Drunk as a Poet on Payday

Anna Lena Phillips Bell

Jason Gray — Fri, 08 May 2026 14:43:04 -0400

Today's guest is Anna Lena Phillips Bell, and her new book, Might Could, won the Anthony Hecht Prize from Waywiser Books. Anna Lena Phillips Bell is also the author of Ornament, winner of the Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, and the chapbook Smaller Songs, from St Brigid Press. Poems appear in journals including The Southern Review, The Georgia Review, Electric Literature, Orion, The Sewanee Review, 32 Poems, and Subtropics, and in anthologies including Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing within the Anthropocene and A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia. She is an associate professor in UNCW’s MFA and BFA programs in creative writing and editor of Ecotone.

Pick up a copy of Might Could here.

Lauren Camp

Jason Gray — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 13:40:17 -0400

Poet Lauren Camp is the author of the new book, Is Is Enough, a collection of poems that face her father’s dementia and the way she and her family are affected by it. Camp is the author of eight previous poetry collections, including In Old Sky, which grew out of her experience as Astronomer-in-Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. As New Mexico Poet Laureate, Lauren Camp created the New Mexico Epic Poem Project, a community-centered, crowd-sourced initiative designed to help people in rural and arts-underserved communities express themselves. Her poems and essays have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Nation, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Orion, Missouri Review, and Poem-a-Day. Her work has been translated into Turkish, Mandarin, Serbian, Arabic, French, and Spanish.

Pick up a copy of Is Is Enough here.

D.M. Aderibigbe

Jason Gray — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 15:27:25 -0400

Happy National Poetry Month! Today, poet D.M. Aderibigbe joins me to talk about his new book, 82nd Division. D.M. Aderibigbe was born and raised in Lagos, Nigeria. Prior to 82nd Division, he published his first collection of poems, How the End First Showed, which won the Brittingham Prize in Poetry. He has received fellowships and scholarships from the Mississippi Arts Commission, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, the James Merrill House, Provincetown’s Fine Arts Work Center, and Boston University. His poems have appeared in Tatu: New-Generation African Poets, The Atlantic, The Nation, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and New England Review, among others. He teaches in the Written Arts Program as Senior Fellow in Ethics and Writing at Bard College.

Pick up a copy of 82nd Division here.

Read more about Aderibigbe and 82nd Division here.

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Heather Lanier

Jason Gray — Tue, 17 Mar 2026 09:17:53 -0400

Today, I’m so pleased to present my conversation with my friend, the essayist and poet, Heather Lanier, about her newest chapbook, Erasing the Book of Pregnancy. She is the author of the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and along with her award-winning poetry chapbooks, she has published the full-length poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing, which was called “a powerful poetic reckoning with motherhood and religion” by Kirkus Reviews. She is the recipient of a Vermont Creation Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and a New Jersey Artist’s Fellowship. Her essays and poems have been published in The Atlantic, TIME, The Sun, Salon, and elsewhere. Her TED talk, “‘Good’ and ‘Bad’ Are Incomplete Stories We Tell Ourselves,” has been viewed three million times and translated into 18 languages.

Pick up a copy of Erasing the Book of Pregnancy here.

Patricia Smith

Jason Gray — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 10:00:00 -0500

Today's show features Patricia Smith, whose The Intentions of Thunder: New and Selected Poems, won the National Book Award for Poetry last fall. It’s a tremendous book, gathering a generous selection of her previous nine volumes along with the new pieces.

Patricia Smith's previous books include Unshuttered; Incendiary Art, winner of the 2018 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry, The Paris Review, among many others, and in Best American Poetry and Best American Essays. She co-edited The Golden Shovel Anthology—New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks and edited the crime fiction anthology Staten Island Noir. Smith is a recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, an inductee of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and Academy of American Poets Chancellor and a member of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame. She is also a Guggenheim fellow, and a four-time individual champion of the National Poetry Slam, the most successful poet in the competition’s history.

A note of caution: Patricia Smith’s second reading contains language that may be difficult for some. Please use discretion.

