Need a new look at your manuscript–chapbook-length (17-40 pages) or full-length (48+ pages)? How about a manuscript in an early stage of development? Join Colrain on Zoom!
Colrain’s August Classic 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.
List of manuscripts published and prizes awarded here.
From a recent participant:
The Colrain Poetry Manuscript Conference will benefit anyone wanting to gain a richer sense of the editor’s perspective, a fuller sense of the poem as an action within a collection, and a more nuanced sense of the collection as discourse for and with readers. The conference is well-designed, excellently staffed, and smoothly run. The iteration of the conference I attended was “remote participation via Zoom,” and the technology was no barrier to an effective and rewarding conference. ”Remote?” Yes. ”Participation”: absolutely and fully.
—T.H., Normal, Illinois
More participants speak here.
Work with the best for the best results! Our August 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 September, 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.
Peter Covino, is one of the founding editors of Barrow Street Press,a not-for-profit press connected to the nationally known journal, Barrow Street. The press publishes poetry collections through its annual contest and through solicitations. As a former professional social worker–who worked in the fields of foster care, AIDS services, and youth and family services for fourteen years, and as an Italian immigrant–poet, translator, and editor, Peter Covino’s creative writing and research interests continue to be strongly influenced by the interrelationship of ethnic culture, work in translation, and psychosocial identity. Covino is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at the U of Rhode Island, and author of the full-length poetry collections, The Right Place to Jump (2012); and Cut Off the Ears of Winter (2005) both from W. Michigan University Press, New Issues, along with Straight Boyfriend winner of Frank O’Hara Prize Chapbook Prize. He has also co-edited an essay collection on Italian American Literature, Bordighera CUNY (2012). His prizes include the PEN American / Osterweil Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize for Literary Excellence, two recent URI Research Council grants, and a Faculty Mentoring award; and fellowship / residencies from Richmond the American International University of London, the American Academy in Rome, and the Nida Translation Institute, among others. His work has been featured or is forthcoming in Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day, American Poetry Review, Colorado Review, Community RAI Italian Television, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Journal of Italian Translation, Paris Review, Western Humanities Review, Witness, and the Yale Review. You can check out more of his work at: www.petercovino.com
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.
