Celebrating the 2018 National Poetry Series Winners with Daniel Halpern

Christopher Kondrich is the author of Valuing (University of Georgia Press, 2019), selected by Jericho Brown as a winner of the National Poetry Series, and Contrapuntal (Free Verse Editions, 2013). A winner of The Iowa Review Award for Poetry and The Paris-American Reading Series Prize, his poems appear or are forthcoming in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, The Believer, Boston Review, Conjunctions, Crazyhorse, Harvard Review, The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Witness, and elsewhere. An Associate Editor for 32 Poems, he lives and works in Maryland.

An influential editor and publishing executive, Daniel Halpern is also a poet of considerable acclaim He is the author of nine books of poetry, including Tango and Something Shining: Poems. Halpern has edited anthologies of both poetry and prose, including Dante’s Inferno: Translations by Twenty Contemporary Poets. Halpern has also edited the short-fiction collections The Art of the Tale: An International Anthology of Short Stories, 1945–1985 and The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories. The founder and long-time editor of the influential literary magazine Antaeus, Halpern is the president and publisher of Ecco Press. A recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, he has taught in Columbia University’s graduate writing program.

Daniel Poppick's first book of poetry, The Police, was published by Omnidawn in 2017. His writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine, Granta, The New Republic, Fence, the PEN Poetry Series, and other journals. The recipient of awards from the MacDowell Colony and the Corporation of Yaddo, and a graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he has taught writing at the University of Iowa, Coe College, and the Parsons School of Design. He currently lives in Brooklyn, where he works as a copywriter and coedits the Catenary Press.

Jake Skeets is Black Streak Wood, born for Water’s Edge. He is Diné from Vanderwagen, New Mexico. He is the author of Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers, a National Poetry Series-winning collection of poems. He holds an MFA in poetry from the Institute of American Indian Arts. Skeets is a winner of the 2018 Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Contest and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Skeets edits an online publication called Cloudthroat and organizes a poetry salon and reading series called Pollentongue, based in the Southwest. He is a member of Saad Bee Hózhǫ́: A Diné Writers’ Collective and currently teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.

Vázquez Paz, Johanny (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 1960). Poeta, antóloga y profesora universitaria. Licenciada en Sociología en la Indiana State University en Terre Haute, tiene también una maestría en Estudios Hispánicos, con especialización en literatura, en la University of Illinois. Entre los títulos que ha publicado se destacan Sagrada familia (ganador del International Latino Book Award 2015), Querido voyeur (2012) y Poemas callejeros/Streetwise Poems (2007). Además, en 2001 coeditó la antología Between the Heart and the Land / Entre el corazón y la tierra: Latina Poets in the Midwest. Obtuvo el Premio Paz de Poesía 2018 otorgado por la Feria del Libro de Miami y la National Poetry Series con su poemario Ofrezco mi corazón como una diana, aparecido bajo el sello editorial Akashic, y el cual viene a presentar al público miamense.

John Balaban is the author of thirteen books of poetry and prose, including four volumes which together have won The Academy of American Poets’ Lamont prize, a National Poetry Series Selection, and two nominations for the National Book Award. His Locusts at the Edge of Summer: New and Selected Poems won the 1998 William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He was named the 2001-2004 National Artist for the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. In 2003, he was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2008, he was awarded a medal from the Vietnamese Ministry of Culture for his work in translation and digital preservation of ancient texts. In 2017, he received the George Garrett Award for Outstanding Community Service in Literature from the Associated Writing Programs. In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, he is a translator of Vietnamese poetry, and a past president of the American Literary Translators Association. His new book of poetry, Empires (Quail Ridge Books) is about tremors in history as imperial eras come to their ends, those interludes when the understood order of things has changed. The poems move through time, around the world, and across the U.S.A.

Jon Sands is the author of The New Clean and the cohost of The Poetry Gods podcast. His work has been featured in the New York Times and anthologized in The Best American Poetry. He’s received residencies and fellowships from the Blue Mountain Center, the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and the Jerome Foundation. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Rosalie Moffett is the author of June in Eden, winner of the Ohio State University Press/The Journal prize, and Nervous System, selected as a National Poetry Series Winner in 2018. She has been awarded the "Discovery"/Boston Review prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Creative Writing from Stanford University, and scholarships from the Tin House and Bread Loaf writing workshops. Her poems and essays have appeared in Tin House, The Believer, FIELD, Narrative, Kenyon Review, Agni, Ploughshares, and other magazines, as well as in the anthology “Gathered: Contemporary Quaker Poets.” She lives in Athens, GA where she teaches and manages the Avid Poetry Series.