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Alcatraz

Editors: Cassandra Atherton, Paul Hetherington

Alcatraz is a one-of-a-kind illustrated anthology of short prose and prose poetry. It showcases works from many of the most exciting practitioners writing in English across the globe.

This includes work by luminaries such as: Will Alexander, Indran Amirthanayagam, Nin Andrews, Maxine Chernoff, Denise Duhamel, Holly Iglesias, Peter Johnson, Luke Kennard, Naveen Kishore, Janice Lee, Jane Monson, Mariko Nagai, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Alvin Pang, Lauren Russell, Fiona Sampson, Ian Seed, Sudeep Sen, John Skoyles, Donna Stonecipher, Sam Wagan Watson, Cyril Wong, Nicholas Wong, Jenny Xie and Gary Young.

The volume is edited by the award-winning Australian prose poets Cassandra Atherton and Paul Hetherington who recently published the definitive book about the form, Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton University Press, 2020), and the authoritative Anthology of Australian Prose Poetry (Melbourne University Press, 2020). The book is illustrated by renowned artist and publisher, Phil Day, whose work recently appeared in the New Yorker.

The anthology is titled Alcatraz largely because of the playfulness inherent in the word, which contains the first and last letters of the English alphabet in first and last positions. Contributing writers were asked to respond to the idea of ‘Alcatraz’ in any way they chose – whether directly or more tangentially. This resulted in a wonderful series of responses, taking on and expanding a wide array of the associations connected to this historically loaded word.

The book is highly inventive in its layout, with contributions appearing according to their length. This means that the book moves from the shortest to the longest pieces and the illustrations complement the shape of the written pieces. They are line drawings, playing on the idea of taking a line from the work and representing it obliquely without ever overwhelming it.

Alcatraz is a highly creative, unusual and distinctive volume celebrating international collaboration and the special magic that happens in the meeting of short prose works and visual art.

