Beth Lyons

About Beth Lyons

Houston poet Beth Lyons, Inprint's intern and frequent Inprint Poetry Busker, is a PhD candidate at the UH Creative Writing Program, where she also serves as a nonfiction editor for Gulf Coast. Her poetry has appeared in Tin House and Indiana Review.

Boldface: A Writers’ Conference in the Bayou City

May 7, 2014, by

Boldface logoFor emerging writers, there’s always the moment when the workshop ends and you’re left wondering what the next step will be. Writers’ conferences—which combine intensive workshops, master classes, and readings—are a great way to sustain the momentum of writing and revision in a community of peers.

While many conferences involve cross-country travel and fees that can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars, the Boldface Conference—housed here in Houston—offers a dynamic experience at a fraction of the cost of many programs. The Boldface conference fee for the week is $125 for students and $200 for non-students; registration is open until May 9.  Click here to learn more.

Boldface was started in 2009 by the editors of Glass Mountain, the undergraduate literary journal at the University of Houston, to create a conference devoted exclusively to developing writers. Any person who has not studied creative writing at the graduate level is welcome to attend.  The goal of the conference is to give emerging writers an experience that is usually available only to professional writers: several days of intense focus on the craft of writing through workshops, readings, and craft talks. Continue reading

A Profile on Vijay Seshadri

April 30, 2014, by

As National Poetry Month comes to a close, we thought it would be good to profile one of the most prominent poets of our time. On April 14 poet Vijay Seshadri was awarded the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for his book 3 Sections. Seshadri becomes the first Asian American to win the Pulitzer Prize in the poetry category. We asked our resident expert Beth Lyons, Houston poet and PhD candidate at the UH Creative Writing Program, to share a little insight about Vijay Seshadri with us. 

vijay-seshadriWinner of the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for his book 3 Sections, Seshadri is an intriguing poet due to his ability to move between the vernacular and the metaphysical, the surreal to the everyday.

Born in India, Seshadri came to the US at the age of five. He holds a BA from Oberlin College, an MFA from Columbia University and currently directs the graduate non-fiction writing program at Sarah Lawrence College. He is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Wild Kingdom (1996) and The Long Meadow (2003). The Pulitzer committee called Seshadri’s work “a compelling collection of poems that examine human consciousness, from birth to dementia, in a voice that is by turns witty and grave, compassionate and remorseless…”   Continue reading

A Road Trip with Failure: A Conversation with Sasha West

February 6, 2014, by

sasha_westOn Friday, February 7, Sasha West and Jason Schneiderman will read their poetry at the Menil Collection as part of the Public Poetry series. West will be reading from her collection Failure and I Bury the Body and Schneiderman from his collection Striking Surface.

Sasha has a close relationship with Inprint. She was a winner of the Inprint Paul Verlaine Prize and was a long time Inprint Writers Workshop instructor. She is an alumnus of the University of Houston Creative Writing Program, where she also served as the editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, and later went on to become Gulf Coast’s Board President. In 2012, West’s poetry collection, Failure and I Bury the Body, was selected by D. Nurske as a winner of the National Poetry Series and published by Harper Perennial.

Her poems have appeared in Southern Review, Ninth Letter, Third Coast, and others. Sasha was kind enough to answer some questions about her poetry and creative process—a big thanks to Sasha for taking the time to talk to us.

BETH: In an interview, you likened linked short stories to “recognizing someone dear to you in the airport of a faraway city.” Could you explain a little about how you linked the narrator, Failure, and the Corpse together in Failure and I Bury the Body? Continue reading