Allyson Whipple

Category: chapbook

  • And now for the big announcement!

    Potential cover art?
    (You read that right. I said “cover art.”)

    I’ve been holding onto this news for about two weeks now, but I wanted to wait until the contract had been signed and the release date had been set before I put this out to the entire internet.

    I am thrilled to announce that Finishing Line Press has accepted my chapbook, We’re Smaller Than We Think We Are, for publication in 2013. I’m so excited to be working with Finishing Line. They’ve published a number of poets I admire, and I’m honored to be included. The book will be available for preorder on January 15th, and the official release date is set for April 27th.

    Now I’m in the process of making sure the manuscript is perfect, selecting potential photographs to use for cover art, and  other miscellaneous tasks to get everything ready for publication. It’s a lot of work, but I’m enjoying every moment of it. 2012 has been a great year for my writing; it looks like 2013 is going to start off with a bang as well.

  • The process of a chapbook

    Last week, I completed the manuscript of We’re Smaller Thank We Think We Are, a poetry chapbook containing a variety of pieces written over the course of about two years. Just completing the manuscript was a huge accomplishment for me, and I had a lot of great help along the way.

    I’d been trying to put a chapbook together for a few months, but had been floundering. I had poems, but I didn’t have any clue how to actually turn them into a cohesive book. Plus, my poems were competent (a term my college poetry professor Jerry Harp used to refer to his own work once), but they needed some work, and I was blocked.

    I turned to local poet Abe Louise Young for private coaching. Over the course of six weeks, we worked one-on-one to hone my revision techniques, get my poems up to par, and arrange them in chapbook form. Abe has been a fantastic mentor. I feel like a better poet, and now I have a sense of what makes a manuscript complete.

    I also had help from my husband, Jon Eric, who read the first version of the manuscript and gave me some feedback that helped shape the final manuscript into what it is now. My friends Reesa, Carly, and Lynn also served as encouraging beta readers. I’m grateful for their support.

    Now comes the process of submitting the chapbook to various places. As well as writing more poetry. Because I’m not going to stop at just one chapbook. 🙂