THE BEST NEW WOMEN POETS

Checking in with you this Poetry Month 

Welcome to April, Perugia Press friends. We wanted to reach out to say we hope you and yours are doing as well as can be during this time of great upheaval and uncertainty. Poetry Month is traditionally full of public readings, festivals, and projects to celebrate poetry, and these have had to be canceled, postponed, or made virtual. It's also the month we hold one of our two annual fundraisers, but we've decided it doesn't feel right to do that this year when the world is full of urgent needs that call for us to give what we can to help during this pandemic.
 
But here's what we can do. Poetry is uniquely equipped to bring solace in chaotic times. In that spirit, we are offering a special Poetry Month sale on our website. All of our collections, including our forthcoming Perugia Press Prize winner Now in Color (see below) are being offered for just $10, with our anthology chapbook on sale for $5. As a small nonprofit press without a "storefront," we are able to continue sending books packed with care, as always, by our Editor/Director Rebecca Olander. Poetry is a vehicle for comfort and hope, and we hope you'll consider finding a volume or two that will do just that for you this April. 
 
 
Perugia poet and Tacoma, WA Poet Laureate Abby E. Murray (author of Hail and Farewell) is offering "Poem Fridays" throughout April, "flash" 10-minute video workshops to help her community get through this time of social isolation with poetry! For her local audience, she's inviting resulting poems to be sent to her, but poets and poetry lovers across the land are invited to listen in and try her prompts! She'll also feature readings by poets of the Pacific Northwest. Check out Abby's two-minute promo for this beatiful project, and tune in to the first "Poem Friday" on 4/3!
 
 
 
Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press Prize
Winner of the 2020 Perugia Press Prize

NOW IN COLOR

By Jacqueline Balderrama

Now in Color explores the multigenerational immigrant experience of Mexican-Americans who have escaped violence, faced pressures to assimilate, and are now seeking to reconnect to a fragmented past. These poems illuminate the fluidity of language and of perception through both small hypocrisies and real atrocities. One of Balderrama’s strategies is to use the development of motion pictures and Technicolor as a lens through which to examine personal and cultural histories and stereotypes. She also considers bilingual expectations through an innovative series of Spanish definition poems. Balderrama documents pieces of her family’s oral tradition and draws connections to ongoing injustices experienced by current migrant families, offering a living picture of a present inevitably tied to and colored by its past. Through the poetics of witness, ekphrasis, portraiture, and family mythos, Now in Color deepens our understanding of hybrid identities and calls attention to those impacted by tensions along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jacqueline Balderrama lives and teaches in Salt Lake City, where she is a doctoral candidate in literature and creative writing at the University of Utah. She is the author of the chapbook Nectar and Small (FLP 2019) and is co-poetry editor for Quarterly West and Iron City Magazine. Balderrama has been involved in the Letras Latinas initiative, the ASU Prison Education Program, and the Wasatch Writers in the Schools.

* Now in Color will be released in September 2020 *
 
 To order advanced copies of this book, or any Perugia Press title,

FINALISTS:

Stephanie Glazier, Some Formidable Lily
Victoria Lynne McCoy, wet reckless

SEMI-FINALISTS:

Sarah Anderson, Come Back. I Have Kept Time.
Stacey Balkun, Sweetbitter
Mirande Bissell, Stalin at the Opera
Caroline Crew, Bucolia
Regina DiPerna, The Midwestern Book of the Dead
Mary Moore Easter, From the Flutes of Our Bones
Janlori Goldman, My Antarctica
Danielle Jones, Landscapes with Alternate Endings
Kelly Morse, Abcission
Catherine Staples, Vert
Sophia Starmack, The Grief Sweater
Gabriella R. Tallmadge, Sweet Beast
Shannon K. Winston, The Girl Who Talked to Paintings

Thanks to each woman who submitted her manuscript/s & to the volunteers who helped read for & judge the contest!

Perugia Press Prize: A prize of $1000 & publication by Perugia Press is given annually for a first or second unpublished poetry collection by a woman. The next deadline is November 15, 2020.
 
Perugia Press
PO Box 60364, Florence, MA  01062
 
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