THE FORTUNATE ISLANDS

 The Fortunate Islands

Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Paperback - April 2008
84 Pages
ISBN: 978-0-9712676-6-4
USD $14.95 + Shipping

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About the Author, Susan Kelly-DeWitt

Susan Kelly-DeWittSusan Kelly-DeWitt is the author of six chapbooks: A Camellia for Judy (Frith Press, 1998), Feather's Hand (Swan Scythe Press, 2000), To a Small Moth (Poet's Corner Press, 2001), Susan Kelly-DeWitt's Greatest Hits (Pudding House, 2003), The Land (Rattlesnake Press, 2005 ), and Cassiopeia Under the Banyan Tree (forthcoming, September 2007), as well as a letterpress collection, The Book of Insects (Spruce Street Press, 2003). Her work has been included in national and regional anthologies such as Claiming the Spirit Within (Beacon Press), I’ve Always Meant To Tell You, Letters to our Mothers (Pocket Books), Things I Never Said, An Anthology of Letters to Fathers (Story Line Press), O Taste and See (Bottom Dog Press) and Highway 99 (Heyday Books), and Words and Quilts (Quilt Digest Press, 1996); her poems have appeared in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, New Letters, North American Review, Rosebud, Cutbank, Nimrod, Women’s Studies Quarterly, Iris, Comstock Review, Oxymoron, Yankee, Runes, Poet Lore, Smartish Pace, Poetry Southeast, Cimarron Review, Spoon River Quarterly, Hawaii Review and Passages North, among many others. Her short story “The Audience” is forthcoming as an illustrated chapbook (Spring 2007) from Uptown Books. She has been the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University and has won a number of awards, including The Chicago Literary Award from Another Chicago Magazine, the Bazanella Award for Short Fiction and a number of Pushcart nominations. Her essays, interviews, reviews and creative non-fiction have appeared in Poetry Now, Small Press Review, Perihelion and Gardening at a Deeper Level (Garden House Press, 2004). She is currently a part-time instructor for Sacramento City College and the University of California, Davis Extension. The Fortunate Islands is her first full-length collection of poetry.

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Reviews

"These poems are sure-footed, engaging, broad in subject matter but grounded in the poet's wary detective-mind. I have a strong feeling for the most "psychological" of the poems, and those with psychological twists in the last stanza. The poems in this collection feel emotionally complete. An irresistible reading experience and revelation. Fortunate Arrival!"  - Sandra McPherson, author of The God of Indeterminacy

The Great American Pinup
Susan Kelly-DeWitt’s first full-length book is glossed by a quote from Dava Sobel in reference to the Roman Egyptian mathematician, Ptolemy, who was “free to lay his prime meridian, the zero-degree longitude line, wherever he liked. He chose to run it through the Fortunate Islands…” With this kind of an epigraph, I had expected Kelly-DeWitt to expose her own longitudinal line in the guise of her spiritual philosophy, or the path that her life has wandered. The blurbs on the back cover of her book also presuppose issues of a tough childhood, father-issues, and a deeply impacted voice.
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Upcoming Events

Sept24The Poets’ Follies Reading Series, sponsored by Marick Press and The Oakland University Writing Center, will feature the poetry of David Young, Todd Swift and Jason Storms at 6:30PM. The reading will be followed by a question and answer session.
Wednesday September 24, 2014
6:30PM, Room 212, Kresge Library at Oakland University
Rochester, MI 48309 
  
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