Join publisher Milkweed Editions, acclaimed authors, and your fellow readers across the country and around the world for an evening celebrating forty years of inspiring writers and the power of books in our lives. More details here!
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For the third episode of What Matters Most, author Margaret Renkl joins us from her backyard and gives us a personal tour of her “pollinator garden,” where she has intentionally planted seeds that serve as refuge and fuel for the bees and butterflies who traverse her home in middle-Tennessee.
“It’s really a great comfort—if we had to be locked in our houses anyway— that it happened in the springtime when there is so much new life and that is…
Milkweed Editions is pleased to announce that torrin a. greathouse has won the 2020 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. For her poetry collection Wound from the Mouth of a Wound, selected by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, greathouse will receive $10,000 and publication by Milkweed Editions this December.
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of boy/girl/ghost (TAR Chapbook Series, 2018) and assistant editor of The Shallow Ends. In 2020, they received fellowships from Zoeglossia and the University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work is published or forthcoming in POETRY, Ploughshares, …
torrin a. greathouse is a transgender cripple-punk and MFA candidate at the University of Minnesota. She is a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow. In 2020, they received fellowships from Zoeglossia and the University of Arizona Poetry Center.
In anticipation of her forthcoming memoir Company of Owls, we sat down with author Polly Atkin—recently longlisted for the 2025 Wainwright prize—to discuss the kinds of company we keep, the habits that hold us steady, and the birds that transform our journey along the way.
Milkweed staff: We were delighted to discover that you own the independent bookstore, Sam Read Bookseller! Living alongside the owls, how have they informed your place within the community—both as a bookseller and as a neighbor?
Polly Atkin: It’s a strange thing finding yourself at the helm of a shop that has…
Join Keith S. Wilson and Rosalie Moffett at the 2025 Miami Book Fair for “ON POETRY, PRIZES, AND PUBLISHING,” a panel in conversation and moderated by Simone Zapata. Together they will read poems from their newest books and discuss the lifespan of a poetry collection from manuscript-in-progress to published book. They will also reveal what it’s really like to win (and judge) book prizes and balance writing, careers, and the rest of life.
Join Rick Barot at “Lavish Syntax,” a free virtual craft talk presented by Poetry@Tech. More information below:
The problem at the heart of writing a poem is the problem of dramatization. That is, how do we dramatize in language—a very limited means—the dynamics of thought, sensation, mystery, knowledge, and unsayability that often comprise human experience? In this lecture, we’ll examine the crucial importance of syntax in vitalizing a poem. We’ll look at poems with powerful content and the syntactical correlatives the poets use in dramatizing that content.
Join Milkweed Books as we present Adedayo Agarau’s book launch for his collection, The Years of Blood. Adedayo will read from the book and be joined in conversation with gracious local poets Sarah Ali Ghazal and Erin Sharkey.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Winner of the 2023-24 Poetic Justice Institute Editors Prize for a BIPOC Writer
In this unflinching debut collection, Adedayo Agarau confronts the harrowing reality of ritual killings and child abductions that have terrorized Nigeria from the turbulent pre-democratic era to the present day. Set against the backdrop of rural Ibadan, The Years of Blood plunges…
In celebration of our newest National Poetry Series Winner, Milkweed hosted a reading featuring Keith S. Wilson and his debut poetry collection, Games for Children on September 24th. While here, Keith was joined in conversation with graphic designer and Milkweed Fellow Alex Guerra to discuss the creation of his book cover. Later, Keith took the stage alongside poets Chaun Webster and Douglas Kearney to discuss graphic design, poetry, and how they’ve blurred the boundaries between the two disciplines.
Within minutes of his arrival at Milkweed, Keith S. Wilson and Milkweed Fellow Alex Guerra sparked into conversation over their many…
Neesa Hawkins is a writer and bibliophile originally from Oklahoma City, now residing in Minneapolis. Prior to joining Milkweed, she was a Citizen Literary Fellow at Graywolf Press and manager of Black Garnet Books. She is a firm believer that literature is a powerful and necessary part of collective liberation. In her free time, she enjoys hunting for rare books and records, spending time with family, and exploring the wonderful parks throughout Minnesota.
