our story
Under a Warm Green Linden, launched in 2008, is a biannual digital poetry journal published each solstice. Reviews and interviews with established and emerging poets are intended to deepen, illuminate, and complicate an understanding of their work; and excellent poetry by a diversity of authors in a variety of styles illustrates our conviction that poetry encourages an engagement with our deepest truths, challenges, fears, and joys. The title of the journal alludes to an image from Pier Paolo Pasolini’s "The Day of My Death," chosen for its balancing the terrors of being with the promise of renewal. In 2015 we expanded, becoming Green Linden Press, a nonprofit publisher of broadsides, chapbooks, and books of poetry. Our publications include the Green Linden Chapbook Series, the Essential Voices Anthology Series, and two annual book contests: The Wishing Jewel Prize awarded for poetic innovation, and the Stephen Mitchell Translation Prize. Our green mission has us give a portion of proceeds for reforestation; to date we have planted 800 trees. In addition to being available on this website, our titles are distributed to the trade by Asterism Books.
editor & publisher
Christopher Nelson is the author of Blood Aria (University of Wisconsin Press, 2021) and four chapbooks, including Blue House, winner of a Poetry Society of America Fellowship. The recipient of the 2023–24 Amy Lowell Traveling Scholarship, he is the founding editor of Green Linden Press, a nonprofit publisher dedicated to poetic excellence and reforestation. He has edited two anthologies, Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora, recipient of a Midwest Book Award and named one of the best poetry books of the year by Entropy Magazine, and Essential Queer Voices of U.S. Poetry. Visit christophernelson.info.
advisory board
Jerome Ellison Murphy earned his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he currently serves as Undergraduate Programs Manager. He co-curates the Bespoke reading series at Bureau of General Services Queer Division bookstore, and serves on the board of The Poetry Well (formerly Emotive Fruition) performance series curated by Thomas Dooley. His critical writing has appeared in The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Adroit Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Lambda Literary Review, and elsewhere, while his poetry appears in Narrative Magazine, LitHub, The Awl, NPR's RadioLab, Spunk, Bellevue Literary Review, and on the ceiling as you lie awake at 3 a.m. See more at jemwords.com. He previously served on the board of Lambda Literary Foundation, the world's foremost non-profit supporting LGBT literature.
Lucas Wildner lives in Seattle where he is repairing his relationships to German and English. He is the author of two chapbooks Fluency (Ghost City Review 2022) and [eyes emoji] (Francis House 2023). He is a Pushcart 2022 nominee. See more at lucaswildner.com and twitter, sadly: @wucas_lildner.
Ye Chun / 叶春 (Surname: Ye) is a bilingual Chinese American writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel Straw Dogs of the Universe; two books of poetry, Travel Over Water and Lantern Puzzle, winner of the Berkshire Prize; and a novel in Chinese,《海上的桃树》(Peach Tree in the Sea). Her translations include Ripened Wheat: Selected Poems of Hai Zi, shortlisted for the 2016 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Award, and Long River: Poems by Yang Jian. Her translations of Li-Young Lee's Behind My Eyes and Undressing,《眼睛后面: 李立扬诗歌》, were published in 2019. Her collection of stories, Hao, was published by Catapult in 2021. A recipient of an NEA Literature Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and three Pushcart Prizes, she teaches at Providence College.
interviewers, reviewers, and guest editors
Simeon Berry won the National Poetry Series for his first collection of poetry, Ampersand Revisited (Fence Books), and his second book of poetry, Monograph (University of Georgia Press). He has been an Associate Editor for Ploughshares and won a Massachusetts Cultural Council Individual Artist Grant, and his work has appeared in AGNI, Colorado Review, Blackbird, DIAGRAM, The Iowa Review, and many other journals. He lives in Massachusetts and is the Prose Poetry Editor for Pithead Chapel. simeonberry.com
Guest Editor: Issue 17
Interview with Jordan Zandi on Solarium
Lauren Camp is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Took House. Her third book One Hundred Hungers (Tupelo Press, 2016), won the Dorset Prize and was a finalist for the Arab American Book Award and the Housatonic Book Award. Lauren’s poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Slice, Terrain.org, The Cortland Review and elsewhere. An emeritus fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she lives and teaches in New Mexico. www.laurencamp.com
Review: Todd Davis’s Native Species
Luanne Castle's chapbook Kin Types (Finishing Line Press) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Award. Her first collection of poetry, Doll God, winner of the 2015 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award, was published by Aldrich Press. A former Fellow at the Center for Ideas and Society at the University of California, Riverside, she studied at the University of California, Riverside (PhD); Western Michigan University (MFA); and Stanford University. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Copper Nickel, TAB, American Journal of Poetry, Verse Daily, Glass: A Journal of Poetry, Lunch Ticket, River Teeth, The Review Review, and other journals. An avid blogger, she can be found at luannecastle.com.
