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Welcome to the schedule of the 2015 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, happening May 1-3 in the beautiful and historic town of Salem! 

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To purchase your attendance button, read articles on our headliners, get tips for where to stay in Salem, and more, visit our website at www.masspoetry.org/festival2015.

Saturday, May 2 • 12:15pm - 1:15pm
From Zero to One: First Books and What We Wish We’d Known FULL

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Limited Capacity seats available

This event will be of special interest to writers submitting a manuscript or about to publish a first book. We’ll discuss the happy but often bewildering aftermath of acceptance: book design, publicity, the vulnerability of being newly published, post-publication contests, second and beyond books, and the importance of continuing to write after a manuscript has been assembled or even published. We’ll also talk about pre-publication editing, researching presses and contests, realistic publishing expectations, and dealing with a difficult publisher. Although the panel will focus on life after an acceptance, we will have handouts that address the business side of preparing a manuscript. Panelists include a publisher/editor and poets in various stages of their careers. Discussion will be audience driven – bring your questions!

Moderators
avatar for Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield

Karen Skolfield’s book Battle Dress (W. W. Norton) won the 2020 Massachusetts Book Award in poetry and the Barnard Women Poets Prize. Her book Frost in the Low Areas (Zone 3 Press) won the 2014 PEN New England Award in poetry, and she is the winner of the 2016 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors... Read More →

Speakers
avatar for Amy Dryansky

Amy Dryansky

Amy Dryansky has two poetry collections; Grass Whistle (Salmon Poetry), winner of the Massachusetts Book Award for poetry, and How I Got Lost So Close to Home (Alice James). She’s a Massachusetts Cultural Council Poetry Fellow, and former poet laureate of Northampton, MA. You can... Read More →
avatar for Susan Kan

Susan Kan

Director, Perugia Press
Perugia Press publishes the best new women poets in the country. Located in Northampton, MA, but with a far-reaching scope, Perugia gets more than 500 submissions to our annual manuscript contest. Winning poets are aged 28 to 80, come from California to the tip of Cape Cod, and write... Read More →
avatar for Sarah Sousa

Sarah Sousa

Sarah Sousa is the author of the poetry collections See the Wolf (2018): Split the Crow (2015) and Church of Needles (2014) She also edited and transcribed The Diary of Esther Small, 1886 (2014) which won the New England Book Festival Award for Regional Literature. Her poems have... Read More →
avatar for Michelle Valois

Michelle Valois

Professor, Mount Wachusett Community College
In Michelle Valois' previous lives she owned the world's cutest beagle; lived in Sweden; and played the guitar - though not always at the same time. These days she lives in Florence, Massachusetts with her partner and their three children. Her writing has appeared in The Massachusetts... Read More →


Saturday May 2, 2015 12:15pm - 1:15pm EDT
Hawthorne Library

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