The mission of Tupelo Press is to publish thrilling, visually, and emotionally and intellectually stimulating books of the highest quality, inside and out. We concentrate on contemporary poetry, essays, fiction and creative nonfiction written by the most diverse list of emerging and established writers in the US, while emphasizing the extraordinary look, feel, and design of our books.

In addition, Tupelo Press is dedicated to encouraging and fostering the literary arts, especially poetry, and to promoting greater public knowledge of, understanding of and appreciation for poetry. By publishing literary fiction, non-fiction and poetry that commercial and trade publishers do not find commercially viable, we intend to keep contemporary poetry, literary fiction and non-fiction before the public eye.

The Press will also sponsor and support educational efforts on behalf of these genres, including a Poets in the Schools program, and the undertaking of numerous public readings and workshops in bookstores, prisons, literary centers and festivals, and other suitable venues throughout the country.

Winner of the 2008 Snowbound Chapbook Award Announced!

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that judge Dana Levin has selected Stacey Waite of Pittsburgh, PA as winner of the 2008 Snowbound Series Chapbook Award. Her manuscript, titled “the lake has no saint,” will be published by Tupelo Press in 2010.

The runners up are:

Jamie O’Halloran of Los Angeles, CA for “The Visible Woman”
John Surowiecki of Amston, CT for “Mr. Niedzwiedzki’s Pink House”
Deb Casey of Eugene, OR for “Spit & Purr”

Other Finalists:

Lisa Beskin – Belchertown, MA, “Shadow Globe”
Remica Bingham – Norfolk, VA, “The Body Speaks”
John de Stefano – New York, NY, “From: Critical Opalescence and the Blueness of the Sky”
Mary Helen Molinary – Memphis, TN, “The Book of 8:38”
Howard Robertson – Eugene, OR, “Three Odes to Gaia”
Robin Beth Schaer – New York, NY, “Almost Tiger”
Suzume Shi – New London, CT, “Ao”
Jacob Shores-Arguello – Fayetteville, AR, “John Barleycorn Must Die”
Janet Sylvester – Kittery, Maine, “The Unbinding”

Semifinalists:

Hadara Bar-Nadav – Kansas City, MO, “Fable of Flesh”
Colin Cheney – Brooklyn, NY, “Here There Be Monsters”
Mark Conway – Avon, MN, “Dreaming Man, Face Down”
John de Stefano – New York, NY, “From: Three-Body Problems”
Joanne Diaz – Chicago, IL, “Violin”
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs – New York, NY, “Mongrel Angels”
Matthew Hittinger – Astoria, NY, “Spectacular Reflection”
Christina Hutchins – Albany, CA, “Dark Creek”
M. Smith Janson – Florence, MA, “Letter Written in this Life, Mailed from the Next”
Jesse Lee Kercheval – Madison, WI, “My Life as a Silent Movie”
Sandra Kohler – Dorchester, MA, “Final Summer”
Gary Copeland Lilley – Swannanoa, NC, “Wade In Da Wahtuh”
Matthew Lippman – Claverack, NY, “Moses”
Mike Maniquiz – Clovis, CA, “Cooking Frutti Di Mare on This Early Evening Before the
             Night Falls on Kentucky Hillsides”
Mary Helen Molinary – Memphis, TN, “This Book of Sun”
Rusty Morrison – Richmond, CA, “Insolence”
Teresa Pfeifer – Chicopee, MA, “Little Matryoshka”
Joseph Radke – Milwaukee, WI, “A Source of Reasons”
Boyer Rickel – Tucson, AZ, “reliquary”
Reginald Shepherd – Pensacola, FL, “Photos of the Fallen World: Poems”
Page Hill Starzinger – New York, NY, “Black Tongue”
Barry Sternlieb – Richmond, MA, “Winter Crows”
Jonathan Weinert – Concord, MA, “Charged Particles”

2007 Dorset Prize Winner Announced

Tupelo Press is delighted to announce that C. D. Wright has selected G.C. Waldrep of Lewisburg, PA winner of the 2007 Dorset Prize for his outstanding manuscript Archicembalo. He will receive $10,000, and his book will be published in 2009 and distributed internationally by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution, Baker & Taylor, Ingram, Small Press Distribution, and Tupelo Press.

In addition to the Dorset Prize winner, Tupelo Press will offer publishing contracts to Marc Gaba of Sacred Heart, Philippines for his manuscript Have, and to Martha Zweig of Hardwick, VT for hers, Monkey Lightning. Our congratulations to G.C. Waldrep, Marc Gaba, Martha Zweig, and to all of the finalists.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who entered their work. Without your support of Tupelo Press, we simply could not do what we do.

