Budy to Launch New Poetry Anthology at Local Library
When She Named Fire: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by American Women, edited by longtime Mountain View resident Andrea Hollander Budy, has just been published by Autumn House Press of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. According to the publisher, the volume contains 461 poems by 96 of the nation’s most dynamic poets, including Pulitzer Prize winners and past United States Poet Laureates.
Budy spent nearly two years on the project, reading hundreds of poetry collections, selecting poems, contacting the poets and their publishers, and writing a preface to the collection. The anthology is organized alphabetically and contains three or four pages of poetry by each poet, as well as a photograph and brief biography.
Early reviews speak to the anthology’s power: “Budy’s selections are thought-provoking, engaging, powerful, and necessary,” writes one reviewer. Another says, “When She Named Fire is so exciting . . . that I could not put the book down until I had read it once through. The poetry seems to touch every thought, feeling, and perception, and the collection as a whole makes you feel as though the poetry is yours alone.”
Budy will appear with other poets from the anthology at promotional readings scheduled all over the United States—Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.
The anthology’s first Arkansas reading will take place at the Stone County Library in Mountain View on Sunday, January 25, from 2 till 4 p.m. Area residents reading from the anthology with Budy will be Jan Hill, Lori Freeze, Will Simpson, Bev and Gene Dunaway, Robert and Mary Gillihan, David and Becki Dahlstedt, Lee Cowan, Liz Harris, and Robbie Purdom, organizer of the event. Refreshments will be served and books will be available at the event, which is free and open to the public.
