Poetry & Conversation: Ailish Hopper & Melanie Henderson

Ailish Hopper is the author of Dark~Sky Society, selected by David St. John as runner-up for the New Issues prize, and the chapbook, Bird in the Head, selected by Jean Valentine for the Center for Book Arts prize. Individual poems have appeared in journals including Agni, American Poetry Review, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, Poetry, and Tidal Basin Review, among other places. Hopper has received support from the Baltimore Commission for the Arts and Humanities, the Maryland State Arts Council, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, and Yaddo. She teaches at Goucher College.Melanie Henderson was born and raised in Washington, D.C. She is an alumnus of Howard and Trinity Universities. Prior to earning an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, she studied poetry at the Voices Summer Writing Workshops (VONA) in San Francisco, CA. Her debut collection of poems, Elegies for New York Avenue, won the 2011 Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Drumvoices Revue, jubilat, Reverie, Torch, Tuesday; An Art Project, and The Washington Informer among numerous others. She participated in Huong's Peace Mural Exhibition in Washington, D.C. (2008-2009), was selected as a feature reader for the 2009 Joaquin Miller Cabin Poetry Series and as a recipient of the 2009 Larry Neal Writers Award (D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities). She received a 2013 Pushcart Prize nomination from Iris G. Press. She is the Managing Editor of Tidal Basin Review.Read "Circle in the Grass" and "Dark-sky Society" by Ailish Hopper.Read four poems from Elegies for New York Avenue by Melanie Henderson.Recorded On: Wednesday, November 5, 2014