'Nerve Curriculum' Featured by The Latinx Project NYU: ‘La Treintena’ 2023

Manuel Paul Lopez's ‘Nerve Curriculum’ (Futurepoem 2023) was recently featured in The Latinx Project's “La Treintena 2023” — where Urayoán Noel highlights 30 (Something) Books of Latinx Poetry that have been making a splash this year:

This book begins with a burst of translingual noise (echoing PJ Harvey) and from there flows into a fragmentary écriture that has something of the rigor and clarity of the conceptual, not afraid of repetition or abstraction. Whereas some of Lopez’s other work has more transparently evoked the San Diego and Imperial Valley borderlands he is rooted in, here the memory of youth and the constitution of selfhood are fascinatingly worked through the speaker’s cousin/neighbor/alter ego, the “Chicano goth” Nestor. Along the way, the book pings with references to everyone from Kim Hyesoon and Don Mee Choi to John Yau, Kenneth Koch, José Olivarez, Jack Hirschman, and Zora Neale Hurston, and to the alternative curricula of Wikipedia and YouTube. Don’t miss the beautiful abjection of “Bird Brain,” the last couplet of which contains its own kind of wisdom: “Of all the rain falling on this planet I’ve somehow attracted / the neon spacey kind that governs like a syllabus of smoke."

Violet Spurlock selected by Poets & Writers as a debut poet for the Get the Word Out program

We are excited to announce that forthcoming 2023 Futurepoem author Violet Spurlock was selected by Poets & Writers for their Get the Word Out program along with amazing new authors from Tupelo Press, Pitt Poetry Series, Akashic Books, Tin House, and others! 

Poets & Writers has announced the ten debut poets selected for their spring 2023 cohort of Get the Word Out, a publicity incubator designed to provide expert advice and peer support for early-career authors—at no cost to the authors or their publishers.

In the months ahead, these ten poets will take part in a series of workshops led by Morgan LaRocca, publicist at Milkweed Editions, supplemented by seminars with other leading publishing professionals. The poets, who hail from cities across the United States including Amherst, Massachusetts; Atlanta; Oakland; and Richmond, will each develop and execute a strategic marketing plan designed to leverage the pivotal opportunity presented by their debut collections.

The program is part of United States of Writing, an initiative to extend and deepen Poets & Writers’ service to writers nationwide. It aims to reduce barriers to success for writers from historically marginalized communities—including BIPOC and LGBTQ writers—as well as those from outside of New York City and those whose books are published by independent presses. Get the Word Out is generously supported by Leonard and Louise Riggio and Macmillan Publishers. (For more information visit at.pw.org/GTWO.)

Violet Spurlock was selected to receive the 2021 Other Futures Award for her book 
In Lieu of Solutions.

Violet Spurlock is a writer living in the Bay Area. Her published works include Alloyed Bliss (Eyelet, 2021) and VS VS VS (Gauss PDF, 2021). In addition to writing poetry, she also facilitates a writing group for trans authors and is currently at work on a novel. In Lieu of Solutions is her first full-length book and is forthcoming from Futurepoem in 2023.  

 Link to view the full press release 

Futurepoem at AWP 2023

Futurepoem was thrilled to attend this year's AWP 2023 in Seattle, WA! 

It was such a joy to meet everyone who came by our table at the bookfair where we had special discounts on select Futurepoem titles, merch, and an excluive print catalog. 

January at Futurefeed : Kicking Off the New Year with Writer-in-Residence Anna Moschovakis 

Announcing Futurepoem's 2020 Open Call Selections

We are thrilled to announce the two books selected for publication by our 2020 Open Call guest editors: Rosa Alcalá, Marie Buck, and Farnoosh Fathi: 

u know how much i hate being alone in social situations// by Stephon Lawrence 

& 

Nerve Curriculum by Manuel Paul López! 

Stephon Lawrence is a Brooklyn born & based writer, and artist. She is a graduate of the MFA in Writing at Pratt Institute and is co-founder and an editor of The Felt, a journal of otherworldly poetics interested in the creation and cultivation of emancipatory poetic spaces for felt sentiments that have been marginalized, displaced, or estranged from the dominant culture. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, Horesless Press, Queen Mob's Teahouse, GlitterMOB, Fanzine & other places. Her micro-chap //GERMZ is available from Ghost City Press. And her chapbook //EVIL TWIN is available from Resolving Host. She is a recipient of a Summer Workshop Scholarship at The Fine Arts Work Center. Stephon spends her free time watching anime and kdramas, training muay thai, yelling about white supremacy, and being cute for the 'gram. Her work aims to encapsulate all of this. She is almost always online. You can find her on twitter @nnohpetss and instagram @alphaheaux. 

