News

This Thurs, 3/21, 7:00-8:15, please join THE URBAN RANGE at BOOK CULTURE, 112th St., Bway/Amsterdam (organic snacks, refreshments, mingling afterwards), featuring these Rangers each briefly reading from their fresh and startling new books or new work: Ruth Danon, Elisabeth Frost, David Groff, Amy Holman, Melissa Hotchkiss, Stephen Massimilla, Hermine Meinhard, Elaine Sexton, and Soraya Shalforoosh. Please join us, and mingle, browse, eat, drink, and have fun! We’d LOVE to see you there!

(More news will be uploaded soon. These brief bios below include some updates about the recently released books shown above.)

David Groff is the author of three books of poems, most recently Live in Suspense, published in 2023 by Trio House Press. His previous books are Clay and Theory of Devolution. He is the coeditor of Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners and Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS. An independent book editor, he teaches in the MFA creative writing program at the City College of New York. 

Stephen Massimilla‘s books include the award-winning Frank Dark (Barrow Street Press, 2022); the award-winning coedited social justice poetry anthology, Stronger Than Fear (2022); Cooking with the Muse (Tupelo Press, 2016, winner of The Eric Hoffer Award, etc.); The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat (SFASU Press Prize); Forty Floors from Yesterday (Bordighera Prize, CUNY); The Grolier Poetry Prize, etc. His poems appear in hundreds of publications. He holds an MFA and a PhD from Columbia University and teaches there and at The New School. stephenmassimilla.com

Amy Holman is a poet, literary consultant, and artist. Captive is her sixth poetry book. She is also the author of the collection Wrens Fly Through This Opened Window and four chapbooks, including the prizewinning Wait for Me, I’m Gone. Her poems have been on Verse Daily and in The Best American Poetry, and nominated by journal editors for Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes. She grew up in northern New Jersey and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Ruth Danon’s fourth book of poetry, Turn Up the Heat, was published by Nirala Series in the summer of 2023. Her previous books are Word Has It (Nirala Series 2018), Limitless Tiny Boat (BlazeVOX, 2015), Triangulation from a Known Point (North Star Line, 1990), a chapbook, Living with the Fireman (Ziesing Brothers, 1980), and a book of literary criticism, Work in the English Novel (Croom-Helm, 1985), which was reissued by Routledge in 2021.

Elaine Sexton’s most recent collection of poetry is Drive (Grid Books, 2022). The Post Office, a chamber opera in poems, is a new work-in-progress, a collaboration with composer Laura Kaminsky, commissioned by Queen City Opera. A maker, art writer, micro-publisher, and educator, she teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute and at arts and writing centers in the U.S. and abroad. elainesexton.org 

Elaine Sexton recently signed a contract with Grid Books to publish Site-Specific: New & Selected in 2025.  She is currently at work on The Post Office: A Chamber Opera in Poems (music by composer Laura Kaminsky), commissioned by the Queen City Opera, to be workshopped by The Cincinnati Opera/Opera Fusion New Works in January, 2025. She has been awarded a 2024 fellowship/residency at The Hermitage Artist Retreat to work on The Post Office Opera to work in collaboration with the composer.

Winter 2018-19

For National Poetry Month, on April 18, Urban Range poets Ruth Danon, Sally Dawidoff and Hermine Meinhard read at an event hosted by Stephen Massimilla at Cornelia Street Café.

On April 15, Stephen Massimilla participated in a reading at The New School, accompanied by J Liebson, Nkosi Ife Bandele, and Olga Breydo.

On Feb 13, Stephen Massimilla was the featured reader, with J. Chester Johnson, at the BigCityLit anniversary event at Book Culture bookstore.

On November 25, Stephen Massimilla lead a roundtable discussion with Urban Range poet Amy Holman and poets Anne-Marie Levine, Patricia Carlin, and Paolo Javier at the Helix Center of the NY Psychoanalytic Society. They discussed the poetry world today (viewing the conception, production, reception, and promotion of poetry through various lenses—formal, linguistic, conceptual, and psychological). The event was followed by a Q & A.

