Three members of the Hope College faculty and two Hope graduates are among the poets featured in "New Poems from the Third Coast: Contemporary Michigan Poetry."
Priscilla Atkins, Jack Ridl and Heather Sellers have work represented, as do former Hope students Kathleen McGookey and Julie Moulds. The volume was edited by Michael Delp, Conrad Hilberry and Josie Kearns and published by Wayne State University Press.
McGookey and Moulds are former students of Ridl. McGookey is a 1989 Hope graduate now living in Wayland, and Moulds is a 1985 Hope graduate living in Delton.
They have published widely in prestigious journals and each has a collection of poems published by or forthcoming from New Issues Press. McGookey's collection, "Whatever Shines," will be published in 2001; Moulds's book, "The Woman with the Cubed Head," was published in 1998.
Atkins is a reference librarian with the rank of associate professor at the college, and Ridl and Sellers are members of the English faculty at Hope.
Atkins has work in such journals as "Poetry," "Passages North," "The William and Mary Review," and "Tar River." She has received four Pushcart Prize nominations, and received an "Editor's Choice Award" for a poem published in the spring, 1997, issue of "Penwood Review."
Ridl has been published in "The Georgia Review," "Poetry," "The Denver Quarterly" and "Ploughshares," among others, and has received numerous Pushcart Prize nominations. He is author of three collections of poetry, "The Same Ghost," "Between," and "Poems from `The Same Ghost' and `Between,'" and co-author of a textbook, "Approaching Poetry."
Sellers has published work in "Field," "Hawaii Review," "Gulf Coast," "New Virginia Review," "The Greensboro Review," and other journals and anthologies. She has received numerous awards and honors for her poetry and fiction, including a 2000-01 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her collection of short stories, "Georgia Underwater," will be published next year by Sarabande Books.
The editors write in their preface, "We received 170 submissions, of remarkably high quality. From those, we chose the work of fifty-six poets. Their recognition has been national as well as regional. Collectively, they have published poems in books and journals issuing from every corner of the country."
Jim Daniels writes in response to the anthology, "Michigan is clearly the home to some of the best poets in the country."
"New Poems from the Third Coast" is available through the Hope-Geneva Bookstore as well as through other area book sellers.