AWARD: Harry Humes, the Keystone Chapbook Competition and Jeff Mann
Harry Humes has won the 2007 Keystone Chapbook Competition with his manuscript “Underground Singing,” rife with details of coal town life. This is hardly his first award. His first collection of poety was “Bottomland” (University of Arkansas Press). It won the 1983 Devins Award from the University of Missouri Press. He has received many accolades since then. Google him at http://books.google.com/ for a taste of his other books, and check back here for more about “Underground Singing,” due out in January 2008.
Another, more direct link to W.Va., besides this collection being about coal town life, is that Jeff Mann, who judged the competition, grew up in Virginia and West Virginia, and has degrees in English and forestry from West Virginia University. He teaches creative writing at Virginia Tech. His poetry has appeared in many journals and publications, including Shenandoah, Prairie Schooner and an anthology called “Wild Sweet Notes: Fifty Years of West Virginia Poetry 1950-1999.” He has three chapbooks out: “Bliss,” “Mountain Fireflies,” and “Flint Shards from Sussex,” and two books of poetry, “Bones Washed With Wine” and “On the Tongue.” “Mountain Fireflies” seems to be unavailable.