Finalists

Beth Bachmann, Nashville, TN, Temper
Jacqueline Berger, San Francisco, CA, The Gift That Arrives Broken
Jennifer Chapis, Oceanside, CA, One Wing Apart
Chris Forhan, Auburn, AL, Black Leapt In
Sarah Gambito, New York, NY, Delivered
Suzanne Gardinier, New York, NY, Dialogue With The Archipelago
Heather Hartley, Paris, France, Knock, Knock
Kirsten Kaschock, Philadelphia. PA, The Snuff Ballets
Kristin Kelly, Iowa City, IA, Come As Your Madness
Patrick Lawler, Liverpool, NY, The Exhalation Therapist
Mary Leader, West Lafayette, IN, Inkstone
Shara Lessley, Madison, WI, Two-Headed Nightingale
Kimberly Lojek, Orland Park, IL, Weather in the Hourglass
Dora Malech, Bethesda, MD, Break, Make Or
Jean-Paul Pecqueur, Brooklyn, NY, Big Thinker
Lance Phillips, Huntersville, NC,  The Dream Life
Brian Swann, New York, NY, Fireflies
Liz Waldner, Houston, TX, In Which the Beautiful Hand of Great God Reaches and Pats Her Head
Ronaldo Wilson, South Hadley, MA, Poems of the Black Object
Sam Witt, Walla Walla, WA, Occupation: Dreamland
Richard Wollman, Amesbury, MA, The Art of Need

Tupelo Offers Free Reader's Companions

Tupelo Press is pleased to provide free, downloadable PDF Reader's Companions for Annie Finch's Calendars as well as Francine Sterle's Nude in Winter. Each is filled with essays that provide insight into the poet's creative process, their inspirations, as well as commentary from the individual poet. Questions help the reader learn more about the process of creating poetry, and the complex interaction between imagery and word.

NEW BOOKS

Invitation to a Secret Feast
By Joumana Haddad

Tupelo Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Invitation to a Secret Feast by noted Lebanese poet Joumana Haddad, edited and with an introduction by Khaled Mattawa (who also did some of the translations). Haddad’s passionate, poetic voice is renowned throughout Europe and the Middle East, and Tupelo is very proud to be the first to publish her work in this country.

In these gorgeous translations, her voice sings, celebrating sexuality, femininity and womanhood.

Enjoy this excerpt from her poem “Slow Down” (then you’ll surely want to buy the book!):

SLOW DOWN
Slow down, impetuous man.
Don’t rush,
slowly mend your nets.

Slow down,
coming and going are the same.
The water’s journey starts from below, rising.
And my body –
trust me – when the time comes
will not escape your deluge.

Slow down,
open your fist,
polish your blue sickle,
count your nails and bullets,
subdue my strength with sharp patience,
wrestle down my belt, that foe of your hands.

Irascible man, slow down.
Don’t panic:
What looks like a wall
is a door,
and your waiting is its key.
Boost your eagerness,
the ravenousness on your table,
your madness and gasping.
I want you erupted, blown up,
and an avenger
so I retaliate…”

Do the Math
By Emily Galvn

Emily Galvin, as much a mathematician as poet, explores the connection between poetry and science by using the Fibonacci sequence and other mathematical formulas to create undeniably compelling and imaginative poems and short lyrical plays. But no mere math exercises, these poems brim with emotional insight and extraordinary wit. A significant community of readers, writers, and bloggers are treading the crossroads where math and poetry intersect and creating something entirely new and viscerally affecting. Emily Galvin is one of the heralds of this new movement with this dazzling collection in which science does not limit art, but enriches it.

Narcissus
By Cecilia Woloch

Tupelo Press is proud to announce the publication of Cecilia Woloch's Snowbound Series Chapbook Award-winner Narcissus.

Prose poems alternate with brief lyrics to describe a narrative arc of failed and renewed romantic love—a turning inward, turning outward again, and no turning back, even in the face of loss.

Here's a sample to whet your appetite:

ANNIVERSARY

Didn’t I stand there once,
white-knuckled, gripping the just-lit taper,
swearing I’d never go back?
And hadn’t you kissed the rain from my mouth?
And weren’t we gentle and awed and afraid,
knowing we’d stepped from the room of desire
into the further room of love?
And wasn’t it sacred, the sweetness
we licked from each other’s hands?
And were we not lovely, then, were we not
as lovely as thunder, and damp grass, and flame?

Selected Poems: 1970 - 2005
By Floyd Skloot

Tupelo Press is extremely pleased to announce the release of Selected Poems: 1970-2005 by Floyd Skloot.

Selected Poems gathers 99 poems, Floyd Skloot’s selection of the finest work from his widely-praised five volumes of poetry. These poems show Skloot’s technical range and mastery of craft, his thematic development, and his growing maturity as a poet celebrating life while facing squarely its harsh challenges and sudden losses. Selected Poems allows a fresh assessment of this “poet of singular skill and subtle intelligence.” (Harvard Review)

“Skloot continues to be a highly disciplined poet, confronting chaos to capture and tame this enemy. There is ferocity living in his forms, coexisting with the sweetness of vanquishing sentiment.” –Prairie Schooner

“Poet, essayist, and memoirist Skloot writes about family matters, the mysterious realm of long-term illness, the natural world, and the nature of art in refulgent and compelling poems, finely constructed vignettes that celebrate life while harboring bracing visions of death.” —Booklist

Be sure to get the scoop on our forthcoming books.

Signed First Editions Available

Any book with this logo on the cover picture is available signed by the author:

Tupelo Press
P.O. Box 539
Dorset, VT 05251
USA

Tel: 802-366-8185, Fax: 802-362-1883
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Last modified August 04, 2008                  Copyright © Tupelo Press 2008