Bainbridge Island Press publishes my chapbook Simultaneous States!

This innovative and dynamic press with a new vision for chapbook publishing has published my poetry chapbook, Simultaneous States!

My new chapbook, Simultaneous States, consists of 16 poems inspired by the experience of being two things at once---to feel both native and alien, both spirit and flesh, both the observer and the observed, both in the present and in the past. Many of the poems depict encounters and visitations that draw attention to these parallel experiences, some in reality, and some only in the imagination.

"Nova's Voice" a feminist, persona poem published in MER (Mom Egg Review) 20!

Inspired by the iconic final scene in the original The Planet of the Apes film, "Nova's Voice" was published in Mom Egg Review's Mother Figures issue--just in time for Mother's Day!  I sent my Mom a copy--she's 99 years young!  She always encouraged me to write and kept everything I ever wrote from Kindergarten verses on.

Copperfield Review publishes "Abelard's Lost Letter to Heloise"

The Copperfield Review, " the world’s online home for short historical fiction and historical poetry" and  (20 years this year!) published my poem "Abelard's Lost Letter to Heloise" on July 6th!

The Best Late News--Pushcart Nomination 2020!

I just found out (having been out of touch in social media lately) that the Editors of Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry, nominated my poem "A Modern Day Amazon Visits the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston" for a 2020 Pushcart Prize back in November (along with four other poets published in that volume.)  Thank you, Stacey Balkun and Catherine Moore!

This honor came at a good time for me, since I haven't been writing or submitting much lately and I needed a good kick in the pants!

This is my 3rd Pushcart nomination:  2014, 2017 and now 2020!  I hope it's a good portent for the year to come!

Year in Review: 2018--Year of the Anthology!

2018 turned out to be the year of the anthology for me!

Five new anthologies do/will include my poems:

• Nuclear Impact: Broken Atoms in Our Hands, by Shabda Press, available now.
• Feminine Rising: Voices of Power and Invisibility, by Cynren Press (April 30th, 2019)  
• Fiolet and Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist poetry (forthcoming, 2019)
• Boricua en la Luna, an anthology of Puerto Rican Voices, May, 2019.
• Running with Water by V Press LC, later this year.

Other publications/acceptances this past year:

"Meeting on the Turret Stairs" an ekphrastic poem after the eponymous painting by Frederick William Burton, was accepted by V Press LC.

Falling Star Magazine published another of my poems in their summer issue, leading to my making the acquaintance of fellow Falling-Star-published poet Joseph Zaccardi, an excellent poet and former poet laureate of Marin County, CA.

New Reader Magazine published two poems in June.

Ending the old year on a positive note: Boricua en la Luna anthology!

I'm very excited and honored to announce that Boricua en la Luna: An Anthology of Puerto Rican voices just accepted two of my poems for their upcoming publication!  It's a great way to end this year, which doesn't have too many good things associated with it, in my mind.  Boricua en la Luna's profits will benefit the Hispanic Federation's efforts on behalf of the island's hurricanes Maria and Irma recovery effort.  Many thanks to editor Elena Aponte for her vision and effort on behalf of the island and support for diverse voices in literature!

From their site:

We want diverse voices from Puerto Rico: stories, poems, and essays that will help the world understand the wonderful people who live on the island, a place that has given the world immensely talented artists, actors, writers, poets, musicians, librarians, politicians, humanitarians, scientists, and athletes-- a place that still needs our support and our love.

Boricua En La Luna will be available in Mid-2019 in both electronic and print formats.

Feminine Rising: Voices of Power & Invisibility--anthology update

My poem "Reunion" was accepted for publication in this anthology a while back. I just visited their site and I'm happy to find out they found a publisher, Cynren Press! It's available for Pre-order here:
Feminine Rising

We've officially signed a contract with Cynren Press!
Contributors will hear from us as soon as possible about next steps. We are so grateful to you all for sharing your voices with us, for making this labor of love something really worth loving.
Sincerely,
Andrea Fekete and Lara Lillibridge, editors

First acceptances of 2018--New Reader Magazine

I haven't been sending out poems as often as I used to, so it was very heartening to receive my first acceptances of the new year from New Reader Magazine, an Arts, Literature & Cultural Quarterly. They have an exciting mixture of prose and poetry from writers all over the world. Their site is very fresh and visually pleasing as well!

My two poems, The Little Sunfish and Mistress Prynne Dreams of Her Youth were accepted for their June issue. The Little Sunfish is my latest poem, written about the robots used to clean up after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant disaster in 2017. The robot they called Manbo, which means "little sunfish", was the one that helped discover the source of the leak and thus saved many lives.

Mistress Prynne refers to the epilogue about Hester Prynne's later life in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter which not everyone remembers after reading the book, but which obviously made an impression on my imagination!

Happiness is seeing your own book in your library!

Today I walked into the Green Library at Florida International University, where I work, and found that some nice person had displayed my new poetry chapbook, The Ocean Between Us, in good company on the New Books shelf!  They obviously intended that I see it, since I'm the one who usually organizes the display shelves!  A few minutes later it was gone...maybe someone's actually reading it?  Uh, oh!

