Joan Barasovska presents ORANGE TULIPS with Chris Abbate and Sherry Siddall at Flyleaf Books

Orange Tulips is a story, told in narrative lyric poetry, of a young woman’s protracted struggle with mental illness and her eventual hard-won recovery. Victoria Reynolds writes, “These are poems that relish ‘the ecstatic lift/of strength and artifice,’ that poetry-making contributes to the difficult work of becoming who we are.

Joan Barasovska lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She will host a poetry series at McIntyre’s Books in 2023 and serves on the Board of the North Carolina Poetry Society. For thirty-five years, Joan has been an academic therapist in private practice. Her poems appeared in Kakalak, San Pedro River Review, Flying South, Crossing the Rift, Red Fez, Speckled Trout Review, Main Street Rag, among other journals and anthologies. In 2020 Joan was nominated for Best of the Net and a Pushcart Prize. Joan is the author of Birthing Age (Finishing Line Press, 2018), Carrying Clare (Main Street Rag, 2022), and Orange Tulips (Redhawk Publications, 2022).

Chris Abbate’s poems have appeared in numerous journals including Connecticut River Review, Cider Press Review, and Comstock Review. He is a two-time nominee for a Pushcart Prize, has been nominated for a Best of the Net award, and has received awards in the Nazim Hikmet and North Carolina Poetry Society poetry contests. His poetry has also been featured on Verse Daily. His first book, Talk About God, was published by Main Street Rag in 2017. His full-length collection, Words for Flying, was published by FutureCycle Press in 2022. Visit him at chrisabbate.com

Sherry Siddall wrote poetry as a child, and studied creative writing at Oberlin College as an undergrad. She continued to write sporadically while raising a family and working. In the last ten years she has been able to re-engage with poetry with intention and the support of a wide and generous community of fellow poets. Her work has appeared in Tar River Poetry, Kakalak, Pinesong, Poetry in Plain Sight and elsewhere, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Sweet Land, published by Finishing Line Press, is her first book.