Irish Coffee by Jay Carson
(A Coal Hill Special Edition) |
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A seventh generation Pittsburgher, Jay Carson teaches creative writing, literature, and rhetoric at Robert Morris University, where he is a University Professor and a faculty advisor to the student literary journal Rune. Jay regularly presents, reads, and publishes in local and national venues. More than 60 of his poems have appeared in national literary journals, magazines, and anthologies. He also co-edited with Judith Robinson The Snow Falls Up, a collection of Margaret Menamin’s poetry. The Cinnamon of Desire, a full-length collection, is forthcoming from Main Street Rag in the fall of 2012. Jay considers his poetry Appalachian, Irish, accessible, and the derived spiritual survival of a raging, misspent youth and just what you might need.
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Herald by Roberta P. Feins
(Winner of the 2016 Chapbook Contest) |
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Roberta P. Feins received her MFA in poetry from New England College, where she studied with Judith Hall, D.A. Powell, Carol Frost, and Alicia Ostriker. Her poems have been published in 5 AM, Antioch Review, The Cortland Review, and The Gettysburg Review, among others. Her first chapbook Something Like a River, was published by Moon Path Press in 2013. Feins edits the e-zine Switched On Gutenberg and currently lives in Seattle, WA.
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American Parable by Sonia Greenfield
(Winner of the 2017 Chapbook Contest) |
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Sonia Greenfield was born and raised in Peekskill, New York, and her book Boy with a Halo at the Farmer’s Market,won the 2014 Codhill Poetry Prize. Her work has appeared in a variety of places, including in the 2010 Best American Poetry, Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Los Angeles Review, Massachusetts Review, and Willow Springs. Her collection of prose poems, Letdown, is forthcoming. She lives with her husband and son in Hollywood where she edits the Rise Up Review and co-directs the Southern California Poetry Festival.
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Prayers of an American Wife by Victoria Kelly
(Co-winner of the 2012 Chapbook Contest) |
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Victoria Kelly received her B.A. Summa Cum Laude from Harvard University, her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and her M.Phil. in Creative Writing from Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where she was a U.S. Mitchell Scholar. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies and journals including The Best American Poetry series, The Autumn House Anthology of Contemporary American Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southwest Review, Prairie Schooner, and North American Review, among others. Her chapbook, Prayers of an American Wife, was the co-winner of the 2012 Coal Hill Prize and was published by Autumn House Press in 2013.
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Crossing Laurel Run by Maxwell King
(A Coal Hill Special Edition) |
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Maxwell King is the former Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer and the former President of The Heinz Endowments. He and his wife, Peggy, live on a farm in Westmoreland County, Pa., with their two dogs, Finn and Cora, and spend time in New England with their two sons and three grandsons. He has written articles for numerous magazines and newspapers, and has published poetry in about a dozen literary periodicals.
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Shelter by Gigi Marks
(Winner of the 2010 Chapbook Contest) |
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Gigi Marks was born and grew up in New York City. Her first book of poems, What We Need, was published in 1998. Since then, her poems have been published in Best American Poetry, 100 American Poets Against the War, and literary magazines such as Green Mountains Review, Lilith, Northwest Review, and Poetry. Currently, Gigi Marks teaches writing at Ithaca College. She lives with her husband and four children in Ithaca, New York.
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Rooms of the Living by Paul Martin
(Co-winner of the 2012 Chapbook Contest) |
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Paul Martin’s poems have appeared in America, Atlanta Review, The Christian Science Monitor, 5 AM, Nimrod, Prairie Schooner, Southern Poetry Review, etc. His book, Closing Distances, twice a finalist in the National Poetry Series, was published in 2009 by The Backwaters Press. Martin is the author of three chapbooks, and has been awarded two poetry fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He lives in Ironton, PA with his wife, Rita.
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Shake It and It Snows by Gailmarie Pahmeier
(Winner of the 2009 Chapbook Contest) |
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Gailmarie Pahmeier, originally from rural Missouri, has been a Nevadan for 25 years. She currently teaches creative writing and contemporary literature at the University of Nevada, where she has been honored with the Alan Bible Teaching Excellence Award and the University Distinguished Teacher Award. Her work has been widely published and anthologized (most recently in Passenger and The Pedestal Magazine and in the anthology Literary Nevada, University of Nevada Press, 2008). She is the author of the poetry collection The House on Breakaheart Road (University of Nevada Press, 1998) and two chapbooks from Black Rock Press. After a decade of publishing individual poems, working on prose manuscripts, and assisting her husband in his design/build business, a new book of her poetry, West of Snowball, Arkansas, and Home, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Pahmeier is considered a ‘domestic’ poet; her work focuses primarily on family and home.
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The Welter of Me and You by Peter Schireson
(Winner of the 2013 Chapbook Contest) |
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Peter Schireson lives in Palo Alto, California. Originally from Los Angeles, he went to school at Cal Berkeley, University of Victoria, and Harvard University. He has studied Zen Buddhism in the U.S and Japan and is a priest and Dharma lineage holder in the Suzuki Roshi Soto Zen lineage. Retired from a long and varied work life, Peter devotes himself to family, to writing, and to Zen practice and teaching. His writing has been published or is forthcoming in Grey Sparrow Journal, Post Road, New Delta Review, The Lyric, Quiddity, RHINO, and other journals.
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Bathhouse Betty by Matt Terhune
(Winner of the 2011 Chapbook Contest) |
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Matt’s work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and Colorado Review, among others. He studied creative writing at California State University, Northridge, Washington University in St. Louis, and Pacific University. In addition, his work has been nominated for an AWP Intro Journals Award. He lives in Los Angeles.
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A Green River in Spring by Matthew Thorburn
(Winner of the 2014 Chapbook Contest) |
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Matthew Thorburn is the author of three books of poems, This Time Tomorrow, Every Possible Blue and Subject to Change, and an earlier chapbook, the long poem Disappears in the Rain. He lives with his wife and son in New York City, where he works as the communications manager for an international law firm.
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The Ghetto Exorcist by James Tyner
(Winner of the 2009 Chapbook Contest) |
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Half Mexican and half Caucasian, James Tyner grew up in some rough neighborhoods in Los Angeles and in Fresno, California. Gangs and violence were an everyday thing. In his late teens, he decided to become a pacifist. Most of his work deals with these issues, beauty in the ghetto and that striving for a different way of life. His awards include the Larry Levis poetry prize and the Andres Montoya Scholarship. He was a finalist for the 2008 War Poetry Contest and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, and was recently in the poetry anthology The Working Poet. His poem At a Barbeque for R.C. was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and his thesis was voted most outstanding thesis of 2009 from Fresno State University. In 2013, Tyner was named the Poet Laureate of Fresno by the Fresno Arts Council.
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English Kills by Monica Wendel
(Winner of the 2015 Chapbook Contest) |
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Monica Wendel is a Brooklyn-based poet and educator. She studied philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and the State University of New York at Geneseo, and received her MFA in poetry writing from New York University, where she was awarded Goldwater and Starworks teaching fellowships. She is the author of No Apocalypse, a full-length collection that won the Georgetown Review Press poetry manuscript contest, and the chapbooks Call it a Window (Midwest Writing Center, 2012), and Pioneer (Thrush Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review, Ploughshares, Rattle, and other journals.
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