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Susan Rich with January Gill O'Neil
Poet Susan Rich returns to the store to launch her latest collection Blue Atlas, a lyrical abortion narrative unlike any other. This collection follows a Jewish woman and her ghosts as they travel from West Africa to Europe, and finally, to the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Poet January Gill O'Neil, author of Glitter Road, will join Susan for the night's reading.
In Blue Atlas, the speaker searches repeatedly for a new outcome, seeking answers in a myriad of mediums such as an on-line questionnaire, a freshman composition essay, and a curriculum vitae. The raw, often far from idyllic experience of a global love affair which results in an unplanned pregnancy, is examined and meditated upon through a surreal prism. The Blue Atlas, a genus of the common cedar tree first found in the High Atlas of Morocco and known for its beauty and resilience, becomes a metaphor for the hardship and power of a fully engaged life.
Susan Rich is the author of six books of poetry including Blue Atlas (Red Hen Press), and Gallery of Postcards and Maps: New and Selected Poems (Salmon Poetry), Cloud Pharmacy, The Alchemist’s Kitchen, Cures Include Travel, and The Cartographer’s Tongue/Poems of the World (White Pine Press). She has received awards from Artists Trust, Fulbright Foundation, PEN USA, and the Times Literary Supplement of London. Her poetry appears in the Antioch Review, Bennington Review, Harvard Review, New England Review, O Magazine, Poetry Northwest and The Slowdown, among other places. She co-edited Demystifying the Manuscript: Essays and Interviews on Creating a Book of Poems (Two Sylvias Press) with Kelli Russell Agodon. Previously, Susan worked as a staff person for Amnesty International, an electoral supervisor in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and a human rights trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. Rich’s international awards include a residency at the Tyrone Guthrie Center (Ireland) and at the Fundacion Valparaiso, (Spain). International poetry honors include participation in the Cuirt Literary Festival in Galway, Ireland and readings at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Currently, Rich teaches Creative Writing and Film Studies at Highline College. She directs Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Writing Retreat for Women.
January Gill O’Neil is an associate professor at Salem State University, and the author of Glitter Road (2024), Rewilding (2018), Misery Islands (2014), and Underlife (2009), all published by CavanKerry Press. The former executive director of the Massachusetts Poetry Festival, she currently serves on AWP’s Board of Directors. Her poem, “At the Rededication of the Emmett Till Memorial,” was a cowinner of the 2022 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Award. The recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Cave Canem, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, O’Neil was also the 2019–2020 John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi.
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