Used Book Sale to Support Book Arts Studio

The University of Tampa Press and its Tampa Book Arts Studio will hold their first-ever used book sale on Saturday, December 4, from 9 am until 3 pm at the Music Room of Plant Hall. All proceeds will support the handcraft and antique letterpress printing activities of the Tampa Book Arts Studio on the University of Tampa campus.

Over a thousand books of all kinds have been donated for the sale by Friends of Tampa Book Arts Studio and other interested supporters. They range from classic and popular novels and nonfiction titles, to more unusual books issued in attractive illustrated editions or books about books and book collecting. Most books will sell for $1, paperbacks for 25 cents, and there will some better books at higher prices.

The Music Room is located just off the main lobby of the historic Plant Hall, the former H. B. Plant Hotel, on the University of Tampa campus.

Donations of books for the sale are still being accepted. Phone 813-257-3099 for information on dropping off books, or for other questions.

Dennis Hinrichsen Wins 2010 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry

Poet Dennis Hinrichsen of Lansing, Michigan, has won the 2010 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry. He receives a $2,000 cash award and book publication by the University of Tampa Press for his winning manuscript, Rip-tooth. His book will be released simultaneously in hardback and quality paperback editions in early 2011.

Hinrichsen is the author of six books of poetry, most recently, Kurosawa’s Dog, winner of the 2008 FIELD Poetry Prize. His other collections include The Attraction of Heavenly Bodies, The Rain That Falls This Far, Detail from The Garden of Earthly Delights (winner of the 1999 Akron Poetry Prize), Cage of Water, and a chapbook, Message to be Spoken into the Left Ear of God.

Tampa Review judges praised Rip-tooth for its “toothy” delivery of “sharp, biting, fresh poems in a manuscript that is also deftly controlled and carefully shaped.”

“Rip-tooth explicitly affirms an American voice in the poetic tradition from Walt Whitman and Hart Crane through John Cage, John Ashbery, Mark Strand, and current poets,” the judges wrote. “At the same time, classical and international allusions abound in this rich, evocative collection. Individual poems have philosophical depth and surprising arcs from private experience to popular culture. There is energy, intelligence, and fresh, sometimes visionary language.”

Judges of the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry also identified nine finalists for the 2010 prize. They are:

Susan Berlin of Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, for “Restaurants Where We Didn't Eat”;

D. C. Berry of Oxford, Mississippi, for “Zen Cancer Church and Saloon”;

Susanna Childress of Holland, Michigan, for “Entering the House of Awe”;

T. J. Jarrett of Nashville, Tennessee, for “The Moon Looks Down and Laughs”;

Steve Lautermilch of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, for “The Basho Dialogues”;

Travis Mossotti of Carbondale, Illinois, for “About the Dead”;

Yehoshua November of Morristown, New Jersey, for “God’s Optimism”;

E. I. Pruitt of Saint Louis, Missouri, for “The Bull in the Drawer”;

Sam Witt of Charlottesville, Virginia, for “Occupation Dreamland”;

Hinrichsen is recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and two grants from the State of Michigan. His poems have appeared in journals including American Literary Review, Black Warrior Review, Crab Orchard Review, Field, Notre Dame Review, and Passages North, and have won awards from Carolina Quarterly and Poetry Northwest. He teaches at Lansing Community College.

A selection of poems from Rip-tooth will appear as a “sneak preview” in one of the next issues of Tampa Review, the award-winning hardback literary journal published by the University of Tampa Press.

Rip-tooth is scheduled for release in Spring 2011. A reading tour of Florida to celebrate its publication is planned for National Poetry Month in April 2011, sponsored by the Florida Literary Arts Coalition.

The Tampa Review Prize for Poetry is given annually for a previously unpublished booklength manuscript. Judging is by the editors of Tampa Review, who are members of the faculty at the University of Tampa. Submissions are now being accepted for 2011. Entries must follow published guidelines and must be postmarked by December 31, 2010.

Guidelines are available at http://tampareview.ut.edu or by sending a self-addressed, stamped envelope to The Tampa Review Prize for Poetry, University of Tampa Press, 401 West Kennedy Blvd., Tampa, FL 33606.

Tampa Review Prize Poet Benjamin Grossberg Wins National Lambda Literary Award for Poetry

Poet Benjamin S. Grossberg and the University of Tampa Press were honored last month with a national Lambda Literary Award.

Grossberg, who received the Tampa Review Prize for Poetry for Sweet Core Orchard, published last year by the University of Tampa Press, had his book selected as winner of the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. He was on hand to accept the honor at the 22nd Annual Lambda Literary Awards Ceremony, May 27, 2010, at the School of Visual Arts Theater in New York City. The awards have been sponsored annually for over two decades by the Lambda Literary Foundation.

Sweet Core Orchard was chosen from an impressive list of finalists, including Breakfast with Thom Gunn by Randall Mann (University of Chicago Press); The Brother Swimming Beneath Me by Brent Goodman (Black Lawrence Press); The First Risk by Charles Jensen (Lethe Press); and What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy (Four Way Books).

Grossberg currently teaches at the University of Hartford. His poems have appeared widely in literary journals, including Paris Review, Southwest Review, American Literary Review, North American Review, and many others. His first book, Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath, won the 2005 Snyder Prize and was published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2007. His previous awards include a Pushcart Prize as well as several literary arts grants. Two poems from his Tampa Review Prize book were recently selected for publication on the Poetry Foundation website: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive.

Sweet Core Orchard, winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize for Poetry and the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry, can be ordered from the publisher at http://utpress.ut.edu



Ben Grossberg at the podium in New York City accepting the 2010 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry. Photo © Donna F. Aceto.