Pick up a copy of The Intentions of Thunder here.

Matthew Francis

Jason Gray — Thu, 26 Feb 2026 11:30:00 -0500

The show's first overseas guest! I'm delighted to present my conversation with poet Matthew Francis, who joins me from his home in Wales to talk about his new book, The Green Month, a rendering of the Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym, one of the most important figures in Welsh poetry. Matthew Francis, besides his work with Welsh poets, is the author of the poetry collections Blizzard, Dragons, Muscovy, Mandeville, among others, and works of fiction, including, The Book of the Needle and Nocturne with Gaslamps, and he edited W. S. Graham’s New Collected Poems.

Pick up a copy of The Green Month here.

Elizabeth Bradfield

Jason Gray — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:00:00 -0500

Today our guest is Elizabeth Bradfield, author of the new book of poems, SOFAR. Bradfield is also the author of the books Toward Antarctica; Once Removed; Approaching Ice, which was a finalist from the James Laughlin award from the Academy of American Poets; and Interpretive Work, which won the Audre Lorde Prize in Lesbian Poetry. She has edited the anthologies Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry, with CMarie Fuhrman and Derek Sheffield, and Broadsided Press: Fifteen Years of Poetic/Artistic Collaboration, 2005 - 2020, co-created with Alexandra Teague and Miller Oberman. Liz works as a naturalist and field assistant at home on Cape Cod, directs the poetry concentration in Western Colorado’s low-residency MFA program, and is editor-in-chief of Broadsided.

Pick up a copy of SOFAR here.

Eric Pankey

Jason Gray — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 11:17:07 -0500

Today on the show is poet Eric Pankey, whose recent collection, Vanishments, is out from Slant Books. Eric is the author of many books of poems, including For the New Year, which was selected as the winner of the Walt Whitman Award by Mark Strand, The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems, and his most recent book prior to Vanishments, The History of the Siege, to name a few. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Iowa Review, The Harvard Review, The Kenyon Review, The New Yorker, and The Yale Review. His work has been supported by fellowships from Guggenheim Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, the Ingram Merrill Foundation, and the Brown Foundation. He is Heritage Chair in Writing and Professor Emeritus at George Mason University, and lives with his wife, the poet Jennifer Atkinson, in Fairfax, Virginia.

Pick up a copy of Vanishments here.

Stanley Plumly / David Baker

Jason Gray — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:55:02 -0500

Today on the show we have the poet David Baker—but he joins us to talk about another poet, the late Stanley Plumly, his good friend, and whose new Collected Poems he has coedited with Michael Collier.

Stanley Plumly published twelve collections of poetry along with four books of prose, including Posthumous Keats: A Personal Biography and Elegy Landscapes: Constable and Turner and the Intimate Sublime. His 2009 collection, Old Heart, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Paterson Poetry Prize, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He taught for many years in the MFA program at the University of Maryland, and he served as Maryland’s poet laureate as well.

David Baker is the author of thirteen books of poetry (and new one is on the way!), as well as several books and anthologies of poetry criticism.

Pick up a copy of Collected Poems here.

Natalie Shapero

Jason Gray — Tue, 14 Oct 2025 09:00:00 -0400

Today on the show it's Natalie Shapero, and her new book, Stay Dead, her fourth full-length collection. Stay Dead was nominated for the longlist of the National Book Award in Poetry, I think even before it actually came out! And overseas, its British-published counterpart is a finalist for the equally impressive TS Eliot Prize. These are punchy poems, full of irony and humor and a sharp critical eye. We have a great talk about her poetry, the labor of working in space, washing the red item with the whites, and putting together a notes section for a book.

Natalie Shapero’s previous books include Popular Longing and Hard Child, also from Copper Canyon, and No Object, her debut, from Saturnalia books, which received the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award. Hard Child made the 2018 shortlist for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her work has earned her a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and a Ruth Lilly Fellowship and has appeared in The New Yorker, The London Review of Books, The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The Nation, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles and teaches writing at UC Irvine.

Pick up a copy of Stay Dead here.

