Description
Poetry. July Open Reading Selection. What happens when the imagined life and the stories we tell ourselves become terrifying, given our human ability to inhabit both mental and physical worlds? Bertram's third full-length collection pivots on an extended piece of creative nonfiction, "Forecast," which shows how obsessive thinking can begin in actual occurrences that are then exploded in the imagination. The science is personal, as the factual is tinted and stylized, filtered through a self grappling with the difficulty of knowing what is "real."
"Lillian-Yvonne Bertram...lives, brilliantly, with whole heart, whole mind, and whole body, in the contradictions...She shows us...that Illusion is the Medium Which Allows Emptiness to Become Something Special, and I love this book beyond loving."—Sarah Vap
Author Bio
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts- Boston, where she teaches in the UMass Boston MFA in Creative Writing Program. She has previously taught at St. Lawrence University, Ithaca College, and Williams College. She was recently named the new director of the Chautauqua Institution Writers' Festival. She is the author of the poetry collections TRAVESTY GENERATOR (Noemi Press, 2019), PERSONAL SCIENCE (Tupelo Press, 2017); a slice from the cake made of air (Red Hen Press 2016); and But a Storm is Blowing From Paradise (Red Hen Press, 2012), chosen by Claudia Rankine as the winner of the 2010 Benjamin Saltman Award. Bertram's other publications include the chapbook cutthroat glamours (Phantom Books, 2012), winner of the Phantom Books chapbook award; the artist book Grand Dessein (commissioned by Container Press), a mixed media artifact that meditates on the work and writing of the artist Paul Klee and was recently acquired by the Special Collections library at St. Lawrence University; and Tierra Fisurada, a Spanish poetry chapbook published in Argentina (Editoriales del Duende, 2002). She collaborated with the artist Laylah Ali for the exhibition booklet of her 2017 art show The Acephalous Series.
Author City: BOSTON, MA USA