Manuel Paul López's books and chapbook include These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series 2017), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press 2013), winner of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, 1984 (Amsterdam Press 2010), and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press 2006). He also co-edited two anthologies, Reclaiming Our Stories 2 (City Works Press 2020) and Reclaiming Our Stories (City Works 2017), both generated from a community-based writers workshop of the same name that he's co-facilitated since 2016 in Southeast San Diego. A CantoMundo fellow, his work has been published in Bilingual Review, Denver Quarterly, Fairy Tale Review, Hanging Loose, Huizache, New American Writing, Puerto del Sol, and ZYZZYVA. He lives in San Diego and teaches at San Diego City College. 

A Message to our Community: Resources for Artists in Need

This is an extremely challenging time for our writing and small press publishing community. We know not everyone is dealing with health concerns but the significant economic impact to individual writers, artists, and arts organizations - including small press publishers. 

What follows are lists from fellow arts organizations of resources for artists and non-profits in regard to health, funding, work opportunities, and more in response to the international spread of COVID-19. We hope these are useful to you and that they get into the hands that need them most. Above all, we hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy in these strange, uncertain times. Thank you for your continued support. 

NYS Council on the Arts 

Resources for New York State Arts and Culture organizations, including information regarding event safety, news sources, legal support, arts education support, community building and others. 

Creative Capital 

Resources for artists in times of need including grants, artist's funds, job listings, and sources of daily information on the development of COVID-19, plus upcoming opportunities and deadlines in March and April 2020. 

Freelance Artist Resource 

Resources including advice for general preparedness, advocacy alerts, emergency funding, international resources, online platforms, health and mental health resources, temporary and remote job opportunities and more. 

NYFA 

A message from Michael L. Royce, Executive Director of NYFA, and a list of resources for preparedness and response to COVID-19 geared toward artists from arts organizations. 

Asian American Arts Alliance 

A short message and list from the AAAA including arts and culture organizations' responses to COVID-19 and their resources, as well as those of NY State Public Health organizations. 

Cave Canem

Lots of great resources on this page including relief funds for queer writers and writers of color, as well as a virtual writing community led by Cave Canem with prompts and links to poetry-related readings. 

Grantmakers in the Arts 

A letter from GIA's President and CEO, Eddie Torres, and a list of resources regarding support for artists, relevant news outlets, and guidance for non-profits. 

Council on Foundations 

Resources for employers and employees, response to COVID-19, and response funds and funding opportunities. 

Thank you to everyone who helped us reach our 2019 end-of-year fundraising goal!

Thank you so much to everyone who supported our end of the year  campaign. We really really appreciate your help and encouragement. Thanks to you we successfully met and exceeded our end of year fundraising goal through combined donations through our website, facebook and other platforms. With that support, we are excited to publish some amazing new books of poetry and cross-genre literature in 2020. It will also enable us to support our publication opportunities like our annual open reading period and our new Other Futures Award in the spring/early summer. In addition, your support will help us continue to develop our new online publishing space futurefeed that supports online residencies by noted writers and to continue to host free literary events for the public in New York City and nationally. It will also enable us to pay our freelance editors and designers a fair wage that supports the quality work they are doing on behalf of our authors and the press. 

All of our new and recent supporters are featured on our Supporter page on our web site. 

If you missed our end of year campaign and would still like to learn more about ways to get involved, please visit our Ways to Support page. 

Thanks again for your continued and generous support!

The Editors

Announcing futurefeed, Our New Online Space & Our First Blogger-in-Residence, Douglas Kearney

futurefeed, an extension of Futurepoem, is a new online space where writers, artists +thinkers we admire are invited to experiment and explore ideas that are important to them over an extended period of time.

Bloggers-in-Residence are invited to publish poems, essays, manifestos, letters, critical essays, videos, video essays, experiments, plays, work-in-progress, audio, dreams, comics, short stories, images, interviews, digressions, or lists. At this time, we are not accepting submissions.