Ross White

Jason Gray — Tue, 29 Jul 2025 15:28:04 -0400

It’s episode 20! And a special one in many ways. It’s my first live in-person podcast recording, and it’s with my great friend Ross White! White is the author of Charm Offensive and the chapbooks Valley of Want, How We Came Upon the Colony, and The Polite Society, and is teaching faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. White also runs Bull City Press, which focuses on chapbooks of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. His poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, Tin House, and The Southern Review, among others. He also hosts a weekly trivia show and podcast, Trivia Escape Pod, which I have been lucky enough to help with for a couple years now.

Pick up a copy of Charm Offensive here.

And while you’re at it, grab a chapbook or three from Bull City Press. Get ready for the Sealey Challenge!

Matt Donovan & Jenny George

Jason Gray — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 07:00:00 -0400

Something special today everyone! Double poet day! My guests are Matt Donovan and Jenny George, coauthors of the new chapbook, We Are Not Where We Are, published this week by Bull City Press. The book is an erasure of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It’s fascinating to hear the two of them, long-time friends, talk about how they worked together on the project and what they were looking to do with the work.

Matt Donovan is the author of the poetry collections The Dug-Up Gun Museum and Vellum, among others, and the collection of lyric essays, A Cloud of Unusual Size and Shape: Meditations on Ruin and Redemption. He is the recipient of a Whiting Award, a Rome Prize in Literature, a Creative Capital Grant, and an NEA Fellowship in Literature. Donovan lives in Massachusetts and serves as the Director of The Boutelle-Day Poetry Center at Smith College.

Jenny George is the author of After Image and The Dream of Reason and the chapbook * (asterisk). She is also a winner of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize and a recipient of fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Lannan Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and Yaddo. Her poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, Narrative, Granta, The Iowa Review, FIELD, and elsewhere. Jenny lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she works in social justice philanthropy.

Pick up a copy of We Are Not Where We Are here.

And while you’re at it, grab Donovan’s The Dug-Up Gun Museum and George’s After Image.

Read more about Donovan here and George here.

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Felicia Zamora

Jason Gray — Fri, 30 May 2025 15:11:30 -0400

Today on the show we have Felicia Zamora with her new book Interstitial Archaeology, an Editor’s Pick for the Wisconsin Poetry Series. Like the title says, it’s a book that digs down into undiscovered spaces; but it’s also one that pushes out, makes those spaces have a place in the surface world. There’s such a breadth of artistic craft in this book, and it’s incredibly smart and funny at times—any book that quotes from The Simpsons is going to have a special place in my heart.

Along with Interstitial Archeaology, Zamora is the author of eight books of poetry including the forthcoming Murmuration Archives, a part of the Akrílica Series with Noemi Press. Her work has won the Loraine Williams Poetry Prize from The Georgia Review, Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, the C.P. Cavafy Prize from Poetry International, and she served as the 2017 Poet Laureate of Fort Collins, CO. Currently, she is an associate professor of poetry at the University of Cincinnati, and a poetry editor for Colorado Review.

Pick up a copy of Interstitial Archaeology here.

Sandra Marchetti

Jason Gray — Fri, 09 May 2025 16:02:07 -0400

Today on the show is Sandra Marchetti, author of the new poetry collection, Diorama. In addition to Diorama, Marchetti is the author of Aisle 228, the 2023 Winner of The Twin Bill Book Prize for Best Baseball Poetry Book of the Year, and Confluence. Her poetry and essays have appeared in Poet Lore, Blackbird, Ecotone, Southwest Review, The Rumpus, Pleiades, and other venues. She is Poetry Editor Emerita at River Styx Magazine. Sandy earned an MFA in Creative Writing—Poetry from George Mason University and now serves as the Assistant Director of Academic Support at Harper College in Chicagoland.

Pick up a copy of Diorama here.

