Member News

Member Denise Provost publishes new book

City of Stories (Červená Barva Press, 2021)

Denise Provost served for many years in local government and for almost fifteen years in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. She has published in such journals as Ibbetson Street, Muddy River Poetry Review, qarrtsiluni, Quadrille, Poetry Porch’s Sonnet Scroll, Sanctuary, Light Quarterly, and in numerous Bagel Bard anthologies. She received the New England Poetry Club’s Samuel Washington Allen Award in 2021, and the Best Love Sonnet Award from the Maria C. Faust Sonnet Competition in 2012. Her chapbook Curious Peach was published by Ibbetson Street Press in 2019.

“City of Stories is a full length poetry collection which explores the narratives we construct to shape our world. In three thematic sections, these poems observe the shared experiences of community, reactions to current events, and the imaginative life sparked by interactions with literature. Many of these poems employ formal conventions: Shakespearean and Petrarchan sonnets; quatrains, heroic couplets, the ghazal and the ballade.”

Read moreMember Denise Provost publishes new book

NEPC Member Cindy Veach publishes new book

Congratulations to NEPC Member Cindy Veach for the publication of her latest book, Her Kind, released this October from CavanKerry Press.

About Her Kind

Set against the historical backdrop of the Salem Witch Trials, Her Kind is a book about women who are innocent and are used or disregarded by their cultures: women viewed as witches, women making their own choices, women fighting for freedom. The poems in this collection skillfully braid together narratives of the female victims of the Salem Witch Trials with the experiences of contemporary women viewed as witches for their personal histories, their political circumstances, or for speaking out and making their own choices. A blend of lyrical and narrative poems, Her Kind celebrates women refusing the victim role and reclaiming their magic.

Read moreNEPC Member Cindy Veach publishes new book

Congratulations to NEPC Board Member Jennifer Markell on the publication of her new book!

NEPC Board Member Jennifer Markell’s 2nd book of poems, “Singing at High Altitude” has just been published and is available from her website as well as from the publisher’s website, The Main Street Rag.

Read moreCongratulations to NEPC Board Member Jennifer Markell on the publication of her new book!

Congratulations to NEPC poet Michael Favala Goldman on the publication of his third book of poetry, Small Sovereign!

The succinct poems of Small Sovereign explore the paradox of personal power and powerlessness with irony and tenderness: “I am a clumsy giant/trying desperately not/to destroy my own city.” Poet Michael Favala Goldman interrogates our attempts to bridge the gap between the material world and emotion-based relationships.      

– from Homestead Lighthouse Press.

Congratulations to NEPC poet Eleanor Kedney, whose collection, Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020), has been named a 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist in Poetry!

Eleanor Kedney’s collection Between the Earth and Sky (C&R Press, 2020) has been named a 2021 New Mexico-Arizona Book Awards finalist in Poetry. Other honors include the 2019 riverSedge Poetry Prize (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) for her poem “Bubbles Blown through a Wand” and a 2020 Mslexia finalist Prize for her poem “Imagine,” and a finalist mention for the 2020 Best Book Award (American Book Fest). Her poems have appeared in journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Fjords Review, Miramar Poetry Journal, New Ohio Review, and Under a Warm Green Linden. Kedney is the founder of the Tucson branch of the New York-based Writers Studio, and served as the director for ten years. She is a Tucson Poetry Festival board member. To purchase Between the Earth and Sky from the publisher, click

Between the Earth and Sky

Author Photo by Chris Conforti

Congratulations to NEPC poet Thomas DeFreitas on his new collection of poems!

Thomas DeFreitas is celebrating the recent publication of his chapbook Winter in Halifax (Kelsay Books). This collection of 26 poems includes “The Old Dry Dock” (an ode to a Boston barroom), “Our Lady of Cambridge” (finding the Madonna in unlikely places), “Chasing the Waves” (the poet’s elegiac remembrance of his father), and “Detox” (a sobering look at the consequences of alcoholism). Cathie Desjardins has praised the volume, and has observed “[a] skillful use of language and form [that] unerringly serves what’s being closely observed or recalled.”

Congratulations to NEPC poet Laura Budofsky Wisniewski on her new book!

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski’s Sanctuary, Vermont, is the winner of the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize.

About Sanctuary, Vermont

Here, past, present, and future residents of Sanctuary, a richly imagined Vermont town, are given voice. Laura Budofsky Wisniewski joins the lineage of Edgar Lee Masters, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Louise Glück in inhabiting and valorizing the extraordinary inner lives of everyday people. Sanctuary’s townspeople endure hardships and loneliness, suffer injustice and racism, but still find moments of solace, beauty, and communion.

Read moreCongratulations to NEPC poet Laura Budofsky Wisniewski on her new book!