Purchase: House of Myth and Necessity(River River Books, 2026)

Jennifer A Sutherlandis a poet, essayist, and attorney in Baltimore. She is the author of House of Myth and Necessity (River Riverbooks, 2026) and the lyric-hybrid, book-length poem Bullet Points, also from River River Books (2023). Her work has appeared in Birmingham Poetry Review, Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, Cagibi, EPOCH, and elsewhere.

Recommended Reading

Robin Robertson 

Anne Carson

Claire Millikin’s TELEVISION (Unicorn Books, 2016)

Monica Youn’s Blackacre 

Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

Tron (film, 1982)

Jameela F. Dallis

Diane Seuss's essay "Restless Herd: Some Thoughts on Order—in Poetry, in Life" (Poets & Writers, on building a bearable myth)

Purchase: There Is News Along the Ohio River(River River Books, 2026)

Beth Gilstrap (she/her) is a multi-genre author, copywriter, editor, and educator. Her debut hybrid/flash CNF collection, There Is News Along the Ohio River, was released February 2026 from River River Books. She is also the author of two story collections including: Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, shortlisted for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and finalist for the Foreword 2021 Foreword Reviews Awards in Short Fiction; I Am Barbarella: Stories from Twelve Winters Press (2015), and the chapbook No Man’s Wild Laura (2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. A true southern goth/punk gal at heart, she is the Publisher & Editor-in-chief of the goth/punk zine, Black Lily (find them on Instagram @blacklilyzine). Her essays, stories, and hybrids have appeared in Poets & Writers, Wigleaf, Craft, Bending Genres, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives with her husband and a bunch of cuddly fur muppets in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a neurodivergent human who lives with c-PTSD, she is open about her struggles and fearlessly vocal about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness.

Recommended Reading

Kathy Fish 

Ross Gay

Maggie Nelson

Lydia Davis

Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries

Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin

Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know

Pete Walker - Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving

Tara Westover, Educated

Jen Soriano, Nervous

Rebecca Olander, Singing From the Deep End

Purchase: The Visible Field (River River Books, 2026)

Zoë Ryder White’s first full-length collection, The Visible Field, was published by River River Books in February, 2026. A chapbook, Via Post, was a finalist for Tupelo Press’ Snowbound Chapbook award and won the Sixth Finch chapbook contest in 2022. HYPERSPACE was the editors’ choice pick for the Verse Tomaž Šalamun Prize in 2020 and is available from Factory Hollow Press. She co-authored A Study in Spring (Rabbit Catastrophe Press, 2015) and Elsewhere (Sixth Finch Press, 2020) with Nicole Callihan. Her poems have appeared in Tupelo Quarterly, Iterant, Plume, and Threepenny Review, among others. A former elementary school teacher, she edits books for educators about the craft of teaching. She lives in New York’s Hudson Valley with her family.

Reading Recommendations

Vijay Seshadri

Emily Dickinson

Letters of Emily Dickinson

Nicole Callihan

Imogene's Antlers (children's book)

The Poetics of Revery by Gaston Bachelard

The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard

Molly Spencer

Purchase: Backyard Alchemy: on life with other creatures in a time of salvage (River River Books, 2026)

J.D. Ho was born by the sea, raised on a rock, schmoozed in Hollywood, drove to Austin, Texas for an MFA, and now lives among foxes and deer on a sliver of east coast green. J.D.’s work has appeared in Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals.

Reading Recommendations

Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Tsing 

The Fall of Iris Henley by Jennifer Graham

Brilliant Minds (tv show)

Alban Fischer (Designer and editor)

Pastoral, 1994 by Joe Wilkins

Scythe by Elizabeth Sylvia

Your Mother’s Bear Gun by Corrie Williamson

EcoTheo Review

Read: "On Learning that Kim Kardashian Exceeded her Water Allowance by 232,000 Gallons in June" (Passengers Journal)

Purchase: Scythe (River River Books, 2026)

Elizabeth Sylvia’s first book, None But Witches: Poems on Shakespeare’s Women (2022), won the 2021 3 Mile Harbor Press Book Award. Her chapbook My Little Book of Domestic Anxieties (2025) is available from Ballerini Books, and her second full-length collection, Scythe, is available now from River River Books. She has been a finalist or semi-finalist in competitions sponsored by the Burnside Review, C&R Press, DIAGRAM, Thirty West, Rare Swan, and Wolfson Press, and is a reader for SWWIM Every Day. Elizabeth has received fellowships from the New York Public Library, the West Chester University Poetry Center, and the Longleaf Writers Conference, and is the winner of the 2023 riverSedge Poetry Prize. Elizabeth grew up on Martha’s Vineyard and currently teaches in Southeastern Massachusetts, where she lives with her husband, two daughters, and an extravagantly demanding garden.

Recommended Reading:

Richard Siken's Crush
Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner 

If Some God Shakes Your House by Jennifer Franklin

Ceive by BK Fischer

Rue by Kathryn Nuernberger

No Longer at This Address by Andrew Hemmers

The Garden Against Time by Olivia Laing 

Purchase: In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls(Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) 

Majda Gama was born in Beirut to a Saudi father and American mother. Her hometown is Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and her roots Hijazi, but she also has a long, complicated relationship with Northern Virginia where her father was stationed in the 1970's. Majda is the author of In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025) and The Call of Paradise, (Two Sylvia’s, 2023). Her poetry has been honored with the Graybeal-Gowen award for Virginia poets from Shenandoah and the Gregory Djanikian scholar award for poetry from Adroit. Recent poems have appeared in, or are forthcoming from, AGNI, Ploughshares, POETRY, Prairie Schooner, Swamp Pink, Tupelo Quarterly, and TriQuarterly.

Recommended reading
2017 PEN America World Voices: Sheyr Jangi (Poetic Battles)

Lena Khalaf Tuffaha

Mahmoud Darwish

Fady Joudah

Gwendolyn Brooks

Jill Kitchen

Read: Three Poems by Frances Klein at Cultural Daily

Purchase: Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025)

Frances Klein is an Alaskan poet and teacher. Klein is the author of the poetry collection Another Life (Riot in Your Throat Press, 2025). She is also the author of several poetry chapbooks, including (Text) Messages from The Angel Gabriel (Gnashing Teeth, 2024). Klein is the founding editor of Flight: A Literary Sampler, and an editor at The Weight Journal. Her writing has appeared in Best Microfictions, Rattle, the Harvard Advocate, the London Magazine, HAD, and others. Klein lives in Southeast Alaska with her husband and son.

