Our Blog

199 Posts

Authors

From Conversations with Birds to dialogues on the world stage

Briana Gwin — 11/30/2023

When Priyanka Kumar began writing her debut memoir, Conversations with Birds, she had a profound realization. Since the dawn of the Information Age, modern Americans have struggled to find fulfillment in their lives more than ever before—but to Kumar, the solution to this problem was surprisingly simple, and could be found in a single word. “We’re at a crossroads in the world,” Kumar says. “Our lives have become fragmented in so many ways by all these devices that we’re basically living inside of now. But there’s something in us that’s very human and wants to break open, that remembers…

Authors / Events

The power of music and verse with stuttering poet JJJJJerome Ellis

Sean Beckford — 11/20/2023

“A stutter is an heirloom—something precious, that should be cherished.”

JJJJJerome Ellis inherited his stutter from his mother, who also stutters. They don’t speak often of their shared inheritance but she is supportive of his work. He sees his stutter as an heirloom and his teacher—both in language and in music. He has learned to gracefully accept and even anticipate how it informs his artistic processes of speaking and performing. In his new book, Aster of Ceremonies, he creates a world that blooms backward, reimagining what it means for Black and disabled people to have taken, and to continue…

Authors

When art inspires art; how Braiding Sweetgrass influenced a climate movement

Briana Gwin — 10/09/2023

American conceptual artist Jenny Holzer is no stranger to addressing the biggest issues of our times through art. In the 1970s, her Truisms project elevated political slogans in public spaces across New York City, and a few decades later her Redaction Paintings series staunchly opposed the abuse of incarcerated people of Guantanamo Bay. As recently as 2020, Holzer again set to work with the noble cause of inciting political awareness and activism in America as part of a project called VOTE FOR YOUR FUTURE. But Holzer was far from finished—and just a year later, she set her sights on…

Awards & Prizes

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón awarded 2023 MacArthur ‘Genius Grant’

Milkweed Staff — 10/04/2023
Video URL

We are overjoyed and honored to announce that U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón has been awarded a 2023 MacArthur Fellowship, also known as the “genius grant”! The MacArthur Fellowship is an $800,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. Limón is one of twenty 2023 Fellows, including composers, scientists, artists, scholars, and more.

MacArthur Fellows Director Marlies Carruth highlights each Fellow’s dedication to the natural world in her announcement statement:

“The 2023 MacArthur Fellows are applying individual creativity with global perspective, centering connections across generations and communities. They forge stunning forms of…

Awards & Prizes

Ava Nathaniel Winter wins 2023 National Poetry Series

Milkweed Staff — 09/25/2023

We are thrilled to announce that Ava Nathaniel Winter has been named one of five winners of the 2023 National Poetry Series. Her manuscript Transgenesis was selected by poet Sean Hill and will be published by Milkweed Editions in August 2024. In addition to publication, Winter will receive $10,000.

Ava Nathaniel Winter is the author of a poetry chapbook, Safe House. Her poetry has appeared in The Baffler, Beloit Poetry Journal, Poetry International, Room, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University and received an Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council. Ava holds an M.F.A…

Authors / Events

Celebrating the decade-long impact of Braiding Sweetgrass

Briana Gwin — 09/20/2023

Robin Wall Kimmerer didn’t set out to change the world—or even to become particularly famous within the canon of environmental literature, which was infamously comprised of homogeneously white voices for decades. Rather, the Indigenous ecologist-turned-author seemed to be operating like a scientist from the outset: her observations led her to understand that the world needed a change, and so she proposed an effective solution. In the face of ongoing biodiversity loss and climate change, Kimmerer observed that scientists had the tools to enact necessary change, but Indigenous communities held the spirit and ancestral knowledge vital to doing so with dignity…

Authors / News / Awards & Prizes

Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe wins 2023 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize

Milkweed Staff — 09/19/2023

We are thrilled to announce that Bluest Nude by Ama Codjoe is the winner of the Academy of American Poets 2023 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. This $25,000 prize recognizes the most outstanding book of poetry published in the United States in the previous year.

Codjoe has received a 2023 Whiting Award, a 2017 Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, a creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship. She is the 2023 Poet-in-Residence at the Guggenheim Museum. Bluest Nude was a finalist for both the NAACP Image Award in Outstanding Poetry…

Authors / News

U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón's Library of Congress signature project announced, includes anthology of nature poems

Milkweed Staff — 09/05/2023

Milkweed Editions is thrilled to share Ada Limón’s signature project as the nation’s twenty-fourth Poet Laureate, You Are Here, which will feature two complementary initiatives: a new anthology of commissioned nature poems, and poetry installed as public art in seven national parks.

News / Bookstore

Milkweed Books celebrates a year since reopening

Briana Gwin — 08/24/2023

This August, we’re proud to celebrate the one-year reopening anniversary of our brick-and-mortar bookstore, Milkweed Books! Originally established in 2016 at the nation’s largest literary center, Open Book, Milkweed Books is the realization of a long-held dream to deepen our connection to community, and to introduce readers to transformative books and authors that align with our mission and values. Despite closure in 2020, we were thrilled to reinstate our beloved public space in the summer of 2022. We continue to enrich our neighborhood with a vital, newly reimagined community asset that connects people with stories through book sales, exciting…

Interviews

7 questions with DC's Youth Poet Laureate—and Ada Limón superfan—Sophia Hall

Briana Gwin — 08/15/2023

On Thursday, September 29 of 2023, Ada Limón was inaugurated as the 24th U.S. Poet Laureate at the Library of Congress. Milkweed Editions was represented there by CEO & Publisher Daniel Slager, and as luck would have it, he would soon learn he was standing in the room amidst another future poet laureate who had dedicated her life to showcasing the power of the written—and spoken—word. Enter seventeen-year-old Sophia Hall, a devoted fan of Ada’s, brought to the ceremony by her mother for a chance to experience the magic of the new poet laureate’s charismatic-yet-commanding voice. By chance, the pair…