On November 20^th, Sally Dawidoff and Stephen Massimilla read at Bluestockings Bookstore in an event honoring Carol Alexander; other readers included Scott Hightower, Ron Kolm, Daniel Schwartz, George Wallace, and Francine Witte.

On Oct 12th, Ruth Danon and Stephen Massimilla shared new work at Cornelia Street Café in an event entitled “‘Wind and Treason’: Writing in a Time of Crisis,” a reading focused on “taking the measure of the winds … in this ominous time.”

Massimilla read at KGB Bar on May 31^stin the “Midway Journal meets Manhattan” event hosted by Ralph Pennel. Other readers included Susan Tepper, Irene O’Garden, Shinelle L. Espaillat, and Linda Carela.

 

Stephen Massimilla:

Poems:

Stephen Massimilla’s poems appeared this year (or are forthcoming) in the following journals: After Happy Hour, After the Pause, Barrow Street, BigCityLit (four poems), Big Muddy (two poems), The Borfski Press, Carbon Culture, East Jasmine, Field, Ghost Town, Italian Americana, The Laurel Review (two poems), Litbreak (two poems), Malala anthology (two poems), Mudlark (poem featured as a Mudlark Flash), La Prensa (Pushcart Prize Nomination), Prism (five poems), Notre Dame Review (three poems), New York Literary Magazine (three poems), Red Savina Review, Rougarou, The Round (the Brown University Journal), Straightforward Poetry, Streetlight Magazine, Sweet Tree Review, and elsewhere.

 

Massimilla’s Reviews:

In addition to the approximately 70 reviews listed on this site so far, Stephen Massimilla’s multi-genre, co-authored Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare, also received enthusiastic reviews this year in Poetry International, The US Review of Books, Five Points, The Food Poet site, BigCityLit, Southern Seasons Magazine, Poetry International, The Notre Dame Review site, The Green Journal, Her Magazine, Italian Americana, the Vital Nutrition site, and other publications.

Massimilla’s own review of Dana Gioia’s New and Selected Poems (which originally appeared in Italian Americana) and of Ruth Danon’s Limitless Tiny Boat (originally appeared in Pratik), can also now be read on The Urban Range Blog.

Massimilla’s Awards:

In addition to the awards listed earlier on this site, Massimilla’s Cooking with the Muse recently won the following:

The Eric Hoffer Book Award;

The National Indie Excellence Award (first place);

The Living Now Book Award (first place, Independent Publisher Book Award);

The New Apple Book Award in the Cross-Genre category (Solo Gold Metal winner);

The Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award in the Nonfiction category;

The Beverly Hills Book Award (first place);

The USA News Best Book Award;

The Green Book Award, The Holiday Book Award;

The Southern California Book Award, and others.

Massimilla also received a Der-Hovanessian Prize citation from The New England Poetry Club for his English adaptation of “The Hitlerian Spring” by Eugenio Montale—a longish poem of outcry written in Italy during the fascist era.

 

Spring 2017

 

Sally Dawidoff, Ruth Danon, Melissa Hotchkiss, and Hermine Meinhard read for the Above and Below Reading Series, curated by Scott Hightower at Jefferson Market Library on May 12, 2017.

UR members Ruth Danon, Elizabeth Frost, David Groff, Stephen Massimilla, and Suzanne Parker held signings and participated in events at the AWP Conference.

On October 12, 2016, Amy Holman, Stephen Massimilla, Suzanne Parker, and Elaine Sexton read for the Above and Below Reading Series, curated by Scott Hightower at Jefferson Market Library.

Ruth Danon hosted “A Midwinter Night with the Urban Range Poets” on February 2, 2016 at Cornelia Street Café.

Three poems by Ruth Danon (“Americana,” ‘Act of Faith in a Simple

Time,” “Season of Uneasy,”) appeared in the anthology Resist Much, Obey Little., published in February by Spuyten Duyvil Press.

Two Danon poems, “The Joke” and “Approach,” appeared in the Spring 2017 issue of The Florida Review.