Recommended Reading:

Terrance Hayes, "Wind in a Box" (poem, also recommend book)

Jericho Brown

Marianne Baruch, Grace, Fallen from

Joshua Bennett

Robert Hass 

Lucille Clifton

Sarah Vap, End of the Sentimental Journey

James Tate

Purchase: MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024)

Nicole Cooley grew up in New Orleans and is the author of seven books of poems, most recently MOTHER WATER ASH(Louisiana State University Press 2024), as well as OF MARRIAGE (Alice James Books 2018), GIRL AFTER GIRL AFTER GIRL (LSU Press 2018) and BREACH (LSU Press 2010). She has received the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA grant, and the Emily Dickinson Award from The Poetry Society of America, and most recently a grant from the New Jersey Council for the Arts. She is a professor in the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Translation at Queens College, The City University of New York and lives in NJ with her family.

Reading Recommendations:

Yannis Ritsos

Incendiary Art by Patricia Smith

The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

The Poet in the Worldby Denise Levertov

The Art of Deathby Edwidge Danticat

Against Forgetting by Carolyn Forche

Orbit by Victoria Chang

Mother Hunger by Kelly McDaniel

"A Small Needful Fact" by Ross Gay

C.D. Wright

Philip Levine

Read: "I Am a Great Lake" (MER)

Natalie Solmer was born and raised in South Bend, Indiana, a granddaughter of Polish and German immigrants. She worked in the field of horticulture for many years, including 13 years as a grocery store florist, before becoming a professor of English and creative writing. She teaches at Ivy Tech Community College in Indianapolis and is the founder and editor in chief of Indianapolis Review. Her work has been published in journals such as North American Review, Notre Dame Review, Pleiades, Mom Egg Review, and Tab Poetry Journal. Her debut book of poems, Water Castle, was published by Kelsay Books in the fall of 2024. You can find her poems, visual poetry, and visual art at http://www.nataliesolmer.com

Reading Recommendations:

The Indianapolis Review

Diane Seuss, Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl (Graywolf, 2018)

"Song in my Heart" by Diane Seuss

Gustav Klimt

Frida Kahlo

"The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" by Walter Benjamin

Joyelle McSweeney, Death Styles (Nightboat Books, 2024)

Sarah Green is the author of an April 2025 release, The Deletions (Editor’s Choice, Akron Poetry Prize) and a previous collection, Earth Science. Her poems have appeared in Ploughshares, Paris Review, New Ohio Review, 32 Poems, FIELD, Copper Nickel, Gettysburg Review, Pleiades, and elsewhere. A two-time Pushcart Prize winner, she is an Associate Professor of English at St. Cloud State. 

Reading Recommendations:
Kylie Gellatly

Marie Howe

Blueberries for Sal by Robert McCloskey

James Wright

Marianne Moore

Merriam-Webster

The Lost Words by Robert Macfarlane

Read: "Dysmorphia (Autumn)" at Harpur Palate

Donna Vorreyer is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Unrivered ( 2025), To Everything There Is (2020), Every Love Story is an Apocalypse Story (2016) and A House of Many Windows (2013), all from Sundress Publications. Recent work has appeared in Ploughshares, Pleiades, Poet Lore, Colorado Review, Harpur Palate, Baltimore Review, Salamander, and many other journals. Donna lives  in the western suburbs of Chicago and runs the online reading series A Hundred Pitchers of Honey. She is the co-founder/co-editor of Asterales: A Journal of Arts & Letters.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:

Mary Ruefle’s essay “Pause”

Diane Seuss's frank: sonnets

John Donne, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (1624)

Philip Sidney, Astrophil and Stella (1591)

Jane Hirshfield "Changing Everything"

Richard Wilbur, “The Beautiful Changes”

Joanne Kyger

Eileen Myles

Salvage by Heji Choi

Taylor Byas’s Resting Bitch Face

Dustin Brookshire, Wild and Precious Life Series

Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry

Lewis Hyde's The Gift

Jameela F. Dallis lives in Durham, NC. Her publications include poems, interviews, arts journalism, and literary scholarship in Feminist Studies, Honey Literary, The Fight and the Fiddle, Our State, Walter, The Bloomsbury Handbook to Toni Morrison, and elsewhere. She's inspired by memory and desire, the thrill of wandering new cities, and the wonder of everyday encounters. Her work explores texture, taste, sound, sensation, and the richness of visual art. She curated Material Encounters (Peel Gallery, Carrboro, March 2024), juried Scaffold (Artspace, Raleigh, April 2023), and has served on regional curatorial and fellowship committees. Jameela has taught dozens of university courses and facilitated creative workshops for more than a decade. Originally from Chattanooga, TN, Jameela received her B.A. in English from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, and holds both an M.A. and Ph.D. in English from UNC-Chapel Hill. Encounters for the Living and the Dead is her first book of poetry. Read more at jameeladallis.com

Reading Recommendations:

Pieter Aertsen's A Meat Stall with the Holy Family Giving Alms(1551)

Henri Matisse's Les Betes de la Mer (1950)

Five Questions with Author Jameela F. Dallis: River River Books' Newsletter

Jaki Shelton Green

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Purchase: Field Notes(River River Books, 2025)

E. G. Cunningham was born in South Carolina and grew up in Italy and Florida. Her poems, essays, stories, and hybrid pieces have appeared in or are forthcoming from a wide range of national and international publications, including The Abandoned Playground, Colorado Review, The Gettysburg Review, The Nation, Poetry London, The Poetry Review, Puerto del Sol, Southern Humanities Review, and ZYZZYVA. Her most recent chapbook, Oranges for Venus, was selected as the 2023 1br/3bath Editor’s Choice from Tilted House Press. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Georgia. Read more about her writing and music at egcunningham.com.

