Arts
April 2021 Dante’s Old South In this episode we interview winners of the Southern Collective Experience’s LBGTQ poetry chapbook contest. 3rd Place: Ian Spencer Bell Ian Spencer Bell is a dancer and poet in New York City. 2nd Place Andrea Deeken Andrea Deeken was born in rural Missouri and has lived in the Pacific Northwest for most of her adult life. She has a BA from Drake University and an MS in Writing and Publishing from Portland State University. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Periphery, The Bear Deluxe, and Spoon River Poetry Review. Awards include an Arts and Letters Creative Nonfiction Finalist, and an Honorable Mention in the 2019 Spoon River Poetry Review Editors’ Prize Contest, among others. A former book editor, she has worked at the public library for nearly fifteen years. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her wife and daughter. You can find her on Twitter @drelo and on Instagram @hands.n.hearts, where she makes diary comics about her family 1st Place Steve Bellin-Oka Steve Bellin-Oka’s first book of poems, Instructions for Seeing a Ghost, won the 2019 Vassar Miller Prize in Poetry and was published by the University of North Texas Press in 2020. He is also the winner of the Antenna Chapbook Award for Proviso, forthcoming from Paper Machine Press in 2021, a text/visual art collaboration with the painter Kristen Tomecek. His two previous chapbooks are Dead Letter Office at North Atlantic Station (Seven Kitchens Press, 2017) and Out of the Frame (Walls Divide Press, 2019). He earned his M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Virginia and his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers. He has taught writing, film, and literature at the University of Mississippi, St. Norbert College, and Eastern New Mexico University. He is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow and Research Fellow at the Oklahoma Center for the Humanities. His other honors include the Eli Cantor Fellowship from Yaddo and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He was the 2019 recipient of the Poets-in-the-Parks fellowship from the National Parks Arts Foundation. He lives in Tulsa with his husband, their dog, and three cats. Music by: “Actor” by Angel Snow "Closer Love" by DL Yancey "Love on the Streets" Kalliope "Morning" by Call Me Spinster "Why" by Eleven Thanks to Our Supporters: Autism Speaks: www.autismspeaks.org Linden Row Inn: www.lindenrowinn.com Mostly Mutts: www.mostlymutts.org The Red Phone Booth: redphonebooth.com