Poetry on Brick Street is back for its August debut, with poet and author Joan Colby.
Joan Colby has been published widely in journals such as Poetry, Atlanta Review, South Dakota Review, The Spoon River Poetry Review, New York Quarterly, the new renaissance, Grand Street, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. She is the recipient of two Illinois Arts Council Literary Awards, a Rhino Poetry Award, the new renaissance Award for Poetry, and an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Literature.
“I’ve been writing fiction and poetry since childhood,” Colby said.
Born in Chicago and raised in rural Illinois, Colby was first inspired by her upbringing in a 19th-century farmhouse.
“Living in a farmhouse built in 1874 creates a sensibility to those who lived here long before us. It also means a lot of maintenance. The countryside and the horses and other animals have provided a lot of material for poems,” she said, in a recent interview about her upcoming books with Flyover County Book Review.
Colby is the editor of Illinois Racing News, and to this day lives on a small horse farm in Illinois.
She was a finalist in the GSU Poetry Contest in 2007, received the Nimrod International Pablo Neruda Prize in 2009 and 2012, and received honorable mentions in the North American Review’s James Hearst Poetry Contest in 2008 and 2010.
She has published 11 books including: “The Lonely Hearts Killers” and “How the Sky Begins to Fall” (Spoon River Press), “The Atrocity Book” (Lynx House Press) and “Dead Horses” and “Selected Poems” (FutureCycle Press). “Selected Poems” received the 2013 Future Cycle Prize. “Properties of Matter” was published this year by Aldrich Press (Kelsay Books).
Two chapter books are forthcoming in 2014; “Bittersweet” (Main Street Rag Press) and “Ah Clio” (Kattywompus Press). Colby is also an associate editor of Kentucky Review and Future Cycle Press.
Colby will speak at 6:30 p.m., Aug. 7, at the SullivanMunce Cultural Center, 225 W. Hawthorne St., Zionsville.
