Amanda Newell

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Amanda Newell’s collection was inspired by her former student, a Marine who nearly died in Afghanistan after the M-ATV he was driving was struck by a command-controlled improvised explosive device. She began writing these poems while he was hospitalized at Walter Reed recovering from a partial leg amputation, “not even the worst,” Newell writes, “of what he refuse[d] to call/his combat injuries.” Her poems witness survival in the aftermath of trauma, but they also contemplate the speaker’s own complicity in the broader cultural narrative that perpetuates war and war-making.

 

Sample Poems

• Four poems in Scoundrel Time
• “On Amputation” in War, Literature & the Arts
• “Still Attached” in Rattle (online)

 

About the Author

Amanda Newell’s poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, Gargoyle, Plume, Scoundrel Time, and elsewhere. A graduate of Warren Wilson’s MFA Program, she has received scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and The Frost Place, and a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. (web)

 

Details

Cover art by Nancy Mitchell
ISBN: 978-1-931307-49-9
Cover price: $6.00
Chapbook: 32 pages
Size: 6″ x 9″