Three Danon poems (“Americana,” “Act of Faith in a Simple Time,” and “Season of Uneasy”) appeared in the anthology Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance, published in March 2017 by Spuyten Duyvil Press.

Two Danon poems, “Floridian” and “Apocalypse,” appeared in Isthmus online.

Danon interviewed Natania Rosenfeld for Isthmus.

Sally Dawidoff curated and hosted “State of the Union: Poetry of Witness – Janani Balasubramanian and Camille Rankine” at Jefferson Market Library.

On 9/11/16, Dawidoff hosted the 9/11 Commemorative Poetry Reading, featuring three generations of Tri-State Area poets, at Jefferson Market Library.

Dawidoff is programming literary and cultural events at Tompkins Square Library and teaching poetry workshops—most recently, “The World We Live In: Poetry and Politics” and “Poetry and Art.”

On April 22, 2017 at Fordham University, “Voices Up!: New Music for New Poetry” presented a concert featuring a musical setting of Elisabeth Frost’s 16-part poetic sequence “All of Us” by Robin Julian Heifetz, as well as new works by Lawrence Kramer.

Frost, Hafizah Geter, Sharon Mesmer, and Caitlin Mahoney participated in the Kill Genre Performance Series “Fake News” reading on January 30, 2017.

Frost had work in the inaugural issue of AMP.

Collaborations by Frost and artist Dianne Kornberg were exhibited in the solo show “For All We Know” at the San Juan Islands Museum in Fall 2016. The artists presented several public talks throughout the region in conjunction with the exhibition.

David Groff participated in two events at the AWP Conference in Washington, DC in February: “The Elegy Endures: 30 Years of Community Witness to HIV/AIDS”; and “The Manifesto Project,” celebrating the publication of the book by the same name by the University of Akron Press, for which he read from his manifesto “The Promise of Radical Content.”

Groff’s poem “Dead Deer” was the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day selection for October 5, 2016.

Stephen Massimilla’s new 500-page multi-genre co-authored tome Cooking with the Muse (visit us at: www.cookingwiththemuse.com) won the Eric Hoffer Book Award, the National Indie Excellence Award, the New England Book Award, and a USA News Best Book Finalist Award, among others. It was also nominated for the Foreword Indies, the Gourmand Award, the Balcones Poetry Prize, the LA Times Book Award, and others.

Muse was also chosen as one of three top titles by Bella magazine and the first of seven top titles in “Laurie’s Library” in Epicurus magazine.

Massimilla’s reviews:

Over 70 reviews of Cooking with the Muse have appeared or are forthcoming in publications ranging from literary journals and poetry sites such as StorySouth, Pirene’s Fountain, Pleiades, Poetry Flash, Summerset Review, Thema Literary Journal, The Washington Square Review, and Wild Violet, to trade publications such as Foreword, Booklist, and Publisher’s Weekly, to nationally distributed glossy magazines such as Bella and Whole Life, to regional publications such as the New Jersey Monthly and The New Haven Register, to arts review sites such as The Arts Fuse and The Rumpus, to culinary publications and sites such as Epicurus, Food52, Fully Booked Biz, Gluten Free and More, Edible, Eat Your Books, Catering Magazine, The Spiced Life, and T. Susan Chang’s The Level Teaspoon, to newspapers and periodicals such as the El Paso Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Epoch Times, Newsday, The Indiana Times, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Huffington Post. 

Massimilla’s interviews:

Written interviews have included a conversation with Epoch Taste (“Giving Thanks Through the Ages”) and an interview (with poems and video) with Mass Poetry. Radio interviews have included: Fully Engaged with Vicki St Claire, How To Live Agelessly with Beth Sobel (Miami), Write On! Radio Show (KFAI, Minneapolis), What’s Cooking with Luca Paris (WKBK Radio, Keane, NH), The Good Life with Guy Bower (KNSS Radio, Wichita, Kansas), On the Menu with Ann and Peter Haigh (OTM Radio), and many others.

