Welcome to the 17th installment of our spectacular SpecPo Rhysling poets showcase! You can try saying that six times super fast in a sec, but for now, set your eyes on the works of these supreme 2017 Rhysling nominees, whose poetry can be found in full in the Anthology (which if you are a member, you will receive and if you are not, you may purchase in PDF or in print formats here).
Whole world, please meet the latest 2017 Rhysling Poets:
- Ada Hoffmann • “The Giantess’s Dream” • Twisted Moon 1
- Akua Lezli Hope • “Ink” • Yellow Chair Review, Horror Issue, October 2016
- John Philip Johnson • “Martian Garden” • The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/ August 2016 [print only]
- Carl Mayfield • “The birds forget to sing” • Abbey 147 [print only]
- Elizabeth R. McClellan • “Getting Winterized: A Guide To Rural Living” • Angels of the Meanwhile, ed. Alexandra Erin, April
- Mary McMyne • “Bones Knock in the House” • Rose Red Review 18
Ada Hoffmann is an autistic computer scientist from Canada. She is the author of over 60 published speculative short stories and poems. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, Goblin Fruit, Stone Telling and Uncanny, and in two year’s best anthologies. She is the winner of the Friends of the Merrill Collection Short Story Contest (2013, “The Mother of All Squid Builds a Library”) and a two-time Rhysling award nominee. You can find her online at ada-hoffmann.com or on Twitter at @xasymptote.
Akua Lezli Hope is a creator who uses sound, words, fiber, glass and metal to create poems, patterns, stories, music, ornaments, wearables, sculpture, adornments and peace whenever possible. Her awards include two Artists Fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, a Ragdale U.S.-Africa Fellowship, a Hurston-Wright scholarship, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from The National Endowment for The Arts. Her first collection, EMBOUCHURE, Poems on Jazz and Other Musics, won the Writer’s Digest book award for poetry. Her manuscript Them Gone, awarded Red Paint Hill Publishing’s Editor’s Prize, was published in 2016. She won the 2015 SFPA short poem prize. A paraplegic, she’s developing a paratransit nonprofit so that she and others may get around in her small town. Visit her online at http://akualezlihope.com
John Philp Johnson writes mostly science fiction poems and short stories. He has had work in or forthcoming from Rattle, Southern Poetry Review, Word Riot, Strange Horizons, Asimov’s, F&SF, Apex, Mythic Delirium, Dreams & Nightmares, Silver Blade, Pedestal, Phantom Drift, ETTT, Daily Science Fiction, Mithila Review, and elsewhere, including Ted Kooser’s newspaper column, “American Life in Poetry” and at the Poetry Foundation. He has had Pushcart, Best of Web, and numerous Rhysling nominations. His comic book of graphic poetry, Stairs Appear in a Hole Outside of Town, made with Marvel Comics legend Bob Hall and other artists, has sold a thousand copies and won second place in last year’s Elgin Award. It can be sampled at http://www.rattle.com/tag/graphic-poetry/. He lives on the Great Plains with his wife and varying numbers of their children, and he would love to go to Mars as long as she went with him.
Carl Mayfield is a small press icon and, as with many an old school icon, you will find very few electronic footprints in his wake. Back in the threadbare 80s, he published a small press poetry magazine called Margarine Maypole Orangutan Express. And by magazine, we mean a single sheet of 8.5 x 11″ paper, folded once, and slipped into an envelope, with an average of 10 or so brief, sparkling shards of poetry. His chapbook, All the Way Up, was part of the Modest Proposal Chapbook series (2013), an imprint of Lilliput Review.
Elizabeth R. McClellan is a domestic violence attorney serving rural East Tennessee. Her poetry has appeared in Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Goblin Fruit, Through the Gate and many other publications. She is a multiple Rhysling nominee and previous SFPA Poetry Contest and Naked Girls Reading Literary Honors Award winner. She is a lover of space witches, fractured fairy tales, cephalopods and carnivorous mercreatures. You can find more of Elizabeth’s work at elizabethrmcclellan.com.
Mary McMyne is a poet, writer, and fairy tale aficionado living in northern Michigan. Her debut poetry collection, Wolf Skin (Dancing Girl Press, 2014), won the Elgin Chapbook Award. Her fiction has won the Faulkner Prize for a Novel-in-Progress, a grant from the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and other honors. Her writing has appeared widely in venues like Southern Humanities Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Word Riot, Ninth Letter, Pedestal Magazine, and Chattahoochee Review. An Associate Professor of English at Lake Superior State University, she co-edits the journal Border Crossing. She edits poetry for Faerie Magazine. Visit her online at marymcmyne.com.
SPECPO 