Three Poems Published in Prairie Schooner Selected For The Best American Poetry 2015

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“Best

Three poems first published in Prairie Schooner will appear in this year’s edition of The Best American Poetry, a long-standing annual anthology of American poetry, as selected by critically acclaimed author and poet Sherman Alexie.

Alexie selected Candace G. Wiley’s poem “Dear Black Barbie,” Rajiv Mohabir’s “Dove,” and “The Bees, the Flowers, Jesus, Ancient Tigers, Poseidon, Adam and Eve,” by Michael Derrick Hudson under the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou, from Prairie Schooner’s 2014 editions for publication in the anthology.

Recently, Candace Wiley received a Fulbright Fellowship in Columbia. In addition to Prairie Schooner, her work has appeared in Electronic Corpse, Home Is Where, and others. She is also the co-founder and director of the blog The Watering Hole, a self-described “online community dedicated to poets of color.” She and other co-founders credit a workshop led by Prairie Schooner editor Kwame Dawes as a source of inspiration for the online community. More can be found at https://twhpoetry.wordpress.com/.

Rajiv Mohabir is winner of AWP’s 2015 Intro Journal Award. His forthcoming collection The Taxidermist’s Cut is set to come out in Spring of 2016, by Four Way Books. He also received the 2015 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant for translating Lalbihari Sharma’s 1916 Holi Songs of Demerara. His work has appeared in The Collagist, The Asian American Literary Review, and others. More can be found at https://rajivmohabir.wordpress.com/.

Michael Derrick Hudson has published work in Poetry Magazine and other journals under his own name and under the pseudonym "Yi-Fen Chou.” Prairie Schooner was not aware of this pseudonym at the time the work was published.

The Best American Poetry series is a well-respected publication, founded by David Lehman in 1988. Its 2015 guest editor, Sherman Alexie, has won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the PEN/Faulkner, PEN/Malamud, and PEN/Hemingway awards for his fiction and short fiction, and is an accomplished slam poet. He also guest-edited Prairie Schooners Winter 2012 themed portfolio of work by Native American writers, and a poem by Alexie will appear in the Winter 2015 sports-themed issue, curated by Natalie Diaz.

More can be found at http://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/.