Literary Journal Selects Best for Wall Scrawls

The following is an official media release from Carolyn Howard-Johnson, a longtime associate whose career continues to colour me green.

Carolyn was a frequent contributor to my newsletters that were, InkSpotter News and Heritage Writer.

Her poetry also appears in my first anthology, Holiday Writes.



Editors of the literary journal Solo Novo Wall Scrawls Vol. 1 have announced that their new issue will include the poetry of UCLA Extension Writers' Program instructor Carolyn Howard-Johnson.

Carolyn Howard-Johnson

The journal is published by Solo Novo Press, Carpinteria, California, and North Wilkesboro, North Carolina. Editor Paula C. Lowe says, “Wall Scrawls is inspired by an Iowa farm house wall. Eighty years abandoned and orphaned, it is a 'hive of letters, a busy kitchen of words. Every kid with a can of spray paint somehow gets here and leaves his or her native tongue on the walls'.” One of those walls has become the cover art of this journal.

The selected poem by Howard-Johnson, "Inevitably Walls,” is inspired by the poet’s extensive travels where she has come upon walls that only occasionally impart hope for the future of mankind. A quote from the poem:

[This wall] like the one we found
years ago when we lost our way

in a dark forest somewhere
in Germany, cried when we

found it there—unexpected…

Howard-Johnson’s poetry appeared in literary journals like the Mochila Review, Banyan Review, Pear Noir, Manzanita and Poetic Voices. One of her poems won a reader award at The Pedestal Magazine.

Howard-Johnson has studied at UCLA with Suzanne Lummis, editor of Speechless the Magazine (http://www.speechlessthemagazine.org/) -- which featured her chapbook Tracings, winner of Military Writers Society of America’s Award of Excellence and published by Finishing Line Press.

The poet's literary novel, This Is the Place, has won eight awards. Her book of creative nonfiction has won three.

She is developing a new Celebration Series of poetry chapbooks with Magdalena Ball. Among them are She Wore Emerald Then: Reflections on Motherhood (www.budurl.com/MotherChapbook) and Cherished Pulse: Unconventional Love Poetry (www.budurl.com/CherishedPulse). She also advocates with authors as the author of the multi-award-winning HowToDoItFrugally series of books for writers (www.howtodoitfrugally.com).

Learn more about Solo Novo and how to order a copy at: http://www.solopress.com.



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