Massimilla’s New York City events:

This past year, Stephen Massimilla and Myra Kornfeld have held multiple Cooking with the Muse events in New York and around the country. New York City events have included book launches at Poets House in April 2016 (introduced by Sally Dawidoff)  a lecture and cooking demo with enough food for a hundred people at the Natural Gourmet Institute on 10, May 2016 (introduced by Hannah Howard), a reading for Ducts magazine at KGB Bar on June 11, a Signing and Tasting at the Union Square Greenmarket on September 10th, a reading at the Calandra Institute on September 29, a reading with Myra Kornfeld, Suzanne Parker, Annie Guthrie, and BK Fischer at Book Culture on November 10, a presentation and sit-down dinner event at The Williams Club, and the “Midway Journal Meets Manhattan” event at KGB Bar, a Cooking with the Muse fundraiser event sponsored by and for the Poetry Society of America at The Bowery Poetry Club on March 27, 2017 (introduced by Catherine Woodard), a reading with Judith Vollmer at Sidewalk Café.

Stephen Massimilla and Myra Kornfeld hosting a Cooking with the Muse event for The Poetry Society of America at the Bowery Poetry Club

Massimilla’s out-of-NYC events:

Stephen and Myra’s out-of-state events have included: a lecture and demonstration with tastings at “READ & FEED: A new festival for food and literature in partnership with CLMP (Community of Literary Magazines and Presses)”  in Basilica Hudson, New York, on June 19, 2016;  a lecture with tastings and a reading at the Griffin in Great Barrington, MA , on August 27, 2016; a lecture on Thanksgiving poetry, traditions, and dishes (with book signing) at the Miami Book Fair on November 20, 2016; a reading and presentation at The Hudson Valley Writer’s Center on January 13, 2017; and other events in Quogue, Long Island, and at The Loft in Washington, D.C., The University of Southern California, and several other locations around the country.

Massimilla’s recent poetry and essay publications:

Massimilla’s recent poetry publications include four poems in Posit, poems in Issues 78 and 79 of Burningwood Literary Review, two poems in The Coachella Review, two poems in Notre Dame Review, two poems in Flock, and additional poems and essays in Caliban, Clare Literary Magazine, The Collagist, Diverse Voices Quarterly, The Griffin, La Prensa,  Poet Lore, Poetry Daily, The Spiced Life , Talking River Review, Verse Daily, and the anthologies The New English Verse and The Traveler’s Vade Mecum (Red Hen Press).

Massimilla’s review of Dana Gioia’s 99 Poems, New and Selected appeared in Italian Americana magazine (University of Miami). Read it online on The Urban Range Blog.

Hermine Meinhard taught “Poetry in Paris: a Poetry Writing Workshop” at the Mid Manhattan Branch of the New York Public Library on four Mondays in March. The friendships of poets and painters, such as Guillaume Apollinaire and Pablo Picasso and the surrealists Andre Breton and Joan Miro, were crucial to the radical changes that would shape art and writing and the modern aesthetic. In this workshop we explored their ideas, experimented with the poets’ practices, and drew on the library’s Art and Picture Collection to stimulate new writing.

Winter 2015–16

 

Ruth Danon’s new collection of poems, Limitless Tiny Boat, was launched at Poets House on October 17, 2015.

Two poems, “Piracy” and “Warning,” appeared in NOON: The Journal of the Short Poem. “The Small Perfectly Lidded Copper Bottomed Cooking Pot” is featured as an online preview in Post Road. It will appear in print in Issue 30 this spring.

Danon read in the We Heart NYC Writers Night at Parkside Lounge in September and the Boundless Tales Reading Series at the Astoria Bookshop in November.

Elisabeth Frost’s new book, Bindle, includes a selection from many years of collaborative visual-text works created with the artist Dianne Kornberg.

