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Virginia Quarterly Review Announces Writing Awards (1/16/2007)

Somers-Willett Featured in November/December 2006 Poets & Writers Magazine (10/20/2006)

Roam, Poems by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Now Available (2/25/2006)

Somers-Willett named winner of 2006 Robert Frost Poetry Award (10/29/2005)

1/16/2007

Virginia Quarterly Review Announces Writing Awards

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Honoring the best writing to appear in its pages in the past year, the Virginia Quarterly Review today announced the winners of its annual writing prizes for 2006:

The Emily Clark Balch Prizes for short story and poetry were established in 1955. Past recipients include Wendell Berry, John Berryman, Hayden Carruth, Carolyn Forché, Donald Hall, Mary Oliver, and May Sarton. The Staige D. Blackford Prize for nonfiction, established in 2003, is named for the seventh editor of VQR who retired in 2003 after guiding the magazine for 28 years. Each prize includes a monetary award of $1,000.

The Virginia Quarterly Review is an award-winning literary magazine published continuously since 1925 at the University of Virginia. Earlier this year, VQR was honored with two awards and six nominations for the prestigious National Magazine Awards.

For more information about the awards, contact Kevin Morrissey (434-924-3675, k.morrissey @ virginia.edu) or visit the VQR website at http://www.vqronline.org.

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10/20/2006

Somers-Willett Featured in November/December 2006 Poets & Writers Magazine

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Somers-Willett’s first book, Roam, was selected for the Crab Orchard Series Open Competition by Leslie Adrienne Miller and was published by Southern Illinois University Press in March 2006.

In the article, Somers-Willett says of the period in which she submitted her book to publishers: “The wait, however frustrating or full of dark hours, proved a time of exploration and self-investigation.” She reveals in the feature that she sent her manuscript out to over a hundred book contests over a period of seven years.

As a supplement to the story, Somers-Willett’s poem, “What the Doctors Forget to Tell You About Morphine,” appears on the Poets & Writers website: http://www.pw.org/mag/debutpoets2006excerpts.htm

Somers-Willett is currently completing a new manuscript of poetry, ‘Quiver,’ about the science, mathematics, and evolution of love and beauty. She teaches as a visiting fellow at the Center for the Arts in Society at Carnegie Mellon University.

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2/25/2006

Roam, Poems by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett, Now Available

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Roam, a book of poems by Susan B.A. Somers-Willett of Champaign, Illinois, has just been released by Southern Illinois University Press and is now available for order from the publisher (618-453-6633). The book was selected from among hundreds of entries for the 2005 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition.

The Crab Orchard Series in Poetry was established in 1998 to publish new and emerging poets. The series, which includes an open competition, a first book competition, and an editor’s selection, is a co-publishing venture between the literary journal Crab Orchard Review and Southern Illinois University Press.

The judge for the 2005 open competition was poet Leslie Adrienne Miller. Somers-Willett received a $1500 honorarium for a reading a Southern Illinois University at Carbondale and publication of her book.

Copies of Roam will also be available at the Associated Writing Programs Conference Bookfair in Austin, Texas, March 8-11. Somers-Willett will read from her book on Friday, March 10 as part of the conference. For more information about the AWP Conference events and upcoming readings, visit Somers-Willett’s website: http://www.susansw.com/events.htm

Roam explores the loss of a parent to cancer and the resulting uprootedness that loss can create. Poet Naomi Shihab Nye says of the book: “There’s a breathtaking, sly intellect at work in the luscious poems of Roam. Susan B. A. Somers-Willett spins an elegant geography of vast terrains and intricate histories. Her poems make unexpected landings and linkages everywhere.”

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is also the recipient of the 2004 Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and the 2005 Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award. She currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities.

To order Roam, please contact the publisher at (618-453-6633) or visit the Southern Illinois University Press website at:
http://www.siu.edu/%7esiupress/Somers-WillettRoam.html

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Somers-Willett named winner of 2006 Robert Frost Poetry Award

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett of Champaign, Illinois has been named the recipient of the 2005 Robert Frost Foundation Poetry Award for her poem, "The Effect of Light on a Woman's Body."

The award, given annually and now in its ninth year, is given to a poem of exceptional merit "written in the spirit of Robert Frost." Somers-Willett receives an invitation to read at the Annual Robert Frost Poetry Festival in Lawrence, Massachusetts and a $1,000 cash prize.

"The Effect of Light on a Woman's Body" was written about one of Andrew Wyeth's infamous "Helga" paintings, Overflow. The Helga paintings have been critically noted for their mastery of the nude female form and their exceptional use of light and shadow.

An audio link to the poem is currently available at the Frost Foundation website: http://www.frostfoundation.org

Susan B.A. Somers-Willett is also the recipient of the 2004 Ann Stanford Poetry Prize and her first book, Roam, is forthcoming from the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry in March 2006. She currently teaches at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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