Contributors to NER’s “Focus on Germany” issue gather in Berlin for a drink and conversation, and to pick up a few extra copies of the new issue. Photos by Joseph Pearson and Ellen Hinsey (not pictured). At Hackbarth’s in Mitte, October 26, 2016.
Archives for October 2016
Brigit Pegeen Kelly and Lucia Perillo
This past week we lost two beloved poets, Brigit Pegeen Kelly (b. 1951) and Lucia Perillo (b. 1958). Over the decades both these writers have come to mean a lot to us at NER. Brigit Kelly’s poetry appeared in our pages frequently, as early as 1986 and as recently as 2014. Lucia Perillo’s most recent contribution was the title poem from her new collection, Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones, just last year. We also published her fiction and poetry beginning in 1997.
We’d like to acknowledge their enormous influence and inspiration with these poems.
“The Dragon” (35.3) by Brigit Pegeen Kelly, was first published in NER in 2002 and then reprinted in C. Dale Young’s last issue as poetry editor.
“Time Will Clean the Carcass Bones,” by Lucia Perillo, from NER 36.3.
Best American Poetry 2016
The book is out! In this season of Best Americans, we’re happy to say that two poems published in our pages during 2015 appear in Best American Poetry 2016, guest edited by Edward Hirsch with series editor David Lehman.
Selected for the anthology are Patrick Rosal’s “At the Tribunals” (35.4) and Cate Marvin’s “High School in Suzhou” (36.1).
We’re also pleased to note that our poetry editor Rick Barot also has a poem in that anthology: “Whitman, 1841,” originally published in Waxwing.
As Edward Hirsch says in his introduction, “In our era, poetry has been radically wrenched and questioned, reframed, reformed, hybridized, ecologized, politicized, erased—its difficulties are notorious—and yet it continues to speak from the margins, to move and tell stories, to disturb and console us. It engages our interior lives, social experiences, planetary woes.”
Best American Essays 2016
Congratulations to Jill Sisson Quinn, whose essay “Big Night” (NER 36.1) was selected by Jonathan Franzen and Robert Atwan for Best American Essays 2016!
We’re also thrilled to see “Permutations of X” (35.4) by Kelly Grey Carlisle and “I’m Searching for a Home for Unwed Girls” (36.3) by Ursula Hegi listed among the “Notable Essays and Literary Nonfiction of 2015.”
As Franzen says in his introduction, “Writing or reading an essay isn’t the only way to stop and ask yourself who you really are and what your life might mean, but it is one good way.” Read on.