Shoshauna Shy

photo by James Schey

CONTACT

Shoshauna Shy
Madison, Wisconsin

BIO

Shoshauna Shy is a member of the Prairie Fire Poetry Quartet which includes John Lehman, Richard Roe and Robin Chapman. They are available to perform at museum celebrations, art gallery openings, special events and evening soirées. In May 2004, she founded a program called Poetry Jumps Off the Shelf, in which the mission is to place poetry in public places where it is not expected. As of February 2010, she is conducting a new call for submissions for the Woodrow Hall Jumpstart Award ---- Open to Wisconsin poets! Read up on it at poetryjumpsofftheshelf.com

Shoshauna Shy's poems have been published in numerous journals and magazines which include The Seattle Review, Cimarron Review, The Briar Cliff Review, Rattle, Rosebud and Poetry Northwest. She won First Place in the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets Triad Contest in 2002; three of her poems were finalists in the Wisconsin Academy Review Poetry Contest in 2004 and the Wisconsin People & Ideas contest in 2010, and one of her poems was selected for the Poetry 180 Library of Congress program launched by Billy Collins. She was the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets' poetry editor for their quarterly newsletter from 2001-2004, and sponsored a contest in Free Verse in 2005. Her collection titled What the Postcard Didn’t Say won an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association in 2008. Shoshauna works for the Wisconsin Humanities Council and has helped create, coordinate and facilitate poetry programs for the annual Wisconsin Book Festival in downtown Madison each October.

PUBLICATIONS

What the Postcard Didn't Say, full-length collection, Zelda Wilde Publishing, 2007 - $11.95 - Winner of an Outstanding Achievement Poetry Award from the Wisconsin Library Association
White Horses on Sale for a Song, Parallel Press, 2005 - $10.00
Lake Wingra Morning: Poems of the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood, Woodrow Hall Editions in partnership with the Dudgeon-Monroe Neighborhood Association, 2003 - $5.00. Edited by Shoshauna Shy - SOLD OUT
Slide Into Light: Poems of the Brighter Moments, Moon Journal Press, 2001 - $8.00
Souped-Up on the Must-Drive Syndrome, Pudding House Publications, 2000 - $8.95

Shoshauna Shy's poems have been anthologized by Random House (Poetry 180), Grayson Books (Proposing on the Brooklyn Bridge, To Love One Another), Wisconsin Poets' Calendars, Samsara Quarterly, Pudding House Publications (The Pocket Poet Parenting Guide, Hunger Enough), Marion Street Press (Poem, Revised), Midmarch Arts Press (Mirror, Mirror: Reflections on the Way We Look ), Wild Dove Studio & Press (Jane's Stories), Sourcebooks, Inc. (Poetry Daily), Girlchild Press (Just Like a Girl), Paper Kite Press (Poem, Home), and Red Hen Press ( Letters to the World).

OTHER POEMS
loc.gov/poetry/180/068.html

poemeleon.org/shoshauna-shy/
madpoetry.org/madpoets/shyshosh.html

BOOKINGS

2010

January
Participant in The Winter Festival of Poets reading on January 24th at 2:00 PM with Russell Gardner, Fran Rall, Geoff Collins, Richard Swanson and Kimberly Blanchette at Avol's Bookstore in Madison

POEM

THE BEST WAY TO READ LORINE NIEDECKER'S POEMS

First wander through Emerald Grove's antique store
amongst fishing nets and rusty kerosene lamps
for a spitbox in which to plant Queen Anne's lace.

Unpin dishtowels from a clothesline
and notice how the leaves
of the neighboring poplar
shimmy in the wind.

Enter a cabin that has been sitting empty
while its owners take a cross-country train
to New York.

With her book on your lap, cup the chin
of a cat as it sprawls beside you
on a windowsill, the breeze thick
with the scent of cherry blossoms.

Remember how your husband's former fiancee
whose pregnancy was terminated
asked to come visit, couldn't take her eyes
off your little boy.

Published by Wisconsin Academy Review

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