Reading Recommendations

"What are the United States and why are there so many of them?" essay by Heriberto Yepéz

Sonia Sanchez's essay in Civil Disobediences: poetics and politics in actions (Coffee House Press, 2004) 

Transnational Battle Field (Commune Editions, 2017) by Heriberto Yepéz 

Poem for Difficult Children (Broken Sleep Books, 2022) by Daniele Pantano

The Gleaners and I (2001, film) by Agnes Varda (watch on The Internet Archive)

Whose Justice? Which Rationality?by Alasdair MacIntyre

The Southern Reach Series by Jeff VanderMeer

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Read: "Faith Test" at The Florida Review Online

Purchase: The Science of Things We Can Believe (Ghost Peach Press, 2024)

Christen Noel Kauffmanis author of The Science of Things We Can Believe which won the Ghost Peach Press Prize in Poetry chosen by Tiana Clark (2024) and the chapbook Notes to a Mother God (2021), which was a winner of the Paper Nautilus Debut Chapbook Series. She is a 2022 National Poetry Series Finalist and her work can be found in A Harp in the Stars: An Anthology of Lyric Essays (University of Nebraska Press), Tupelo Quarterly, Copper Nickel, The Cincinnati Review, DIAGRAM, and Smokelong Quarterly, among others. She's currently a poetry editor for Driftwood Press and lives in Richmond, Indiana.

Reading/Listening Recommendations:
Frank X Walker's Affrilachia

Sara Moore Wagner's Of Poetry Episode

upfromsumdirt's Of Poetry Episode

Joe Wilkin's Of Poetry Episode

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Purchase: Lady Wing Shot by Sara Moore Wagner (Lynx House Press, 2024)

Read: “Annie Oakley’s Bullet Inventory” Jet Fuel Review

Sara Moore Wagner is the author of three prize winning full length books of poetry, Lady Wing Shot, winner of the 2023 Blue Lynx Prize (2024), Swan Wife (Cider Press Review Editors Prize, 2022), and Hillbilly Madonna (Driftwood Press Manuscript Prize, 2022), and of two chapbooks. She is also a 2022 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award recipient, a 2021 National Poetry Series Finalist, and the recipient of a 2019 Sustainable Arts Foundation award. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in many journals and anthologies including Gulf Coast, Smartish Pace, Waxwing, Beloit Poetry Journal, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. In 2023, she became the Managing Poetry Editor of Driftwood Press. She lives in West Chester, OH with her husband and three children. 

Recommended Reading

Christen Noel Kauffman (with us in spirit on Episode 74!)

[Buffalo Bill 's] by E.E. Cummings

Lit Youngstown
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

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Read: "Practice Elegy" at Copper Nickel

Purchase: The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021)

Rachel Mennies is the author of the poetry collections The Wolf (BOA Editions, forthcoming fall 2027); The Naomi Letters (BOA Editions, 2021); The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry at Texas Tech University Press and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award; and No Silence in the Fields, a chapbook from Blue Hour Press. Her poetry has recently appeared at Poetry Magazine, The Believer, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Rachel's essays, criticism, and other articles have appeared, or will soon, at The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, LitHub, and numerous other outlets.

Reading Recommendations:

"Having it out with Melancholy" by Jane Kenyon

Portrait of a Woman on Fire, Dir. Céline Sciamma (film)

Aracelis Girmay's The Black Maria

This is How You Lose the Time Warby Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller

Galatea by Madeline Miller

[Eugenio] Montale in English

Adrienne Rich

Anne Sexton

Virginia Woolf

Anaïs Nin

Sylvia Plath

Purchase: Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025)

Read: "Larks" at Poetry Daily

Han VanderHartis a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the pines. Their second poetry collection, Larks (Ohio University Press, 2025), was selected by Chanda Feldman as winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize. Han is also the author of the chapbook Hawk & Moon (Bottlecap Press, 2025) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has essays and poetry published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and, alongside Amorak Huey, co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is the author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2024) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize. Huey is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and many other print and online journals.

Reading Recommendations:

The Dream of Reason by Jenny George

Robert Pinsky, Sounds of Poetry

James Longenbach, The Lyric Now

The Poet in the World by Denise Levertov

Annie Lauterbach

"Bewilderment" (essay) by Fanny Howe

Gwendolyn Brooks

Marianne Moore

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Read: "The Difference Between a Dog and a Biscuit Tin" (Poetry Magazine)

Purchase: Kin by Karl Knights (Winner of the New Poets Prize, 2022)

Karl Knights’s poems, critical essays, and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Dark Horse, and elsewhere. His debut chapbook, Kin, (2022) was published by The Poetry Business. Knights is a Zoeglossia fellow and won a 2021 New Poets Prize. He lives in Suffolk, England.

Recommended Reading

Brian Patten

Tilling the Hard Soil: Poetry, Prose and Art by South African Writers with Disabilities, ed. Kobus Moolman (University of KwaZulu-Natal Press: 2010)

Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability, eds. Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black & Michael Northen (Cinco Puntos Press: 2011)

QDA: A Queer Disability Anthology, ed. Raymond Luczak (Squares & Rebels: 2015)

Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back, eds. Sandra Alland, Khairani Barokka & Daniel Sluman (Nine Arches Press: 2017)

Imaginary Safe House, eds. Shane Neilson, Roxanna Bennett & Ally Fleming (Frog Hollow Press: 2019)

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Purchase: Ablation (11:11 Press) 

Read: "Relentless" (at cloak.wtf, the relentless reading experience) 

Danika Stegeman’s second book, Ablation, was released by 11:11 Press November 1st, 2023. Her first book, Pilot (2020), was published by Spork Press. She’s a 2023 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. Her video poem, “Then Betelgeuse Reappears” was an official selection for the 2021 Midwest Video Poetry Festival. She’s an assistant editor for Conduit and does light bookkeeping for Fonograf Editions. Along with Jace Brittain, she co-curates the virtual collaborative reading series It’s Copperhead Season. She currently lives in St. Paul, MN. Her website is danikastegeman.com.

Recommended Reading:

Harryette Mullen Urban Tumbleweed 

The Cinquain

Gertrude Stein

Alice Notley's Certain Magical Acts

Anne Carson’s Nox

Molly Spencer's Invitatory

Jake Skeets’ essay "Poetry as Field" and "The Memory Field"

Purchase: The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020)

Read: poems from "Fayre Gabbro Suite" (Ice Floe Press)

upfromsumdirt is a speculative poet & visual artist dreaming of romanticisms and revolutionary coups. he is the author of 3 chapbooks and 3 full-length collections of poetry, Deifying A Total Darkness (Harry Tankoos Books, 2020), To Emit Teal (Broadstone Books, 2020), and The Second Stop Is Jupiter (Wayne State University Press, 2023); a fourth collection, The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife, is forthcoming from University Press of Kentucky in Fall 2025. he is a former co-founder of the defunct literary journal, Mythium, as well as the former co-owner of The Wild Fig Books & Coffee. currently, he serves as the in-house designer for Workhorse Publishing. upfromsumdirt resides in Lexington with his fellow Affrilachian Poet partner, author & college professor, Crystal Wilkinson.

