Poet Tom Miller Monday June 8th 3PM

Tom Miller has taught school and has worked as a rehabilitation counselor in both private and public settings focusing in the main on mental health services for children and teenagers.  He changed career paths and worked in the automotive aftermarket for thirty some years rising from sales representative to Vice President/Regional Manager. Upon “retirement” Tom went to work for Historic New England and is currently serving as the Lead Guide for two historic house museums in Salem MA. Along the way Tom garnered a Bachelor of Science in Education Degree from The Ohio State University, a Master’s Degree in Rehabilitation Counseling from Bowling Green State University and most recently a Masters of Arts Degree in History from Salem State University.  He has also studied voice over work with Jordan Rich of WBZ radio and has been involved with a number of commercials and voice over projects.  

Tom has written poetry for many years but became active as both a writer and a performer at various venues on the North Shore and around Greater Boston since his “retirement” began.  His work has been published in Ibbetson Street, The Wilderness House Literary Review, The Muddy River Poetry Review, Lyrical Somerville, and a variety of anthologies and other journals.  He has received a nomination for The Pushcart Prize.  

Tom has also appeared on Jordan Rich’s nationally syndicated Friday night talk show.  With Jordan’s help he released a CD of his poetry set to music called “Dancing At Red’s” which is the title of one of the collection’s poems.  

Tom grew up in a small farming community in Ohio and has lived in Florida, New York, Minnesota, California, and New Hampshire as well as Massachusetts.  He currently resides in Ipswich MA. 

Poet to Poet: Interview with Poet Marc Goldfinger: June 1 2020

Review of Marc D. Goldfinger’s Heroin’s Harbour

Review of Marc D. Goldfinger’s Heroin’s Harbour ( Ibbetson Streeet Press) by Gregory J. Wolos

The Split Man

            Heroin’s harbor is the addict, as Marc D. Goldfinger’s collection of poems and stories, Heroin’s Harbour makes harrowingly clear. Heroin is the body of the addict that craves the drug, and it’s the mind of the addict that cooperates with the insistent body, paradoxically rationalizing any action that might provide safe harbor for a poison. Human beings are frail things, ultimately, Goldfinger’s poems and stories illustrate, too weak to commit to our resolutions or to stave off gratifications that have become needs. Goldfinger’s work does more than merely describe the habits, lifestyle, and thoughts of a junkie; he takes his reader hostage, straps us to the back of his motorcycle so that we do more than simply observe—we participate. Goldfinger’s craft enables us, along with him, to feel the needle and the need.

            In “A Junkie’s Prayer,” one of the first poems in the first section of Heroin’s Harbour, “An Epistle to Opium,” the reader is told what the junkie prays for: not redemption, not relief, not freedom from addiction. The narrator of this poem is so embedded in his world of dependency—the “harbor” of the drug—that what is prayed for are his most immediate needs: “please keep our needles disease free”; “keep us safe from those who would poison our dope”; “keep the police the police from our door”; “keep us free from abscess.” What is prayed for is not an escape, but that “heroin’s sweet sleep” will “ease the pain that lives within our hearts.” The junkie does not beg for a way out and doesn’t seem to want one, asking only that God “keep watch over the farmers and the fields of poppies they tend.”

            A poem like “What Would You Do for a Fix?” lacks a religious core, but uses liturgical “call and response” and repetition to emphasize the all-encompassing nature of a junkie’s need. In this poem, there are sins against the family: “For a fix/ I would steel my mother’s purse; For a fix/ I would take my sister’s coin collection; For a fix/ I would desert my children.” There are sins against the purity of his own body: “For a fix/ I would risk hepatitis; For a fix/ I would shoot toilet water.” There are sins against society: “For a fix/ I would take the money out of the pocket of an unconscious man on the street, For a fix / I would sell dangerous drugs to novices.” Later in the poem, further biblical allusion occurs in another repeated construction: “In the beginning, I got high because I liked it./ In the end I got high because it was all I had left . . . In the beginning I got high because I was searching for the way./ In the end I got high because I was searching for the way out.” As the narrator concludes in “I Have Trouble with Names”: “Some of us name the Gods. / I have trouble with names.”

            Love itself for the junkie isn’t to be found through religion, as Goldfinger testifies in “Drug Store Christ (Heist): “They tell me to turn to Jesus Christ/ Just wait till I do this drug store heist/ . . . ‘Well, we found God/Just sittin’ in the safe of that drug store.’” And True Love for one’s significant other, as described in “Junkie Love” means “giving her the biggest hit,” or when you’re strung out and broke and don’t ask her to hit the streets.”