Stephen Massimilla’s Cooking with the Muse: A Sumptuous Gathering of Seasonal Recipes, Culinary Poetry, and Literary Fare, co-authored with chef Myra Kornfeld, is forthcoming from Tupelo Press in spring 2016. This 500-page “coffee table book” features 150 recipes; a plenitude of essays and culinary poetry by Massimilla and many other poets; a guide to healthy, sustainable eating; and 200 photographs.
Massimilla’s recent and upcoming journal and anthology appearances: four poems in The Notre Dame Review, three poems in BigCityLit.com, the five-part poem “Slow Storm” in The Alembic, two poems in Diode, two poems in Poetry Fix, two poems in Ducts, two poems in Interim, and additional poems in Mantis (The Stanford University Review), Barrow Street, Harpur Palate, Slab, Poet Lore, Schuykill Valley Journal, Blue Earth Review, RHINO Poetry, The Valparaiso Review, Midway Journal, The Critical Pass Review, and Oxford Magazine; and poems in the anthologies Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Press)  and The Traveler’s Vade Mecum (Red Hen Press).
Read Massimilla’s reviews of Stephen Sandy’s Overlook and Alfredo de Palchi’s Paradigm in the Urban Range blog.

Read the latest reviews of Massimilla’s recent book The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat in BigCityLit and Poetry Bay.

Massimilla’s recent appearances have included featured readings with Alice Friman in the Lunar Walk poetry series in Brooklyn; with George Guida in the Great Weather for Media series at Parkside Lounge; and in group readings at the Calandra Institute, the Bowery Poetry Club, and elsewhere.

In May 2015, Massimilla and Kornfeld gave a lecture with readings entitled “Eating Poetry and the Poetry of Eating” at Shapiro’s Bar and Restaurant for the Raising the Bar event hosted by Columbia University and NYU.

Massimilla served on the committee that selected the new Poet Laureate of Queens.

This spring and fall, Massimilla also taught four seventeen-week literature and writing courses at The New School.

 

Winter 2015

 

 

Ruth Danon’s new chapbook, The Echoes, will be published by Traffic Street Press in 2015. A poem appeared on the website of Augury Books.

Sally Dawidoff’s adaptation of Ha Jin’s The Crazed made Theatrestorm’s “Best of 2014.”

In 2014, prose pieces from Elisabeth Frost’s current manuscript, “Proxy,” appeared in Clockhouse Review and in the Guernica/PEN flash fiction series. Frost held residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and Willapa Bay. Her several series of collaborative text/image works with the artist Dianne Kornberg appeared in “Madonna Comix and other Collaborations” (The Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham WA).

David Groff has poems forthcoming in The Great River Review.

Stephen Massimilla has recent work in or forthcoming in the following journals and anthologies: Prick of the Spindle, Jet Fuel Review, Fogged Clarity, Mantis, Fiction Fix, The Critical Pass Review, Verse Daily, Rabbit Ears, and in The Meridian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry Vols. 4 and 7. 

Massimilla’s review of Paradigm: New and Selected Poems (1947–2009) by Alfredo de Palchi is currently appearing in VIA: Voices in Italian Americana.

On November 14, Massimilla participated in a poetry reading and discussion at the Bordighera Press 25th-Year Anniversary event at the John D. Calandra Institute, CUNY. He also appeared at an event at The Brooklyn Winery.

Read the latest reviews of Massimilla’s recent book, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-shaped Hat, in PANK, American Microreviews and Interviews, and VIA.

Last fall, Massimilla also taught a seventeen-week writing and literature course at The New School.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Winter–Spring 2014

Ruth Danon will be in residence at the Ashbery Home School in August 2014.

Danon’s recent readings: Prose Pros, November 7, 2013 (new prose from work in progress) and NYU Bookstore, April 1, 2014 (with Martine Bellen).

Danon’s recent talks and papers:

• “Psychoanalysis and Cyberspace: A Response to Margaret Yard,” Object Relations Annual Conference, February 23, 2014
• “Writing in the Presence of An Other,” Bookends, May 1, 2014 (NYU)

Danon’s recent publications:

• “As Mother, As Child” (poem), Mead: The Journal of Literature and Libations, vol. 6, Fall 2013.
• “An Aerial View of the Playground” (article), Division/News, American Psychological Association, Spring 2014.