Reading Recommendations:

Saida Agostini, let the dead in

Destiny Hemphill, motherworld: a devotional for the alter-life

Ishmael Reed, Mumbo Jumbo and "I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra"

Crystal Wilkinson

Read: "What We Read About Ukraine Makes Us Dream of Burning" by Sarah Carey (Gulf Coast)

Sarah Carey is an award-winning veterinary public relations specialist, science writer and Pushcart-nominated poet. She holds a master’s degree in English with a creative writing concentration from Florida State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous literary journals, including Gulf Coast, Sugar House Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Grist, Five Points and Redivider, among many others. Her debut full-length collection of poems, The Grief Committee Minutes, from Saint Julian Press, was published in September 2024. Her next collection, Bloodstream, will be published by Mercer University Press in 2026. She received the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award for her last chapbook of poems, Accommodations, (2019). She also is the author of another poetry chapbook, The Heart Contracts (2016).

Recommended Reading:

"The End and the Beginning" by Wisława Szymborska

Cynthia Barnett

Jen Karetnick

Erica Wright

Chelsea Dingman

Alice Friman

Read: "You're Hoarding Guns, I'm Growing Herbs" (Kenyon Review)

Corrie Williamson was born on a small farm in southwestern Virginia. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Your Mother’s Bear Gun, which is newly out from River River Books. Her other books are The River Where You Forgot My Name, in the Crab Orchard Series, which was named a 2019 Montana Book Award Honor Book by the Montana Library Association; and Sweet Husk, which won the 2014 Perugia Press Prize, and was a finalist for the 2015 Library of Virginia Poetry Award. She is also co-editor, with poets Anne Haven McDonnell and Kamella Cruz, of the in-progress eco-poetry anthology A Literary Field Guide to the Rocky Mountains.

She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Virginia, with a BA in Poetry and Anthropology, and her MFA in Poetry from the University of Arkansas, where she was a recipient of the Walton Fellowship, and a Director of the Writers in the Schools Program. She has taught writing at the University of Arkansas, Helena College, and Carroll College, and worked as an educator in Yellowstone National Park. She was the recipient of the 2020 PEN Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency, spending seven and a half months writing and living off-grid in a remote section of the Rogue River in southwest Oregon. Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, Ecotone, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, AGNI, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, and many others. You can also find her work in anthologies such as Cascadia Field Guide; Environmental and Nature Writing Volume II: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology; The Ecopoetry Anthology: Volume II; and Bright Bones: An Anthology of Contemporary Montana Writing. She lives in Lewistown, Montana.

Recommended Reading:

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek and The Abundance

Elizabeth Bradfield

The Poem’s Country: Place & Poetic Practice

Charles Wright

Read: "Limp" at The Missouri Review

Joe Wilkins was born and raised on the Big Dry of eastern Montana and now lives with his family in the foothills of the Coast Range of Oregon. He is the author of the novels Fall Back Down When I Die (2019) and The Entire Sky (2024), both published by Little, Brown and Company. A finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, Fall Back Down When I Die won the High Plains Book Award. Wilkins is also the author of a memoir, The Mountain and The Fathers, and four previous collections of poetry. Wilkins directs the creative writing program at Linfield University and is a member of the low-residency MFA faculty at Eastern Oregon University.

Reading Recommendations:

James Dickey, Deliverance

Maurice Manning

Louise Erdrich

James Wright

Gary Soto

Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology

Maya Jewell Zeller

Atsuro Riley

Read: "A BRIEF HISTORY OF YANKEE THRIFT, YANKEE INGENUITY, AND YANKEE WORK ETHIC" in Sixth Finch

Abbie Kieferis the author of Certain Shelter (June Road Press, 2024) and the chapbook Brief Histories (Whittle Micro-Press, 2024). Her work is forthcoming or has appeared in Copper Nickel, Gulf Coast, Pleiades, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Southern Review, and other places. She lives in New Hampshire. Find her online at abbiekieferpoet.com.

Reading Recommendations:

Edwin Arlington Robinson Wikipedia

"Richard Cory" by E.A. Robinson

Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

"The Truth the Dead Know" by Anne Sexton

"Ars Poetica" by Aracelis Girmay
frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

Purchase: The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024)

Carolyn Oliver is the author of The Alcestis Machine (Acre Books, 2024), Inside the Storm I Want to Touch the Tremble (University of Utah Press, 2022; selected for the Agha Shahid Ali Prize), and three chapbooks. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Image, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, Moist Poetry Journal, Consequence, and elsewhere. Born in Buffalo and raised in Ohio, she now lives in Massachusetts. 

Recommended Reading:

The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies

frank: sonnets by Diane Seuss

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

Metropolis (1927) film, Directed Fritz Lang

"Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint" by John Milton

Order and Disorder by Lucy Hutchinson

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin

River River Bookswas founded by Amorak Huey and Han VanderHart in March 2022. Inspired by the idea that you cannot step in the same river twice, at River River Books, two poetry editors join together to publish (at least) two exceptional poetry titles a year. By limiting our press catalog, we commit to supporting our authors and their books with focused attention and joy. Submissions (fee optional) open to full-length poetry manuscripts May 1-June 30.

Amorak Huey (uh-MOR-ack) is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-founder with Han VanderHart of River River Books, Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. He also is co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2nd ed., 2024) and Slash/Slash (2021), winner of the Diode Editions Chapbook Prize. Huey is a recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, and his poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and many other print and online journals. 

Han VanderHart is a queer writer living in Durham, North Carolina. Their second poetry collection Larks, winner of the 2024 Hollis Summers Poetry Prize, is forthcoming in April 2025 from Ohio University Press. Han is also the author of What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and has work published in Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI, and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast and alongside Amorak Huey co-edits the poetry press River River Books.

Purchase: Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024)

Violeta Garcia-Mendoza is a Spanish-American poet, teacher, and suburban wildlife photographer. Her poetry has appeared in numerous literary journals, and in 2022, she received a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation. She is a member of the Madwomen in the Attic Writing Workshops at Carlow University. Violeta lives with her husband, children, and pack of rescue dogs on a small certified wildlife habitat in western Pennsylvania. Songs for the Land-Bound (June Road Press, 2024) is her debut collection.

