Publications
RED WHEELBARROW TITLES
“—Still the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken”
So ends the first poem in William Carlos Williams’ quirky, iconic Spring and All, published in 1923. One hundred years later, the Red Wheelbarrow Writers’ Spring and All anthology takes up its challenge: “profound change” lies at the heart of each piece. Some authors write with raffish humor, some with wry nostalgia, some with elegiac undercurrents. This collection displays a dazzling array of poetry and prose: art seeking to articulate insight. Across a broad canvas of expression, writers contend with life’s “Aha!” moments. That uplifting “Aha!” might take place in a train rattling across a foreign landscape, or in front of an enigmatic lilac bush, or during a Midwestern summer afternoon with a baseball game wafting in from the radio, even on an ordinary driveway. Our 2023 anthology offers readers a sense of awakening, sparking deeper understanding, renewed wonder, and refreshed reverence.
This Uncommon Solitude captures the myriad and diverse experiences of Red Wheelbarrow Writers during these times of quarantine and the COVID-19 pandemic. We reach out to connect but we can’t physically touch each other. We are shaken by news of widespread suffering and death caused by a novel virus that inexorably spirals out of control. We feel powerless and isolated. Ongoing catastrophes of racism and environmental decline trouble our hearts. For many of us, poetry has helped to connect us, one to another, as we share experiences and insights, express our grief and sadness, fears and pain, gratitude and hope. In joining together, we feel our way forward as best we can toward making sense of our transformed world.
In 2018, Red Wheelbarrow Writers published a second anthology: So Much Depends Upon…
Behold the egg! Smooth, rounded, perfectly formed, fragile, its glowing center suspended in a malleable, translucent penumbra. The same might be said of these thirty-five memoirs in which the past–formed at the fragile nexus, the malleable boundary of memory and imagination–is suspended in prose, contained in an essay. You have but to crack open this book.
In 2013, Flavorwire named Bellingham one of the top 20 “Great American Cities for Writers.” The Red Wheelbarrow Writers give voice to that assessment: we have classes and workshops, critique groups and bookish events from readings to a book club. The Red Wheelbarrow Writers are all about creating and maintaining community.
In September 2016 we released our first book, an anthology titled Memory into Memoir. The anthology, too, is a project of community collaboration, using Red Wheelbarrows own talents and resources to write, edit, publish, and market this collection of 30+ memoir pieces.
Laura Kalpakian on Red Wheelbarrow Writers: “So much depends…on community. We altered this sweet, succinct line for the William Carlos Williams poem when we first started Red Wheelbarrow Writers. [We] began with some classes, but the concept of Red Wheelbarrow quickly evolved into something much less structured, much looser, more fun. When I am asked to describe Red Wheelbarrow, I always say it is a loose affiliation of lively writers. The loose and the lively are equally important. We don’t have members. We don’t pay dues. We don’t take roll or assign committees. We have no Board, though we have a lively ‘Bored’ meeting on occasion.”
MEMBERS’ PUBLICATIONS
Click on a title to learn more about the books and authors. If you’d like to purchase, please consider supporting your local indepenet bookstore. Some titles will lead you directly to our local indie—Village Books.
