Blog Posts by Milkweed Staff

by: Fábio Zuker

ENGLISH

A whale in the amazon forest: a cover image story

“Space and time move in mutual dependence. It’s as if rivers, lakes, and forests can slow or even halt the passage of time as it’s traditionally conceived: an arrow shot across a smooth surface. It’s not like a car driving down the road. In the Amazon, time will take its time, at least as long as there are rivers and forests.”

I decided to quote an excerpt from my book, The Life and Death of a Minke Whale and Other Stories of the Brazilian Rainforest—which…

by Kerri ní Dochartaigh

When someone writes a book about anything the first thing they are often asked is: HOW?

How did you find the time, the topic, the means to get it out of your insides and into the outside world for all to see? When someone writes a book that takes as its subject matter their own personal lived experiences – those which might range from deeply unsettling – to upsetting – or even traumatising; perhaps the question most commonly asked is: WHY?

Why would you put yourself through it? Why would you unearth that pain? Why would…

Milkweed Editions is thrilled to announce that Jennifer Huang has won the 2021 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. For their poetry collection Return Flight, selected by Jos Charles, Huang will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed Editions in January 2022.

Jennifer Huang was born in Maryland to Taiwanese immigrants and has since called many places her home. Their poems have appeared in POETRY, The Rumpus, and Narrative Magazine, among other places; and they have received recognition from the Academy of American Poets, North American Taiwan Studies Association, and more. In 2020, Huang earned…

A great deal of Dutch poetry nowadays is influenced by urban tendencies, by movies, by social media, by elements of the news. Earlier generations often focused on nature, that traditional source of consolation for modern man who has lost his religious faith and paradise. This tendency also means that most younger poets do not strive any longer for unity behind all diversity, for calming the chaos, for a symbolist view on reality; on the contrary, they emphasize pluriformity, changes of registers, they prefer the prismatic glance of diversity.

 Also quite striking is the renewal of language in Dutch poetry seen…

by Victoria Chang

The cover for Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief, emerged organically, in the same way that this book emerged. After my mother died, there was the obvious grieving of my mother as body, as mind, as caretaker, but I was surprised to feel a greater sense of loss–a loss of not only her history but my own history. When she died, my connection to and with my family’s Chinese and Taiwanese culture evaporated. Because my mother tended toward secrets, I didn’t know much about her history, and never cared too much before about…

Author Arra Lynn Ross reminisces on the inspiration for the cover of her forthcoming collection, Day of the Child.

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF THE 2020–21 JAKE ADAM YORK PRIZE!

Copper Nickel and Milkweed Editions are thrilled to announce that judge Randall Mann has chosen Brian Tierney’s book Rise and Float as the winner of the 2020–21 Jake Adam York Prize. Rise and Float will be published by Milkweed Editions in February, 2022, and Tierney will receive $2,000.

Brian Tierney’s poetry appears in Agni, Boston Review, Kenyon Review, New England Review, Best New Poets, and elsewhere. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, and a graduate of the Bennington College MFA Writing…

Author Michael Kleber-Diggs reflects on the artistic process of creating the cover of his collection, Worldly Things.

Celebrate a year of great reading with us!

Real people recommend good books we think you’ll like, too!