Students interested in working with award-winning poets need look no further than Woodbury’s faculty. Linda Dove and Mike Sonksen have both recently received recognition for their work in the form of publications and prize winnings.
Dr. Dove, who directs Woodbury’s Honors Program and literary magazine MORIA, recently won or was runner-up for three national awards for her poetry. She won the 2023 HeartWood Poetry Prize for her piece, “Glosa After the Flight Home, New York to California,” and her poem “Scheherazade Finishes” won Sweet Lit magazine’s 2023 poetry contest. Her chapbook manuscript, Sonnets to Rabbits, was runner-up for Slate Roof Press’s Elyse Wolf Prize. In addition to these achievements, Dr. Dove’s chapbook, Switchfish, was published by Gatehouse Press in June. Another chapbook, This Too, won the Clockwise Competition Chapbook Prize in 2016 and was published by Tebot Bach Press in 2017. Look for the second edition reprint by Seven Kitchens Press coming in Spring 2024 as part of their Rebound Series.
CLAS is also proud to announce Mike Sonksen’s recent literary achievements. Sonksen read his poem, “Whose Story Do We Tell,” at the Jeffrey Deitch Gallery in West Hollywood before Judy Baca spoke for her exhibit, Judith F. Baca: The Great Wall of Los Angeles. This September, Sonksen had two entries included in Dear California: The Golden State in Diaries and Letters, edited by David Kipken (Stanford University Press), and published an essay on California Poet Laureate Lee Herrick in Cultural Daily. He also presented the paper “Mike Davis Showed Me How To Do It” at Cal State, Northridge, as a part of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association’s event “In Memoriam: Mike Davis as a Historian of LA/Mike Davis and the History of LA.” Mike’s homage will be published in Southern California Quarterly later this Fall.
Both Sonksen and Dove presented their work in September at “Stories, Poems & Songs: A Literary Lounge by the LA River,” an event at Happier Camper in Frog Town, co-hosted by Writ Large Projects and CLAS. The event also featured readings from award-winning poets and spoken work performers Gary Phillips, traci kato-kiriyama, Lisa Kwon, Doug Brown, Javier Servin aka Foo Howser, and Tommy Domino.
Last Updated on October 23, 2023.