Fall 2021
I am thrilled that my book, Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht, reached the Finalists Shortlist for the Silver Falchion Award – Best Supernatural book published in 2020. Although it did not take the top prize, this hybrid collection, often listed under poetry, scored high marks against a contest pool of traditional prose novels. As another bonus, I enjoyed circulating the Killer Nashville Conference floor and meeting a variety of mystery writers.
While there is no who-done-it component to Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht, and I wrote the vignettes of these bog bodies (corpses) from a character-driven narrative, at the heart of this lies mystery. Isn’t there a bit of mystery in every human story? Thank you to the readers and judges of the Silver Falchion Awards for your broad and valuable reading tastes!
Winter 2020
Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht
Several years ago, when I visited The National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, a featured exhibit held the leathery remains of Bog Bodies and I’d been astonished at the amount of preservation. Considering how old the bodies are, they have some amazing detail–hair, toenails, and fingerprints are still visible. After reading the extensive forensic detail on display, I left to make a study of the nameless people whose bodies were preserved by the bog. And I’ve tried to give some of them ‘voice’ in my latest collection, Borrowings of the Shan Van Vocht.
I look forward to the release of this collection by Unsolicited Press, Portland, Oregon, in April of this year. Ordering available now.
http://www.unsolicitedpress.com/store/p244/catherinemooreborrowings.html
This chapbook-length collection of prose poems explores lost voices of the soil-mummified nameless, whose bodies are recovered from bog lands. The ‘borrowings’ are Bog Bodies—naturally preserved corpses— displayed sometimes like sideshow curiosities in museums worldwide. These bodies are titled after the bog, melting and churning, which exhumed them.
In creating a lyrical voice for these nameless, the poet kept in mind what modern-day forensics reveals about the nature of life and death for bodies recovered from the bogs—the what of their diets, the ways their occupations or illnesses marked their bodies, and the how behind their death.
Summer 2019
Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulist Poetry
The anthology Stacey Balkun and I edited is now available from Liminal Books! This extraordinary collection brings together poets writing in the fabulist tradition: fable, myth, fairytale, or magic. Both an introduction to and a survey of the ways women poets reclaim the domestic sphere and define a genre, poets representing all regions of the continental U.S. and abroad spanning four continents find home here. Contributors include Kelli Russell Agodon, Jennifer Givhan, Miriam Bird Greenberg, Carol Guess, Akua Lezli Hope, Colette Inez, Melinda Palacio, Susan Rich, Martha Silano, Cecilia Woloch, and many others.
Carmen Maria Machado, multi award-winning author and Guggenheim Fellow, says, “Every page of Fiolet and Wing brings some new magic: birds and blooms, fairy tales and fabulism, the border between the domestic and the wilderness, the dream and nightmare of womanhood, the home as prison and liberator. I love these fierce, vibrant, luscious poems.”
Follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@fioletandwing). More anthology resources available at https://fioletandwing.wordpress.com
Spring 2019
My short story “Burnt Festival Blues” won the 2019 Yemassee Fiction Contest! Seems fitting that the literary journal at the University of South Carolina will publish the story as my friend, and early fan, Nancy Fletcher-Blume would often phone in her soft rolling Carolinian voice and say, “Please drop by and bring another one of your swamp mermaid stories.” Miss you, Nancy, this win is for you!
James E. McTeer II, the guest judge, had this to say: “From the first lines of ‘Burnt Festival Blues’ I was immediately made a customary citizen of Burnt Springs. I feel like I was right there, jostling with the Alabama crowd at the genesis of their new festival. I could feel the thick air, hear the thicker accents, and see each vividly described vignette. From a cast of interesting characters, the real star here is the author’s voice. In both narration and dialogue, the author has captured an authentic Southern voice that’s tuned just right to convey this slightly-bizarre tale. The story throws a few great surprises at the reader, but still manages to wrap up in a satisfying fashion. In short story form, that always earns high marks from me.” https://twitter.com/YemasseeJournal/status/1116056773885157376?s=20