NHWP's CD Sampler, with readings by Charles Simic, Donald Hall, Maxine Kumin, and other great poets and writers, makes a wonderful gift!

NHWP's Summer Lineup Sizzles!

Ready to explore new avenues for your writing? Interested in food? Curious about other people? Wondering how to get that extra edge with editors? Want to write a column or perfect your memoir? Join NHWP as we welcome a stellar lineup of award winning writers as instructors for our Summer classes and workshops. For more information and to register, click here.

NHWP's Writers' Day Gallery!

This years Writers' Day was a hit! Visit our gallery to see!

 

 

 

Poets Three Event Fills Concord City Auditorium

It was an unforgettable evening with U.S. Poet Laureate Charles Simic and two of his predecessors, Maxine Kumin and Donald Hall. The three beloved NH poets kept more than 700 people on the edge of their seats during the January 22 event at the Concord City Auditorium. Congratulations to Mike Pride and the Concord Monitor for hosting this wonderful celebration. And our heartfelt thanks to the Monitor for donating the event proceeds to NHWP. Thanks also to Michael Herrmann of Gibson's Bookstore for selling books and contributing a portion of the profits to NHWP and for his ongoing support of NHWP.

Congratulations to Poet Charles Simic

New Hampshire poet Charles Simic was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate by the Library of Congress in August 2007. Simic, who lives in Strafford and who taught at the University of New Hampshire for thirty-four years, succeeds Donald Hall, also a New Hampshire poet, as the nation’s laureate.

Born in Yugoslavia, Simic moved to the United States in 1954. About being named the U.S. Poet Laureate, he has said, “I am especially touched and honored to be selected because I am an immigrant boy who didn’t speak English until I was fifteen.”

Simic is a poet, translator, essayist, reviewer, memoirist, and biographer. He has published eighteen books of poetry, including The World Doesn’t End, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Walking the Black Cat, which was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry, and A Wedding in Hell, which won the 1996 Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry, awarded by the New Hampshire Writers’ Project. His newest poetry collection, That Little Something, will be published in 2008.

In Booklist, Janet St. John has commented on the poet’s mastery: “Simic’s gift is his ability to unite the real with the abstract in poems that lend themselves to numerous interpretations, much like dreams. Whether using the metaphor of a dog for the self, or speaking to sunlight, Simic, original and engaging, keeps us on our toes, guessing, questioning, and looking at the world in a new way.”

For more information about Simic and his achievements, visit the Web site of the Library of Congress.

The 2007 New Hampshire Literary Award Winners

In November 2007, NHWP presented the 2007 New Hampshire Literary Awards, a biennial program that honors outstanding works by writers connected to the Granite State. The ceremony took place in November at Southern New Hampshire University. The winners are:

Julie Baker, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Children's Literature for The Bread and Roses Strike of 1912. Baker is the author of several books for children, including The Great Whaleship Disaster of 1871, and New Hampshire, Our Home. Her articles detailing New England’s seafaring past have been featured in American History Magazine.  She was the 2002 recipient of the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Nonfiction Work-In-Progress Grant. She lives in Amherst with her husband and two daughters and is an adjunct writing instructor at Daniel Webster College.  Baker is currently working on a book about the history of apartheid in South Africa for Lerner Publishing.

Rebecca Curtis, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Fiction for Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money. Curtis grew up in New Hampshire where she set many of the stories in Twenty Grand, her debut collection. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, Harper’s Bazaar, McSweeney’s, Conjunctions, NOON, N+1, and elsewhere, and her nonfiction in Jane Magazine. Her stories have been performed by New York’s Symphony Space series and Chicago’s “Stories on Stage” and anthologized in The O’Henry Prize Stories.  She teaches writing at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.

Maggie Dietz, the Jane Kenyon Award for Outstanding Book of Poetry for Perennial Fall. Dietz is assistant poetry editor for the online magazine Slate and is frequently a lecturer in creative writing at Boston University. For several years she directed the national Favorite Poem Project and is coeditor of three anthologies related to the project, most recently An Invitation to Poetry. Her awards include the Grolier Poetry Prize and fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Phillips Exeter Academy, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts. Her work has appeared in journals such as Poetry, Ploughshares, Agni, and Salmagundi. Perennial Fall is her first book of poems. She lives in Exeter.

Edith Milton, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Outstanding Work of Nonfiction for The Tiger in the Attic: Memories of the Kindertransport and Growing Up English. Born in Karlsruhe, Germany, Milton is a freelance writer who lives in Francestown, New Hampshire for part of the year. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and her writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, the New Republic, and the Boston Globe, among other places. Her short stories were included in Best American Short Stories for 1982 and 1988, and she is the author of a novel, Corridors. Currently she is at work on a series of essays centered on various jobs she held in her youth—from soda jerk to aide in a mental hospital.   

Annmarie Timmins, the Donald M. Murray Outstanding Journalism award. Timmins has been a reporter and editor for the Concord Monitor since 1992. She currently covers crime and court news and led the paper's coverage of the Catholic Church clergy abuse scandal and the election of Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson, the first openly gay man elected bishop in the Anglican church. New England Society of Newspaper Editors awarded her New England's  Community Reporter of the Year in 2004. The following year, the New Hampshire Press Association named her Writer of the Year. She has also received reporting awards from the New England Associated Press News Executives in 2004 and 2006. She lives in Concord with her husband.

Theodore Weesner, the New Hampshire Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. Weesner is the author of seven novels, including The Car Thief, Harbor  Lights, and Novemberfest, as well as a collection of short stories.  The Car Thief, his first novel, won the Great Lakes Best New Novel Award. His  short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, The  Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, and Best American Short  Stories. He taught for many years at the University of New Hampshire and  later at Emerson College in Boston, where he directed the creative writing  program. He has received Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts grants, among others. He lives in Portsmouth.

For a complete press release on the New Hampshire Literary Awards, including judges' comments on the winners, click here.

The 2007 New Hampshire Literary Awards are made possible in part by generous support from Southern New Hampshire University, Lincoln Financial Foundation, RiverStone Resources, and Northeast Delta Dental, and through operating support grants from The Badger Fund and The Blythe and Dan Brown Foundation of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation, and the New Hampshire State Council on the Arts, with additional support from Gibson's Bookstore.