Fall 2020 TWH Contributors’ Newsletter
To my great sorrow, this last newsletter begins with bereavement. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, our sister in widowhood, died September 18, after repeated bouts with cancer and treatment. She was 87. Ruth wrote the Foreword to The Widows’ Handbook at my request, itself the result of a personal friendship which I inherited from my mother. A brief account of our connection appeared last month in the online magazine Persimmon Tree, part of a collective tribute. It’s the third piece from the end at https://persimmontree.org/fall-2020/tribute-ruth-bader-ginsburg/ halfway through, Jackie Kudler’s poem “Up Ahead” recalls RBG at the Brooklyn high school they both
attended.
Just after I sent the Spring newsletter, Lise and I found out that Barbara L. Greenberg had died April 2, also at 87. She was the author of several novels and short-story collections, in addition to her books of poems. Because Barbara avoided public readings, I often read her “The Woman of Few Tears” myself.
And I shed tears of my own while relleniting to Natasha Saje, whose mother died of Covid-19 on May 8, and to Katherine Bouton, widow of our college friend and blurber Daniel Menaker. Dan died of pancreatic cancer October 26; his last collection of poems, Terminalia, is published posthumously this month.
Under the circumstances, every bit of good news is a flicker of light. Please keep letting us know about your publications, readings, work, and other activities! Lise and her techie friend Isla expect to update the anthology’s web site from time to time. However, I (Jacqueline) need to make this the last official newsletter (yes, really) and try to push myself forward, too. Thank you, all, for keeping me from despair all these years. I’m attaching the latest update of everyone’s contact information.
Barbara Bald’s poem “Lost River, New Hampshire” appeared online July 24 in Silver Birch Press’s Landmark Series: https://silverbirchpress.wordpress.com/2020/07/24/lost-river-new-hampshire-by-barbara-bald-landmarks-series/?fbclid=IwAR05xEeCBmqu3caTKA_b5_70xMCcB0M2HBqJso7Z8BGtM3c7tnUzJyJ6b1A
She also has a poem in this past summer’s PSNH Touchstone (journal) and another in Covid Spring, an anthology (ed. Alexandria Peary, Hobblebush Books). Barb did a Zoom reading with Bob Demaree in September for the Poetry Society of New Hampshire. More updates at www.barbarabald.com.
Judy Bebelaar‘s And Then They Were Gone: Teenagers of Peoples Temple from High School to Jonestown won first prize for journalistic nonfiction in the Chanticleer Nelly Bly awards. Judy’s doing a Zoom book talk about it on November 17 at 6 p.m. PST, hosted by San Francisco’s Mechanics Institute Library. Registration is free. https://www.milibrary.org/events/and-then-they-were-gone-teenagers-peoples-temple-high-school-jonestown-nov-17-2020
Roselee Blooston’s novel Trial by Family was the Gold Medal winner in the 2020 Independent Publishers Book Awards for Mid-Atlantic Best Regional Fiction. Her spring and summer workshop and book club gigs have all gone virtual or been tentatively rescheduled for 2021, because of the pandemic. But, she has become a cover girl––on the July issue of her region’s magazine, Living Rhinebeck. Roselee’s next project: a collection of short stories.
Ann Cefola’s 47-page essay “Beauty That Stands The Test of Time” about her grandfather, the architect Julius Gregory (1875-1955), helped the local historical preservation committee save one of his houses in October. Against the consultant hired by the demolition applicants’ law firm to impugn his legacy, Ann’s paper argues that he was indeed a master architect and so considered by the prestigious clients who commissioned him to build for them.
Lenore McComas Coberly‘s memoir, From the West Virginia Hills (Fireweed Press) is now available from Inkwell Printers, 202 E. Chapel Street., Dodgeville, WI 53533 ($32 including postage). Though she has traveled the world, Lenore doesn’t use a computer—see spreadsheet, line 14, for home address.
Gail Braune Comorat and the other Delaware poets in her regular writing group (Linda Blaskey, Wendy Elizabeth Ingersoll, and Jane C. Miller) are creating ൪uartet, a new quarterly journal highlighting the creativity of women 50 years of age and older. It will include poetry, book reviews and interviews. They already have content for the inaugural issue, launching in January 2021 with a CFS for the Spring issue.
