Rosa Alcalá's MyOTHER TONGUE included in New York Times Book Review shortlist

We were thrilled to see Rosa Alcalá's MyOTHER TONGUE included in Stephanie Burt's shortlist of five poetry books in the New York Times Book Review. Burt notes that Alcalá "uses empty spaces, hesitations and semantic difficulties to address mothers and daughters, herself as mother and herself as daughter, and the messy emotions and miscommunications that move between languages..."

You can read the full New York Times review here. 

ANNOUNCING FUTUREPOEM’S
2017 OPEN CALL SELECTIONS

Thank you to everyone who submitted to Futurepoem's open reading period this past fall/winter! We received a record number of submissions for the press this year.

 We're thrilled to announce the two book selections by our guest editors Monica McClure, Pierre Joris, and Claudia La Rocco. 



Near, At by Jennifer Soong  
The Nancy Reagan Collection by Maxe Crandall

About the authors:
Jennifer Soong is a New Jersey and New York-based poet. She received her B.A. in English and Visual & Environmental Studies from Harvard College before working at The New School and joining the English doctoral program at Princeton University. Her poetry has been published in Berfrois, H_NGM_N, Prelude Magazine, DIAGRAM, glitterMOB, among other places, and is currently being translated into Spanish. She is the poetry editor at Nat. Brut and thinks writing poems is a bit like going around with a metal detector while looking for pearls.

Maxe Crandall is the author of the chapbook Emoji for Cher Heart (belladonna*, 2015) and the play Together Men Make Paradigms (Yo-Yo Labs, 2014), which was a finalist for the Leslie Scalapino Award. He has been awarded fellowships from Poets House, the Poetry Project, the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat, and the Millay Colony for the Arts. Maxe is a lecturer in the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Stanford University and splits his time between Berkeley and Brooklyn.

Many thanks to our staff editors, guest editors and to the volunteer readers who helped us put great care into this process. Expect more information about our new authors and their books, as well as other Futurepoem events soon. We'll announce next year's open call guest editors and dates later on this summer/early Fall. Stay tuned! 

FUTUREPOEM AUTHOR SIMONE WHITE 
WINS A 2017 WHITING AWARD

We are so thrilled to share the news that Simone White, author of Of Being Dispersed from Futurepoem, has won a 2017 Whiting Award. The "Whiting" founded in 1985 and accompanied by an award of fifty thousand dollars, are based on “early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.” The program has recognized over 320 writers and poets, including Colson Whitehead, Suzan-Lori Parks, Alice McDermott, Akhil Sharma, David Foster Wallace, August Wilson, Tracy K. Smith, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Jeffrey Eugenides, LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs, Leopoldine Core and Mona Simpson. 

You can read more about Simone's award and learn about this year's other winners at this official announcement at The Paris Review.

Our warmest congratulations to Simone on this incredible recognition of her work!

ANNOUNCING FUTUREPOEM’S 2015 OPEN CALL SELECTIONS

Thank you to everyone who submitted to Futurepoem this past fall! Futurepoem is thrilled to announce the two selections from our most recent open reading period in 2015. The two selections by this year's guest editors Mei-mei Berssenbrugge and Roberto Tejada are:

MY OTHER TONGUE by Rosa Alcalá

SWOLE by Jerika Marchan

We are honored to publish Rosa and Jerika as part of our Futurepoem series. Here's a little bit more about both of these authors:

Rosa Alcalá is the author of two books of poetry, Undocumentaries (2010) and The Lust of Unsentimental Waters (2012), both from Shearsman Books.  Her poems are also included in two recent anthologies: Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing (Counterpath, 2014) and The Volta Book of Poets (Sidebrow Books, 2015). Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2012), edited and translated by Alcalá, was runner-up for the 2013 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She is currently an NEA Fellow in Translation and teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Jerika Marchan was born in Manila, Philippines and grew up in southeastern Louisiana. She is a recent graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Smoking Glue Gun, The Bat City Review, and the new journal agápē.  She lives in New Orleans. 

We will share more information about these authors and their upcoming books very soon.