            Again and again, Goldfinger repeats the message stated in “Death Trippin,” one of the poems written in hard driving couplets that he suggests are “songs” but are all the more frightening in that they come off more as feverish rants: “One thing I know, Heroin’s the best/ For nullifying the pain that’s in my chest.” The shift from reading Goldfinger’s poems to reading his short stories is like a shift from listening to songs to watching a movie that uses those songs as background music. The refrain stated in the poem “Getting Fixed in South Carolina”: “addiction only remembers what it needs” throbs through the prose of stories that describe in detail the underworld of junkies. There are stories about dealing with crooked pharmacists and hard-ass police (“A Controlled Dangerous Substance Act”); stories about navigating life with various women who shared the narrator’s addictions (“Femme Fatale”); stories about obtaining prescriptions from doctors (“Running on Empty in Vermont”); stories about living in filth and failing to care for those innocents for whom you’re responsible (“Two Dogs and a Kitten”). The long poem “Getting Fixed in South Carolina” is itself expanded into a short story that depicts the life-threatening hazards a junkie will undertake to satisfy his habit. These stories powerfully convey the life of addicts whose focus is reduced to remembering “what it needs.” But even detailed stories are insufficiently descriptive, Goldfinger asserts in “The Rocking Chair,” which shows a recovering junkie’s return home to aged and ailing parents: “The imagination is limited when it comes to the real. Things get left out.”

            Recovery for the junkie seems a struggle doomed to Sisyphean failure. In his second section of poems, “The Fight to Stay Clean,” Goldfinger presents several portraits of those lost to drugs (“Medusa with Fire,” “One of the Tough Guys,” “Significant Other,” “Open Casket,” “The Way She Shakes”), or those who will be (“A Couple of Kids”). But there is a whisper of hope in the sisterhood of “The Angels of Gloucester,” who “walk an ancient path now, join hands at signs of trouble, hug each other’s children, knit their families into hot strong blankets with threads of prayer.” Ultimately, Goldfinger points to the necessity of the recovering junkie never losing sight of the fact that he is “The Split Man”: two alternate realities, this poem illustrates, are perpetually present, contending for the junkie’s heart: “I am the happy married man/ the junkie in the street begging/ the house-owner sitting  sitting at my computer/ in the bathroom sticking a needle in my arm . . . / I am a split man, this half of me dances with joy/ I am a split man, this half of me is dying day by day/ I can choose, I can stand by a lake holding the hand of my wife/ or my choices are gone, I probe my arm looking for a vein.”

            With devastating honesty and heartbreaking detail, Marc D. Goldfinger offers in his poems and stories glimpses into the lives of tortured souls who have abandoned themselves to an all-consuming, unsafe harbor. “A junkie’s body never forgets,” he concludes in the poem “All of Me”: “If it was just physical, I would never use dope/ again. It is not my body, it is me, all of me, my body, my soul, my mind/ interlocked in heroin hypnosis, even/ free, I will never be free again.” Goldfinger’s words seem less buoys warning of an unsafe passage than a testament to the hope of a single split man’s survival.

May 25 Memorial Day Special: Ellie O'Leary 3PM.

Ellie O'Leary

https://endicott.zoom.us/j/92132032200 Click on at 3PM and join us--


Ellie O’Leary grew up in the village of Freedom, Maine and writes about it from many angles. Her writing has brought her opportunities that include hosting a radio show, teaching poetry plus organizing a new writing program at an Adirondacks retreat center, and earning an MFA in Maine’s Stonecoast program. She is now a resident of Amesbury, Massachusetts where she serves as Poet Laureate and is the author of Breathe Here (North Country Press, 2020).

May 21! This Thursday 3PM: Poet to Poet Resumes with poet Eileen Cleary

Eileen Cleary

See it live on Zoom!  To be broadcast from The Somerville Media Studios later..



 https://endicott.zoom.us/j/91899374062

Eileen Cleary earned MFA's in poetry from Lesley University and Solstice.  She is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Lily Poetry Review and Lily Poetry Review Books. Cleary co-founded and runs The Lily Poetry Salon in Needham, MA. Her recent work is published in The Sugar House Review, JAMA, West Texas Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, and The Solstice: A Magazine for Diverse Voices. 