Traci Brimhall

Jason Gray — Fri, 18 Apr 2025 14:15:35 -0400

On the show today is Kansas State Poet Laureate Traci Brimhall. Her new book of poems, Love Prodigal, is recently out from Copper Canyon. Brimhall's previous books of poetry include Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod, Saudade, Our Lady of the Ruins, and Rookery. Brimhall’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Orion, Poetry, The Nation, and The New York Times Magazine. Through fellowships with the National Endowment of the Arts, National Park Service, and Academy of American Poets she’s taught writing workshops in farm schools, art museums, libraries, medical communities, and the outdoors.

Pick up a copy of Love Prodigal here.

Lesley Wheeler

Jason Gray — Thu, 20 Mar 2025 14:24:28 -0400

Today's show features poet Lesley Wheeler, and her wonderful new book of poems, Mycocosmic. It’s a fascinating book both in its individual poems and in its overall assembly. It takes us under the earth to the mycelia below, and under the skin to the heart inside.

Lesley Wheeler’s previous poetry collections include The State She’s In, Radioland, The Receptionist, Heterotopia, and Propagation. She has also published the novel Unbecoming and and a collection of essays, Poetry’s Possible Worlds. Wheeler edits poetry for the literary magazine Shenandoah and teaches at Washington & Lee University. Her work has been supported by the Fulbright program, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Breadloaf, and the Sewanee Writers Conference.

Pick up a copy of Mycocosmic here.

Christian Teresi

Jason Gray — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 14:55:17 -0500

Today on the show we have poet Christian Teresi, talking about his new book, What Monsters You Make of Them, recently published by Red Hen Press. Teresi has published poems in AGNI, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Blackbird, and many other places. He has also translated Book 7 of Nonnus of Panopolis’s Dionysiaca, the longest surviving text from Ancient Greece, as a part of a collection from several translators. His work has been supported by a fellowship from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He holds degrees from Binghamton University and George Mason University.

Pick up a copy of What Monsters Your Make of Them here.

Ava Nathaniel Winter

Jason Gray — Wed, 12 Feb 2025 12:23:41 -0500

On the show is poet Ava Nathaniel Winter, whose new book, her first full-length collection, is the National Poetry Series–winning Transgenesis.

Winter has also published the chapbook, Safe House, and her work has appeared in The Baffler, Beloit Poetry Journal,Poetry International, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University and now teaches at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in the department of English and the women’s and gender studies program.

Pick up a copy of Transgenesis here.

Sidebar: Richard Wilbur

Jason Gray — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 16:06:32 -0500

I’ve always loved the poem "Year's End" by Richard Wilbur, and it is of course a great choice for the last day of the year, so here’s a short episode on this amazing poem. Wishing you all a wonderful New Year's Eve, and a great year to come!

Richard Wilbur, twice-winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, was the author of eleven collections of poetry, and was also the second Poet Laureate of the United States.

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Abbie Kiefer

Jason Gray — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 14:48:02 -0500

In time for your holiday travels, here is a new episode to cue up! Today, Abbie Kiefer talks about her new book, Certain Shelter, which focuses on the loss of her mother and the loss of her home, a Maine mill town. We also talk about the poet, E.A. Robinson. Happy Thanksgiving!

Besides Certain Shelter, Kiefer is the author of the chapbook Brief Histories. Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, The Missouri Review, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She is on the staff of The Adroit Journal and lives in New Hampshire.

Pick up a copy of Certain Shelter here.

Carl Phillips

Jason Gray — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:38:40 -0500

Today on the show is Carl Phillips, whose new book, Scattered Snows, to the North, has recently been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and Carcanet in the UK, where it has been shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize. Phillips' previous book, Then the War and Selected Poems, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. In total, Phillips has published 17 books of poetry and three prose volumes. His work has earned him many awards and accolades besides the Pulitzer, including the 2021 Jackson Prize and the Kingsley Tufts Award.

Pick up a copy of Scattered Snows, to the North here. (Want the British version? Here you go.)

Matthew Buckley Smith

Jason Gray — Wed, 30 Oct 2024 18:08:16 -0400

Today's guest is Matthew Buckley Smith, whose new book, Midlife, won the 2021 Richard Wilbur Poetry Award, and is out from Measure Press. He is also the author of Dirge for an Imaginary World, which won the 2011 Able Muse Book Award. His poems and stories have appeared in AGNI, American Life in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best American Poetry, Cincinnati Review, Fairy Tale Review, The Nation, Ploughshares, Subtropics, and Threepenny Review.

