To call this place "Copper Nickel-tested, Copper Nickel-approved" would be a serious understatement. We lunch here, we hold meetings here, and Copper Nickel staffer Anisetta keeps the place on the literary up-and-up by posting poems at her register. Here you can get a cup of Boulder's own Allegro coffee, along with a murderer's row of obscene pastries. They serve a wide range of deli fare, as well as beer and wine, and the ample seating area can easily accommodate you and the half-dozen people you promised to have lunch with.

Located at Denver's historic Larimer Square, on Larimer between 14th and 15th. Take the free 16th Street Mall shuttle to Larimer, hop off, and take a short walk south.

Biker Jim's Gourmet Dogs

At this award winning food-cart, in addition to the more traditional beef dogs, you'll also find dogs made from wild boar, elk, buffalo, and even rattlesnake/pheasant now and then. Get yours topped with mouth-watering caramelized onions, and have a bag of Boulder chips (aka, "The Best Damn Chips Ever") as a side. If you're nice, they'll inject your dog with a caulking gun full of cream cheese. Go on--try to have just one.

Location: 16th and Arapahoe, a short stroll from all conference-related stuff.

We have updated our contest guidelines here: http://www.copper-nickel.org/contest/.

We are ready to begin accepting entries and will continue to do so through May 15, 2010.

Holly Goddard Jones, author of Girl Trouble will be with us Monday, March 8th. She'll be reading at 4pm in Tivoli 440. The reading is free and open to the public.

Copper Nickel is teaming up with Win Wear to present an evening of writing from Copper Nickel 13 translated into music, art, and food on Thursday, March 18th, beginning at 7pm at Orange Cat Studios, 2625 Larimer Street in Denver.

A $10 cover gets you in, gets you fed, and puts a copy of Copper Nickel 13 in your hands. Another $1 will get you a "bottomless cup of beer" to be filled with goodness from our friends at Great Divide Brewing.

Translating musicians include Roger Green, Conrad Kehn, David Mead and more. In addition to the music, Mark Shusterman, current pastry chef at Beatrice and Woodsley, will be preparing inspired food for the event paired with the GREAT DIVIDE beer.

The fun doesn't stop there; a reception follows with NOVO Coffee, home made pastries, and record spinning going well into the night.

Please join us for an evening of transmogrification and hot artist-on-artist action.

During the AWP Conference, Copper Nickel will present an audible edition of the journal featuring past contributors---including Hadara Bar-Nadav, Alyson Hagy, James Hoch, Deborah Poe, and Aurelie Sheehan---on Saturday, April 10th, beginning at 7:30pm. The event is free and open to all comers.

Check back here for a table of contents, coming soon.

As part of the AWP Conference, Copper Nickel will present eight debut poets on Thursday night, April 8th, from 6-8pm in the Tivoli Turnhalle (900 Auraria Parkway). After readings from Dan Albergotti, Jericho Brown, Stacey Lynn Brown, Michael Dumanis, Farrah Field, J. Michael Martinez, Alison Stine and Allison Benis White, join us for a reception where books will be on sale. This event is free and open to all comers.

With all these poets from Copper Nickel showing up on Verse Daily and so forth, you might say "What about the fiction?

Well, here's a little horn.

Alyson Hagy, a contributor to Copper Nickel 11, has a new collection of stories, Ghosts of Wyoming, out, featuring the novella "The Sin Eaters" that appeared first in our pages, and that novella is getting special attention in the reviews, including this one from the Boston Globe:

Hagy's final and most powerful tale, "The Sin Eaters,'' captures the bewildering clashes of an earlier, wilder Wyoming through the eyes of an outsider. In 1889, a young Protestant missionary from Iowa is traveling to Fort Washakie, where he will compete with Roman Catholics and Episcopalians for the souls of the natives. Riding from one homestead to the next, he finds a gruff hospitality everywhere. Yet the people who give him berth turn out to be a complicated lot: cattle rustlers, whores, and killers, locked in unnavigable feuds with each other. Even the mixed-race mule driver who takes the young man under his wing - a hallucinatory figure with mules named Terpsichore and Betsy Ross - is far from pure of heart. He can only warn his Midwestern guest that this is no place for him.

Hagy renders this tale as vivid and surprising to readers as it is to the young preacher. She offers little explanation, simply letting the players and the landscape unfurl before us. Her Wyoming is a harsh world, but one shot through with transcendent moments, as when the traveler and his hosts raise their eyes to the night sky: "The silver hook of the moon seemed poised to lift them all into the net of heaven's stars.''

Maybe you read it here first.

Did you know Copper Nickel 13 had so many good poems in it? Michael Dumanis's "Natural History" is today's poem of the day on Verse Daily.

Verse Daily present's Jericho Brown's poem "Contrast" today!