Brickhouse Books poet Kathi Wolfe won first place in the Washington Writers’ Publishing House Pride Poetry Contest for the poem “This Is Just to Say.” The poem was published in WWPH’s June Pride issue; you can read Wolfe’s poem here.
Congratulations to Wolfe, who also recently won an award for journalism!
Brickhouse Books is now open for submissions! See our Submissions page for more details on how to submit your manuscript for consideration.
We look forward to reading your work!
Brickhouse Books will be open for submissions on September 15th! Get your poetry and prose manuscripts ready by checking out our Submissions page for more details.
BhB poet Kathi Wolfe (Love & Kumquats) appeared on Judy Heumann’s The Heumann Perspective podcast. Judy and Kathi discuss Kathi’s journey as a writer, and Kathi reads two of her works: “Tasting Braille” and “Dancing with Martha Graham.”
Listen to or read this episode at The Heumann Perspective: How Art Feeds Us.
BhB poet Kathi Wolfe (Love & Kumquats) had two poems featured as part of supplemental written works for PBS’ American Masters episode “Becoming Helen Keller” (season 35, episode 20, aired October 19, 2021). Wolfe’s poems “The Sun is Warm: Nagasaki, 1948” and “Dancing with Martha Graham” are written from the imagined perspective of Keller.
You can read Wolfe’s introductions and poems here: “Two poems influenced by Helen Keller’s legacy.”
Poet Kathi Wolfe (Love & Kumquats) was recently featured on the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day series. You can read “Braille” here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58791/tasting-braille.
Brickhouse Books is proud to the announce the release of The Origami Swan: New and selected poems by Dyane Fancey.
The Origami Swan is a posthumous collection of mostly unpublished poetry by the prolific and beloved poet Dyane Fancey, collected, transcribed, and laboriously edited by the late poet’s husband to preserve all their wit, erudition, sexuality, passionate sense of time and place, and consummate craft. Re-reading Dyane’s poetry since her death has brought a whole new appreciation of her achievement; these poems are wild, brilliantly crafted, and hot hot hot!
Originally from Washington, DC, back when, in Dyane’s words, it was still a sleepy Southern town, Dyane Fancey lived most of her life in Baltimore, MD, after a brief sojourn in San Francisco. She was a gifted student at the famed Maryland Institute College of Art and graduated with honors from Towson University, where she majored in English. She was loved and greatly admired by literally all the poets in the lively, often fractious Baltimore poetry scene, and equally loved by her fans and customers at a restaurant in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon area, called the Great American Melting Pot, Gampy’s for short. Perhaps some of the latter did not know she was a great poet, but all knew and knew well that she was a great wait-person! Thanks to her wide range of acquaintances, Dyane made a huge success of a poetry reading series that ran at the Angel Tavern in Fells Point every Sunday evening for three full years and ended only when the Angel Tavern was sold. Her marriage to classical radio personality and film scholar, Reed Hessler, was long and loving and hot, and it brought great joy to them both. He has preserved her memory and her poetry magnificently and has celebrated Dyane’s life by bringing to light many previously unpublished poems. Dyane never stopped writing.
“There is great art in concealing the art. Dyane knew this. It as the light by which she wrote. Her plain-spoken elegance inspires admiration, and—dare I set this down?—envy. There are only two kinds of poems: the ones you wish you’d written, and the ones you are grateful that you did not. There are no small number of Dyane’s poems I wish I could lay claim to. What finer, truer thing can one poet say of another?”
— Bruce Sager, author of THE PUMPING STATION and many other collections
Josephine Jacobsen, a founding mother of BhB and the New Poets Series, was recently featured as part of the Poetry Foundation’s Poem of the Day column. You can read “The Animals” at the Poetry Foundation’s website.
Poet and writer Kathi Wolfe (Love & Kumquats, among others) recently published “Two-hearted” as part of poet Mike Maggio’s 30 for 30 series, which was sponsored by the Potomac Review.
You can read the full text of “Two-hearted” here, along with a writer’s statement about the origins of the poem.
BhB Poet Carrie Conners (Luscious Struggle) and Bethany Holmstrom co-wrote a blog for the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) about the power of collaborative writing. The blog recounts how one college engaged its student body creatively and academically through a massive collaborative writing effort.
You can read the blog—and the collaborative poem highlighted in the piece—at the NCTE website here: Connecting through Writing: A Collaborative Writing Project Inspired by the National Day on Writing.
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