Alumni Authors Bookshelf
Johns Hopkins alumni write about everything from healing to romance to sports nutrition. Check us out!
Poetry
Bugs Us All
Scot Slaby, KSAS '09Poems by Scott Slaby with drawings by Walter Gurbo. Scot Slaby's poems accompany Walter Gurbo's whimsical drawings of insects, and both the poems and the drawings are sure to delight readers who may have a dread of the little beasts and those who may have a fondness for them.
ISBN: 9780985099749
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The Altar of Innocence
Ann Bracken, SOE '79The Altar of Innocence is about a daughter's struggle to untangle the web of her mother's depression, alcoholism, and suicide attempt and her own adult confrontation with depression and a crumbling marriage. These poems explore different approaches to their journeys, offering a vision of hope and courage for the reader.
ISBN: 978-0-9906939-5-6
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No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom
Ann Bracken, SOE '79Ann Bracken's new collection of poems, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom, was recently published by New Academia Publishing of Washington, D.C. Bracken's poems are based on her work as a teacher in inner city and suburban schools. The poems feature the voices and stories of real teachers and students from kindergarten to college. While the voices of students and teachers are frequently absent in today's education debate, No Barking in the Hallways: Poems from the Classroom offers readers a window into their stories as both groups struggle to be successful in our test-obsessed culture.
ISBN: 978-0-9981477-0-3
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Mnemosyne: The Long Traverse
Carolyn Clark, A&S '98
This collection of lyrical, observant poems bring together the strands of myth, the natural world, family, friendship and collective and personal memory to create a new and illuminating weave.
ISBN: 9781622295142
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Shakespeare's Sonnets Freshly Phrased
Joseph Gallagher A&S '77
The original Sonnet; a modern paraphrase; pertinent essays and notes.
ISBN: 9781435110342
The Lost Boys
Daniel Groves, A&S '00
A debut collection of poetry, featuring poems previously published in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.
ISBN: 0820336793
Missing Persons
Hilary Jacqmin, A&S '04
The opening poems of Missing Persons, Hilary S. Jacqmin's lyrical first collection, explore the streetcar suburbs of Northern Ohio through a series of comic and caustic vignettes. The book's second half intersects with the larger world to consider questions of empire, loss, and autonomy.
ISBN: 9781904130871
Chaos Theories
Elizabeth Hazen, A&S '01
In Chaos Theories loss is explored, and survival becomes another form of understanding, a way of seeing ourselves and others not as guilty or innocent, good or bad, but as complex, sometimes thwarted beings who are always striving for more wisdom, more empathy, more light.
ISBN: 9781942892021
Cracks in the Invisible
Steven Kampa, A&S '08
Stephen Kampa's poems are witty and restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. Despite the metaphysical seriousness, there is always an undercurrent of stylistic levity a panoply of puns, comic rhymes, and loving misquotations of canonical literature that suggests comedy and tragedy are inextricably bound in human experience.
ISBN: 9780821419526
EVERWARD: One Man's Journey Through Declaration, Discovery & Discernment
W.G. Kirst, A&S '00
EVERWARD by W.G. Kirst is the inaugural collection of poems illuminating one man’s journey of forgotten knowing and infinite healing. Honoring stages of declaration, discovery and discernment, the collection traces the stitches of self-inquiry and introspection, asking the purpose-seeking question, Who am I? It is raw, honest, vulnerable and revealing.
ISBN: 979-8988796213
Eyes Like Broken Windows
Seth Michelson, A&S '97
"These poems--courageous, world-aware, joyful, terrifying--by Seth Michelson, a young poet who has learned his trade, move me very much. They make me feel like shooting off a cannon, make me feel like grabbing strangers by the lapels, saying: Read these poems, read these poems, he wrote them for you!" - Thomas Lux
ISBN: 9781935708551
Oldest Mortal Myth
Joanna Pearson, A&S '09
Winner of the 2012 Donald Justice Poetry Prize, selected by Marilyn Nelson.
ISBN: 0978599764
When the Eye Forms
Dwaine Rieves, A&S '16
A Tupelo Press First Book Award. Mississippi babies and Louisiana mommas, New York poster boys, Washington politicians, sons and daughters, examined by an examined by an extraordinary poet-doctor.
ISBN: 978-1932195347
Kismet
Dr. Dipa Sarkar-Dey, Engr '86 (MSE/PhD)
The poems of this collection depict the experiences of the author in her birth land and the adaptive land as well as her love of nature and philosophy of life.
ISBN: 9798886544893
Dirge for an Imaginary
Mathew Buckley Smith, A&S '08
Winner of the 2011 Able Muse Book Award, selected by Andrew Hudgins. From the publisher: "These are poems of breathtaking craftsmanship that find inspiration in the simplicity of the quotidian, or the perplexity of the grand. Smith is equally at ease musing about Neanderthals or God as he is with a ballet exam or highway medians. These poems of personal and universal introspection are filled with grace, and sparkle with abundant intelligence and wit."
ISBN: 9780987870506
The Lily and The Aster
January Wilson, SAIS '08
Wilson has written a provocative collection of poetry with The Lily & The Aster. She uses the haiku to communicate her message. Each haiku is a meditation on love, music and politics. To borrow the title from her second chapter, time and again her poetry is "a confession of joy."
ISBN: 9781469917672
Photographing Eden
Jason Gray, A&S '01
Photographing Eden meditates on several ideas, the crux of which is Eden: spirituality, environmentalism, and the relationships between men and women. Observing, often through the lens of a camera, our state in the world, the poems try to focus sharply on what often seems a blur.
ISBN: 97808214183692
Radiation King
Jason Gray, A&S '01
Winner of the Idaho Prize for Poetry. The second full-length collection by Writing Seminars alumnus.
ISBN: 9780999199435