Our first Blogger-in-Residence will be Douglas Kearney beginning in November. Stay tuned!

 --------------------------->

Futurepoem and ICA Philadelphia Speech/Acts Catalog Launch at Printed Matter on Saturday, April 7th

On Saturday April 7th, Printed Matter will host a launch event for Speech/Acts, a publication accompanying an exhibition by the same name (September - December, 2017) at the Institute of Contemporary at the University of Pennsylvania. The catalog is co-published by ICA Philadelphia and Futurepoem.

The event will include a conversation between Dan Machlin (Editorial Founder and Executive Editor, Futurepoem), Meg Onli (Assistant Curator, ICA Philadelphia) and the poet/scholar Amber Rose Johnson speaking about the Speech/Acts exhibition and the process of translating that into a publication.

The Speech/Acts exhibition catalog features reprints of seminal texts from Fred Moten and Harryette Mullen, and newly commissioned poetry by Morgan Parker, Simone White, and an essay from the exhibition curator, Meg Onli.

The exhibition features the work of Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Steffani Jemison, Tony Lewis, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Martine Syms. The artists in this exhibition use poetics as a tool to manipulate the conceptual and structural elements of language and the social contexts in which language is employed, appropriated, and abstracted.

View the Facebook Event invite

Futurepoem will be a the AWP 2018 Conference in Tampa Florida from March 8-March 10th

Please join Futurepoem, Catenary and @xx_press @ #AWP2018 bookfair Table T1134. With a new book by Jerika Marchan and the #SpeechActs exhibition catalog co-published w @ICAPhiladelphia with work by Harryette Mullen, Fred Moten, Meg Onli, @simonefonsiba@morganapple + others.

Also Join BOAAT, Gramma, and UDP for early evening reading/revelry in C.1949's backyard. Accuweather forecasts "brilliance" and readings from:

Rosa Alcalá
Diana Arterian
Matthew Cooperman
Meg Freitag
Sarah Galvin
Brionne Janae
Aby Kaupang
Anastacia-Reneé
Jon Ruseski
Emmalea Russo
Catherine Taylor

Friday March 9th
4:30 PM - 6:30 PM
C. 1949 Florida Beer Garden
6905 N. Orleans Ave., Tampa, Florida 33604 

Facebook Event Page

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. 

Book Launch for Rosa Alcala's MyOTHER TONGUE, Sunday 6/25, NYC

Come on down this Sunday for a book party for Rosa Alcalá's new Futurepoem book MyOTHER TONGUE. 

BOOK PARTY

for

MyOTHER TONGUE
by Rosa Alcalá

with Readings by 
Rosa Alcalá, Cecilia Vicuña and Carmen Giménez Smith

Hosted by our friends at McNally Jackson books.

Sunday June 25th, 7-9 PM Free
McNally Jackson Books
52 Prince Street, NY, NY

View Facebook Invite
McNally Jackson Books Event Page

About Rosa Alcalá:
Rosa Alcalá is the author of Undocumentaries and The Lust of Unsentimental Waters. The recipient of an NEA Translation Fellowship, she has translated the work of Cecilia Vicuña, Lila Zemborain, and Lourdes Vázquez, among other poets. Spit Temple: The Selected Performances of Cecilia Vicuña, edited and translated by Alcalá, was runner-up for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. Born and raised in Paterson, NJ, she now lives in El Paso, TX, where she teaches in the Department of Creative Writing and Bilingual MFA Program at the University of Texas-El Paso.

About the other readers:
Cecilia Vicuña is a poet and multimedia artist born in Santiago de Chile. She has been in exile since the military coup in Chile in l973. She is the author of twenty two books of poetry, most recently Spit Temple: The Performances of Cecilia Vicuña, edited & translated by Rosa Alcalá. About to Happen, an artist book, was published earlier this year by Siglio Press. Cecilia Vicuña: The Selected Poems (1966-2015) is forthcoming from Kelsey Street Press, 2017.

Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of a memoir, Bring Down the Little Birds (University of Arizona), four poetry collections—Milk and Filth (University of Arizona), Goodbye, Flicker (University of Massachusetts), The City She Was (Center for Literary Publishing) and Odalisque in Pieces (University of Arizona)—and three poetry chapbooks—Reason's Monsters (Dusie Kollectiv), Can We Talk Here (Belladonna Books) and Glitch (Dusie Kollectiv). She has also co-edited a fiction anthology, My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (Penguin). She is the recipient of a 2011 American Book Award, the 2011 Juniper Prize for Poetry, and a 2011-2012 fellowship in creative nonfiction from the Howard Foundation. Formerly a Teaching-Writing Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, she now teaches in the creative writing programs at New Mexico State University and Ashland University, while serving as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal Puerto del Sol and the publisher of Noemi Press. She lives with her husband, the writer Evan Lavender-Smith, and their two children in Las Cruces, New Mexico.

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!

SIMONE WHITE’S OF BEING DISPERSED
NAMED ONE OF SMALL PRESS DISTRIBUTION’S 
TOP 40 TITLES IN RECENT HISTORY

Small Press Distribution is featuring their top 40 titles in recent history and Simone White’s Of Being Dispersed published by Futurepoem is on the list! Her book is part of a limited time 20% off sale at SPD. You can find out more information at the special SPD page here.

NEW BRUCE BOONE REVIEW OF
THE SISSIES UP AT JACKET2

Jacket2 has published a new insightful review of Evan Kennedy’s The Sissies recently published by Futurepoem entitled "Paradise Now." Here's a brief quote from the reivew:

"The alien poet ever moving from agglomeration to agglomeration is a picture in motion. A nomad. A passerby, as the Thomas gospel says. That this is in fact truly the normal situation is something most of us may fail to realize. On the contrary, to think essentialistically is to be at odds with the core spirit of The Sissies. The subject of this book is, in a sense, motion itself. It is, then, a book of change." 

Read the review at Jacket2.

FUTUREPOEM AT AWP CONFERENCE 2017 
IN WASHINGTON D.C. FEB. 9TH–11TH

Futurepoem will be at AWP (Associated Writing Programs) Conference 2017 in Washington D.C. from Thursday, February 9th–Saturday 11th!

We'll be showcasing our books and authors at the AWP Bookfair at the Washington D.C. Convention Center at a shared table with Elis Press. We will also be hosting a reading event with readers from Futurepoem, Elis and Litmus Press on Friday evening Feb. 10th. And Futurepoem Founder and Executive Editor Dan Machlin will be speaking at an AWP panel discussion Friday morning about our recent website redesign by Everything Studio. 

More details and links to follow.

BOOK PARTY FOR THE SISSIES
BY EVAN KENNEDY WITH LISA JARNOT

Rumor has it there will be a not-so-secret book party for The Sissies by Evan Kennedy from Futurepoem on Saturday 4/30/16. With readings by Evan Kennedy and Lisa Jarnot. 

Saturday April 30, doors open at 7 PM, reading at 7:30
PH Projects, 253 East Houston Street, 2nd Floor, New York, New York
Facebook event page

Hope to see you there!

NEW BOOKS BY SIMONE WHITE 
AND EVAN KENNEDY IN APRIL

Futurepoem is excited to announce two new books:

The Sissies by Evan Kennedy
Of Being Dispersed by Simone White

Look out for more details on these books in early April! 

FUTUREPOEM’S 2015 OPEN READING PERIOD 

Futurepoem is excited to announce our open reading period dates and guest editors for this year. The open reading period will begin 11/15/15 and the submission deadline will be 12/15/15. Our guest editors for this year will be Omar Berrada, Dawn Lundy Martin and Jena Osman. For more information about our guest editors and submissions guidelines, please visit our submissions page.

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.

We are excited to present you with our brand new Futurepoem site and look for our press. 

From the beginning Futurepoem finding and celebrating daring new literary voices with unique points of view. So we wanted to create a site and new press identity that also expressed a unique point of view, but still felt welcoming and easy to use at the same time. We hope you like our new look. Let us know what you think and any suggestions about how to make our site better. Our sincerest thanks to Jessica Green and Tom Griffiths at Everything Studio for their amazing work creating this new site and press identity. 

This blog will be the place to find exciting Futurepoem news about new authors, books, events and upcoming submissions periods. Plus we'll also be posting responses to recent Futurepoem books, posts by special guest bloggers and authors and we will be sharing videos, photos and other great things. So stay tuned — this is just the start of many great things we have in the works for 2015!