ep. 96 - Melissa Balmain

Rattlecast #96 features the editor of Light poetry magazine, Melissa Balmain. As always, the first half-hour will feature Poets Respond Live. Melissa Balmain is a humorist, journalist, and teacher. Since 2012 she has edited Light, the country's longest-running journal of light verse (founded in 1992 by John Mella). Balmain's poems have appeared in The American Bystander, American Life in Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, The New Criterion, The New Verse News, Poetry Daily, Rattle, The Spectator (UK), Verse Daily, The Washington Post, and many anthologies; her prose in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Weekly Humorist, and elsewhere. A former columnist for Success magazine and other publications, she's the author of a memoir, Just Us: Adventures of a Mother and Daughter (Faber and Faber). Balmain has received national honors for her journalism, including the National Society for Newspaper Columnists humorous columnist award and multiple Pulitizer Prize nominations. She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. Her poetry collection Walking in on People was chosen by X.J. Kennedy for the Able Muse Book Award. Her newest collection is The Witch Demands a Retraction: Fairy-Tale Reboots for Adults, illustrated by Ron Barrett (Humorist Books). For more on the author, and to order the book, visit: https://www.melissabalmain.com/ Visit Light poetry magazine here: https://lightpoetrymagazine.com/ As always, we'll also include live open lines for responses to our weekly prompt or any other poems you'd like to share. For details on how to participate, either via Skype or by phone, go to: https://www.rattle.com/rattlecast/ This Week's Prompt: Write a a poem in which an inanimate object or concept is personified. (See “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath for a great example.) Next Week's Prompt: A pivotal moment in your childhood. The Rattlecast livestreams on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, then becomes an audio podcast. Find it on iTunes, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your podcasts.