West Side Books is excited to host Sheryl Luna, author of Magnificent Errors and Pity the Drowned Horses, and local poet Lew Forester. Sheryl and Lew will be on the patio outside West Side Books from 7:00 pm to 8:30 on August 29th.
Sheryl Luna’s Magnificent Errors received the 2020 Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize and was published by University of Notre Dame Press in 2022. Pity the Drowned Horses (University of Notre Dame Press) received the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Seven (3: A Taos Press) was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Recent work has appeared in Poetry, Huizache and Saranac Review. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Anderson Center and Canto Mundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award and was inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters.
Lew Forester is a retired social worker who lives in Arvada, Colorado, base for his frequent hikes in the Rocky Mountains. The author of Dialogues with Light (Orchard Street Press, 2019), Lew’s poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Main Street Rag, Blue Mountain Review, Sky Island Journal, Plainsongs, POEM, Slipstream, The MacGuffin, Evening Street Review and other journals, magazines and anthologies. He is the winner of the 2018 Malovrh-Fenlon Poetry Prize.
Magnificent Errors is a collection of poems that shows how mental health challenges can elicit beauty, resiliency, and hope.
Pity the Drowned Horses is the winner of the first Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. This collection is about place and many of the poems in it are set in the desert southwest on the U.S./Mexico border in El Paso, Texas. Sheryl Luna's poems are also about family and home within the broader context of the border as both a bridge and a barrier.
Lew Forester's poems come from the marrow. They speak of old truths in a new light, stories born of hard-won wisdom, joy and sadness. Here's a poet at home with lyricism who knows what he's about, and not afraid to tackle the big questions: the nature of man and man's place in nature. His work is infused with wonder and a generosity of spirit. Here is poetry that lingers long after the reading.
- Frank Coons, author of Finding Cassiopeia and Counting in Dog Years
Lew Forester's collection of peoms brims with imagery of the natural world and the riches of the present moment, from the joys of salmon fishing and young love to the peace of the Nebraska prairie. Lurking below the surface, however, lies a keen awareness of the passing of youth, a nostalgia for the past, and the fragility of human existence. Forester's personal experience with family sorrows and serious illness informs his compassion, as a social worker, for victims of poverty, disease, and natural disasters. Still, his lyrical poetry speaks to the reader with hope and gratitude for each day of survival. Keep this book of courage and consolation on the bedside table to re-read often.
-Donna Pucciani, author of Edges
Lew Forester's Dialogues With Light is a highly metaphorical collection filled with poems of depth and meaning. We have light "kind to aging faces," the sun holding still while children play and are told "light never repeats itself." There are poems about family, the homeless, and the poet's youth. The collection explores language and our use of it, even when words become "clouds blocking light." Forester is transparent about his cancer experience, writing, "It's left me full and hollow, with the bones of a bird." This is a stellar debut.
-Sheryl Luna, author of Pity the Drowned Horses and Seven