Mary Pacifico Curtis had a poem, “City Windows,” on Jam & Sand last March.
https://jamandsandjournal.com/home/mary-curtis-city-window
Jessica G. de Koninck‘s poem “After Babel,” which originally appeared online in Tiferet Journal, has been translated into Gujarati (a first!), with an article by Vivek Tailor, the translator. Jessica reviewed Donna J. Gelagotis Lee’s collection, Intersection on Neptune, for Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry: www.catholicpoetryjournal.com/presence-2020 She is also a co-editor of ALTE, a literary & arts project connected with Jewish Currents magazine and focusing on creative activity as we get older (https://www.altegettingoldtogether.com). Her YouTube readings can be viewed on https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDCtob9v6sPguKKoUEvGziw?view_as=subscriber
Ruth Bader Ginsburg received the 32nd annual Liberty Medal from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. The video program was broadcast on Constitution Day, September 17, featuring arias from her favorite operas, sung by renowned soloists, and tributes from some of RBG’s special friends and from her granddaughter, Clara Spera. Ruth’s letter of acceptance is shown, but she wasn’t well enough to be filmed at home. https://constitutioncenter.org/liberty-medal/ A few weeks earlier, on Aug. 30, Ruth had officiated at a family friend’s outdoor wedding.
Pat Goodman’s third book, a memarmoir in poetry called Unbridled, has been accepted by Kelsay Books for publication next summer. It’s mostly about the business she and her late husband and ran for forty years, sending riding programs to children’s summer camps.
Donna Hilbert’s poems “Dear Sadness” and “Walk in Winter” appeared online in Sheila-Na-Gig: https://sheilanagigblog.com/volume-4-4-summer-2020-the-poets/donna-
hilbert/?fbclid=IwAR303XFxSF7YL2OFLC5iGpAu2iX6CdTpzWukcOQBMv4rY86TiS69cgMGftA Her “Dirge” is in the Gatherings Project: https://gatheringsproject.com/siems%2Fbeck%2Fbronzan She has new poems in the latest issues of Nerve Cowboy, San Pedro River Review, and forthcoming in the fall issue of Sheila-Na-Gig—as well as each month in Verse-Virtual. Donna’s readings and workshops have had to go virtual, too.
Iris Litt will have six poems online in Vox Poetica; “Do Not Resuscitate” appeared in October, and the other five will follow, one per month, at: voxpoetica.com/Iris Litt . Other recent poems appear in Dash, North Sea Poetry Press, Cutthroat, and Mingled Voices, an anthology from Proverse Poetry. Iris also has a futuristic story, “Return or Exchange,” in the Mud Season Review, issue #50. https://mudseasonreview.com/category/fiction/
Katharyn Howd Machan won Comstock Review’s 2019 Jessie Bryce Niles Poetry Chapbook Contest for A Slow Bottle of Wine. It’s available now at www.comstockreview.org
Laura Manuelidis’s contemplative new collection of poems, Swimming to Oblivion, was published in May (available from Amazon, https://www.amazon.com/SWIMMING-OBLIVION-laura-manuelidis-MD/dp/1651416567/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Laura+Manuelidis&qid=1605030261&s=books&sr=1-1
Lucia May and her husband have settled full-time in Cambridge, Mass., where she’s still teaching violin. She has a box of extra copies of TWH and, she writes, would be happy to send some, without charge, to any of you who might need them.
Lise Menn is still re-transcribing the child language recordings she made in the 1970’s for her doctoral dissertation, so that the data can be used by other researchers. Since this multi-year project requires eyes, ears, fingers, and brains, she has no idea whether she’ll be able to finish it. But she’s working (remotely) with one older and one younger colleague on analyzing some of the data, and they’re finding some publishable results—that’s the fun part!
Joan Michelson has poems in Stand Magazine and the Penine Platform, both long-established literary magazines in the UK with US distribution. She also published ‘Mother’s Day, May 2020″ in “Write Where We Are Now,” a Manchester Metropolitan Covid project https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/write; “Logan’s Sunday” and “The Way Back” in Medical Literary Messenger, a VCU journal (Feb. 2020, med-lit.VCU.edu ); and
“Sick Lungs: A Wartime Story” in the anthology Israel Voices 2020.
