby Chew, Brent House, Bill King, Denise James, Roy Bentley, Faith Holsaert, Dorie LaRue, Michelle Lyle, Meggie Royer, James Engelhardt, Valerie Neiman, Marc Harshman, Ronald Jackson, C.A. Cole, Madhla Khan, Ron Burch, George M. Lies, Rhonda Browning White, Alma Luz Villanueva, Brent Watkins, and R.T. Castleberry. 

Also don’t miss our Appalachian Arts Interview with multitalented artist Kopana Terry! 

Let’s get to the heart of the matter! 

http://www.heartwoodlitmag.com/

_______________________________________

Thanks and BIG gratitude to the amazing editorial staff!

Managing Editor: Danielle Kelly

Fiction Editors: Danielle Kelly, Chris Chapman

Poetry Editors: Jessica Spruill, Mary Imo Stike

Nonfiction Editors: Susan Krakoff, Beth Feagan

Appalachian Arts Editor: Vincent Trimboli

Blog Manager: Allison Pugh

Technical Advisor: J Hackett

Y’all rock!

Friday Call for Submissions Love! A Lonely Riot

A Lonely Riot Magazine Seeks Submissions for Inaugural Issue

Deadline: Rolling

 A Lonely Riot Magazine is opening inaugural submissions for their online magazine. They’re looking for literature that’s more than just prose; writing that challenges  assumptions and beliefs. Writing that makes us grow. They pay $7 for poetry/flash fiction and $20 for fiction with no reading fees.

See full guidelines at: alonelyriotmag.com/submit.

Sometimes the Prompt Is a Heartbeat Away

Daily Prompt

Dreamt someone I love brought me a drum, and together we listened to its heartbeat. Make art about a drum, the sound of a drum, the drum as a call to prayer.

Sometimes the Prompt Has a Certain Ring To It

Daily Prompt

Business-related phone calls alllllllll day longgggggggggggggg.

Make art about a phone call, maybe where a phone call turns into a surprising exchange.