Need a new look at your manuscript? Join Colrain on Zoom! The Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference, June 4-7, is open for enrollment now.
Why Colrain? Because Colrain is the original manuscript conference (est. 2006), and the proven leader in excellence of program design and pedagogy, honest and useful editorial feedback, depth of experience and integrity of faculty, and, most importantly, proven results. Over 200 Colrain manuscripts have been taken, including many with awards such as: The Perugia Press Prize, New Issues Poetry Prize, Vassar Miller Poetry Prize, The Bakeless Prize, FutureCycle Press Poetry Book Prize, John Ciardi Prize from BkMk Press, McGovern Prize from Ashland Press, Editor’s Choice Akron Poetry Prize from University of Akron Press, Gerald Cable First Book Award, T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize from Truman State University, Orphic Prize from Dream Horse Press, Levis Prize from Four Way Books, Wick Prize from Kent State Press, Four Way Book Intro Prize, Beatrice Hawley Prize from Alice James Booksm, Emily Dickinson Prize from the Poetry Foundation, Marsh Hawk Press Prize, Lexi Rudnitsky Poetry Prize from Persea Books, Nightboat Books Poetry Prize, May Swenson Poetry Award, University of New Mexico Press WILLA Literary Award…and many more!
List of manuscripts published and prizes awarded here.
Participants speak here.
Work with the best for the best results! Our June faculty:
Joan Houlihan is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Shadow-feast (Four Way Books). A sixth collection, It Isn’t a Ghost if it Lives in Your Chest, is forthcoming in 2021. Her poetry has been anthologized in The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries (University of Iowa Press) and The Book of Irish-American Poetry-Eighteenth Century to Present (University of Notre Dame Press). She is former contributing critic for the Contemporary Poetry Review and author of a series of essays on contemporary American poetry archived online at bostoncomment.com. She has taught at Columbia University and Smith College and currently teaches in the Lesley University Low-Residency MFA Program and at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. Houlihan is founder and director of the Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference.
Stephen Motika, poet and publisher, is the author of Western Practice, published by Alice James Books in 2012. He is also the author of two chapbooks, Arrival and At Mono (2007) and In the Madrones (2011), and editor of Tiresias: The Collected Poems of Leland Hickman (2009). His articles and poems have appeared in Another Chicago Magazine, At Length, BOMB, The Brooklyn Review, Eleven Eleven, Maggy, The Poetry Project Newsletter, Poets.org, Vanitas, among other publications. A 2010-2011 Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace Resident, he has taught at Naropa University and in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. He is the former program director at Poets House and the publisher of Nightboat Books.
Martha Rhodes is the publisher of Four Way Books, a literary press in New York City where she edits and publishes award-winning poets including Gregory Pardlo (Pulitzer Prize), Rigoberto Gonzalez (Lenore Marshall Award and Lambda Award) and Yona Harvey (Kate Tufts Discovery Award). She is author of five poetry collections: The Thin Wall (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017), The Beds (Autumn House Press), Mother Quiet (Zoo Press, 2004), Perfect Disappearance (winner of The Green Rose Prize, New Issues, 2000), and At the Gate (Provincetown Arts, 1995). She has published widely in magazines and journals including Agni, American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly, and her work has appeared in such anthologies as Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, The New American Poets, Last Call, and many others. Martha has taught at Emerson College, New School University, UC at Irvine, and currently teaches at Sarah Lawrence and the Warren Wilson MFA Program.
Poet and translator Ellen Doré Watson is the former director of The Poetry Center at Smith College and is currently the Grace Hazard Conkling Writer-in-Residence at Smith. She also serves as poetry and translation editor of The Massachusetts Review. Her fifth full-length collection, pray me stay eager, is available from Alice James Books. Earlier books include Dogged Hearts (Tupelo Press, 2010), This Sharpening (also from Tupelo), and two from Alice James, We Live in Bodies and Ladder Music, winner of the New England/New York award. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Tin House, Orion, and The New Yorker. Among her honors are a Rona Jaffe Writers Award, fellowships to the MacDowell Colony and to Yaddo, and a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship. Her best-known works of translation are The Alphabet in the Park and Ex-Voto, both by Brazilian Adélia Prado. Watson also teaches in the Drew University Low-Residency MFA in Poetry and Poetry in Translation and has for many years led a generative writing group in Northampton, MA.
