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Quercus Review Poetry
Series
Annual Book Award
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Meet the Editorial Staff
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2007 Book Award Editors:
Ann Henry, Jason Wholstadter, Ingrid Keriotis, Gary Thomas, Nita Rajagopal,
Ruhi Sheikh, Theron Westrope,
Optimism One, Emily Malsam,
Karen Davies
Karen Davies
teaches part-time at Modesto Junior College. She received a BA in
Literature/Writing from UCSD and an MFA in Creative Writing from Brown
University. She has been part of memorable workshops with Michael
Davidson, Fanny Howe, Michael Palmer, C.D. Wright, and John Yau. Her poems have been published in Raddle Moon, No Roses
Review, and the Voice Literary Supplement. She loves
poems full of serendipitous language and poems that rend the clingy fabric
of daily mind to sight the inexplicable, inexpressible. Poems that get
around the words for what we cant say. Arthur Sze, Frank Stanford, and
Barbara Guest are three poets who inspire her.
Emily Malsam
earned
her M.A. in Rhetoric & Linguistics from North Dakota State University. Her
background in editing runs parallel with her interest in syntactical and
morphological constructions in virtual environments. Her literary
preferences include those authors who consciously control word and
sentence structure in an attempt to move their readers, including ee
cummings, Gertrude Stein, Emily Dickinson, and Federico Garcia Lorca of
particular note.
Optimism One
received his A.A. from
Modesto
Junior
College, his B.A. from UC Berkeley, where he wrote, read, and published
with June Jordan's Poetry for the People, and his M.A. from
CSU
Stanislaus. He also served as the poetry editor for In the Grove:
California Poets and Writers from 1997 to 2001.
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Meet the Founding Editor
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Sam Pierstorff
is
currently the Poet Laureate of Modesto, CA. He teaches English at Modesto
Junior College
and is the founding editor of Quercus Review. He has published 100s
of poems in numerous journals throughout the
U.S.,
including Rattle, Free Lunch,
Pearl,
Slipstream, Nerve Cowboy, Chiron Review (cover feature),
Louisiana
Review, Sidewalks, StapleGun,
and many others. He received his
MFA
from
CSU
Long Beach, and his latest collection, The Albatross Lives, was
nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and was favorably reviewed by X.J.
Kennedy who wrote, "Sam Pierstorff writes clear, straightforward,
no-nonsense poems, full of infectious humor and strong feeling."
As for
his general tastes in poetry, he appreciates poetry with a pulse, poetry
that's accessible and highly readable, humorous or insightful, poetry that
always turns and transcends the obvious nature of things and guides
readers into places they never saw coming. He likes "layers," poems that
reveal themselves more and more upon closer readings but poetry that is at
first clear and engaging. To name just a few favorites is tough, but here
are a few contemporaries he admires: Dorianne Laux, Bob Hicok, Tony
Hoagland, Sharon Olds, Denise Duhamel, Stephen Dunn, Philip Levine, Yusef
Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, Billy Collins, and all of our previous book
award winners. |
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