Recommended Reading

"In the Bleak Midwinter" by Christina Rossetti

June Road Press

Madwomen in the Attic
Episode 57: Sebastián H. Páramo (Of Apocalypse Literature, Writing Semi-Autobiography, and Hunting Pixelated Ducks)

Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. She began translating the poetry of St. Teresa of Ávila in 2019, after retiring from a hybrid career as an advertising copywriter and adjunct instructor of philosophy. Her translations of Teresa's poetry and her essays on Teresa’s legacy have appeared in Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, The Catholic Poetry Review, U.S. Catholic, After the Art, and Confluence, with a translation forthcoming in a new anthology from Word on Fire. Delibovi's writing has also appeared in Apple Valley Review, Bluestem, Ezra Translations, Moria, Noon, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, Slippery Elm and many other journals. She is a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee, a 2020 Best American Essays notable essayist, and 2023 co-winner of the Hueston Woods Poetry Contest. Delibovi is Consulting Poetry Editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street. She received her BA from Barnard College, Columbia University, and holds MA degrees from New York University (philosophy) and Bank Street College of Education (early childhood education). She lives in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri.

Molly Peacock is a poet and a biographer whose multi-genre literary life has taken her from New York City to Toronto, from poetry to prose, from lyric self-examination to curiosity about the lives of others.  Her latest poetry collection is The Widow’s Crayon Box (W.W. Norton), a  A book-length sequence of poems that dares to affirm the vast variety of emotional colors in loss and rejuvenation. Peacock is the author of eight books of poetry, including The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, as well as A Friend Sails in on a Poem, about a 47-year friendship in poetry.  Peacock is the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses, the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series and, most recently, creator of The Secret Poetry Room at Binghamton University. Awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Canada Council, and the Leon Levy Center for Biography, Peacock is also a memoirist and biographer, author of two books about creativity in the lives of women artists Flower Diary and The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life’s Work at 72, named a Book of the Year by Booklist, The Economist, The Globe and Mail, The Irish Times, The Kansas City Star, The London Evening Standard, MacLean’s, The Pittsburgh Post Gazette and The Sunday Telegraph. A dual citizen of Canada and the United States, she lives in Toronto and teaches at 92NY.

Purchase: Composition (Button Poetry, 2023)

Junious 'Jay' Ward is a poet and teaching artist from Charlotte, NC. He is a National Slam champion (2018), an Individual World Poetry Slam champion (2019), author of Sing Me A Lesser Wound (Bull City Press 2020) and Composition (Button Poetry 2023). Jay currently serves as Charlotte's inaugural Poet Laureate and is a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. Ward has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference, Callaloo, The Watering Hole and Tin House Winter Workshop. His work can be found in Columbia Journal, Four Way Review, DIAGRAM, Diode Poetry Journal and elsewhere.

Recommended Reading and Listening:

Year of the Dog by Deborah Paredez (Boa Editions)

Look by Solmaz Sharif (Graywolf Press)

Zong! by M. nourbeSe philip (Graywolf Press)

Defacing the Monument by Susan Briante (Noemi Press)

Whereas by Layli Long Soldier (Graywolf)

Catherine Rockwood's Episode 44: Of Pirates, the Event of the Image, and Angelic Sex

Purchase: The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (HCP, 2024)

Emilie Menzel, writer and librarian of hybridities, is the author of the book-length lyric The Girl Who Became a Rabbit (Hub City Press, 2024). Their gently haunted writing features in Copper Nickel, Bennington Review, and The Offing, amongst others, and has garnered such honors as the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize, the Deborah Slosberg Memorial Award in Poetry, and the Cara Parravani Memorial Award in Fiction. Menzel holds an MFA from UMass Amherst and serves as a collections librarian at Duke University and creative resources librarian for Seventh Wave. Raised on Georgia summers, they live in Durham, North Carolina.

Recommended Reading:

The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley

"The War of Vaslav Ninjinsky" by Frank Bidart

My Life in the Nineties by Lyn Hejinian

Max Porter

Annie Dillard

Toni Morrison

Maggie Nelson

Bernadette Meyer

Sabrina Ora Mark

Lydia Davis

Purchase: Altars of Spine and Fraction (Northwestern University Press, 2024)

Nicholas Molbert Born and raised on Louisiana’s Gulf Coast, Nicholas lives in Los Angeles. He is the author of Altars of Spine and Fraction(Northwestern University Press, 2024) and two poetry chapbooks from Foundlings Press: Goodness Gracious (2019) and Cocodrie Elegy (2024). You can find his work in places like The Cincinnati Review, The Greensboro Review, Mississippi Review, and Missouri Review among others. He holds a PhD from the University of Cincinnati and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign."

Recommended Reading:

Martha Serpas

Dear Memphis by Rachel Edelman

Night Angler by Geoffrey Davis

Lures by Adam Vibes

Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith

Beyond Katrina by Natasha Trethewey

The Room Where I Was Born by Brian Teare

Larry Levis

Phillip Levine

Wanda Coleman

Unmanly Grief by Jess Williard

Purchase: Portrait of Us Burning(Curbstone Books, 2023)

Sebastián H. Páramo is the author of Portrait of Us Burning (Curbstone Books, 2023) and was named a finalist for the 2023 Best First Book of Poetry by the Texas Institute of Letters. His poems have recently appeared or will appear in AGNI, Poetry Northwest, The Arkansas International, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, and elsewhere.  His work has received fellowships and support from the Dobie Paisano Fellowship Program at UT-Austin, CantoMundo, among others. He is the founding editor of The Boiler and lives in Texas.

Recommended Reading:

Apocalypse and Disaster Communities Reading List on Bookshop

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabriel Zevin

Meltwater by Claire Wahmanholm 

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

The World Keeps Ending, the World Goes On by Franny Choi

The Murderbot Diariesby Martha Wells

Stanley Kunitz

Larry Levis

Thomas Lux

Nicola Davison-Reed

Emily Kramer is a poet and editor living in Boston, MA. She received her BA in English from Barnard College, and her PhD from Boston University’s Editorial Institute. Her critical edition of Arthur Henry Hallam’s collected poems is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. 