Cleary's debut full-length collection Child Ward of the Commonwealth was published by Main Street Rag Press in June 2019. Her second,  2 A.M. With Keats is slated for Fall 2020 by Nixes Mate.  

Poet to Poet: Marc Goldfinger March 17, 2020 5PM

    

SEE IT LIVE AT 5PM at  http://somervillemedia.org 




Marc Goldfinger has been published by the Ibbetson Street, the Aurorean, Liberation Poetry Collective, Pegasus, the Boston Poet, the Crooked River Press, EarthFirst! magazine, Clamor, The New Renaissance, User’s News, Poiesis and many others. He is currently the poetry editor and a regular columnist for the Spare Change News, a paper put out for the benefit of homeless people. He is a counselor for people with Substance Use Disorders. He is a member of The Road Scribes Of America.We will discuss his new collection of poetry  Heroin's Harbour (Ibbetson Street Press)

March 3, 2020 5PM Poet to Poet Writer to Writer: Christopher Reilly's discussed his new poetry collection "One Night Stanza"

“Christopher Reilly's new collection of poems, One Night Stanzas, delves beyond the wordplay of its title and serves the reader engaging poems. Smart and seductive,  Reilley's work explores the reality and depth of attraction, desire, passion, looking, loving, and loss, and their experience at differing human life stages. Both intense and feather-light, with a knowing, palpable sense of humor threading throughout the collection, One Night Stanzas offers powerful imagery that lingers; consider this: ‘Our love is friendship caught fire.’"

~ Liz Ciampa, What Is Left and Good For Everyday Use

Guest: Poet Steve Ablon Feb 18 5PM

Steven Ablon

see it live at  http://somervillemedia.org at 5PM

Steven Ablon is a psychiatrist whose main purpose as a poet is( in his words) “to break your heart.” Ablon, a Harvard Medical School faculty member who is well-seasoned in the practice of psychoanalysis, is acquainted with heart break. In his poetry he wants his words to be strongly evocative. He wants to reach the reader on a visceral level.  We will discuss his latest collection of poetry,  Dinner in the Garden.

Poet Jake Tringali: Jan 21 2020 5PM

see it live at 5PM       http://www.somervillemedia.org

Bio: After living in Los Angeles for many years, Jake is now back in his home city of Boston.  Runs rad restaurants.  Thrives in a habitat of bars, punk rock shows, and late-night adventures.

Jake writes about the edges of society, and frequently about the things we no longer see, such as the hidden letters of the alphabet (“recanted”).  With a strong background in cyberpunk and the hard sciences, he has a focus on the intersection of technology and human interaction.  The reader will find him equally comfortable inside a mosh pit, or enjoying a 12-course dinner service.

First published in 2014.  Journals include Catch & Release, Boston Poetry Magazine, Indiana Voice Journal, and forty other fine periodicals.

Jan 7, 2020: Enigma Wrapped in a Mystery: Poet, Union Organizer, Floor Sweeper, Prison Administrator, Reviewer, Translator, Journalist Dennis Daly.

Poet Dennis Daly

Dennis Daly lives in Salem Massachusetts. He graduated from Boston College with a B.S. degree and earned a Master of Arts degree in English Literature at Northeastern University.

For ten years Daly worked for the General Electric Company. He became a union activist and was elected into the leadership of the 9000 member Local 201 of the International Union of Electrical Workers. During these years he published and edited The Union Activist and the North Shore Union Leader. He also was the managing editor of the Electrical Union News.

Subsequently, Daly worked as a department head for the City of Salem and a Director of Community Corrections for the State of Massachusetts.

Daly has been published  in magazines and small poetry journals such as The Sou’wester, The Lyric, Boston Today Magazine, Soundings East, Tendril, Poetry &, Dark Horse, Green House, Lyrical Somerville, Muddy River Poetry Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Bagels with the Bards Anthologies, Realms of the Mothers Anthology, Lummox, Zig Zag Folios, Fresh Broth, The Boston Poetry Magazine,  Ibbetson Street, Fox Chase Review, the Aurorean,The Endicott Review, SpoKes, Sunday Poet, Constellations Magazine, Peacock Journal, Solstice, The Ekphrastic Review, Nixes Mate, The Asses of Parnassus, First Literary Review--East, and he is included with two other poets in a chapbook entitled 10 X 3, published by Northeastern University Press. He has been nominated for seven Pushcart prizes-- the first for work published in 2012 (Ibbetson Street), then for 2013 (Wilderness House Literary Review),  2014 (both Muddy River Poetry Review and The Aurorean),  2015 (Muddy River), 2016 (Muddy River) and 2018 (Ibbetson Street).  He was also nominated by Fox Chase Review for Best On The Web 2014 Poetry Anthology. Daly reads his poems occasionally and has featured at a number of venues. He is a member of the Bagel Bards, a group of poets and artists, who meet weekly in Somerville. He regularly writes literary reviews for the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. He also occasionally writes reviews for The Somerville Times, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fox Chase Review in Philadelphia, Ibbetson Street, and Notre Dame Review.

