The title poem of Andrea Hollander Budy's second poetry book, The Other Life, was selected in 1/7/01 by Rita Dove as her weekly Poet's Choice in The Washington Post. "These poems explore that nameless longing engendered by alternative possibilities: What Might Have Been," she said. The poems also look hard at difficult truths whether in distant places - like the jungles of Vietnam or the terribly familiar world of our bedrooms and kitchens, where she ambushes us "across the table's white ironed cloth."
Ms. Budy lives with her husband and son in the woods of Mountain View, Arkansas and teaches at Lyon College. Her awards include the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize for her first poetry collection, House Without a Dreamer, and fellowships from the NEA, the Arkansas Arts Council, and the Wesleyan and Bread Loaf Writers' Conferences.
Carl Phillips writes of Double Going, Richard Foerster's recently-published fourth collection of poetry: "With the formal viruosity that has always marked his work, Richard Foerster turns his gaze to the conundrum of childhood trauma, the stain of the past, our instinct sometimes to erase it, sometimes to brandish it - a tattoo. It is the doubleness of desire itself - finally - bodily and psychological - in which a thing can be "luminous: because of what is ruined." Double Going casts a light as slant with wisdom as it is pitched with grace."
Mr. Foerster is the author of three previous collections, Sudden Harbor, Patterns of Descent, and Trillium, which received Honorable Mention for the 2000 Poet's Prize. Other honors include the "Discovery"/The Nation Award, Poetry magazine's Bess Hokin Prize, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and the 2000/2001 Amy Lowell Poetry Travelling Scholarship. He holds degrees from Fordham University and the University of Virginia and has worked as a lexicographer, textbook editor, and typesetter. He is editor of the literary magazine, Chelsea, and lives in York Beach, Maine.
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The readings at the HVWC are made possible in part by grants from the Bydale Foundation and the Gannett Foundation; with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts; and by Westchester Arts Council with funds from Westchester County Government, corporations and individuals.