32 Poems Fave Book Feature and More
Well, my five favorite poetry books feature is up at the 32 Poems Blog:
http://www.32poems.com/blog/2238/day-21-jeannine-hall-gailey-shares-her-five-favorite-poetry-books
May all the books listed sell a thousand copies. Great books, all of them.
And, yesterday, Kelli Russell Agodon’s five fave feature was up, which might have have mentioned Becoming the Villainess:
http://www.32poems.com/blog/2233/day-21-kelli-russell-agodon-national-poetry-month
The bad things about lists like this is I still feel I didn’t even get to talk about a third of my favorite poets. Rebecca Loudon, Karyna McGlynn, Suzanne Frischkorn, Kristy Bowen, Jeff Walt, Karen Weyant…OK, now I’ve listed another six poets that I love. And that’s just for starters.
I have a small haiku up at the new issue of Pirene’s Fountain. The whole issue’s pretty great, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil (another of my fave poets…see, the list just keeps going) is featured in it.
Thanks to a very generous donor, the drive to collect money for the Japan disaster – specifically, for Doctors Without Borders – by selling copies of Becoming the Villainess raised more than $200 for the cause. Thanks again! All proceeds will go to the charities.
April Poetry Month Giveaway and More
Yes, I’m taking part in April Big Old Poetry Giveaway! Thanks for asking and to Kelli for organizing it. I’ll be drawing a winner out of a hat on May 1, so leave a comment on this post (with contact information, including a working e-mail address) and you’ll be entered for a chance to win one of these books!
I’m giving away a copy of:
My first collection, Becoming the Villainess. Pop icons, Wonder Woman before she changed costumes, mythology, and more!
Anna Rabinowitz’s Present Tense
Apocalypse, Political Screed, Religion, History…She’s got it all wrapped up in this Omnidawn collection.
So, besides April being National Poetry Month, it is also the beginning of the class I teach at National University, the month of Seattle’s Sakura-Con and NorWesCon, (which of course include chances to get together with out-of-town friends for fun!) and various other cons in Seattle. There is literally a reading almost every day somewhere in Seattle (check out this calendar) I’m also going to be judging some local high school poetry contests (because, the children are our future, etc.) Did I mention a birthday at the end of the month as well? And I’d love to get a chance to go look at the tulips in Skagit…it’s time for at least one clone!
The Holidays…and the new book becoming a reality
The holidays are upon us. I keep being reminded of this by the cold cold weather and by the fact that we live down the street from a Christmas tree farm. We are going to go get our tree today, and do some festive light-seeing afterwards. I love driving around town looking at lights, because of my inner twelve-year-old-girl.
I have news about my new book, She Returns to the Floating World, that suddenly makes it all very real: I have a street date from my wonderful publisher Kitsune Books! July 1, 2011! And they’re going to send review copies out before that even! If you’re a reviewer who loves
a. my work, and wants to review my next book whatever it is about
b. books about Japanese anime characters/Japanese folk tales/the love of Japanese culture by American teens/all of the above
c. books with haibun and haiku
b. books about love, disappearing women, animated heroines, apocalypses, fairy tales in which women transform into animals or trees, Tennessee childhoods, foxes, or litte brothers…
Please send me an e-mail at jeannine.gailey@live.com with your mailing address and I’ll be sure to put you on my list!
It’s the holidays, and our minds turn to buying presents for our loved ones. May I recommend a book of poetry? Small presses are always struggling, and poets are part of the economy! Here are a few:
—Becoming the Villainess. Yes, that’s my own book. It’s perfect for lovers of Buffy, Wonder Woman, bad girls, fairy tales, and etc.
–Looking for a slightly more adult version of a fairy tale? Check out Lana Ayers’ A New Red.
—Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room by Kelli Russell Agodon makes a great gift for writers, or anyone who wants to think about life’s mysteries, from the star tabloids to the stars of cosmos.
–For those who love travel and recipes, The Alchemist’s Kitchen by Susan Rich.
—A Working Writer’s Daily Planner, for the writers in your lives.
—Lucky Fish by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Now, this one doesn’t technically come out til January, but you can pre-order it, and who can resist that cover?
These are but a few wonderful options. It’s time to browse some poetry, either in the local independent bookstore, if you’re lucky enough to have one, or online.
Kitsune Books – She Returns to the Floating World
So, since my new publisher just tweeted about it, I guess I can make the news official:
Kitsune Books, a wonderful publisher down in Florida of all kinds of speculative lit, has decided to accept my Japanese-folk-tale-and-anime-themed manuscript, She Returns to the Floating World, for publication (tentative publication date – late 2011!)
