It’s been a crazy fall, people. Bearnice has barely had time to breathe. Still, I think it would be good if she reminded everyone that Bear Star’s annual competition for the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize will end on November 30. Polish up that manuscript and send it to us, or take advantage of our new online submission process—all reading fees support the publication of the winner’s book.

In other news, Bear Star poet Rick Bursky has a new book coming out with Sarabande this fall and I can’t wait to read it: Death Obscura. It sports another stunning cover, right up there with the one for The Soup of Something Missing, but when you work for an ad agency and teach at an art school you have no shortage of creative friends with whom to collaborate. Congratulations, Rick! Don’t forget you promised to let me interview you sometime soon.

Meanwhile, Steve Gutierrez has an essay in the fall Redwood Coast Review—“The Big Fresno Fair” (online at http://www.stephenkessler.com/rcr/rcr_2010fall.pdf )—that I loved. Here’s his description of his Aunt Ella. “She was the younger one: the rebel who had been a 'career girl' into her late twenties, daring the barrio to call her an old maid, working as a secretary for a corporation and saving enough money to travel. She conquered Mexico with Capri pants that stirred the natives. She dropped in on Hawaii and broke some hearts.”

Also, I’m excited to announce that Bear Star will be publishing a book of poems by Quinton Duval, beloved Sacramento-area poet who passed away unexpectedly last spring. Gary Thompson at Cedar House Books (Friday Harbor, WA) has taken Quinton’s unfinished manuscript and added to it from various files the poet was working on at the time of his death. The book is called Like Hay and will come out in Spring 2011. I can’t wait to begin setting it up in InDesign.

Finally, it’s been a pleasure to enter The Kilim Dreaming for some awards I feel it deserves. Each poem (there are only four) would make a terrific film, but you’re just going to have to order a copy if you can’t wait for Hollywood to come to its senses and make something good for a change. Robert Hill Long is a fabulous storyteller and one of the best sonneteers around.