James P. Lenfestey

James P. Lenfestey is the author of Seeking the Cave: A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain, a Minnesota Book Award finalist, and multiple collections of essays and poems, including A Marriage Book. He is also the editor of multiple anthologies, including Robert Bly in This World (University of Minnesota Press). Lenfestey is a former college English instructor, alternative school administrator, marketing communications consultant, and editorial writer for the Star Tribune, where he won several Page One awards for excellence. As a journalist, he covers education, energy policy, and climate science. He is chair of the Literary Witnesses poetry series, teaches at the Mackinac Island Poetry Festival, and lives in Minneapolis with his wife.

Awards
2014 Minnesota Book Award Finalist
2008 Milkweed Editions Award for Distinguished Contribution to Literary Culture

Books by James P. Lenfestey

Poetry
Body Odes, Praise Songs, Oddities, Amazements
By
James P. Lenfestey
Now Available!
An exuberant collection celebrating the body and the soul of language, wringing delights and amazements out of the latter years of life.
Nonfiction
A Pilgrimage to Cold Mountain
By
James P. Lenfestey

As the author approached his thirtieth birthday in a state of acute anxiety, a bookseller prescribed to him a singular literary diet—the poems of a Tang Dynasty hermit named Han-shan. His pilgrimage to Han-shan’s cave decades later comes to life in this singular combination of travel writing, memoir, translation, and poetry.

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