I am so excited to be working with them and to have a new book on the horizon! Second book second book second book!!! Thanks to everyone who has read it for me and kept encouraging me along the last few years.
Also, thanks for Valerie Loveland for her kind review of my first book, Becoming the Villainess, here.
Splinter Generation and Becoming the Villainess
Jessie Carty writes about needing a hero on Splinter Generation, and says nice things about Becoming the Villainess there. Thanks Jessie Carty! And Splinter Generation!
I liked Stephen Burt as a critic before this – in fact, I’ve assigned his essays to my class before – but after this terrific essay on poetry and superheroes:
http://poems.com/special_features/prose/essay_burt3.php
I am even more of a fan. He talks about how poets can connect to wider mythology through superheroes, and also how they can be used as a kind of subversive accessibility:
“Poems about superheroes, famous or obscure, announce their divorce from expectations about high culture, antiquity, “academic” difficulty.”
I was pretty excited that the essay mentioned two poems of mine as well.
I admit that when I was writing Becoming the Villainess, I was writing it for a specific audience – for an audience that perhaps wasn’t that friendly with poetry, but definitely knew something about comic books, video games, and maybe even Greek mythology. I wanted it to be something a college student could pick up and understand, relate to. I wanted it to be something that might make a non-poetry-lover like poetry again.
Anyway, check out the article, and you might be tempted to pick up Rae Armantrout’s new book, Versed, as well.
Reading Tomorrow at Barnes and Nobles in La Mesa, San Diego with Jeannine Hall Gailey and Tim Green
Here’s the reading info:
Jeannine Hall Gailey and Tim Green are the featured readers at the Barnes and Nobles at the Grossmont Center in La Mesa. If you’re in the San Deigo area, please come out! Tim will be reading from his new book, American Fractal, and I’ll be reading from my “old” book, Becoming the Villainess, as well as a few from my new “Robot Scientist’s Daughter” series.
Time: 7:30 p.m.
Cost: free
Phone: (619) 667-2870
Location: Barnes & Noble–La Mesa (map)
Address:Grossmont Center
5500 Grossmont Ctr Dr, Suite 331
La Mesa, CA
This is only my second real featured San Diego reading, so if you missed the first one, I hope you’ll come out! I get nervous before readings, and even had a reading-oriented anxiety dream (the one where I lose my reading notebook, can’t remember any of my poems, and the audience acts bored. Oh, it’s worse than getting chased by monsters, I tell you!)
Also, both readers might be on crutches (we both sprained our ankles a week or so ago), so there’s more excitement than usual!
Look for Suzanne Frischkorn and Tom Hunley on Verse Daily this week!
And, since it’s “Cyber Monday” and you’re all shopping for Christmas presents, did I mention poetry books make a great holiday gift? I am going to put on my winter special and offer this limited-edition, beautiful broadside of “The Snow Queen Explains” for free to anyone who buys a copy of Becoming the Villainess from me between now and Christmas. The art work on the broadside was done by the lovely and talented Michaela Eaves, who also did the cover art of my book. I only have a few copies around, so this offer won’t last 🙂
Here’s the link to order the book:
https://webbish6.com/orderform.htm
or you can e-mail me at jeannine dot gailey at live dot com.
All I want for Christmas is an enthusiastic publisher for my second book manuscript. And total financial security. And shiny happy healthiness. And, well, some world peace would be nice, too. Come on, Santa!
The Villainess Goes to…ComicCon?
Imagine my surprise when someone pointed this out to me in the ComicCon 2007 schedule:
Saturday 1:00-2:30 Comics Arts Conference Session #11: High Art and Low—Richard Becker (CSU Northridge) discusses the nature of the narrator and authorial self-insertions in comics, like those of Lee and Kirby, Gerber, and Morrison, and the schism between schools of storytelling in which the writer is very visible and another in which the writer seeks to be completely invisible. John A. Walsh (Indiana University) examines Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol stories and their punctuation by appearances of and allusions to similarly fracture, damaged, and outcast artists and works and asks whether the members of the Doom Patrol are artists or heroes and if there’s a difference. Jason Mott (UNC-Wilmington) uncovers the history of comic book superheroes and traces their evolution from serving purely as devices of metaphor for poets to becoming the subject of extended development and progression by award-winning poets such as Brian Dietrich in Krypton Nights and Jeannine Hall in Becoming the Villainess. Room 30AB
Very close to this listing: the Q&A with the Heroes cast and crew. Hee! Yes, I’m missing a last name, but it makes me more mysterious…
Wish I was going to be in San Diego in two weeks!
PS It’s 100 degrees today. So I’m going to see Harry Potter!
