Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews

SunLit Interview: When prose failed her after her son’s death, a Colorado mother turned to poetry

Diane Alters, a Colorado Springs-based former journalist and college professor, turned to poetry in 2012 when her son, Armando Alters Montaño, 22 and known as Mando, died suddenly and violently in Mexico City. Already an accomplished student journalist, Montaño had recently graduated from Grinnell College, interned with the New York Times, The Chronicle of Higher […]

Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit

SunLit Excerpt: “Breath, Suspended” charts in poetry the depths of a mother’s grief

This Face You sit in a glass-walled officeat the morgue in Mexico City,studying a cadaver photographof a face you love. You are tryingto convince the coroneryou know this face,this young man who was smilingthe last time you saw him.In your face she has glimpseda blankness, a momentaryrefusal to acknowledgethat the photograph depictsyour son. You barely […]

Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews

SunLit Interview: Poet Carol Guerrero-Murphy’s urgency moved her to self-publish

Carol Guerrero-Murphy has a significant history of publishing while teaching creative writing from preschool through graduate levels in southern Colorado. She is semi-retired, writing and teaching in the Adams State Prison College Program and is affiliate faculty in the Western Colorado University MFA creative writing program. She is a professor emerita from Adams State University […]

Posted inBook Excerpts, SunLit

SunLit Excerpt: The prose poems of “Bright Path, Dark River” meditate on family life and death

Spring Tea Time, 4 o’clock We sit in the west courtyard. We chat about the times we have nearly died over our long lifetimes.  Death is a tossed stone.  Memory is a pool.  The melanoma incident.  The two bloody births.  The numerous fatal car accidents mitigated or avoided.  The angioplasty.  Open heart surgeries.  Several resistant […]

Posted inSunLit, SunLit Interviews

SunLit Interview: In “Slow Arrow,” Kathryn Winograd wove threads of her mother’s voice

Kathryn Winograd is the author of six books, and her essays have been noted in Best American Essays, and published in numerous journals and anthologies. Her poetry has received three Pushcart Prize nominations and been published in places as diverse as The New Yorker and Cricket Magazine. She currently teaches for Regis University’s Mile High […]