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A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN RAGES by Melissa Helton

Accents Publishing is proud to announce that Melissa Helton’s first full-length poetry collection, A MIDDLE-AGED WOMAN RAGES is set to release on 5/15, exactly a month from now.
We believe that you will love this book and its powerful messages delivered with exemplary poetic craft! Preorder info to follow.

With fierce energy and a creative use of poetic styles, these poems collaborate as an affirmation against the evils women face and as an entreaty to “thrive in flux,” to pay “deliberate, unceasing attention” to everything in the world, “as if it were holy.”
—Marianne Worthington, author of The Girl Singer

Through these poems, I come to understand the middle-aged woman raging as a community spiritual worker…. These poems are fearless and yet they understand the importance of
acknowledging our fears and telling what we must tell to survive.
—Joy Priest, author of Horsepower

Her passion & artistry left me awed, energized, & ready to write. What more could you want?
—George Ella Lyon, author of Back to the Light: Poems
Kentucky Poet Laureate 2015 – 2016

Revision as a Poet’s Superpower with Tom C. Hunley

Revision as Cooking, Revision as Childrearing, Revision as Midwifing, Revision as a Poet’s Superpower with Tom C. Hunley

A draft of a poem isn’t a broken thing that needs fixed. It’s not a clear, rational argument that needs a little cleaning up, a little editing. It’s a missive from another world that has thus far been only partially-translated.  Or, as writes Philip Metres in “The Art of Losing (and other Visions of Revision),” “Your work is not full of mistakes, and it’s not broken. It’s just not itself yet” (62). Bingo. That bag of flour and that egg? They’re not a bad cake. They haven’t failed you on your birthday. They’re just not a cake yet. A draft is nothing but the ingredients for a poem, lined up and waiting for the skilled chef to go to work. But there’s no definitive recipe, either, because each poem, if it’s good, is a new thing that has never existed yet. It’s a bird, not a birdhouse, as Dean Young tells us in The Art of Recklessness. A poem is something wild and mysterious that is trying to be born, and your arsenal of revision skills may make the difference, for the poem, between living and dying. Please note – This is a revision workshop, so please bring a draft of a poem.

Tom C. Hunley is the author of eight full-length poetry collections, eight chapbooks, two textbooks, and two produced films. He and his wife of twenty-nine years have four amazing kids. Right or wrong, he believes he has impeccable taste when it comes to literature, film, music, and the one woman who has his whole heart. He seriously lacks inner resources, and he’s almost certain that his liver is diseased. He despises generative AI, groupthink, the tortured language of propaganda, big government, and bloated bureaucracies, especially in universities. He has published poems in journals with names beginning with every letter of the alphabet, from Atlanta Review to Zone 3. He is currently working on a novel and a memoir-in-flash.

Online

$40

Tuesday, May 12, 6-8pm EST

Katerina Stoykova to Teach at Tupelo Quarterly

Accents Publishing founder and senior editor Katerina Stoykova will teach a three-hour workshop at Tupelo Quarterly as part of their Spring Series Workshops. More info here.

Workshop Description

You have accumulated a stack of poems, so what’s next? How do you go about arranging your material into a book? Should you work towards a chapbook or a full-length collection? What could be a manageable, non intimidating place to get started? What is the best way to organize the work? Should you break it into sections or shape it into one continuous flow? How can you recognize a good title for a collection? What are the main architectural elements of a book? How to keep sane and motivated throughout all this? Poet/Editor/Publisher Katerina Stoykova will discuss best practices on these and give tips to keep the process manageable and fun.

Meet Your Instructor

A Bulgarian by birth, Katerina Stoykova is a bilingual poet living in Kentucky and is the author of Between a Bird Cage and a Bird House (University Press of Kentucky, 2024) and The Poet’s Guide to Publishing: How to Conceive, Arrange, Edit, Publish and Market a Book of Poetry (McFarland, 2024). Katerina is the founder and senior editor of Accents Publishing, as well as the creator of the Accents podcast on WUKY. Katerina serves as the 2025-2026 President of the Kentucky State Poetry Society. 

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James Baker Hall Book Award for Creative Nonfiction

Accents Publishing is pleased to continue the partnership with the James Baker Hall Foundation for the prestigious yearly James Baker Hall Book Award. The 2026 edition of the award will honor an unpublished, book-length manuscript of Creative Nonfiction by a Kentucky author at any stage of their career. Creative Nonfiction may include memoir, personal essays, biography, travel writing, and other forms grounded in factual storytelling.

We define Kentucky author as someone who lives in Kentucky, has lived in Kentucky, has strong ties to Kentucky or whose work features a prominent Kentucky theme. The author of the winning manuscript will receive a $3000 award and the manuscript will be published the following year by Accent Publishing, with the standard Accents Publishing contract.

The winner of the inaugural James Baker Hall Award was Wesley Houp for his poetry book, Strung Out Along the Endless Branch, which was selected by Greg Pape.

The 2026 award went to the short story collection Honeysuckle Season by Willie Davis, selected by Toni Ann Johnson.

Fees: None. There is no submission fee.

Eligibility: Writers 18 or older. Current students of the judge, as well as personal friends and family may not submit.

Manuscript preparation: The submitted manuscript must be anonymous. The author’s name should not appear anywhere in the text.

Deadline: Manuscripts can be submitted between April 1st and June 30th. Winner and finalists will be announced in the Fall.

Award: $3000 plus publication with the standard Accents Publishing contract.

Submission: Only electronic submissions will be considered. Email your anonymous manuscript to accents.publishing@gmail.com. Include a brief bio in the body of the email.

Judging: Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame inductee Richard Taylor will be the final judge.

The News from Poetry with Leatha Kendrick

Taking a workshop with Leatha Kendrick is a right of passage! Not only that, but also the news is begging to be written about.

Hope to see you to this two-hour workshop, brought to you by Accents Publishing and the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning!

The News from Poetry

It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.

–William Carlos Williams
“Asphodel that Greeny Flower”

Poetry is news that stays new, Ezra Pound said. What is it of our own lives that will stay new? How do we give voice to this moment in time? It is not so much the what as it is the how of our poems—the line and its mystery, our images and diction, the unexpected metaphor—that cause poems to remain fresh.

In this session, we will consider how poems convey both the timely and the timeless. Using prompts we will explore how we might craft poems that stay new, poems to surprise a future reader with a sense of our particular time.

Leatha Kendrick’s poetry, essays, and articles appear in journals and anthologies, including the Red Branch Review, Good River Review, Kansas City Review, Appalachian Journal, the Anthology of Appalachian Writers (Volume XVII); The Southern Poetry Anthology (Volume 3); and What Comes Down to Us – Twenty-Five Contemporary Kentucky Poets. In 2025, Kendrick was awarded the 10th annual Judy Gaines Young Award by Transylvania University, “recognizing exceptional works of Appalachian writers.” And Luckier, from Accents Publishing (2020), is her fifth collection of poems.

The News from Poetry with Leatha Kendrick
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/e3E_3SzCQjuTcMzzGUIUlA
https://bit.ly/news_poetry
Thursday, April 9, 6-8pm
Online
$40