The Slapering Hol Press (Old Dutch for Sleepy Hollow), the small press imprint of The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, Sleepy Hollow, New York, announces the 2008 publication of Poems in Conversation and a Conversation, by Elizabeth Alexander and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon.
Two years in the making, the Poems in Conversation chapbook is the first in the Sleepy Hollow Chapbook Series edited by SHP founder, poet Margo Stever, and co-editor, poet Suzanne Cleary. The Poems in Conversation chapbook sings of the black woman’s experience in America. Press kits and copies of Poems in Conversation and a Conversation are available on request from The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center.
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L to R: Elizabeth Alexander and Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. |
Alexander was recently commissioned by President-Elect Barack Obama to compose and read a poem for his upcoming inauguration. She will join the ranks of only three other poets in American history to read at such an event. Robert Frost was the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration – that of John F. Kennedy in 1961. Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton’s first inauguration in 1993, and Miller Williams read at Clinton’s second inauguration in 1997.
