PUBLISHING NEW WOMEN POETS SINCE 1997

* Perugia Press & Community Partnerships *

Did you know we donate a portion of our book sales at year's
end to selected organizations that support the lives and work
of folks who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color?
Our 2024-2025 orgs are The Care Center, Torch Literary Arts,
and We Are Not Numbers. We've just made our 2024 donations, and any of our books you buy this year will also
support these important organizations. 

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We are so honored to announce grant funding we were
recently awarded to help us continue our work in 2025.
 
The Small Press Future Fund supports presses formerly distributed by Small Press Distribution to help strengthen operations as they move forward after SPD's abrupt closure in 2024. Thanks to CLMP and the Mellon Foundation for its support of this program. 
 
 
Flexible Funding grants from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts provide support to sustain the operations of nonprofit organizations throughout the Pioneer Valley, including the vibrant local arts and creativity ecosystem. Thanks to CFWM and its partners for the support of this program. 
 

Press Coverage for Joan Kwon Glass's
* Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms *
 
Joan Kwon Glass's Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms was reviewed by Laurie Kuntz for Wild Roof Journal. Kuntz writes, “Much of Kwon’s work deals with hunger, spanning both the literal and metaphorical meaning. She writes about the basic yen for all that is forbidden whether it be certain food or certain desires. These poems span generational hunger: hunger for an absent father, hunger to see a happy family, hunger for self identity, hunger for saving one's soul, and hunger for acceptance
of things lost and found.”
 
 
 
 
Joan was also interviewed by our intern, Amherst College student Evelyn Chi. You can watch the full 35-minute interview on our YouTube channel. An edited 9-minute version is on our blog, along with a transcript. In this interview excerpt, Joan and Evelyn talk about the opening poem “Bloodline,” the role of absence, and what the title Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms means to Joan. 
 
 
Joanell Serra interviewed Joan for the latest River Heron Review.
 Joan shared, “I believe that poetry does not have to be comfortable for the reader or the writer. In fact, I have written some of what I consider to be my most distinctive poems by refusing to turn away from the things that compelled me to start writing. I wrote as a child as the only act of resistance that was accessible to me in an incredibly dysfunctional and traumatic situation. Why would I abandon this now?"
 

Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight

January 2025 Poet: Sarah Ghazal Ali

Daughter

Too stubborn
to supplicate, I bend for luster

not love. For absolution, I break my bones,
soften gristle with what teeth remain.

Mine an umbilical affliction without cure.
Do you think I asked to eavesdrop

through inherited eyes?
Recite to me a single memory not manufactured.

Even a mother is myth, fabling 
to survive a marriage     miscarriage     man.

Call me a reed. Voices lake 
behind my eyes.

The rims of wounds have wounds 
as well. I have a theory about mirrors

that I won't risk repeating.
The women who made me already know


To read more about this poet and her work, check out our blog.

* Perugia Poet News *
 
* A SELECTION OF RECENT POET PUBS & HONORS *
 
 
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Joan Kwon Glass's Daughter of Three Gone Kingdoms 
 was featured in Donna Vorreyer's end-of-year list on her 
 Substack “Put Words Together. Make Meaning.” Work
from Joan's project “The Kafka Erasures" is featured
in the inaugural issue of issue of Asterales.
 
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Gail Thomas is one of the contributors in a new Lavender Review anthology from Headmistress Press, edited by Mary Meriam.
 
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Lisbeth White's chapbook A Most Natural Thing was chosen
as the winner of the 2023 Masters Review Chapbook Open. White’s chapbook—part travel-writing, part ecopoetical mythology, part memoir of healing—will be out in February! 
 
 
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Carolina Hotchandani's The Book Eaters was highlighted in Michael Mercurio's end-of-year list on his Substack “A Slight Case of Overthinking.” The Book Eaters was also considered in Maria Zoccola’s fascinating essay “What’s Left Out: The Poems That Haunt a Collection From the Outside” in Poets & Writers. 
 
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Abby E. Murray's poem "Today, I Am Not Kind Because
I Love Love," was published in ONE ART. And their poem
"The New Year Makes a Request" was named 3rd on Rattle's "Most-Read Poems in 2024" list.
 
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Jennifer K. Sweeney's poem "Heartbeat Sound Machine"
was featured in Verse Daily.

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L. I. Henley's essay “Dispatches from the Ridge”
has been awarded The Oran Robert Perry Burke Award
for Nonfiction by The Southern Review!
 
 
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Gail Martin's poem "Coming Back Body" was featured in the beautiful anthology Braving the Body, edited by Chenda Bao, Nicole Callihan & Jennifer Franklin, and was highlighted in an interview at Tupelo Quarterly, along with other anthology poems, including "Anniversary" from Editor/Director Rebecca Olander.
 
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(River River Books, 2025) was featured on the "Of Poetry Podcast" Episode 63. Check it out where you listen to podcasts.
 
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Lynne Thompson had an encore episode on "The Slowdown with Major Jackson" for her poem “Ode to Bones.” Jackson wrote, “Today’s poem riffs off a childhood name, to caravan us to all the possibilities of association which brings the speaker back to the uniqueness and individual nature of their being.”
 
 
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