Danon is preparing for this year’s Summer Intensive at NYU (June 15th–27th). Guest Writers are Cristina Garcia, Jericho Brown, and Katha Pollitt.

Sally Dawidoff’s adaptation of Ha Jin’s The Crazed premiered at Central Works Theatre

in May.

A review.

Dawidoff and visual artist Georgia June Goldberg co-won The Commission 2014 with their design for a multimedia installation comprising sculpture and recordings of a ten-part poem, entitled Coming to Know What We’ve Always Known. The installation was exhibited in May at Morven Farms, a historic acreage in Charlottesville once owned by Thomas Jefferson.

Dawidoff’s poems “Irony Used to Fascinate Me” and “‘Tis Meet to Labor for the One You Love” appeared in the Fall 2013 issue of Barrow Street. 

The First Wednesday Formal poetry series in Albany, California, featured Dawidoff and Maryann Corbett in February.

Dawidoff taught at The Writing Salon last fall.

Elisabeth Frost has poems forthcoming this summer in Clockhouse Review and is enjoying working at two residencies in different parts of the country this summer: Willapa Bay (Oysterville, WA) and Yaddo (Saratoga Springs, NY). She read from new work at Berl’s Poetry Store in May.

David Groff‘s book of poems Clay and the anthology he coedited, Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners, were both finalists for the Lambda Literary Award, with Who’s Yer Daddy? winning the prize at the annual Lambda Literary awards celebration on June 2 in New York City.

On June 3, David began a ten-week artist-in-residence fellowship at the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. Here is his casita: 

From April 21 to May 28, David taught a workshop at Poets House in New York City, “From the Earth to the Stars: Writing Poems of Spiritual Questioning.”

Read reviews of Clay in The Huffington Post.

At the AWP Conference in Seattle (February 25–March 2), Urban Range members Elisabeth Frost, David Groff, Stephen Massimilla, and Suzanne Parker conducted book signings and participated in events.

                              Left: David Groff, Right: Stephen Massimilla

Stephen Massimilla read with Linda Baldanzi on January 11 at Cornelia Street in the West Village in the IAWA series.

On April 3, Stephen Massimilla kicked off National Poetry Month with Barbara Elovic at the Brooklyn Workshop Gallery in Carroll Gardens in the Jupiter Series, which is hosted by occasional Urban Range guest-member Amy Holman.

On April 29, Stephen Massimilla gave a talk with Chef Myra Kornfeld at Acme Bar and Grill entitled “There’s Nothing the Matter with Butter” as part of the “Raising the Bar” lecture series hosted by Columbia University and NYU. The event, which sold out within 24 hours of being listed, concluded with a lively Q and A session.

On May 7, Stephen Massimilla, Suzanne Parker, and musician Laura Foulke performed at Ding Dong Lounge in the TRACT 187 CULTURE CLATCH series hosted by Ronnie Norpel. 

Read Stephen’s recent winter/spring interviews with The Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) and Collected Works.

Stephen’s new book, The Plague Doctor in His Hull-Shaped Hat, was reviewed recently in Poet’s Quarterly, Mead: A Magazine of Literature and Libations, Washington Independent Review of Books, and Puerto Del Sol.

Stephen also has recent work in the following journals: Spoon River Poetry Review, The Literary Review (The Tides issue), Qwerty, Crack the Spine, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Gastronomica.

On March 13th, Hermine Meinhard hosted an evening of poetry—readings and conversations with poets Stephen Massimilla and Cathy McArthur—at The Jewish Community Center in Manhattan in the JCC’s beautiful conference room overlooking the city.

Also this spring, Meinhard taught an eight-week poetry workshop at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library which culminated in students making chapbooks of their poems. On April 23rd, she taught a poetry class at the 67th Street branch library as part of World Book Night.

On December 16th, The Urban Range read to a packed audience at Book Culture to celebrate new work and new books. After an introduction by Stephen Nadler, Ruth Danon, Melissa Hotchkiss, Hermine Meinhard, David Groff, Suzanne Parker, and Stephen Massimilla read their poetry. A reception with organic hors d’oeuvres followed.