Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology Reading (via Zoom) with editors Dustin Brookshire & Julie E. Bloemeke

Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology offers 54 poets’ takes on often-unsung facets of this diamond in a rhinestone world—calling in Dolly’s impeccable comedic timing, her lyric mastery, her business acumen, and her Dollyverse advocacy. These poems remind us to be better and to do better, to subvert Dolly cliché, and they encourage us to weave Dolly metaphor into our own family lore. Within these pages, Dolly takes the stage and the dinner table; readers see the public Dolly of the silver screen and the private Dolly of identity contemplation. Dolly raises praise and question, and she butterflies into our hearts to unabashedly to claim the mantra In Dolly We Trust.

Launching January 19, 2023. Happy Birthday, Dolly!

Dustin Brookshire, a finalist for the 2021 Scotti Merrill Award, is the founder/editor of Limp Wrist and curator of the Wild & Precious Life Series, a Zoom based poetry reading series. He is the author of the chapbooks Love Most Of You Too (Harbor Editions, 2021) and To The One Who Raped Me (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012). Dustin’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been published in Assaracus, Whiskey Island, Mollyhouse, The West Review, Oddball, Gulf Stream Magazine, Redheaded Stepchild, SubtleTea, Ocho, Oranges & Sardines, Ouroboros, Qarrtsiluni, Blue Fifth Review, and other publications. He has been anthologized in Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men on their Muses (Lethe Press, 2012) and The Queer South: LGBTQ Writes on the American South (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). Visit him online at dustinbrookshire.com.

Julie E. Bloemeke (she/her/hers) is the 2021 Georgia Author of the Year Finalist for Poetry.  Her debut full-length collection Slide to Unlock (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2020) was also chosen as a 2021 Book All Georgians Should Read, one of only two poetry collections selected statewide for the honor.  Currently an associate editor for South Carolina Review, she also recently served as co-editor for the Dolly Parton tribute issue of Limp Wrist and was a finalist for the Telluride Institute’s 2020 Fischer Prize. Her poems, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous publications including Writer’s Chronicle, Prairie Schooner, Cortland Review, Gulf Coast, EcoTheo Review, South Dakota Review, and others. A 2021 fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, she teaches online workshops and is a freelance writer, editor, and guest lecturer.  To learn more: https://www.jebloemeke.com