10 Writers To Watch Out For In 2015: In the unlikely event that your well of reading recommendation resources has run dry, we've gathered together to-read lists of emerging storytellers to keep an eye on. Unusual friendships and dark biblical allusions.
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is the author of the poetry collection But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award. She received first place in the 2011 Summer Literary Seminars poetry contest, and her poem “I Was a Barking Dog” won Second Place in Narrative’s Second Annual Poetry Contest. Bertram is a graduate of the writing programs at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Illinois and was a 2009–2011 Gaius Charles Bolin Fellow at Williams College.
Sherwin Bitsui is the author of two poetry collections,Shapeshift and Flood Song,and is anthologized inLegitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. A recipient of the 2006 Whiting Writers’ Award, Bitsui was born on the Navajo Reservation in White Cone, Arizona, and is Diné of the Todicheenii people. He lives in Tucson.
One new writer we’re particularly excited by at the moment is D’Andre Jones.Born in Dallas,Texas, came and took the world by surprise. He made his first appearance in 2012 with,”Me or My Drugs” and the ball has been in his court ever since. Karrine Steffans dropped him off to the world as a shock and he has done exactly that, shocking us daily. Jones has the whole world in anticipation for his first memoir “Broken Silence:Vindication.” Ben Bella, made the best decision ever signing Jones. Whether it is his crazy social rants or his touching posts he has definitely grown on the world. One can’t do anything but respect this guy for his openness about life. You’ll either love or hate him. The writer resides in Orange County, CA.
James Arthur was born in Connecticut and raised in Canada. His debut poetry collection is entitled Charms Against Lightning (Copper Canyon Press, 2012). Arthur has taught composition at Northwest Missouri State University and is an assistant professor at John Hopkins. He lives in the Baltimore area with his wife, the fiction writer Shannon Robinson.
Mattox Roesch’s work has appeared in several literary reviews and is included in the2007 Best American Nonrequired Readinganthology. A recipient of a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, he was also honored with a Loft Mentor Series Award. “All the Way Rider” is from a novel entitledSometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same (Unbridled Books, September 2009). Roesch lives in Unalakleet, Alaska, with his wife.
Ebonee Monique Born an outgoing individual, Ebonee was quick to make friends and memories out of any situation. Equipped with an outstanding vocabulary and imagination, it was no surprise when five-year old Ebonee wrote her first book titled: “Goldie the Goldfish”, for her kindergarten class. Throughout elementary, middle, high school and college Ebonee continued penning soul-stirring, personal, humorous and deep poems that she often only shared with friends and family members. It wasn’t until her sophomore year in college, at Florida A&M University, that she woke up one night with a story to tell and a blank computer screen.
Chloe Honum is a tremendously talented poet who we’ve had the chance to publish a few times now. Her first collection, The Tulip Flame, came out in 2014 to many well-deserved accolades across the poetry world, including praise from Pulitzer winners Claudia Emerson and Tracy Kidder. Trained as a ballet dancer, you can sense an almost muscular, but always graceful, control in her lines; the emotional register is as powerful and lithe as a leaping dancer. Chloe tells me she is working on a memoir about growing up in New Zealand and her mother’s suicide: I suspect it may be a tough read but know it will be a beautiful one.
We’re excited to bring much-deserved attention to Austin Smith, whose 2014 Narrative Prize–winning story “The Halverson Brothers” captivated us when it came across our desks this year. It’s a dark tale with echoes of the biblical — the brothers’ rivalry hearkens to Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau — and the style evokes such literary greats as Salter, Maxwell, and Berry. Austin is equally adept in the world of verse; his poetry collection Almanac (2013) was chosen for the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. I hope to see much more from this dedicated young author.
Another writer to watch out for is Adam O’Fallon Price, a fiction instructor at Cornell. He submitted the wry yet melancholy “Objects of Desire” to our iStory contest and impressed our team, including guest judge Ann Beattie. Ann wrote, “You have to read the whole story as if you’re the cinematographer: now here, now there, what’s happening off-camera.” That kind of movement is difficult to achieve in 150 words, but Adam managed to fit a whole world into a small space.
Recently I’ve also been interested to come across the work of a young Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate named Anna Noyes. This year Anna signed with the literary agent Claudia Ballard at William Morris Endeavor, and is working on a debut collection of stories and a novel. One of her first published stories will appear in the next issue of A Public Space, and I think her debut book, when Claudia sends it out, will excite a lot of editors. She has a terrific command of voice, a natural sense of rhythm, and she writes about friendships in close-knit communities with unusual insight. There are elements of Alice Munro to the storytelling, but she also has a distinctive ability to blend quiet moments with raucous ones, and the surreal with the real. A writer to watch.
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