Recommended Reading:

Saskia Hamilton

Arthur Henry Hallam

Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam

Robert Lowell

Words in Air: the complete correspondence of Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell, edited by Thomas Travisano and Saskia Hamilton

The Dolphin by Robert Lowell, edited Saskia Hamilton

Virginia Woolf's Letters with Vita Sackville-West (Paris Review)

John Keats' Letters

Purchase: Invitatory (Parlor Press, 2024)

Molly Spencer is a poet, critic, editor, and writing instructor. Her debut collection, If the House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2019) won the 2019 Brittingham Prize judged by Carl Phillips. A second collection, Hinge​ (SIU Press, 2020), a finalist for the National Poetry Series, won the 2019 Crab Orchard Open Competition judged by Allison Joseph. Invitatory, her forthcoming third collection, won the 2022 New Measure Poetry Prize and will be published in 2024 by Free Verse Editions / Parlor Press. Molly’s poetry has appeared in Blackbird, Copper Nickel, FIELD, The Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her critical writing and essays have appeared at Colorado Review, The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review online, Literary Hub, The Writer's Chronicle, and The Rumpus, where she is a senior poetry editor. Molly's work has won a Lucile Medwick Award from the Poetry Society of America, a Glenna Luschei Award from Prairie Schooner, a Writers@Work Fellowship Award, and a faculty fellowship from the University of Michigan's Institute for the Humanities. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and an MPA from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and teaches writing at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. ​

Further Reading:

Carl Phillips

Jorie Graham

"Home Burial" by Robert Frost

Wordsworth's Prelude, Book 1 ("Fair seedtime had my soul...")

Aracelis Girmay's essay From Woe to Wonder

Jake Skeets' essay Poetry as Field

Louise Glück

Purchase: But Then I Thought by Kyla Houbolt (above/ground press, 2023)

Kyla Houbolt writes poems and occasional reviews, and takes care of two goats, 11 chickens, and 8 ducks. Chapbooks But Then I Thought available from above/ground press, Tuned available from CCCP Chapbooks, Surviving Death available from The Broken Spine, and a re-issue of Dawn’s Fool(a micro chap) also available from above/ground press. 

Recommended Reading:

Lucille Clifton

Tang Dynasty poets

Gary Snyder

Frank O'Hara

Emily Dickinson

Purchase: Asterism by Ae Hee Lee (Tupelo Press, 2024)

Ae Hee Lee--born in South Korea and raised in Peru--is the author of ASTERISM, which was selected by John Murillo for the 2022 Dorset Prize, and the poetry chapbooks Bedtime || Riverbed (Compound Press 2017), Dear bear, (Platypus Press 2021), and  Connotary (Frost Place Chapbook Competition Winner – Bull City Press 2021). Ae Hee is a Just Buffalo Literary Center Fellow, Adroit Journal Gregory Djanikian Scholar, recipient of the James Olney Award by The Southern Review, and Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellowship Finalist. She has also received scholarships and honors from the Academy of American Poets, AWP, Bread Loaf, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Palm Beach Poetry Festival, among others.  

Recommended Reading:

Build Yourself a Boat by Camonghne Felix

The Body: An Essay by Jenny Boully

Ghost by Rachel Whiteread (National Gallery)

The Atomic Sonnets by Rosebud Ben-Oni

Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti

Purchase: Deadheading & Other Stories (Red Hen Press, 2021) by Beth Gilstrap and We Will Miss the Stars in the Morningby Lee Potts

Beth Gilstrap is the author of Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), Winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, short-listed for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award, Bronze-winner of Reader Views Literary Awards, and a finalist for the 2021 Foreword Reviews Awards in Short Fiction. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella: Stories (2015) from Twelve Winters Press and No Man’s Wild Laura (2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. Born and raised near Charlotte, she and her house full of critters now call the Charleston-metro area home. She also lives with c-PTSD and is quite vocal about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness. For the ’24/’25 academic year, she’ll be in service with Americorps/Reading Partners.

Lee Potts (he/him) is author of two poetry chapbooks: We Will Miss the Stars in the Morning (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and And Drought Will Follow (Frosted Fire, 2021). He was poetry editor at Barren Magazine from 2020 to 2023 and co-editor of the Painted Bride Quarterly back in the late 80s and early 90s. He is a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net nominee. His work has appeared in The Night Heron Barks, Rust + Moth, Whale Road Review, UCity Review, Firmament, Moist Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He lives just outside of Philadelphia with his wife, the last kid still at home, and two cats named Franny and Zooey.

Further Reading:

Black Lily Zine

Stone Circle Review

Siddhartha by Herman Hesse

Circe by Madeline Miller

Andrei Tarkovsky (particularly Stalker)

Aftersun (Dir. by Charlotte Wells)

Aubrey Hirsch

Poor Things (Dir. by Yorgos Lanthimos)

Little Fiction Big Truths

Barren Magazine

Painted Bride Quarterly

Purchase: Who Will Cradle Your Head by Jared Beloff (and be on the lookout for Mitch Nobel's Beginning to Sense, forthcoming from ELJ Editions in 2025)

Jared Beloff is the author of the Who Will Cradle Your Head (ELJ Editions, 2023). Jared is currently a poetry editor at The Weight Journal and Poets of Queens. His poetry can be found in AGNI, Baltimore Review, Rust & Moth, Crab Creek Review and elsewhere. His work has been nominated for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Queens, NY.

Mitchell Nobis is a writer and K-12 teacher in Metro Detroit. His poetry has been nominated for things by Whale Road Review, Nurture Literary, and Exposition Review. His collection Beginning to Sense is forthcoming from ELJ Editions (2025), and he has two poetry manuscripts making the rounds. He facilitates the Teachers as Poets group for the National Writing Project, hosts the Wednesday Night Sessions reading series, serves as an assistant editor at Bracken Magazine, and co-founded the NAWP reading series. Find him at @MitchNobis (various platforms).

Further Reading:

NAWP

Patricia Smith

UCity Review

rob mclennan
Gabriel Garcia Márquez's Until August review

Purchase: No Spare People (Black Lawrence Press, 2023)

Erin Hoover was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She is the author of two poetry collections: Barnburner (Elixir, 2018), which won the Antivenom Poetry Award and a Florida Book Award, and No Spare People (Black Lawrence, 2023). Her poems have appeared in The Best American Poetry and in journals such as Cincinnati Review, Poetry Northwest, Shenandoah, and The Sun. Hoover lives in Tennessee and teaches creative writing at Tennessee Tech University. She curates and hosts a poetry reading series, Sawmill Poetry, and produces the “Not Abandon, but Abide” monthly interview series for the Southern Review of Books. Visit her website at erinhooverpoet.com.