$34.99 inc. GST

Additional information

Dimensions 22.5 × 14 cm
Pages

272
ISBN

978-0-6454648-8-7
Will Alexander is a poet, essayist, aphorist, novelist, short fiction writer, visual artist and pianist/improvisor, with about forty titles in these categories.
Indran Amirthanayagam edits Beltway Poetry Quarterly, publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions, writes poetry and hosts The Poetry Channel.
Nin Andrews’s most recent collection of poetry, The Last Orgasm, was published by Etruscan Press in 2020. She is the editor of a book of translations of Henri Michaux.
Sally Ashton, writer, teacher, and editor-in-chief of DMQ Review, is the author of four books. Her most recent is The Behaviour of Clocks (WordFarm, 2019). She lives in California.
Cassandra Atherton is an award-winning poet and scholar. Her recent books are Prose Poetry: An Introduction (Princeton UP), and Australian Anthology of Prose Poetry (Melbourne UP).
Stuart Barnes is an award-winning poet and author of Like to the Lark (Upswell Publishing, 2023), and Glasshouses (UQP, 2016) He lives in Queensland, Australia.
Linda Black is a United Kingdom poet and artist. She is editor of Long Poem Magazine and has published five collections, the latest being Then (Shearsman Books, 2021).
Jessica Bundschuh is Lecturer in English Literatures & Cultures at the University of Stuttgart and has published on Irish performance poetics and ekphrastic poetry.
Anne Caldwell is a lecturer with the Open University and a Royal Literary Fellow. Her latest collection of prose poetry is Alice and the North (Valley Press, 2020).
Anthony Caleshu is the author of four books of poetry, most recently A Dynamic Exchange Between Us (Shearsman, 2019). He is Professor of Poetry at University of Plymouth, England.
Maxine Chernoff is a professor at SFSU, an NEA winner in poetry, a PEN Translation Award winner, and the author of seventeen books of poetry and six works of fiction.
Paul Christiansen is the author of Odes Beneath the Chò Nâu (Phuong Nam), and co-editor of A Rainy Night in the City (Hanoi Publishing). He is content director for Saigoneer.
Phil Day's drawings can be found in collections and publications, including the National Gallery of Australia and the New Yorker.
Denise Duhamel’s most recent book of poetry is Second Story (Pittsburgh, 2021). She is a Distinguished University Professor at Florida International University in Miami.
Carrie Etter teaches at the University of Bristol. Her four collections include Imagined Sons (Seren, 2014) and The Weather in Normal (UK: Seren; US: Station Hill, 2018).
Gerald Fleming is an American poet and editor, author of five collections, the latest of which is The Bastard and the Bishop (Hanging Loose Press, 2021).
Jeff Friedman is the author of ten collections of poems and micro stories, including The Marksman, Floating Tales, and Pretenders. He has won numerous literary awards.
Oz Hardwick is an international award-winning prose poet based in the north of England. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.
Bob Heman’s collections include Demographics, or, the Hats They Are Allowed to Wear (Quale Press), How It All Began (Quale Press) and The House of Grand Farewells (Luna Bisonte Prods).
Xavier Hennekinne is a French Australian writer, publisher and international aid and development professional. His latest novel is Lost Words (Gazebo Books, 2019).
Paul Hetherington has been nominated for more than thirty awards. He is Professor of Writing at the University of Canberra and has written and edited forty-one books.
Cindy Hochman is a copy editor from Brooklyn, New York, and editor-in-chief of First Literary Review-East. Her newest chapbook is Telling You Everything (Unleash Press).
MC Hyland is the founding editor of DoubleCross Press and the author of two books of poems: THE END (Sidebrow, 2019) and Neveragainland (Lowbrow Press, 2010).
Holly Iglesias is a poet and teacher (History through Poetry, Documentary Poetics) who lives in Miami. She is very proud that her work is included in Prose Poetry: An Introduction.
Brenda Iijima is a poet, playwright, choreographer and visual artist, and author of nine books of poetry. She is the founding editor-publisher of Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs.
Peter Johnson ’s recent books are Old Man Howling at the Moon and Truths, Falsehoods, and a Wee Bit of Honesty: A Short Primer on the Prose Poem.
S. K . Kelen’s most recent book is Love’s Philosophy (Life Before Man, 2020). Pam Brown has written that he ‘has been writing preeminent poems for several decades… He is one of OzPo’s luminaries’.
Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist who lectures at the University of Birmingham, UK. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2005 for his first collection The Solex Brothers.
John Kinsella’s new work includes the story collection Pushing Back (Transit Lounge, 2021) and The Ascension of Sheep: Collected Poems Volume 1 (UWAP, 2022).
Naveen Kishore is a photographer, poet and publisher at Seagull Books. Kishore has a book of poems entitled Knotted Grief (Life Before Man, 2022).
Janice Lee is the author of seven books, most recently Imagine a Death (Texas Review Press, 2021). She teaches at Portland State University.
Gian Lombardo has published a number of collections of prose poems. The latest is Bricked Bats (Quale Press, 2021). He teaches publishing at Emerson College.
Kathleen McGookey is an American poet who has published four books and three chapbooks. She lives in Michigan with her family.
Alyson Miller is an award-winning prose poet and scholar who teaches writing and literature at Deakin University, Australia.
Jane Monson is a prose poet and Mentor for disabled students at Cambridge University. Her third poetry collection is The Chalk Butterfly (Cinnamon Press, 2022).
Margaret Moores lives in Auckland where she and her husband own an Indie bookshop. Her poems and short fiction have been published in journals in New Zealand and Australia.
Paul Munden is a poet, editor and screenwriter living in North Yorkshire. A Gregory Award winner, he has published five poetry collections, including Chromatic (UWA Publishing, 2017).
Mariko Nagai has received the Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction. She is a Professor at Temple University Japan Campus.
Sawako Nakayasu is the author of Some Girls Walk Into The Country They Are From (Wave Books, 2020) and Say Translation Is Art (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2020).
Nguyên Phan Quê Mai is an award-winning Vietnamese author of eleven books. Her latest book is the internationally best-selling novel, The Mountains Sing.
Geoff Page is an Australian poet who has published twenty-three collections of poetry and two novels, five verse novels and various anthologies.
Alvin Pang is an award-winning Singaporean poet and editor whose writings appear in more than twenty languages worldwide.
Jonathan Penton lives in New Orleans and edits Unlikely Stories and Unlikely Books. He lends editorial and management assistance to a number of literary organizations.
Meg Pokrass is the author of nine collections of flash fiction and two novellasin-flash. Her stories have been included in three Norton Anthologies of the flash fiction form.
Lee Ann Roripaugh ’s latest book is tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (Milkweed Editions, 2019). She is a Professor of English at the University of South Dakota.
Lauren Russell is the author of Descent and What’s Hanging on the Hush. She is an assistant professor at Michigan State University.
Sarah M. Sala is a queer poet of Polish-Lebanese descent and the author of Devil’s Lake (Tolsun, 2020). She is the founding director of Officeug Hours Poetry Workshop and poetry editor.
Fiona Sampson is a leading British poet, literary biographer, critic and librettist. Published in thirty-seven languages, she’s received various national and international awards.
Kristin Sanders is an American poet and writer. She is the author of CUNTRY, a 2015 National Poetry Series finalist.
Ian Seed’s latest collection is The Underground Cabaret (Shearsman, 2020). He is currently working on a new translation of Max Jacob’s The Dice Cup.
Sudeep Sen’s prize-winning books include Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems. Sen is the first Asian honoured to speak and read at the Nobel Laureate Festival.
John Skoyles ’s most recent book is Yes and No (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, 2021). He is the poetry editor of Ploughshares.
Ruth Stacey is a poet from Worcester, England. She is the author of Queen, Jewel, Mistress (Eyewear Publishing, 2015) and I, Ursula ( V Press, 2020).
Donna Stonecipher has published five books of poetry, most recently Transaction Histories (University of Iowa Press, 2018), as well as several translations. She lives in Berlin.
Marc Vincenz has published eighteen poetry collections. He is also a fiction writer, artist and musician, and publisher of MadHat Press.
Samuel Wagan Watson has written over a dozen poetry books including the 1999 David Unaipon Award for Emerging Indigenous Literature and the NSW Premier’s Book of the Year.
Amelia Walker draws inspiration from contemporary writers including Dominique Hecq, John Kinsella, Andy Jackson, Quinn Eades and Charmaine Papertalk Green.
Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, and co-editor of Meniscus. Flight Mode was published by (Recent Work Press in 2020.
Jessica L. Wilkinson is the author of Music Made Visible: A Biography of George Balanchine (Vagabond Press, 2019). She is managing editor of Rabbit: A Journal for Nonfiction Poetry.
Cyril Wong is a Singaporean poet and fictionist. His last poetry collection is Infinity Diary (Seagull Books, 2020).
Nicholas Wong is the author of Crevasse (Kaya Press, 2015), winner of Lambda Literary Awards in Gay Poetry, and Besiege Me (Noemi Press, 2021).
Jenny Xie is the author of Eye Level (Graywolf Press, 2018), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and recipient of the Walt Whitman Award.
Gary Young is an award-winning artist and author of many books, including That’s What I Thought (Persea Books, 2018). He teaches creative writing and directs the Cowell Press at UC Santa Cruz.

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