Call number:  PS 3606. E7334.O33 2017

Pushcart Prize nomination surprise!

Thirty West Publishing House just nominated my sonnet "Blood Pacts" as one of their Pushcart Prize nominations for 2017!  I am floored and very honored!  I never imagined it would happen again so soon.  Many thanks to editor Josh Dale and others who took the time and effort to make it happen!
Congratulations to my fellow nominees, too! 

The Ocean Between Us cover reveal!

Backbone Press just published my new poetry chapbook The Ocean Between Us along with Faisal Mohyuddin‘s The Riddle of Longing.  Faisal’s book The Displaced Children of Displaced Children just won the 2017 Sexton Prize for Poetry from Eyewear Publishing; I’m very honored and excited to be published alongside him!

Many thanks to editor Crystal Simone Smith for the beautiful cover design and to editor Daniel Romo for his blurb!

Backbone Press will publish The Ocean Between Us!

I'm excited and honored to announce that Backbone Press chose my chapbook The Ocean Between Us as one of their two Fall 2017 publications from 120+ entries.  It will be in the pre-order stage for a few weeks ($9 via paypal).  The Riddle of Longing by Faisal Mohyuddin is the other chapbook chosen. Faisal just won the the 2017 Sexton Prize selected by Kimiko Hahn! 

Backbone's description: 

The Ocean Between Us is a collection of poems wrapped in memories and language. Beatriz Fernandez artfully weaves together dazzling imagery and alluring sounds to create concrete visions of Puerto Rico, Florida, and a geography of loss. With the ability to use the perfect words to describe imperfect times, she poses questions that pierce the human spirit. Unsure of the answer, this is a book of poetry that is rich with the “embryonic code of things to come.”

I'm really happy to have another chapbook published so soon after my first, Shining from a Different Firmament, in 2015 (Finishing Line Press).

The Ocean Between Us is very different than Shining, which was mostly a collection of persona poems about historical, literary and legendary women.  Ocean, as I described in my last post, is a collection of 25 poems about my personal experiences in Puerto Rico and Florida, from childhood to the present.  The first poem, Calle del Cristo, is an exception in that it is a persona poem.

The suffering of all Puerto Ricans as the island has endured two hurricanes is omnipresent in my mind these days.  My family members are safe and being very brave about the circumstances but I can't imagine living through that.  We were in Miami during Hurricane Andrew, but it did not hit our area directly.  Irma again sideswiped us, leaving only fences and trees down, mostly.  We are so lucky to have our homes and our lives to go back to.

Backbone Press finalist!

I'm very happy to learn that my chapbook, The Ocean Between Us, is a finalist in Backbone Press's Spring open reading session.

Backbone Press is a small press for ethnic poets and is interested in:

language that is elegant and provocative; poetry that informs and engages us in broader cultural conversations.

Even if my chapbook doesn't get accepted for publication, it is an honor to make it to the final round!

The Ocean Between Us is a 25-poem chapbook divided into two sections: Puerto Rico poems and Florida poems.  The journey begins with a brief visit back to Puerto Rico that brings back many memories of my childhood spent there. I’m the daughter of an immigrant and an islander whose ancestors also immigrated to their respective homelands.  Within every generation of my family there came a decision: to leave or to stay, and my ancestors always chose to leave, for their own sake and for their children’s.  From this restless heritage I derived a curious lack of home sense—I’ve always been neither one thing nor another, neither native nor alien.  These poems are an attempt to gather all these emotions together into a cohesive whole—to define what we mean by “home” and to highlight that perhaps it’s the ocean between that really matters:  that ever-changing, ever-the-same body that divides us and yet also unites us into a single body.

June publications!

June has been a good month for me!

First, Alsina Publications accepted two flash fiction fantasy pieces, with a view to a third to complete the trilogy.  Alsina is launching a new language learning app, LingoBites, that will help students and other customers learn languages by reading stories!

Then Highland Park Poetry republished my poem "The Last Thing I'll Lose" in their Muses Gallery bird themed summer issue.

The Ginger Collect, self professed publishers of "The Weird, the New Age and the Strange" were kind enough to publish two of my poems in their Issue Two:  "The Story of the Stones" and "Under a Graveyard Sun."

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review also featured my poem "Plague Graffiti" on their page.
This poem was based on a BBC news article:

(Songs of Eretz Editor’s Note:  "This is a unique and moving elegy that resonates as much today in the age of indiscriminate terror attacks as it would have 500 years ago during the black plague that struck Cambridgeshire.")

Thirty West Publishing House's beautiful hand-bound chapbooks!