He also hosts a terrific podcast of his own—Sleerickets—a podcast about “poetry and other intractable problems” as he calls it. It’s a smart and in-depth look at poetry and the poetry world and is absolutely worth giving a listen to.

Pick up a copy of Midlife here.

Sidebar: Barbara Jordan

Jason Gray — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 16:34:15 -0400

A new sidebar edition! This week I read and discuss Barbara Jordan's poem "The Discovery Room," from her book, Channel. Jordan only published two books of poems, and they are excellent. What happened to her, why she stopped writing, or publishing, is a bit of a mystery. Do you know Jordan's work? Do you have clues as to her whereabouts? I'd love to know. Send me a note, please!

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Christian J. Collier

Jason Gray — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:58:41 -0400

Today's show features poet Christian J. Collier, author of the new book of poems, Greater Ghost, hot off the press from Four Way Books. This is a book full of smart, tough, and beautiful poems. It was wonderful to be introduced to him and his work.

Christian Collier is the author Greater Ghost and the chapbook, The Gleaming of the Blade, the 2021 Editors' Selection from Bull City Press. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poetry, December, and elsewhere. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2022 Porch Prize in Poetry and the 2020 ProForma Contest from Grist Journal.

Pick up a copy of Greater Ghost here and The Gleaming of the Blade here.

Dan O'Brien

Jason Gray — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 17:47:36 -0400

Today on the show is Dan O'Brien, discussing his new book, Flying on Easter and Other Poems. This pamphlet was published by Poetry London Editions in the UK, and is drawn from his recent full-length collection from Acre Books, Survivor's Notebook.

O'Brien is the author of previous poetry collections, including Our Cancers, New Life, War Reporter, and the nonfiction books From Scarsdale: A Childhood and A Story That Happens: On Playwriting, Childhood, & Other Traumas. He is an accomplished playwright as well, having won several awards for his plays The House in Scarsdale: A Memoir for the Stage and The Body of an American, which also earned him a 2015-16 Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama & Performance Art.

A content note about today's show: it does feature a mention of suicide, so please use discretion.

Pick up a copy of Flying on Easter here and Survivor’s Notebook here.

Callie Siskel

Jason Gray — Mon, 24 Jun 2024 12:13:55 -0400

Today on the show is poet Callie Siskel, discussing her new book, Two Minds. It's a terrific book, one that is, in part, about her father, the late, wonderful film critic Gene Siskel. Two Minds is Siskel's first full-length book, after her Poetry Society of America chapbook, Arctic Revival, which was selected for publication by Elizabeth Alexander.

Siskel's poetry appears in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, and The New York Review of Books. She is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and holds an MFA from the Johns Hopkins University Writing Seminars and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles, where she is a poetry editor at The Los Angeles Review of Books.

Pick up a copy of Two Minds here.

Kevin Prufer

Jason Gray — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:49:41 -0400

On the show this week is Kevin Prufer, author of the new book of poems, The Fears, which just won the Rilke Prize, as well as the new novel, Sleepaway. Prufer is the author of several previous collections of poems, including The Art of Fiction, Churches, and National Anthem. With Wayne Miller and Martin Rock, Prufer directs the Unsung Masters Series, a book series devoted to bringing the work of great but little known authors to new generations of readers. Prufer is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Houston and the low-residency MFA at Lesley University.

Pick up a copy of The Fears here and Sleepaway here.

Philip Metres

Jason Gray — Mon, 27 May 2024 17:27:37 -0400

Today's show features poet Philip Metres discussing his new book, Fugitive/Refuge, published in April by Copper Canyon Press.

Philip Metres is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge, Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, Sand Opera, and I Burned at the Feast: Selected Poems of Arseny Tarkovsky. His work—poetry, translation, essays, fiction, criticism, and scholarship—has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, the Watson Foundation. He is the recipient of the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Lyric Poetry Prize, and the Cleveland Arts Prize. He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He lives with his family in Cleveland, Ohio.

