North Carolina writer Maureen Sherbondy has published her eighth book of poetry, "The Art of Departure." Sherbondy, a Raleigh, North Carolina fiction writer and poet, is a previous winner of the North Carolina Poetry Council's 2013 Oscar Arnold Young Award for North Carolina's Best Book for The Year of Dead Fathers (Spring Garden Press, Greensboro, NC).
Sherbondy's stories have appeared in Stone Canoe, the North Carolina Literary Review, Southeast Review, and the Sierra Nevada College Review. She is a previous winner of the Piccolo Spoleto Fiction Open, as well as a finalist in Southeast Review's Best Short-Short Story Contest. Her previous poetry collection, Praying at Coffee Shops, won first place in the poetry category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. Her first poetry collection, After the Fairy Tale, was published in 2007 (Main Street Rag). Weary Blues was released by Big Table Publishing in 2010. North Carolina writer Ruth Moose describes Sherbondy's new collection: "Power. Pow! Her! These poems will punch you in the heart, grab your mind mightly. Sherbondy wears Wonder Woman boots and they can kick you alive with love, loss and just plain living. She's 'touching fire to land once kissed and tended,' 'a scarecrow swallowing a wallow of stars.' She's iron fisted, heavy hammered and she knows her name. You will too. Stunning work from a poet whose praises cannot help but be sung."Videos