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Who is female death and how do we find her and her monstrous friends? This new collection explores figures of lady-death such as Inanna, Persephone, and others where death is mother, sister, and girl. New from Aldrich Press, Wake traces such myths as the hero’s journey, a descent into and out of the underworld, and a return to the land of the living where monsters still chase us even after we return. It is a dark story, piercing and magical.
Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of over twenty books and chapbooks, including An Apparently Impossible Adventure (BlazeVOX [books], 2016) and the collaborative book with artist Sally Deskins Leaves of Absence: An Illustrated Guide to Common Garden Affection (Red Dashboard, 2016). Her book Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014) was nominated for the 2015 Elgin Award. Poems collected in Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013) were awarded the 2011 Susan Atefact Peckham Fellowship in Poetry. Her collaborative short story collection with artist Lauren Rindaldi, The Hunger of the Cheeky Sisters: Ten Tales (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2015), includes work that won the 2011 Spittoon Fiction Award, the 2008 Mari Sandoz/Prairie Schooner Award in Fiction, and was a Honorable Mention for the 2009 Arts & Letters/Susan Atefat Prize selected by Paul Lisicky.
Her poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and reviews have appeared in Margie, Mid-American Review, Poet Lore, Blackbird, Arts & Letters, Prairie Schooner, Feminist Studies, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, Calyx, and American Short Fiction.
She earned a BS in Women’s Studies and English Literature from Iowa State University, an MA in Women’s Studies from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in English the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has received an Academy of American Poets Award, a Louise Van Sickle Fellowship, the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship, and grants from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Center for the Great Plains Studies. Her poem “Roadside Kiddie Pools” won the 2015 Beecher’s Contest in Poetry. Her poem “When We’re Not Hiking” was s a finalist for the 2015 District Lit Poetry Prize.
She edited the poetry anthology Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013) and served as the Guest Editor for Issue #18 – Historical (Re)Tell of Cahoodaloodaling. She is the editor of The Chapbook Interview. Currently, she teaches poetry in the Red Hen Press Writing in the Schools Program and Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Paperback: 72 pages
Publisher: Kelsay Books/Aldrich Press (January 29, 2015)