Pamela Manché Pearce was a finalist in Nowhere Magazine’s Fall 2019 Travel Writing contest, for a chapter from her memoir, Blue Crete, chronicling four summers she spent on the island (1989-1992). Pamela hopes this second excerpt in Nowhere (first was in 2016) will help the book find its publisher. Meanwhile, you can read both chapters here: https://nowheremag.com/author/pamela-manche-pearce/
Ellen Peckham had a poem, “Carnet de Bal” in the 25th Anniversary issue of the Atlanta Review, and three haiku, “old book” “like the cat” and “strawberry” plus a poem in the western mode, “Nap,” published in HQ Quarterly, a British literary journal. Ellen’s poem “Old Barn,” along with her print of the barn itself, appears in DASH. The spring/summer 2020 issue of Comstock Review included her poem about the Gothic German sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. Ellen participated in the Colrain manuscript consultation conference in July (online this year). She also had art works in several exhibits last year. Her new web site is now live at www.ellenpeckham.com.
Helen Ruggieri has an essay “Rejection” in the anthology Far Villages: Welcome Essays for New and Beginning Writers (Black Lawrence Press),
Natasha Sajé’s memoir, Terroir: Love, Out of Place (Trinity University Press), reflects on how location shaped her perceptions, identities and personal experiences, over time and through many changes—including her husband’s illness and death and falling in love again. She’s reading from it in three online events ( free, but registration required):
November 13, 6 pm mountain time, https://www.kingsenglish.com/event/tke-presents-online-natasha-saje-terroir-love-out-place
November 19, 7 pm mountain time, https://westminstercollege.edu/student-life/events-and-
performances/poetry-series
Aline Soules had two poems in the Galway Review, “Gutting” and “The Witching Hour.” She reviewed Jenny Molberg’s: Refusal: Poems for Tupelo Quarterly in October. https://www.tupeloquarterly.com/the-struggle-of-spirit-a-review-of-refusal-poems/?fbclid=IwAR24Onyz4sBJJXEgKl4RGAgmYSsxG-utzTZfNc27xEnxppgg0YUVuTUlhTU
Ellen Steinbaum made a video for the 15th anniversary of Cervena Barva Press: https://www.facebook.com/ellen.steinbaum/videos/10157656952676819 and another for the Stockbridge (Mass.) Public Library’s Medicine for the Soul series (see link on her web site). She also did several Zoom readings with other poets , including the Boston Poetry Marathon Aug. 7. Ellen’s poem “we have no words” appears in River Heron Review’s special section “Poems for Now”: https://www.riverheronreview.com/toc-for-pfn-september-2020
Tammi Truax, as Poet Laureate of Portsmouth, NH, writes a weekly poem for the city’s coronavirus newsletter, tempering its grim statistics with verse. This link goes to the collection:
https://www.cityofportsmouth.com/city-manager/portsmouth-poet-laureate
She was featured in The New York Times, with a photo at her desk, Sunday, Aug. 9, pA12 in print, and online at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/us/portsmouth-nh-newsletter-
poems.html?fbclid=IwAR28vI–TMax-lkEHegs47t7d8IxHsTX1cx451seqktxt2q0KmPw_7i0_xs
Tammi’s project was also included in CNN’s online newsletter (scroll down past the zebras):
https://view.newsletters.cnn.com/messages/1598097694837541c81138cab/raw?utm_term=15980976948
37541c81138cab&utm_source=The+Good+Stuff+08%2F22%2F20&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=237792_1598097694839&bt_ee=eerft%2Fa22wJvYJ4gFcJNp325ysHunaRa6Fu20Y15EpGLRDm3xpnn
%2BJODCsCzHTWv&bt_ts=1598097694839&fbclid=IwAR1g9R2JBIv6D-
Oz3LXS8XVoYJPsnxJ44oDIjRmUQkUvhmaMlp-nBPprxKE
Nancy Womack’s collection of widow poems, Red Jacket Requiem, won the 2020 Chapbook competition from Hermit Feathers Press and will be published in 2021. It includes her “Christmas Trilogy” from TWH. After 15 years and many revisions, mostly about her evolutions as a stronger, more independent woman, it comes with Nancy’s very best wishes to all of us.
Lise and I send our very best wishes to all of you.