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205 Posts

Authors

Rest in Peace, Darrel J. McLeod

Milkweed Staff — 09/06/2024
CREDIT ILJA HERB

Milkweed Editions is deeply saddened to share that Darrel J. McLeod passed away late last week after a sudden illness. He was 67. Darrel was an uncommonly beautiful and gentle soul whose stories about finding his voice as a two-spirit, Indigenous man moved readers across the globe. Along with his activism and service to Indigenous causes, particularly in Canada, his books brought forth vital stories of heritage, compassion, forgiveness, and hope.

“I am saddened by the news of Darrel’s passing, if also profoundly grateful to have called him a friend. He was an exceptionally beautiful human being.”—Daniel Slager, Publisher…

Authors / Interviews

Four questions with Daywork author Jessica Fisher

Milkweed Staff — 08/12/2024

How do artists work within constrictions of time? How can our existence be traced through art? How does writing ekphrastic poetry compare with linguistic translation? How is historical time considered with care in stretching both towards the past and into the future? These are some of the questions poet Jessica Fisher unpacks with her work in Daywork and in our Q&A below!

Milkweed Staff: Daywork takes its title from the giornata—the term in fresco painting for the section of wet plaster that can be painted in a single day. When did you first discover this concept? And what…

Awards & Prizes

Fady Joudah wins $100,000 Jackson Poetry Prize

Milkweed Staff — 04/18/2024

“Distinguished by his courage to speak in the face of the unspeakable,
in poems of lyric concision and intensity.”

Poets & Writers announced today that Fady Joudah has won the 2024 Jackson Poetry Prize, which this year carries an increased award of $100,000. Given annually by Poets & Writers to recognize an American poet of exceptional talent, the prize is endowed by a gift from the Liana Foundation and is named for the John and Susan Jackson family. There is no application process; poets are nominated by a panel of their peers, selected by Poets & Writers, who remain…

Authors / News

Honoring Tuệ Sỹ

Milkweed Staff — 04/17/2024

Milkweed is deeply saddened by the recent passing of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Tuệ Sỹ, whose poems we published in a bilingual edition last year as Dreaming the Mountain, with translations by Nguyen Ba Chung and Martha Collins. Born in 1943, Tuệ Sỹ joined a Zen order at the age of ten and later became an eminent Buddhist scholar, professor, translator, and poet. He actively resisted the idea that Buddhism should serve as a tool for any political agenda, and was well known for his dissidence.

Following study at the Institute of Buddhism in Nha Trang, Tuệ Sỹ moved to Saigon…

Authors / Interviews

A Q&A with Chris La Tray, author of debut Memoir Becoming Little Shell

Milkweed Staff — 04/02/2024

At Milkweed, we often discover great books in curious ways, and the Métis poet and storyteller Chris La Tray’s debut memoir, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, is no exception. Nearly a decade ago, Publisher & CEO Daniel Slager attended a writers conference in Missoula, Montana. There he crossed paths with La Tray, who was hand-selling books at local indie bookstore Fact & Fiction. Their exchange morphed from pleasantries to serendipitous dialogue revealing that La Tray was writing a book of his own.

Later that evening, Slager learned that La Tray had recently begun interrogating…

News

Craig Popelars joins Milkweed as new VP, Sales & Marketing

Milkweed Staff — 03/19/2024

Effective March 18, 2024, Craig Popelars has joined Milkweed Editions in the newly created role of Vice President, Sales & Marketing. Popelars was previously the publisher of Tin House Books, and the associate publisher of Algonquin Books

Daniel Slager, Publisher and CEO of Milkweed, said, “We are thrilled to welcome Craig to the Milkweed team. We’ve had some wind in our sails in the marketplace over the last few years, and we are all very excited to build on it.”

Popelars shared, “I’ve admired Milkweed’s storied publishing program ever since I wrote my very first bookstore shelf-talker for Larry Watson’s …

Authors / Events

Celebrating the polyvocal launch of Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes

Milkweed Staff — 03/11/2024

On February 22, Milkweed Editions hosted a virtual launch event to celebrate the publication of Imane Boukaila’s Tressing Motions at the Edge of Mistakes: Poems. The book is the fourth addition to Multiverse, a literary series curated by—and devoted to—neurodiverse voices. Boukaila was joined by Multiverse editor, Chris Martin, who moderated the event, and four poets selected by Boukaila to “give voice” to their favorite poems from her book. The launch concluded with a dazzling “homing rally,” a collaborative poetry exercise open to all.

Among the many feats Multiverse has accomplished in the years since its…

Authors / Poetry & Migration

On Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo: a monument to multiplicity (and home)

On Yalie Saweda Kamara’s <em>Besaydoo</em>: a monument to multiplicity (and home) — 03/11/2024

As an Afro-Latina American citizen, I tend to seek stories that center voices, cultures, experiences, and lifeways historically peripheralized by the Western literary canon. But for all the breadth that I encounter still with every new BIPOC-authored book I read, I am routinely enchanted by a sense of what remains familiar. What lands have you been denied, what spaces have you been neglected in—and rejected from—and from what sunless places were you forced to grow? I ponder these questions as I read, acutely aware of the ways longing for BIPOC authors so often manifests on the page as a reaching…