Pick up a copy of Fugitive/Refuge here.

J.L. Conrad

Jason Gray — Mon, 06 May 2024 16:35:07 -0400

Today on the show is poet J.L. Conrad, whose new book, A World in Which, was released in April by Terrapin Books.

J.L. Conrad’s first full-length book is A Cartography of Birds (LSU Press), and she has published the chapbooks Recovery (2022 Robert Phillips Chapbook Prize) and Not If But When (Salt Hill’s 2015 Dead Lake Chapbook Contest). Her poems have appeared in Pleiades, Sugar House Review, Jellyfish, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA in creative writing from American University and PhD in English from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. And she lives in Madison still, that great capital city and land of delicious fried cheese curds, as well as a fantastic writing community.

Pick up a copy of A World in Which here.

Sidebar: Anthony Hecht

Jason Gray — Tue, 23 Apr 2024 16:19:18 -0400

This week the show takes a twist: this is Drunk as a Poet on Payday: Sidebar Edition. Here I read and discuss Anthony Hecht's poem, "A Hill," from his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Hard Hours.

We'll return in two weeks with our regularly scheduled shows, featuring poet J.L. Conrad.

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Lisa Ampleman

Jason Gray — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 08:00:00 -0400

Episode 3 is an auspicious meeting of astronomical event and poetry book, as today we feature Lisa Ampleman and her book Mom in Space on the day of the total solar eclipse across much of North America.

Lisa Ampleman is the author of three full-length poetry collections—Mom in Space, Romances, and Full Cry, winner of the Stevens Manuscript Competition sponsored by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies—and the chapbookI’ve Been Collecting This to Tell You, winner of the Wick chapbook competition. Her poems have appeared on Poetry Daily and Verse Daily, and in literary journals, including 32 Poems, Image, Kenyon Review Online, Poetry, Shenandoah, Southern Review, and The Rumpus. Lisa is the recipient of scholarships and prizes from the Sewanee Writers Conference, Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prizes, the Institute for Advanced Catholic Studies, and the Hermitage Artist Retreat. Most recently, she was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for FY2022. She is the managing editor of The Cincinnati Review and the poetry series editor at Acre Books.

Jesse Nathan

Jason Gray — Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:24:41 -0400

Episode 2 features Jesse Nathan, whose first book, Eggtooth, was released last fall from Unbound Edition Press. One poem in the book, “Dame's Rocket,” was selected for the Best American Poetry 2024. The collection won the 2024 New Writers Award in Poetry from the Great Lakes College Association.

Nathan’s poetry has appeared in The New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, and the inaugural issue of Revel, among other magazines. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Stanford University, Bread Loaf, and the Kansas Arts Commission. He's a 2024 LABA Bay Area Fellow.

Nathan was a founding editor of the McSweeney’s Poetry Series. Nathan’s reviews and interviews appear in the online McSweeney’s series “Short Conversations with Poets.”

Find out more at Jesse Nathan’s website. Grab a copy of Eggtooth.

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Cynthia Marie Hoffman

Jason Gray — Mon, 11 Mar 2024 02:30:51 -0400

In this premier episode, Jason Gray speaks with Cynthia Marie Hoffman, whose new book, Exploding Head, is a memoir-in-prose poems about her life as a young child and an adult with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), which manifests in fearful obsessions and counting compulsions that impact her relationship to motherhood, religion, and the larger world.

Hoffman is the author of three previous books of poetry, Call Me When You Want to Talk about the Tombstones, Paper Doll Fetus, and Sightseer, as well as the chapbook Her Human Costume. Hoffman is the recipient of a Diane Middlebrook Fellowship in Poetry at the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board, and a Director’s Guest fellowship at the Civitella Ranieri Center in Italy. Her poems have appeared in Electric Literature, The Believer, The Los Angeles Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere.

Visit Cynthia Marie Hoffman's website or buy a copy of Exploding Head.

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