Further Reading:

Ever Baldwin

Adrienne Rich

Rachel Zucker

Diane Seuss

Bernadette Mayer

Purchase: World's End (ARP Books, 2023) and groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013–2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023)

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collection World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022) and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). His collection of short stories, On Beauty (University of Alberta Press) will appear in fall 2024. An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (periodicityjournal.blogspot.com) and Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com). He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Recommended Reading:

Midwinter Day by Bernadette Mayer

Lydia Davis

Russell Edson

Sarah Manguso

Nate Logan

Ben Niespodziany

Rosmarie Waldrop

Cole Swenson

Rachel Zucker

Lisa Robertson

Norma Cole, Writing on Writing in French

Purchase: Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (University of Akron Press, 2024)

Emilia Phillips (they/them) is a poet, nonfiction writer, and book reviewer. They are the author of five poetry collections from the University of Akron Press, including Nonbinary Bird of Paradise (forthcoming February 2024) and Embouchure (2021), and four chapbooks. Winner of a 2019 Pushcart Prize, 2015 StoryQuarterly Nonfiction Prize, and the 2012 The Journal Poetry Prize, Phillips’s poems, lyric essays, and book reviews appear widely in literary publications including The Adroit Journal, Agni, American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. They are an Associate Professor of Creative Writing in the Department of English; MFA in Writing Program; and the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at UNC Greensboro, where they regularly teach MFA- and undergraduate-level poetry workshops, Queer Poetry & Poetics, and Women’s Health & Bodies. 

Recommended Reading:

Linda Gregerson

Jenny Johnson — "Fisting Party" (Cortland Review), "Bottoms" (APR)

Donika Kelly -- "On What Gay Porn Has Done For Me"

Destiny O Birdsong - "what lesbian porn has done for me" (PoFo)

Xan Phillips - "Want Could Kill Me"

Cameron Awkward-Rich

Ari Banias

Chen Chen

Bob Sykora is the author of the chapbook I Was Talking About Love–You Are Talking About Geography (Nostrovia! 2016) and the forthcoming collection Utopians in Love (Game Over Books 2025). A graduate of the UMass Boston MFA program, he teaches at community college, edits with Garden Party Collective, co-hosts The Line Break podcast, and curates the KC Poetry Calendar.

Han VanderHart is a queer writer and arts organizer living in Durham, North Carolina. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry Podcast, edits Moist Poetry Journal, and co-edits the poetry press River River Books with Amorak Huey.

Poems Read on the Show:

"Utopians in Love" by Bob Sykora (Cotton Xenomorph)

“Bottoms” by Jenny Johnson (American Poetry Review)

"What the Kids Don't Know" by Jill McDonough (The ThreePenny Review)

“Elusive Black Hole Pair” by Alina Pleskova (Toska, Deep Vellum)

"Last night I was sexting and reading June Jordan" by Han VanderHart (unpublished)

"human pastoral brick" by Chris Corlew

Purchase: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress, 2021) and What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021)

Amorak Huey is author of four books of poems including Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021). Co-author with W. Todd Kaneko of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology (Bloomsbury, 2018) and the chapbook Slash/Slash (Diode, 2021), Huey teaches in the BFA and MFA programs at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. His previous books are Boom Box (Sundress, 2019), Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank, 2018), and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress, 2015), as well as two chapbooks. He is recipient of a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and his poems appear in the Best American Poetry anthology, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, the Norton Critical Edition of The Odyssey, and many print and online journals.

Han VanderHart is a genderqueer, Southern writer living in Durham, North Carolina, under the loblolly pines. Han is the author of the poetry collection What Pecan Light (Bull City Press, 2021) and the chapbook Hands Like Birds (Ethel Zine Press, 2019). They have poetry and essays published in The Boston Globe, Kenyon Review, The American Poetry Review, The Rumpus, AGNI and elsewhere. Han hosts Of Poetry podcast and edits Moist Poetry Journal. Their aim is to live, edit, and write with transparency, care, and warmth. They love rescue pitbulls, and send a hello to your dog.

RiverRiverbooks.org

Recommended Reading/Listening

Lauren Camp

Rachel Edelman

W. Todd Kaneko

Carla Sofia Ferreira

Jennifer A Sutherland

Joe Wilkins

Corrie Williamson

The Line Break podcast with Bob Sykora and Chris Corlew 

The Black Lily Zine

Noa Fields

Nic Anstett

Jason B. Crawford

Stephen J. Furlong

Octopus Books

Purchase: A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024)

Carla Sofia Ferreira (she/her) is the daughter of Portuguese immigrants and a teacher from Newark, New Jersey. Author of micro-chapbook Ironbound Fados (Ghost City Press, 2019) and debut poetry book A Geography That Does Not Hurt Us (River River Books, 2024), her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. You can find her writing in The Rumpus, Glamour, EcoTheo, underblong, Okay Donkey, december, and Washington Square Review, among others. On the internet, she’s @csferreira08 on Twitter and @csferreirawrites on Instagram. She believes in kindness, semicolons, and the permanent abolition of ICE. She has now successfully taught her cat Moonshadow how to fetch. She dislikes writing bios in the third person but is saving for her overthrow of societal norms for other causes.

Recommended Reading:

Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia

Ross Gay, Be Holding and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude 

Gwendolyn Brooks, "Paul Robeson"

Roberto Carlos Garcia, [Elegies]

Benjamin Garcia, Thrown in the Throat

Purchase: And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (Ethel Zine Press, 2023)

Catherine Rockwood  (she/they) lives in Massachusetts. She reads and edits for Reckoning Magazine and reviews books for Strange Horizons. Their poetry chapbooks, And We Are Far From Shore: Poems for Our Flag Means Death (2023) and Endeavors To Obtain Perpetual Motion (2022) are available from the Ethel Zine Press.

Recommended Reading:

Our Flag Means Death: A Brief Excursus on Tailors and Tailoring by Catherine Rockwood

A review of Our Flag Means Death by Catherine Rockwood (Strange Horizons)

Ethel Zine Press

Stephanie Burt, We Are Mermaids

Brian Teare, Doomstead Days

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Purchase: Reclaimed Water (Ornithopter Press, 2023)

Tom Snarsky is the author of the chapbooks Threshold (Another New Calligraphy) & Complete Sentences (Broken Sleep Books), as well as the full-length collections Light-Up Swan and Reclaimed Water (both from Ornithopter Press). He lives in the mountains of northwestern Virginia with his wife Kristi and their cats. You can find him @tomsnarsky on Twitter, Instagram, & Bluesky, and you can find the reading series he coordinates @night_light_poems_ on Instagram and @nightlightpoems on Twitter. If you're a poet, he would love to hear from you!

