Valerie Nieman v. 3.0

A big thank you to James Tate Hill, my colleague at North Carolina A&T State University, for inviting me on this blog tour, My Writing Process. His post appeared last week at this site. It’s always interesting when people ask us to step back and explain exactly what we’re doing, what I’m doing there in the corner in front of the computer, early in the morning or into the night, typing in words in uneven bursts. 1)                    What are you working on? Right now, I’m engaged in far too many projects. I am completing final edits to a new collection of poetry, Hotel Worthy , which will be published in the spring by Press 53. I’m pretty pumped about that – the best of ten years’ worth of poetizing. The editing has been light from the publisher, but I have to skinny down three formal poems – a ghazal, pantoum, and sestina – to fit the page width. Free verse and prose poems are not an issue, but form poems are the devil! I am also doing another edit on Backwate r, my new

Don't you just love that cover? I took one look at it and immediately thought of our legislative "process" these days. The summer issue of The Missouri Review is out, with a theme of "Fast Living." It's fun to see how an issue comes together, how a theme emerges from the submissions even if not imposed from the start. We used to see this kind of synergy back when I was opening snail mail submissions to Kestrel , and today as I scroll through Submittable for Prime Number.  (And watch for a redesign there soon!) Of course, I'm especially excited as six poems from my novel-in-verse, "The Leopard Lady Speaks," are featured - watch for the audio to be released soon, and another of the poems to be the "Poem of the Week." The issue also Diane Seuss writing about art and Andrew Grace in the voice of a man with a dangerous past.  Prose features include stories by Carol Ghiglieri, Ben Hoffman, Sharon Pomerantz, and  Amanda Harris, a