You have reached the official website of Charmaine Pappas Donovan, Poet & Writer. Welcome to my writing world!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Charmaine Pappas Donovan, recent past-president of the League of Minnesota Poets, has prose and poetry published in various newspapers, magazines, journals and anthologies. As project manager for County Lines, a Minnesota sesquicentennial publication showcasing the poetry of 120 Minnesota poets, she also co-edited the anthology. She lives in rural Brainerd, Minnesota and Reed Point, Montana with her husband and pet menagerie. Her first collection of poetry was recently published by Lost Hills Books.
WHERE A READER CAN FIND MY WORK:
My poetry and prose has been published in The Brainerd Dispatch, County Lines, Differing Visions, Dust & Fire, Encore, NFSPS Prize Poems; Her Voice, Lake Country Journal, The Moccasin, Park Rapids Enterprise, Poetry On, and Off, the Wall and The Talking Stick and Twenty Poets Celebrate the Lake Country.
Besides writing poetry, I write magazine articles and memoir, also short fiction. I once participated in the month-long, NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), a November annual event.
My best news ever: I must let you know that my first collection of poetry, Tumbled Dry, was recently published by Lost Hills Books, Duluth. Thank you Bruce Henrickson, publisher, for this opportunity. The book is available through Bookin’ It, an independent bookstore located in Little Falls, Minnesota. Laura Hanson, Bookin’ It owner, is a fellow poet and friend.
You can order my new book (Tumbled Dry) by clicking here!
“Charmaine Donovan’s poems contain familiar images seen through the light of her unique, poetic eye. She is a careful craftsman. Hers is a voice of place, of seasons, of nature and environment, whether following form in sonnet and sestina, or the prose poem and narrative. Her poems are a visual art in words. She uses delicious language. She is master of detailed observations, from a horse grazing in a pasture, to a girl’s sexual awakening. It is a pleasure to read her journey as she tumbles from wet to dry behind the ears. In these poems, she establishes her identity, placement and authority in the wild woods of our existence.”
-Diane Glancy, author of Stories of the Driven World & Stone Heart
“A lovely wit’s at work in Tumbled Dry, and an open heart. In the sonnet “Cat Burglar,” for instance, the subject is not a thief, but a forlorn feline that the poet welcomes inter her house (and poem). Donovan plays with form and metaphor, and turns the raw material of life into poems that feel knitted together by the dexterity of her imagination. “Words tumble anywhere—no one owns them…” she says. “They can go where you go, where you’ve been, or will be.” Sit down with this engaging book, and let these artful poems take you into their world.”
-Connie Wanek, author of On Speaking Terms
“It’s hard to pin down what it is that makes Tumbled Dry so appealing. Charmaine Donovan’s poems address a wide range of topics that will be familiar to anyone whose adolescence is rooted in the experiences of the 1960s. Unlike so many feverishly angst-ridden treatments of those times, hers is confident and directed toward self-integration. It’s an honest look at what it was like to be in the middle of how mixed up daily life could be, culminating in a mature perspective on life and death, one that adroitly transitions into appreciations of friendship, motherhood, and a playful attitude toward everyday things.”
-John Calvin Rezmerski, author of BREAKING the RULES, Starting with Ghazals