Dr. Joshua Bennett is the author of The Sobbing School and Being Property Once Myself: Blackness and the End of Man, which is forthcoming from Harvard University Press. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, and an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. Winner of the 2015 National Poetry Series, Dr. Bennett has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Cave Canem, the Josephine de Karman Fellowship Trust and the Ford Foundation. His writing has been published in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, The New York Times, Poetry and elsewhere. He is currently a Junior Fellow in the Society of Fellows at Harvard University.                                                                               

PRAISE FOR THE SOBBING SCHOOL

“At a moment in American culture punctuated to a heartbreaking degree by acts of hatred, violence and disregard, I can think of nothing we need to ponder and to sing of more than our shared grief and our capacity not just for empathy but genuine love. Poetry is critical to such an endeavor—and Joshua Bennett’s astounding, dolorous, rejoicing voice is indispensable.”
– Tracy K. Smith, U.S. Poet Laureate

“In his scintillating debut, Bennett raises a crucial question about the writing of African-American experience:  how can one convey the enormity of black suffering without reducing black life and expression to elegy? . . . At its heart, Bennett’s sharp collection is an ode to family, friendship and culture that neither pulls punches nor withholds sentiment.” – Publishers Weekly

Originally from Jamaica, Shara McCallum is the author of five books of poetry, published in the US and UK: Madwoman, The Face of Water: New and Selected Poems, Song of Thieves, and The Water Between Us. Her poems have appeared in literary magazines, anthologies, and textbooks in the US, Europe, the Caribbean, and Latin America and have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, Romanian, Dutch, and Turkish. Her personal essays appear regularly in print and online. Recognition for her writing includes a Witter Bynner Fellowship from the Library of Congress, a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, and other awards. From 2003-2017 she was Director of the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. She is currently a Liberal Arts Professor of English at the Penn State University.

Praise for Madwoman

“In a major way, McCallum peels off the layers of what it is to be a woman. She jettisons poetic forms and can exact poetic norms without waiting for a reaction.”       — Washington Independent Review of Books

“There is a hunger in these lines that is furious and electrifying.” —Nervous Poodle Poetry

McCallum beautifully incorporates the patois of her native Jamaica and employs myth as a way to deal with the mistakes and hurts of the past. [Her] striking poems take the madwoman out of her attic so that she may walk and speak among the living.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review