Sharon Olinka, author of The Good City (Marsh Hawk Press) won a Barbara Deming Memorial Award for her poems on the destruction of Smyrna in 1922. She was active in PEN American Center’s Freedom to Write committee, and took part in a program on banned books in China. Publications include Drunken Boat, Poetry East, Nimrod, the Library of Congress website Poetry of 9/11, Bum Rush the Page: a Def Poetry Jam, Jewish Quarterly in London and Prairie Schooner. The ADF Library in Canberra, Australia hosted one of Olinka’s readings, and she guest edited an issue of American Book Review on Australian poetry. “Getting Her Ready” was inspired by a poem by Australian writer Rhyll McMaster about her aging mother.

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