Thirty West Publishing House produces hand-bound chaplets and chapbooks.  As I previously posted, they recently chose my poem "The Surest Poison" as winner of their sonnet challenge (part of their celebration of National Poetry Month) and now editor Josh Dale is publishing a chaplet of all the weekly challenge winners!  It will include work from four different writers and four different genres/forms, and will include my winning sonnet as well as a second sonnet "Blood Pacts."  Many thanks to TWPH for their support of poetry and writers!  I would like to learn to make hand-bound chaps like these!  In Josh's picture, you see some of the tools he uses and the resulting chapbooks.

P.S.
If you look closely at the picture, you will see that my two poems happened to fall in the middle pages of the chaplet!

The Ghazal Page publishes my ghazal "Wings" about Ada Lovelace in their Freedom issue.

POEMS

Beatriz F. Fernandez
Wings

"The Surest Poison" wins Thirty West Publishing House's sonnet challenge

Many thanks to Thirty West Publishing House for choosing my poem, The Surest Poison, as winner of their sonnet challenge!  They are a micropress based in Philadelphia, which naturally appeals to me.  They will possibly re-publish this sonnet in a chaplet compilation of their contest winners.  This was a great way to celebrate National Poetry Month!

Looking back at 2016 -- the year of the anthology

It was the year of the anthology for me, as four anthologies have accepted my poems, three of which will be published in 2017.  Also, it will be a first for my work to be included in an art exhibit!  

2016: Year in Review

Publications: 14

The Quarterday Review print and online (Maid Marian’s Many Silences ghazal)

The Ghazal Page online (3 ghazals, From Dante to Beatrice, From Beatrice to Dante and Rilke Returns to Ronda)

The Copperfield Review online (3 poems, Maid Joan’s Gethesemane, Genesis, 1880, and the Lost Colony)

The Australia Times Poetry Magazine online (4 poems, The Last Thing I’ll Lose, Inspiration, Bahia Honda Beach Conch and Mother Re-gifts)

Stonecoast Literary Review (1 poem, Monody for a Leading Man)

Anthologies/Collections: 2

Pay Attention: Poems for Oral Interpretation (2 poems, Her Last Cotillion, Richard the Lionheart’s Mummified Heart Examined)

Total 14 publications

Acceptances

Spark: A Creative Anthology (2 poems not published yet.)

Street Voice journal (3 poems, not published yet, Poem for My Father, In the Shadow of the Miami Metrorail Overpass, Departures)

Fiolet & Wing Domestic Fabulist anthology) (1 poem, A Modern Day Amazon visits the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston)

Feminine Rising: Voices of Power & Invisibility (with Ellen Bass!)   (1 poem, Reunion)

               Shabda Press’s Nuclear Impact Anthology: Broken Atoms in Our Hands (1 poem)

               

               Arte Latino Now 2017 exhibit in January 2017 (1 poem, Calle del Cristo, Old San Juan)

               Whale Road Review (1 poem, The Astronomer’s New Eyes, for their June issue)

               Total acceptances and publications: 24

Interviews:

FEM website interview

Queens Center for Latino Studies interview—Meet the Writers—published online on their tumblr page.

Reviews:

Literary Arts Review of Shining from a Different Firmament

Svetlana’s Reads and Reviews blog: review of Shining from a Different Firmament

Nomination/Honors:

"Calle de Cristo, Old San Juan" chosen for the Arte Latino Now 2017 exhibit at Queens University in a nationwide competition!

Words Dance—actually last year, my poem Late Night Shift was a finalist in their nomination list for Best of the Net and I didn’t realize it until recently! 

Workshops/Classes:

Key West Literary Seminar Writing Workshop with Campbell McGrath  --  this workshop yielded three new poems, two of which have already been published and one, "Calle del Cristo" which was chosen for the aforementioned Arte Latino Now exhibit!

Speculative Fiction writing class (online) with best-selling, award-winning science fiction author C.S. (Celia) Friedman!  This class yielded my first completely edited short story--about a robot!  I also began a story about Death as a character.  It generated many ideas for future stories and I also had several magic world-building ideas that Celia said were original and promising for novel-length works.  I don't intend to write novels, but maybe I could manage a novella or novelette!  I also met a great group of writers who are willing to read and critique my work.

   

Stonecoast Review publishes my "Monody for a Leading Man"

My poem, "Monody for a Leading Man" has been published in Stonecoast Review's Winter 2016 issue 6.  Stonecoast Review: a literary arts journal published by the University of Southern Maine's MFA program in Creative Writing.

Pay Attention: Poems for Oral Interpretation

Pay Attention: Poems for Oral Interpretation, edited by John Pierce, now on sale at Amazon,  contains two of my longer persona pieces: "Her Last Cotillion" about Doc Holliday and his cousin Mattie (whom Melanie Wilkes in Gone With the Wind was modeled after) and "Richard Lionheart's Mummified Heart Examined" a piece in various voices about the recent discovery of King Richard's heart buried beneath a church in Rouen.  The editor's intention is that this collection of poems be used for high school dramatic interpretation competitions.  I thought it was a great idea, especially as he says it is difficult to find good pieces to use for this purpose.  When I was in Forensics in high school, I couldn't find a piece I liked and I ended up writing my own, and after I left it was used by others.