Further/Recommended Reading:

The Minison

The Minison Project

C.T. Salazar

Noelle Kocot's Ascent of the Mothers (Wave Books, 2023)
Jon Anderson's The Inner Gate

Purchase: For Today (LSU Press, 2024)

Carolyn Hembree's third poetry collection, For Today, is forthcoming from LSU Press. She is also the author of Skinny and Rigging a Chevy into a Time Machine and Other Ways to Escape a Plague, winner of the Trio Award and the Rochelle Ratner Memorial Award. Her poems appear in Beloit Poetry Journal, Copper Nickel, Poetry Daily, The Southern Review, and other publications. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of New Orleans and serves as the poetry editor of Bayou Magazine. 

Recommended Reading:

Jennifer Shaw's visual art series Flood State

Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (novella on the 1918 flu pandemic)

Inger Christensen's alphabet, translated Susanna Nied

Spring and All (facsimile edition with introduction by C.D. Wright) by William Carlos Williams

[By the road to the contagious hospital] by William Carlos Williams

Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

"An Anatomy of the Long Poem" by Rachel Zucker

Purchase: Dear Memphis (River River Books, 2023)

Rachel Edelman is a Jewish poet raised in Memphis, Tennessee whose writing explores diasporic living. Dear Memphis, their debut collection of poems, will be published by River River Books in 2024. Her poems have appeared in Narrative, The Seventh Wave, The Threepenny Review, West Branch, and many other journals. They have received material support from City of Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, the Academy of American Poets, Mineral School, Crosstown Arts, and Tin House and finalist commendations from the Adrienne Rich Award, the Pink Poetry Prize, and the National Poetry Series. Edelman earned a BA in English and geology from Amherst College and an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington. She teaches Language Arts in the Seattle Public Schools, where embodiment and care root her personal, poetic, and pedagogical practice.

Further Reading:

Jacob Lawrence: The Migration Series

Alicia Ostriker

Purchase: Site of Disappearance (Ornithopter Press, 2023)

Erin Malone’s new book, Site of Disappearance, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series and is out now from Ornithopter Press. She’s also the author of Hover (Tebot Bach Press, 2015), and a chapbook, What Sound Does It Make (Concrete Wolf, 2008). Her recent honors include the Coniston Prize from Radar Poetry and the Robert Creeley Memorial Prize from Marsh Hawk Press. Erin has received grants and fellowships from Washington State Artist Trust, 4Culture, Jack Straw, and the Colorado Council of the Arts; and residency support from Kimmel-Harding Nelson Center, The Anderson Center, Ucross, and Jentel Foundations. Her poems have appeared in FIELD, New Ohio Review, Salamander, Cimarron, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. A former editor of Poetry Northwest, Erin has taught at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, the University of Washington Rome Center, Hugo House, and with Seattle’s Writers in the Schools. She lives on Bainbridge Island, WA, and works as a bookseller.

Additional Reading:

Nox by Anne Carson

Jane, A Murder by Maggie Nelson

Purchase: The Understudy's Handbook (WWPH, 2020).

Steven Leyva was born in New Orleans, Louisiana and raised in Houston, Texas. His poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, Scalawag, Nashville Review, jubilat, The Hopkins Review, Prairie Schooner, and Best American Poetry 2020. He is a Cave Canem fellow and author of the chapbook Low Parish and author of The Understudy’s Handbook which won the Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from Washington Writers Publishing House. Steven holds an MFA from the University of Baltimore, where he is an associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design.

Further Reading:

Lucille Clifton's Collected Poems

Taylor Byas, "THE POETICS OF PERFORMANCE IN STEVEN LEYVA’S THE UNDERSTUDY’S HANDBOOK"
The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry (Blair)

Purchase: Flutter, Kick by Anna V. Q. Ross (Red Hen Press, 2022)

Anna V.Q. Ross's previous collections include If a Storm (Anhinga Press, winner of the Robert Dana-Anhinga Prize for Poetry); Figuring (Bull City Press); and Hawk Weather (winner the New Women’s Voices Prize from Finishing Line Press and the Jean Pedrick Chapbook Award from the New England Poetry Society). 

A recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Fulbright Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and Vermont Studio Center, her recent work appears in Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, The Nation, The Missouri Review, Poetry Northwest, The Southern Review, and elsewhere. She is poetry editor for Salamander Magazine and teaches at Tufts University and through the Emerson Prison Initiative. Anna lives with her family in Dorchester, where she runs the poetry and music series Unearthed Song & Poetry and raises chickens.

Reading/Viewing Recommendations:

Muriel Rukeyser's ("I lived in the first century of world wars")

Visual art by Shelly Julian Bunde ("She Left For Good One Time But Came Back")

Read: "Must Learn Neither," at Poetry Daily

Purchase: An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023)

Lauren Mukamal Camp, New Mexico Poet Laureate, is the author of seven poetry collections, most recently An Eye in Each Square (River River Books, 2023) and Worn Smooth Between Devourings (NYQ Books, 2023). She was awarded a 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship. Other honors include a Dorset Prize and finalist citations for the Arab American Book Award, the Housatonic Book Award and the Adrienne Rich Award for Poetry. In 2022, she was Astronomer in Residence at Grand Canyon National Park. Lauren is the recipient of fellowships from Denver Botanic Gardens, The Taft-Nicholson Center for Environmental Humanities and Black Earth Institute. She was a visiting writer at the Mayo Clinic, and artist in residence at Lowell Observatory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Her poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Missouri Review, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day.

Reading/Viewing Recommendations: 

Agnes Martin

Vija Celmins

Purchase: Bullet Points (River River Books, 2023)

Jennifer A Sutherland is a poet, essayist, and attorney living in Baltimore, Maryland. Her work has appeared or will appear in Hopkins Review, Best New Poets, Denver Quarterly, I-70 Review, Cagibi, Appalachian Review, and elsewhere.

Reading Recommendation:

Hart Crane, Linda Hull, Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know

Moira J Saucer is a disabled poet living in the Alabama Wiregrass. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Her worked has appeared in literary magazines and anthologies in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada including Black Bough Poetry Freedom- Rapture anthology, Visual Verse, Fly on the Wall Press, Ice Floe Press, Mooky Chick, Floodlight Editions, and Fevers of the Mind Poets of 2020.

Catherine Rockwood is a staff member of Reckoning Magazine and a reviewer for Strange Horizons. She has a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies, and many remaining questions about everything.