Terrapin Books News

Turtle slowly making its way to AWP

The first and only time I attended AWP was in 2007 when the conference was held in NYC. Though I had a good time, I didn’t think I’d ever go back. However, this year I was invited to be on a panel: "The Independent Press Anthology: Focusing, Editing, Organizing, Designing, Publishing, and Marketing," moderated by Lucille Lang Day, with Wendy Barker, Bryce Milligan, Claire Ortaldo, and me. Since I had recently begun Terrapin Books and had done our first anthology, The Doll Collection, I thought I might have a thing or two to say and also thought this seemed like a good opportunity to introduce the press to a larger group, so I said yes. I’ll be heading to the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Washington, DC, in February. The panel will be on Thursday from 4:30 - 5:45 PM.

Since I was already going to be there, I decided to book a table in the Book Fair. I’ll be sharing the space with Storyscape Journal. Having the table entitles Terrapin to hold book signings for its poets, so on Friday, I’ll be having signings for Christine Stewart-Nunez with Bluewords Greening, Jessica de Koninck with Cutting Room, and Patricia Clark whose book, The Canopy, will debut at the conference.

Then I also thought that as long as I was going to be there, I should also try to schedule a Terrapin reading. That was a significant challenge as I’m not at all familiar with the area. I contacted poet Kim Roberts, one of the poets in our anthology. She lives in DC and gave me a list of venues to try. They were all prohibitively expensive. One place on the list was the Methodist Church which seemed promising, but the person in charge of booking space was away. Weeks later Sandra Beasley and some other poets sent out a list of venues. I saw the Methodist Church listed so decided to try again. This time I got hold of the person in charge and was happy to learn that they had space and it wouldn’t put me in debtors’ prison.

So there will be a Terrapin Books reading on Thursday, 7:00 - 9:00 PM. The reading will include Christine Stewart-Nunez, Jessica de Koninck, and Patricia Clark, all reading from their Terrapin books. They will be followed by a group reading of close to twenty poets from The Doll Collection, each poet reading one poem. The poets scheduled to read include Meg Hurtado Bloom, Kim Bridgford, Jessica de Koninck, Roberta Feins, Kelly Fordon, Alice Friman, Richard Garcia, Meredith Davies Hadaway, Donna Hilbert, Christina Lovin, Jennifer Perrine, Susan Rich, Kim Roberts, Hayden Saunier, Enid Shomer, Elaine Terranova, J. C. Todd, and Kristin Zimet. Should be a fun, poetry-packed evening.

That’s going to be a very busy Thursday as I’ll be setting up the table and lugging in books in the morning, manning the table all day, doing the panel late afternoon, then hosting the reading in the evening—all in that one day.

Please come to the reading on Thursday evening! And stop by the Terrapin table. We'll be at table #525T. Stop by and say hello, especially on Friday around noon. All three poets will be doing their book signings on Friday.