LILLIEN WALLER was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. She studied English literature at the University of Michigan and received her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She also holds degrees from the New School for Social Research and Emory University. She has been a Cave Canem Fellow, a member of the Sisters of Color Writers Collective (SOC), and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her poems have appeared in journals and the anthology Sisterfire: Black Womanist Fiction and Poetry (HarperCollins). She is currently working on a collection of poems exploring family and community life in Detroit in the wake of the 1967 riots. She lives in Harlem, New York. |
AMERICAN GHOST: POETS ON LIFE AFTER INDUSTRY Accelerated by the Great Recession, late twentieth-century deindustrialization in the United States left many manufacturing cities, and their rural counterparts, economically battered by the experience of unprecedented joblessness, poverty, and depopulation. We characterize these locales as ghost towns, phantoms of a former glory, while often failing to acknowledge the people who fare the downturns and form the core of America's urban and rural cultures. The nine poets represented in American Ghost: Poets on Life after Industry counter such myopia in verse, with thoughtful reflections on the real costs of industry and its dismantlement--community life, personal identity, cultural traditions, and the natural world--in Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island, Washington, Wisconsin, and beyond. This intimate collection culls inspiration from personal and collective experience, found text, and oral history, as it speaks to the complicated humanity surviving amid so-called ruin. American Ghost asks us to consider: what will sustain us? How will we sustain each other? POEMS BY b: william bearhart, Suzette Bishop, Anne Gorrick, Randall Horton Denise Miller, Ruby Murray, Kate Schapira, Lillien Waller, Deborah Woodard. Photographs by Ruby Murray and Valaurian Waller. |
MARY OLMSTED GREENE, a resident of Narrowsburg, New York, was born in Mexico City and raised at the New Jersey shore. She received her Masters of Fine Arts in Poetry from Brooklyn College. She is founder and director of the Upper Delaware Writers Collective which sponsors workshops, publications and events in the Upper Delaware River valley. She is also associate editor of The River Reporter rnewspaper in Narrowsburg. Greene's poetry has appeared in numerous national and local journals, and she has given readings and performances in venues all over the region. She has published two books of poetry, Where You're Going in this Dream and A Painting With You Running Through It, and her work has appeared in several anthologies. Her favorite wild place is the Atlantic Ocean. |
ISBN 978-0-9819267-9-7
WOMEN OUTSIDE The thirteen women interviewed by Mary Olmsted Greene in Women Outside: Conversations about Nature, Art & Spirit invite readers to reconnect with wilderness and wildness. These women share an intensity that comes from contact with nature. We read how their exchange with the non-human blossoms through artistic and spiritual practices. As associate editor of The River Reporter and as facilitator/founder of The Upper Delaware Writers Collective, Greene fosters awareness in individuals who are activists in their ecosystem. Here, we meet some of these women. She introduces us to a nine-year-old walking a streambed and an eighty year old living alone in the woods. We meet a wildlife rehabilitator, a shorthorn shepherd, a Sufi master, a Yoruba priestess, a dancer, a photographer, an activist, a gardener, a naturalist and a mountaineer. Their words are echoed in poems that examine the book's four sections: Earth's Daughters, Crossing Paths, Body Knowledge and Answering the Call. The book is 272 pages and features 12 interviews and 24 poems. |
LISA WUJNOVICH was born in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the daughter of an oil painter and an Air Force Sergeant. She holds a BA in drama from Antioch College and numerous herbal certifications. She has performed and directed in theater, cabaret, and film. Lisa models much of her work after tovil dancing or devil dance (a healing dance) in which she apprenticed in Galle, Sri Lanka. She has mentored and worked with farm apprentices for nineteen years. Lisa has studied poetry at The Catskill Poetry Workshop, Hartwick College, Binghamton University and New England College. She has a MFA student in poetry from Drew University. MARK DUNAU was born in Washington, D.C. in 1952, and is the son of two labor lawyers. He graduated from Antioch College in 1974 with a degree in drama. From 1969 through 1986 he wrote eight plays, all of which were produced. His play Glass was nationally toured for three years, and was the first play in history to be supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. He is the author with Elizabeth Henderson of The Farmer’s Pledge of NOFA-NY. In 2008, Mark’s first new play in twenty years was produced at Antioch College. Mark is currently an advocate and birdddogger for the self-employed: Don't Submit. See http://www.dontsubmit.org/ |
ISBN 978-0-9819267-1-1
THIS PLACE CALLED US Organic farmers Lisa Wujnovich and Mark Dunau document their passion for the slow food movement through poems and photographs. This collaboration grows out of their daily life on Mountain Dell Farm. Wujnovich's poems, entitled Hands and Knees, take us through the seasons, exposing us to the toil and joy she experiences through a full growing cycle. Dunau's photography collection, Sky to Plant, kaleidoscopes from aerial photos down to dirt-level: we see crop circles from an airplane then zoom down to close-ups of seedlings. We watch their children mature harvest after harvest. Page after page, we experience the internal and external landscapes of a farm family as it forges a sustainable relationship to the land. The books is 62 pages and features 28 poems and 22 photos. |