Daly has published seven books of poetry and poetic translations: The Custom House (Ibbetson Street Press, June 2012); Sophocles' Ajax (Wilderness House Press, July 2012); Night Walking with Nathaniel (Dos Madres Press, May 2014), Sentinel (Red Dashboard Publishing, September 2016), Twenty-One Ghazals by Alisher Navoi (Cervana Barva Press, December 2016), Pantoums (Dos Madres Press, 2018), and The Devil's Artisan, Sonnets from the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (Dos Madres Press, 2019).

In addition Daly has published travel articles and many op-ed pieces in the Salem Evening News. He has travelled widely in Central Asia.

On November 12, 2015 the classics department of Skidmore College sponsored and U.S. veterans performed a professionally directed dramatic reading of Daly's translation of Sophocles' Ajax at Skidmore College.

Daly and his wife, Joanne, have four adult children.

Dec 3 5PM Poet, Translator, Publisher Jim Kates

Jim Kates 

 See it live at 5PM  Dec 3. at  http://somervillemedia.org  



Jim Kates will talk about a new book from his Zephyr Press  Paper-thin Skin by Aigerim Tazhi, that he skillfully translated. We will also touch on his recent poetry, and other projects.




One of the first Kazakhstani women poets to gain international attention, Aigerim Tazhi offers incisive and intimate observations in these seemingly spare poems that “pour out a little from an overflowing heart.”




Paper-thin Skin is her debut collection in translation. Readers will find images of fish, insects, birds, the sea, the sky, humans seeking connection, and death in these succinct poems, along with windows, mirrors, and eyes: these are poems of observation and deep reflection. Tazhi gently insists that we look at words and the world “in the eye,” as she seeks to create what translator J. Kates calls a “mystic community of communication.”




Aigerim Tazhi  (Айгерим Тажи) was born in the western Kazakhstani city of Aktobe (formerly called Aktyubinsk) in 1981. She is a graduate of the Aktyubinsk (Zhubanov) State University. Her only book of poetry so far, БОГ-О-СЛОВ (“THEO-LOG-IAN” but there is a play on words that could come out "GOD O' WORDS") was published in 2003. She has received numerous literary prizes in Kazakhstan and Russia for poems in the collection, and in 2011 she was a finalist for the Russian Debut Prize in poetry. Her work has been translated into English, French, and Armenian, and published in prominent literary magazines. Tazhi was one of the creators of a project of literary installations, “The Visible Poetry,” in 2009. She lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan.




J. Kates is the author of several collections of his own poetry, and the translator of more than a dozen books by Russian and French poets, including Tatiana Shcherbina, Mikhail Aizenberg, Mikhail Yeryomin, Aleksey Porvin, Jean-Pierre Rosnay, and Sergey Stratanovsky. He co-translated four books of Latin American poetry, was the translation editor of Contemporary Russian Poetry, and was the editor of In the Grip of Strange Thoughts: Russian Poetry in a New Era. He has been awarded three National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, the Cliff Becker Book Prize in Translation, and a Käpylä Translation Prize.

Poet Brad Rose on Poet to Poet Nov. 19 5PM

 

Poet Brad Rose

see the show live at 5PM  http://sommedia.org



 Brad Rose was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Boston. Brad is a sociologist, and is the author of a collection of poetry and flash fiction, Pink X-Ray (Big Table Publishing, 2015,  http://pinkx-ray.com and Amazon.com.) Brad has three forthcoming books of poems: Momentary Turbulence and WordinEdgeWise, from Cervena Barva Press, and de/tonations from Nixes Mate Press. He is also the author of five chapbooks of poetry and flash fiction. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and twice nominated for Best of the Net Anthology, his poetry and micro fiction have appeared in, The Los Angeles Times, The American Journal of Poetry, Clockhouse, Hunger Mountain, Folio, decomP, Lunch Ticket, The Baltimore Review, Cultural Weekly, Into the Void, and other publications. His story, “Desert Motel,” appears in the anthology Best Microfiction, 2019.  Brad’s website is: www.bradrosepoetry.com Selected readings can be heard at https://soundcloud.com/bradrose1 A list of publications is available at: http://bradrosepoetry.com/2019/03/a-list-of-publications/

