A little good news – first book award nom, Northwest Bookfest, poems after readings
- At October 03, 2011
- By Jeannine Gailey
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Yes, after a somewhat discouraging reading yesterday at Northwest Bookfest, I was feeling a little down and tired, but then I found out She Returns to the Floating World is up for its very first award! It’s one of three finalists up for the Florida Publisher’s Association President’s Award for Poetry.
http://www.kitsunebooks.com/assets/11-10-FPA-Newsletter.pdf
I’m very excited, because if I win, I get a sticker. Stickers are really fun!
It was wonderful to see and read with my friends yesterday, who all did a great job, but the crowd seemed a little…muted…and I didn’t sell any books. Which always makes me feel a little depressed. Glenn took a video of the reading but it didn’t turn out. We did avoid the rain, though, and I got to see the beautiful latest issue of Crab Creek Review (2011 Volume 1,) which has two mini-reviews in it that I wrote of Dorianne Laux’s Book of Men and Suzanne Frischkorn’s Girl on a Bridge. Here are some of the editors at work yesterday (pictured: me, Annette Spaulding-Convy, Kelli Russell Agodon.)
So I came home feeling tired (three readings in seven days will really knock you out – or at least, it knocks someone like me out) and a bit discouraged but weirdly, I got into bed and wrote a new poem – the first new poem in a while that I’ve been happy with. Then I found out this crazy FPA award news. We poets have to try to stay zen throughout the whole book launch process, but it’s more of a high/low situation. Sometimes, to use a California metaphor, I only see the smog in the sunset, and other times, I see an egret lifting in the last light.
Next post: I promise not to be so self-absorbed. I’m going to talk about the New Poet’s Market, Mari L’Esperance’s beautiful book, and more!
Update: Oh, and I just found this too – a new review of She Returns to the Floating World is up at Midwest Book Review! Check “The Poetry Shelf!”
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
