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Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50
I am the grateful winner of Lambda Literary’s 2025 J. Michael Samuel Prize for Emerging Writers Over 50!
Announcement and acceptance speech
This award is made possible by writer and philanthropist Chuck Forester, who created it out of the firmly held belief that “Writers who start late are just as good as other writers, it just took the buggers more time.”
I am glad to get this award from an organisation that is spotlighting LGBTQ+ writers, fighting book banning, and striving to allow queer works to shine in the world.
5 Questions with Samuel Prize Winner Amy Beth Sisson
Poetic craft queers language and resists binaries: syntax is twisted, lines are broken, and layered meaning emerges. My sense is that fascism relies on binaries, us/them, worthy/unworthy, man/barefoot pregnant wife, human/nature. I think that’s why art and queerness are under attack. The complexity of navigating outsiderness is both a queer way and a writer’s way of being in the world.
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“Go Above Your Nerve”: An Interview with Linda Norton About CLOUD OF WITNESSES: ESSAYS, POEMS, COLLAGES
Linda Norton’s latest book contains essays about life, literature, and writing; collages made of paint, documents, and photographs; and poems she assembled from the volumes she used to prop up her screen for Zoom calls during the pandemic lockdown. In conversation with Cleaver contributor Amy Beth Sisson, Norton discusses this collection, her work-in-progress, and her process.
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My Mentor’s Mentor Text: An Interview with Paul Lisicky
Paul Lisicky’s latest book Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, is part Joni Mitchell playlist, part fan letter, and part memoir. It is rich in explorations of writing craft such as the importance of mentors and how work in other art forms informs writing.
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A Conversation with Ann de Forest Editor of the Anthology WAYS OF WALKING
Walking is counter to the things our culture values. We live in a society that values speed, efficiency, and the arrival more than the journey. Walking contradicts all those things.
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Discovering Your Genre: Prose, Poetry, or In Between
How does a writer who works in both poetry and prose, or on the cusp of both, decide which genre best expresses a particular subject? We, Ann de Forest and Amy Beth Sisson, are critique partners for poetry but we both write prose as well. In conversations about our experiences, we posed this question. Here, we explore some differences between the genres and offer experiments and exercises to help us – and other writers – decide.
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Revision and the Multi-Faceted Self
When revising, how can you shift your mind from the wildly creative to the place where you have empathy for the reader’s needs. What do the readers need to know, what might resonate with their experience, what will raise useful ideas and questions for them? When revising, I am striving to access deep empathy for the person interacting with my words.
Stuck in the Genteel
A certain kind of genteel racism became an evident pattern in my town Swarthmore’s local paper, The Swarthmorean.