Alice James Books Launches New Jean Valentine Series with VEER by Cole Swensen
Alice James Books Launches New Jean Valentine Series with Veer by Cole Swensen
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
NEW GLOUCESTER, MAINE, April 8, 2024 - Alice James Books (AJB), a leading independent poetry publisher, announced today that it will launch a new series honoring the poet Jean Valentine. Established to provide a unique opportunity to women writers, the Jean Valentine Series will publish books authored by mid-career, women-identifying poets. Selected poets will receive a cash prize and publication by Alice James Books.
The first book to be published under the series is Veer by Cole Swensen, scheduled for publication in May of 2026. Cole Swensen is the author of twenty books of poetry, most recently And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023) which was longlisted for the 2024 Griffin Poetry Prize, Art in Time (Nightboat Books, 2021), and a volume of critical essays, Noise that Stays Noise (U. of Michigan Press, 2011). A former Guggenheim Fellow, she co-edited the Norton anthology American Hybrid. Her work has won the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, the National Poetry Series, and the PEN USA Award in translation and has been a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. She taught for ten years on the permanent faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and twelve years in the Literary Arts Department at Brown University. A translator of poetry and art criticism from French, she divides her time between France and the US.
“The Jean Valentine Series from Alice James Books is a tribute to a beloved poet. Jean Valentine was a wholly original and distinctive voice in American poetry from the 1960s until her death in 2020. AJB has been proud to publish Valentine’s work, including her posthumous Light Me Down: The New & Collected Poems of Jean Valentine. This award in her name honors poets in mid to late career who, like Valentine, take risks in form and content, poets who surprise and move us.” said Anne Marie Macari, President of the AJB Board of Directors. Macari continues, “Cole Swensen is such a poet. Her forthcoming book, Veer, lures us into a world that is electric and alive. Swensen asks us to be present in a way that allows for pure joy, pure wonder. Veer is celebration, in fact, it is as if our way of being in the world is reinvented through language in these stunning poems.”
For more information, contact: Emily Marquis, Senior Press Associate, at PA@alicejamesbooks.org or call 207-926-8283.
About Alice James Books
Founded in 1973, Alice James Books publishes books that matter, preserves a place of belonging for poets who inspire us, and seeks to broaden our collective interpretation of what constitutes the American poetic voice. AJB provides a platform from which to elevate established and emerging voices and literary artists of excellence with an emphasis on supporting artists whose voices have been historically marginalized or who offer overlooked perspectives. The press emphasizes collaborative partnership with authors, supporting writers throughout their careers, connecting them to a broad audience, and helping them tell stories that matter. Alice James Books is named after the sister of the philosopher William James and novelist Henry James, Alice James. Keenly self-aware, Alice started writing a journal in 1889 as a vehicle for self-expression within the confines of the Victorian period in which she lived and its narrow view of womanhood. Since the publication of her journal in its entirety in 1964, Alice James has been celebrated as a feminist icon and diarist.
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