Sarah Ruhl’s plays include In the Next Room, or the vibrator play (Pulitzer Prize finalist, Tony Award nominee), and The Clean House (Pulitzer Prize finalist, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize), among many others. She is recipient of the MacArthur “genius” grant, and of, most recently, the 2016 Steinberg Prize. She is currently on the faculty of the Yale School of Drama and lives in Brooklyn with her family.
As you will have heard by now, President Trump’s administration submitted its first federal budget request to Congress this week. The proposal calls for the elimination of a number of federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). Here at Milkweed Editions, our publishing program is sustained by a healthy mix of revenue, including revenue from the sales of books we have published as well as support from readers like you, from private foundations, and from government agencies such as the Minnesota State Arts Board and the NEA. In fact, we have received financial support from the NEA almost every year since our founding in 1980.
Will Brewer’s first book of poems, I Know Your Kind, was a winner of the National Poetry Series. His debut novel, The Red Arrow, was published by Knopf in 2022 and received the Silver Medal for First Fiction from the California Book Awards.
As part of “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration,” the first formalized programming of the Poetry Coalition, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Birds, LLC have partnered to curate a selection of poems on the theme of migration. Installment #2: Mai Der Vang’s “Transmigration,” from Afterland.
Mai Der Vang is the author of Afterland (Graywolf Press, 2017). She is an editorial member of the Hmong American Writers’ Circle and coeditor of How Do I Begin: A Hmong American Literary Anthology. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and The Washington Post.
Milkweed Editions is deeply saddened to report that Richard Wagamese passed away in his home on Friday, March 10, 2017. He was 61. Wagamese was the author of more than 15 books ranging across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the novels Medicine Walk, Dream Wheels, and Indian Horse. Much of his work drew from his own struggle with family dysfunction that he attributed to the isolating government- and church-run schools, attended by his parents and extended family members. Wagamese called himself a second-generation survivor of these experiences.
As part of “Because We Come From Everything: Poetry & Migration,” the first formalized programming of the Poetry Coalition, Milkweed Editions, Coffee House Press, Graywolf Press, and Birds, LLC have partnered to curate a selection of poems on the theme of migration. The first: “Ego-Tripping as Self-Defense Mechanism for Refugee Kids Who Got Their Names Clowned On” by Bao Phi.
Bao Phi has been a performance poet since 1991 and has performed as a featured artist all over the United States. He is the author of Sông I Sing (Coffee House Press, 2011) and Thousand Star Hotel (Coffee House Press, 2017). His first children’s book, to be illustrated by Thi Bui, will be published by Capstone Press in the fall of 2017. He is currently Program Director at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
We’re proud to be part of the independent publishing community, promoting titles that breed independent minds, break the mold, and dare to be different. In support of our fellow independents, we’ve teamed up with a few presses to draw attention to big books from smaller publishers across the country. This month, we’re celebrating International Women’s Day. What books are you reading to celebrate? Join the conversation and use the hashtags #ireadindie and #InternationalWomensDay.