Doug Holder interviews Lloyd Schwartz Nov. 5 Poet to Poet

 

Lloyd Schwartz

1941–

see the show live at 5PM  http://somervillemedia.org

Lloyd Schwartz was born on November 29, 1941 in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from Queens College of the City University of New York in 1962 and earned his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1976.

Schwartz's most recent book of poetry is Little Kisses (University of Chicago Press, 2017), which was preceded by Cairo Traffic (University of Chicago Press, 2000), Goodnight, Gracie (University of Chicago Press, 1992), and These People (Wesleyan University Press, 1981). He is also editor of two volumes of collected works by Elizabeth Bishop: Elizabeth Bishop: Poems, Prose and Letters (Library of America, 2008), which he co-edited with Robert Giroux, and Prose (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). Schwartz's most recent book, Music In—and On—the Air (PFP, 2013), is a collection of his music reviews that appeared on NPR's Fresh Air.  

About his work, the poet Richard Howard has said: "The poet has extended his reach as well as his grasp, and we are the richer for it, through no less ravaged: these people (and these poems) are devastated by life, of which they offer us, unnervingly, the flagrant shards."

His poems, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Vanity Fair, The New Republic, The Paris Review, and The Best American Poetry series. In 1994, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Schwartz has taught at Boston State College, Queens College, and Harvard University, and is currently Frederick S. Troy Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. He is also the senior editor of classical music for New York Arts and a regular commentator on NPR's Fresh Air. In 2019, he was named the Poet Laureate of Somerville, Massachusetts, a two-year appointment.

Doug Holder interviews documentary filmmaker Olivia Huang_Somerville Med...

Tuesday Oct 29, 2019 5PM Doug Holder interviews documentary filmmaker Olivia Huang

Doug Holder  Left--Olivia Huang --Right

https://oliviahuang.yolasite.com/about.php   Olivia Huang, an award-winning filmmaker, produced the film " Last Sacred Place of Poetry," about the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, among other works. Check out her website above. You can see the show live at 5PM at http://somervillemedia.org

Oct. 1, 2019 5PM Michael C. Keith author of Stories: In the Key of Me

see it live at 5PM at   http://somervillemedia.org

In the tradition of the of the classic short stories of Lydia Davis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Joy Williams, this singular collection explores the full range of human experience and behavior . . . both good and bad. At once compelling and provocative, Keith's writing takes the reader to places that only a truly vivid and original imagination could. Frequently disquieting in theme and plot, the stories within these covers invariably contain meaningful truths and lessons, and just as frequently do so in an uproariously humorous and deeply compassionate manner.

Sept 24 5 PM Robert Dinsmoor author of "You Can Leave Anytime"

Robert Dinsmoor

You Can Leave Anytime   follows the true-life story of a 53-year-old Ivy-League-educated freelance writer and yoga teacher in a cozy suburb of Boston, who falls down a rabbit hole and checks himself into a rehab facility in Florida. For 3 months, he enters a strange new world of controlling therapists, burnt-out orderlies, and young junkies, many of whom are fresh out of jail. He navigates this new world of suburban gangstas and bizarre rules without judgment. A great network of friends, a Zen outlook, and a very dry sense of humor get him through his day. As he sobers up and gets his head glued on straight, he faces his biggest challenge of all--getting out.

See it live at 5PM    http://somervillemedia.org

Karen Klien: A Marriage of poetry and dance Aug 20, 2019 5PM

Founded by Karen Klein, teXtmoVes works in the interdisciplinary intersection between spoken word and movement, poetry and dance, experimentally exploring their boundaries and connections. It is the goal of this collective to bring intergenerational performance works which integrate dance and poetry to diverse audiences.

