Writing News

Thank you Tiny Spoon (a bite size experimental magazine) for interviewing Sarah Lilius and I for Tiny Talks, where we talk about our process, writing collaborative poems these past few months! You can read the interview here.

I am thrilled to say that my fifth full length poetry collection, Pool Parties, will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2023!

This photo is not the cover art (!) but some artwork that I love by Paul Fuentes that I think captures the mood of these poems.

Some fun May news: My micro chapbook, Lying Travel Notes from the Desert is now available from Ethel Press!

I was super pleased to read my poem “Twins” on Saturday, March 13th, at the virtual Iron Pen Writing Contest Award Ceremony! I won second place and it was a joy to hear the other winners and participants read their work! The Midwest Writing Center is the best! Cheers to Ryan Collins and Sarah Elgatian for their hard work.

Michael Sikkema interviews me about surrealism, inspiration, writing, and the world here for a journal of Poetry and Poetics.

Many thanks to the editors of Milk and Cake Press for publishing three of my poems in their recent Dead of Winter Anthology. It’s beautiful and available for purchase on their website.

I’m so thrilled to have some poems published in these two journals: Landlocked and Constellations. Makes the winter in Iowa a little less cold!

My new chapbook, “Teeth Have a Hardness Scale of 5” is now available to purchase at Sputnik and Fizzle Press. I’m so grateful to Isabel and Rita Campos.

Sputnik and Fizzle Press

My chapbook is in the world from Grey Book Press: The Female Citizens of Sunshine Nation Face off with Light Sucking Demons

Here is The Vitamix and the Murder of Crows chapbook cover. This chapbook has the same title as my full length poetry book, and if you put the books next to one another, one crow is chasing the other one. I love it.

Here is cover art for my full length poetry book,  “We’re Going to Need a Higher Fence,” which tied for first place in the Lit Fest Press full length poetry contest in 2017. (Art created by the amazing artist/writer Susan Yount.) Thanks so much to Jane Carman at Lit Fest Press.

Rag Queen Periodical nominated my poem “A 1996 Sister Carrie”  for Best of the Net. Thanks to the editors!

John Madera says this about The Messenger is Already Dead:  “Jennifer MacBain-Stephens’s The Messenger Is Already Dead (Stalking Horse Press) is both exorcism and séance, a visceral and evocative collection of poems brimming with images of blood and bone and skin and death and rot, where angels and devils and monsters cavort among visions vivifying visionary Joan of Arc and ekphrastic engagements with Jenny Holzer, Guillermo del Toro, and Man Ray.”

Thanks so much to the Northern Virginia Review for nominating my poem “A Sparrow’s Death” for a Pushcart Prize!

Below is the exquisite cover art for “Your Best Asset is a White Lace Dress” my first full length book. I love how this photo is creepy and beautiful at the same time. Thanks to Olivia Rose Edvalson for her cover art!

Here is an interview I do over at Carpe Noctem where I talk about my chapbooks “Jeanne” and “The Visitant”  and feminism and the writing process. Thanks Nicole Rollender for posting this. You can read it here and scroll down to 9/15/15.

I am the poet of the month at Yes, Poetry. Thanks to editor Joanna C. Valente. Read three of my poems here:

Yes, Poetry

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Prompt Press #3 will also be sold at AWP this year and it will be completely Gorg. Trust me. I’ve got three poems in this one. Thanks so much to editor, Jenny Colville, fiction writer extraordinaire.

My poem THE FUTURE is going to be part of an Underground Books Anthology Chapbook that is handed out at the New York Poetry Festival this July 26th and 27th. So cool! Wish I could be there.

Over the summer I was so  happy to participate in Iowa City’s Poetry in Public Project.  Various poems were chosen written  by Iowa City residents and displayed all over the city in public spaces/places. Lisa Roberts and I read our poems in public as well as part of the Iowa City Arts Festival!