Plume, Poet Lore, and The Writer’s Center welcome poets/editors Danny Lawless and Amanda Newell for a book launch celebration of their brand new collections, plus guest poets Leeya Mehta, Gloria Mindock, and Nancy Mitchell. Book signing and refreshments to follow.
FREE & open to the public. RSVP below.
Daniel Lawless is the author of The Gun My Sister Killed Herself With; his current book, I Tell You This Now was released in March, 2024. Recent poems appear in FIELD, Barrow Street, Prairie Schooner, Ploughshares, Poetry International, Los Angeles Review, upsteet, SOLSTICE, Manhattan Review, Massachusetts Review, JAMA, and Dreaming Awake: New Prose Poetry from the U.S., Australia, and the U.K., among others. A recipient of a continuing Shifting Foundation grant, he is the founder and editor of Plume: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry, Plume Editions, and the annual Plume Poetry anthologies.
Born and raised in southern Maryland in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay region, Amanda Newell graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in English from Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland and earned her MFA from Warren Wilson College. Her chapbook, I Will Pass Even to Acheron, was selected as a 2021 winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and was inspired by her former student, a Marine who nearly died in Afghanistan after the M-ATV he was driving was struck by a command-controlled improvised explosive device. Her first full-length collection, Postmortem Say, is forthcoming in 2024 from Červená Barva Press. Newell is currently an associate editor for the contemporary poetry journal Plume. amandanewellpoet.com
Leeya Mehta is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer and essayist. Leeya’s new collection of poems is ‘A Story of the World Before the Fence’ (2020). In 2022 her work appeared in three new anthologies: Future Library (Red Hen Press), the Penguin Book of Indian Poets, and Converse. She is the Director of the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center, a literary arts center that is currently celebrating the centennial of the writer James Baldwin through a 13-month community project – the Baldwin100. She serves on the board of The Inner Loop Lit, and teaches at George Mason University.
Gloria Mindock is editor of Červená Barva Press. She is an award-winning author of six poetry collections and three chapbooks. Her poems have been published and translated into eleven languages. Her recent book, Grief Touched the Sky at Night (Glass Lyre Press, 2023), won the International Impact Award and the Speak-up Talk Radio International Firebird Award. Gloria’s book ASH (Glass Lyre Press, 2021) won several book awards and was translated into Serbian by Milutin Durickovic and published by Alma Press in Belgrade in 2022. Gloria has had numerous publications including Gargoyle, The James Dickey Review, Growth: Journal of Literature, Culture, & Art (Macedonia), KGB Lit, to name just a few. Gloria was the Poet Laureate in Somerville, MA in 2017 & 2018. For more information about Gloria Mindock, visit her website at: gloriamindock.com
Nancy Mitchell, a visual artist and writer is the author of The Near Surround, Grief Hut, and The Out-of-Body Shop. A Puscart Prize recipeint, her poems have or will appear in such journals as Agni, Green Mountains Review, Ploughshares, Plume and Washington Square Review. While a professor at Salisbury University, Maryland, she taught Creative Writing and ECO-Installation Art for the Environmental Studies Department, and founded the annual literary arts festival Wordstock. She hosts the Poets on the Plaza Reading Series at Poets’ Corner, Headquarters in Salisbury, Maryland, where she serves as Poet Laureate, and is an Associate Editor for Plume Poetry Journal.
If you need an accommodation for this event, please contact us at access@writer.org. We will attempt to fulfill all requests, but advance notice is necessary to arrange for some accessibility services.