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.

2008 Snowbound Chapbook Award Finalists and Semifinalists

Finalists

Lisa Beskin - Belchertown, MA, Shadow Globe
Remica Bingham - Norfolk, VA, The Body Speaks
Deb Casey - Eugene, OR, Spit & Purr, What Shines: A Several Sisters Chapbook
John de Stefano - New York, NY, From: Critical Opalescence and the Blueness of Sky
Mary Molinary - Memphis, TN, The Book of 8:38
Jamie O'Halloran - Los Angeles, CA, The Visible Woman
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
John Surowiecki - Amston, CT, Mr. Niedzwiedzki's Pink House
Janet Sylvester - Kittery, ME, The Unbinding
Stacey Waite - Pittsburgh, PA, the lake has no saint

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 - Astoria, 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 Sternleib - 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

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

Masque
By Elena Karina Byrne

Tupelo Press is very happy to announce that Elena Karina Byrne's Masque is now available for purchase.

In verse simmering with sensuality, Elena Byrne eloquently reveals, then carefully slices away, layer after layer of the masks we wear until our most secret selves are exposed. Pretense is overthrown in her exotic and electric imagery, irresistibly drawing the reader into an unabashedly intimate internal dialogue.

“The Greeks highest compliment to Odysseus was to call him ‘myriad-minded.’ Shall we say of Elena Karina Byrne's amazing sequence that it is ‘myriad-masked?’ By turns poignant, intricate, ingenious — Byrne’s poems explore and dramatize the theme of mask into a multiplicity of insights and imaginings almost as rich as consciousness itself.”

        — Gregory Orr

Spill
By Michael Chitwood

Tupelo Press is both excited and proud to say that Spill by Michael Chitwood has arrived in the office. We have both a paperback ($16.95) as well as a limited edition, signed & numbered hardcover ($100.00).

Your purchase of the special hardcover edition supports the Tupelo Press National Poetry in the Schools initiative. Thank you for bringing the literary arts alive to students in elementary schools across the country.

Spill is a book of spiritual yearning, grounded in the here and now of airport terminals, the backyard, a rainy morning, and a broken down church van. With finely honed, vibrant imagery, this poet’s audacious imagination chisels away at the mundane and unearths the miraculous in his eighth poetry collection. The book is divided into three sections. Chitwood’s distinctive vision begins simply, as he evokes an Appalachian upbringing mired in pious certainty and yet haunted by spiritual craving. We follow the pilgrim’s path in the following segment, as he attempts to wring holiness from the merely terrestrial, finding only fleeting glimpses of the divine. The final section turns contemplative, as the speaker tries to comprehend the course he has taken and find solace and wisdom in his journey.

Chitwood’s verse is sharp, spare and unpretentious, wonderfully surprising and yet deeply profound. Words are neither wasted nor superfluous; he never forgets that this is an honest conversation with the reader, and he uses the common tongue and humor of a man in thoughtful dialogue with his fellow creatures.

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 May 09, 2008                  Copyright © Tupelo Press 2008