Contributors' Notes

The folks over at Barrelhouse are presenting "Bargain," a poem by Steve Kistulentz (CN16) complete with Steve's annotations. It's a great read, and the annotations include a shoutout to Copper Nickel, since our 16th issue contains his amazing essay "People Who Died," which see if you haven't yet...

We're very happy to see Steve Langan's poem, "A Report," from Copper Nickel 16 on Verse Daily today. Thanks again to Steve and to all the folks at Verse Daily for helping this poem circulate.

Anna Journey's poem "Alarm (2)" from Copper Nickel 15 is featured today on Verse Daily. Check it out and, if you haven't yet, check out the whole issue, which includes two additional fresh Anna Journey poems.

Also, if you're in Denver, you can check out Anna on Thursday, April 7th, when she reads on the Auraria Higher Education Campus in North Classroom 1607. The reading is free and open to the public.

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!

Noah Eli GORDON (with Bhanu KAPIL and David BUUCK) will read at the Dikeou Collection, Downtown Denver with musical guest Edward ALMOST in the first reading of the relaunched Dikeou Collection Reading Series 7pm on Saturday, February 20th 2010.

"There will be beers, treats and access to the Dikeou Collection of artwork.

The Dikeou Collection @ The Colorado Building, 1615 California Street (at 16th Street), Suite 515. Take the elevator to the 5th floor ...

The folks at Verse Daily have done it again, featuring A. E. Watkins from CN13 on their site today. Congratulations to A. E., and thanks to everyone who's tuning in.

Krista Franklin, the cover artist for Copper Nickel 13 presents her "A Natural History of My Drapetomania" over at The Owls.

Here's a preview:

The radio is a bad influence, lures me further away, summons me to Salem Mall, through its heavy glass doors to feast on the hallucinogen of consumerism. Here garments beckon me to try on, be transformed, but Camelot Records spins a sticky web, offers a hundred shrink-wrapped escape plans begging to be bagged. I leave sweaty-palmed with something to take home, my allowance pick-pocketed by the record industry.

Simmons Buntin, contributor to Copper Nickel 11 and editor of Terrain.org, has posted a story about the latest literary journal to come under fire, Isotope. Follow this link to find out how you can help.