Poetry. Selected by Reginald Shepherd. Winner of the 2005 Anhinga Prize for Poetry, Sandy Longhorn's BLOOD ALMANAC "is a beautiful yet modest and unassuming book, one that claims less than it accomplishes, transfiguring personal narrative and landscape into things rich and strange: 'The air is heavy with the desire to claw beneath/ the surfaces of things.'"--Reginald Shepherd. "Whether evoking the very American landscape of Midwestern farms or tracing a more interior journey, Sandy Longhorn writes not only of solitude and longing but also of the power of language and its mysterious twin, quiet attention, to brighten the way. Here is the accuracy of faith. Here, a series of 'momentary constellations' flickering. Here, poems 'both diary and document/ held open and up to the light"--Mary Ann Samyn.

Sandy Longhorn was born in Waterloo, Iowa in 1971 and received her BA in English from the College of St. Benedict (MN) in 1993. In 2003 she received an MFA from the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. Currently, she teaches at Pulaski Technical College and lives in Little Rock, AR. Recent poems appear or ar forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Connecticut Review, Free Verse, Gulf Coast, Hotel America, Midwest Quarterly, Smartish Pace and elsewhere.