Ready for a literary road trip? Check out Route One Reads!
Route One Reads is a special partnership connecting the East Coast Centers for the Book from Maine all the way to Florida. Following an annual theme, each Center for the Book selects a book to represent its state on our collective reading list.
The theme for 2021 is “Poetry.”
Rhode Island’s Route One Reads selection is then, we were still living by Michael Klein
The news from the Rhode Island Center for the Book on choosing my second book of poems, then, we were still living, as its Route One Reads book for 2021 has to be the warmest reception I’ve gotten since my recent move to Newport–to be recognized as someone usually working alone, on the margins. For the honor to go to this particular book made me even more happier, as this is probably the one collection that always seems just a little beyond my habitual sensibilities–i.e., many of the poems here were channelled in the weeks following 2001’s terrorist attack in New York and they came fast and pretty much fully themselves. Thanks again to the Center for the Book for this personal acknowledgment and for all the important work you do connecting American readers to the necessity of literature. – Michael Klein
Michael Klein writes both poetry and non-fiction in the form of essays and memoir. His first book of poems, 1990, tied with James Schuyler’s Collected Poems to win a Lambda Literary Award in 1993. His memoir, Track Conditions, about his time on the racetrack grooming Kentucky Derby winner, Swale, was a Lambda finalist. His latest book of poems is When I Was a Twin (Sibling Rivalry Press) and he has just finished putting together a collection of selected and new poems with the working title The Early Minutes of Without, which is currently under consideration at several publishers. Recent work appears in Ocean State Review and the forthcoming summer issue of The Paris Review. And he has just started writing for SPIN, where he’s published a piece on songwriter Laura Nyro and is working on an appreciation of Sufjan Stevens. He lives in Newport, RI with his husband, Andrew, French bulldog, Ruby and two cats, Flora and Eddie. And teaches writing workshops at Hunter College in New York and taught for more than two decades at Goddard College and in the summer program of The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a Fellow in 1990.
Visit the Route One Reads website to see how you can travel 2,369 miles and explore 15 states plus DC, all from the comfort of your favorite reading nook!
