Tag: The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry

Sundress Announces The Familiar Wild Virtual Book Launch

Sundress Publications announces a virtual book launch and reading to celebrate the release of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry. The event is hosted by the anthology editors, Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies.

The virtual launch will take place on November 11th from 7:00-8:30PM EST. Canine friends are also encouraged to attend!

Join us on Zoom at http://tiny.utk.edu/sundress with password: safta.

The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry grapples with the simultaneous heaviness, happiness, love, and loss that comes with dog companionship, exposing deep truths about what it means to share space with our fellow non-humans. This moving anthology catapults readers into the marrows of living and feeling alongside our mysterious canines: a species that often teaches us what it means to be human.

Readers at the event will include:

Kelli Russell Agodon
Ruth Baumann
Robin Becker
Tara Betts
Soledad Caballero
Grady Chambers
Chen Chen
Emily Rose Cole
Steven Cordova
Lisa Fay Coutley
Matthew Gavin Frank
Chloe Honum
Ashley Inguanta
Irène Mathieu
Carly Miller
Rosalie Moffett
Jason Myers
Leila Ortiz
Jennifer Perrine
Carrie Shipers
Raena Shirali
Nomi Stone
Nina Sudhakar
Jeanne Wagner

Ruth Awad is the Lebanese-American author of Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017). Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Believer, The New York Republic, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She lives and writes in Columbus, OH, with her four bratty and joyous Pomeranians.

Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters, forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2021 and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, which was a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poetry has appeared at The Believer, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review, and her nonfiction has appeared at The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, and LitHub, among other outlets. Mennies lives in Chicago with her spouse and her rescue greyhound mix, Otto.

Access the event here. The password is safta.

The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry is available for sale HERE.

Sundress Releases The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry

Sundress Publications announces the release of The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry, an anthology edited by Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies.

What does it mean for a poet to love a dog—especially knowing it will never outlive them? The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry catapults readers into the marrows of living and feeling alongside our mysterious canines: a species that often teaches us what it means to be human. These selections interrogate our lives as they’ve intertwined with humanity’s most beloved house companion. What catalyzes our hunger to share our vulnerabilities and lived realities with these curious, interdependent animals?

Writers, including Chen Chen, Noah Baldino, Hanif Abdurraqib, Carly Joy Miller, Maggie Smith, and Raena Shirali, among others, grapple with the simultaneous heaviness, happiness, love, and loss that comes with dog companionship, exposing deep truths about what it means to share space with our fellow non-humans. This collection examines both the routine and the unexpected lives this anthology’s poets have built with their dogs, exploring wildness and domestication, boundaries and freedom, rescue and grief through works centered on the complicated, expansive writer-to-canine connection.

Ruth Awad is the Lebanese-American author of Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Believer, The New Republic, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in poetry from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and she lives and writes in Columbus, Ohio, with her four bratty and joyous Pomeranians.

Rachel Mennies is the author of The Naomi Letters, forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2021 and The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards, the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award. Her poetry has appeared at The Believer, Kenyon Review, and American Poetry Review, and her nonfiction has appeared at The Millions, The Poetry Foundation, and LitHub, among other outlets. Mennies serves as the reviews editor for AGNI. She lives in Chicago, where she works as a freelance editor and writer, with her spouse and her rescue greyhound mix, Otto.

The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry is available for order now!

Call for Submissions: The Familiar Wild

Call for Submissions: The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry

Sundress Publications announces an open submission call for The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry, an anthology that centers the storied, yet perpetually mystifying connection that dogs and humans share with a new focus: the historical and contemporary relationships between poets and dogs.

Reaching beyond a generic celebration of the “dog-owner bond,” The Familiar Wild: On Dogs & Poetry will also interrogate and focus it: why (and how) do dogs appear in poets’ poems, and what does it mean to have a dog beside a poet at their writing desk? Why might poets in particular be drawn to dog companionship? This collection will examine both the routine and the unexpected lives we’ve built with our dogs, exploring wildness and domestication, boundaries and freedom, rescue, and grief through poetry centered on the complicated, expansive dog-poet connection. This call takes particular interest in voices and histories not usually centered in this conversation, particularly those that consider the role of the dog-poet bond in relation to disability, queerness, race, gender, age, and more.

Interested poets should submit a cover letter, 3-5 poems, and an optional short (max. 500 words) essay that considers their personal relationship to the anthology’s subject matter. We intend to include these essays alongside chosen poems for each author. Please feel free to interpret the themes of the anthology widely: however best fits you, your work, and your relationship to dogs. We want to be surprised! That said, poems must engage with dogs or dog companionship/ownership in some way (we’re not looking for poems not about dogs). The deadline for submissions is July 1, 2019.

To submit, attach your manuscript as a single DOCX or PDF file to thefamiliarwild@gmail.com. If the poems have been previously published elsewhere and/or simultaneously submitted, please indicate this in your cover letter. We will happily consider previously published poems so long as the poet retains the rights to reprint them.

The poets Ruth Awad and Rachel Mennies will serve as co-editors for this anthology.

Ruth Awad is a Lebanese-American poet and author of Set to Music a Wildfire (Southern Indiana Review Press, 2017), winner of the 2016 Michael Waters Poetry Prize and the 2018 Ohioana Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of a 2016 Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, and she won the 2013 and 2012 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize and the 2011 Copper Nickel Poetry Contest. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The New Republic, Pleiades, The Missouri Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

Rachel Mennies is the author of The Glad Hand of God Points Backwards (Texas Tech University Press), the 2014 winner of the Walt McDonald First-Book Prize in Poetry and finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and the chapbook No Silence in the Fields (Blue Hour Press). Her writing has recently appeared, or will soon, at The Believer, Kenyon Review, The Poetry Foundation, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Chicago and is a member of AGNI’s editorial staff.