​

teXtmoVes does not simply have a poet recite and dancers move, but explores multiple innovative ways to integrate words/meaning/movement. Words are not literally translated into movement, making dance illustrate words, a practice which has a rich history in dance and choreography. Instead, our work interrogates the relationship between the two modes more deeply and complexly through choreographic and vocal practices. For example, dance movements take their own shapes while the roles of poet and dancers are fully integrated; the dancers are involved in speaking and the poet is one of the  movers.  Unlike spontaneous or improvised spoken word, the integrity of the poem is respected; its stanzaic trajectory underlies the narrative of movement.  Repetition, a technique common in both poetry and dance, is used as speakers repeat words or phrases to emphasize their meaning and to guide audience comprehension. Repetition with variation in the dancers’ movements unites with verbal repetitions to form patterns of cohesion. Unless specified, there is no music. The voiced poem and its rhythm constitute the music. The poem is the score. Musicians, however, while playing their instrument, may join the dancers/speakers and move with them. Our performances are geared to audiences who come to both poetry readings and dance concerts and who appreciate the challenge of innovative presentations and creative interdisciplinary work in art forms.

Interview with Victor Wallis author of the Red/Green Revolution

VICTOR WALLIS

Red-Green Revolution is an impassioned and informed confrontation with the planetary emergency brought about by accelerated ecological devastation in the last half-century.

Its author, distinguished political scientist Victor Wallis, argues that sound ecological policy requires a socialist framework, based on democratic participation and drawing on the historical lessons of earlier efforts.

Wallis presents a relentless critique of the capitalist system that has put the human species into a race against time to salvage and restore what it can of the environmental conditions necessary for a healthy existence. He then looks to how we might turn things around, reconsidering the institutions, technologies, and social relationships that will determine our shared future, and discussing how a better framework can evolve through the convergence of popular struggles, as these have emerged under conditions of crisis.

This is an important book, both for its incisive account of how we got into the mess in which we find ourselves, and for its bold vision of how we might still go forward.

July 9, 5PM Doug Holder Interviews DeWitt Henry

see It Live at 5PM  at  http://somervillemedia.org

BIOGRAPHY

Born 6/30/41 in Wayne, PA. Radnor High School, 1959; A.B. Amherst College, 1963; M.A. in English, Harvard Univ., 1965; Ph.D. English, Harvard Univ., 1971; completed requirements for M.F.A. University of Iowa, 1968 (did not take the degree). Married Constance Sherbill 1973; two children Ruth Kathryn Henry born 1977; David Jung Min Henry born 1985. Grandaughters Eva Luz Henry born 2003, Maya Salome Torres-Henry born 2009. Sister Judy Friedericy; brothers Charles (deceased 1999) and John T. Henry (deceased 2004). Founding editor of Ploughshares literary magazine, and active editor and director 1971-1995. Interim Director of Ploughshares 6/2007-10/2008. Professor Emeritus , Emerson College, 2016-present. Professor, Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College, 2006-2015; Associate Professor 1989 to 2006: hired as Assistant Professor 1983; Acting Chairperson 1987-8; Chairperson 1989-93. Contributing editor to Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices (2013-) and to The Woven Tale Press: Arts and Literary Journal (2016-).

MY WRITING, EDITING AND PUBLISHING LIFE

SWEET MARJORAM: NOTES AND ESSAYS, Plume Editions / Mad Hat Press, 2018.

FALLING: SIX STORIES, CreateSpace, 2016

VISIONS OF A WAYNE CHILDHOOD, CreateSpace, 2012

SWEET DREAMS: A FAMILY HISTORY, Hidden River Press, 2011

SAFE SUICIDE: ESSAYS, NARRATIVES, AND MEDITATIONS, Red Hen Press, 2008

Novel:THE MARRIAGE OF ANNA MAYE POTTS, University of Tennesee Press, 2001 (winner of the Peter Taylor Prize for the Novel)

Anthologies Edited:

SORROW'S COMPANY: WRITERS ON LOSS AND GRIEF, Beacon Press, 2001

BREAKING INTO PRINT: EARLY STORIES AND INSIGHTS INTO GETTING PUBLISHED; A PLOUGHSHARES ANTHOLOGY, Beacon Press, 2000

FATHERING DAUGHTERS: REFLECTIONS BY MEN (with James Alan McPherson), Beacon Press 1998, pb. 1999

OTHER SIDES OF SILENCE: NEW FICTION FROM PLOUGHSHARES, Faber and Faber, 1993, o.p.

THE PLOUGHSHARES READER: NEW FICTION FOR THE 80S, Pushcart Press, 1984, NAL, 1985; winner Third Annual Editors Book Award