Writer-in-Residence Diane Seuss won the Indiana Review 1/2K Prize for prose of 500 words or less. Brief nonfiction, prose poetry, or short-short stories are eligible for the prize. Di’s winning entry is titled “Wal-Mart Parking Lot,” and about it the contest judge wrote: “[It] offers readers an unexpected vision of American culture filtered through consumer culture and 20th century art history.” Di also was a finalist in three prestigious poetry competitions: the Orlando Prize (from A Room of Her Own Foundation); the River Styx Poetry Prize, 2013; and the Able Muse Poetry Prize, 2013. Last fall she was the MacLean Distinguished Visiting Professor in the English department at Colorado College.
New poems of Di’s appear in Unsplendid, Rattle, North American Review, and The Missouri Review. The latter journal featured the four poems in its online Text Box anthology, which includes an introduction to the poems (from which comes the Di Seuss quote that serves as title to this post) as well as questions and writing prompts. Di’s next public readings will occur November 4 (in Mount Pleasant, Mich., as part of the Wellspring Literary Series) and February 6, 2014 (at the University of Michigan, as part of the Zell Visiting Writers Series). Her third collection of poems, Four-Legged Girl, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in 2015.