Review: Ann Keniston’s Somatic
C.W. Emerson’s work has received numerous international awards and honors, including the Poetry International’s C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize and co-winner of Poetry International’s Summer Chapbook competition. Emerson’s work has appeared in Harvard Review, Oxford University Press, Crab Orchard Review, december, Greensboro Review, New Ohio Review, and others. He is the author of a chapbook, Off Coldwater Canyon (The Poetry Box, 2021), and his poetry collection, Luminous Body, Glittering Ash, is forthcoming in 2024 from Eyewear Publishing, LTD.
Review: Cyrus Cassell’s To the Cypress Again and Again: Tribute to Salvador Espriu
Catherine Fletcher is a writer based in Virginia. Recent work has appeared in The Broadkill Review, The Inflectionist Review, New World Writing, Kissing Dynamite, and the concert series Concept Lab. Her poetry also has been featured in public art installations on the Elizabeth River Trail (Norfolk, Virginia), the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail (King George, Virginia), and at Re-Imagining Conservation on Governor’s Island (New York, New York). She has received fellowships from Arizona State University, Queens Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, and others. She is a Virginia Commission for the Arts Fellow (2022) and a Creature Conserve Mentee (2022-23).
Interview with Jared Harél on Let Our Bodies Change the Subject
Bernie Groves is working toward an MFA in creative writing at Columbia College Chicago. She's a speculative fiction writer interested in identity and exploring the ways in which intergenerational trauma is expressed. You can view her published work at bernieg.art.blog.
Review: Yi Lei’s My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree
Youssef Helmi is a Muslim-American poet and a first-year J.D. Candidate at the University of Chicago. He received his B.A. in Creative Writing, Political Science, and Arabic from the Florida State University; he is also currently learning Japanese. His work work has been featured or is forthcoming in Nimrod Journal, Rigorous Magazine, Orson’s Review, and elsewhere. He was selected as a finalist for the 2020 Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. When not writing, Youssef stress-drinks caffeinated beverages and binge-watches seasonal anime.
Interview with William Fargason on Love Song to the Demon-possessed Pigs of Gadara
Eva Heisler has published two books of poetry: Reading Emily Dickinson in Icelandic (Kore Press, 2013) and Drawing Water (Noctuary Press, 2013). Honors include the Poetry Society of America's Emily Dickinson Award and fellowships at MacDowell and Millay Arts. Poems have appeared in many journals, including BOMB, Crazyhorse, Colorado Review, The Grist, Heavy Feather Review, The Ilanot Review, Indiana Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Poetry Northwest. She was co-winner of the 2021 Poetry International Prize.
Review: Nancy Eimers’ Human Figures
Daniel Lassell is the author of Spit (Wheelbarrow Books Poetry Prize, 2021), Ad Spot (Ethel, 2021), and The Emptying Earth (Madhouse Press, 2023). He grew up in Kentucky and currently lives in New York. Visit his website at www.daniel-lassell.com.
Interview with Issam Zineh on Unceded Land
Arden Levine is a New York City municipal employee whose daily work focuses on housing affordability, homelessness prevention, and equitable community development. Her writing has been featured in American Life in Poetry (selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Ted Kooser), Harvard Review, The Missouri Review's Poem-of-the-Week, Poetry Society of America’s Song Cycle series, and WNYC’s Radiolab. Arden's debut poetry collection, Ladies’ Abecedary (Harbor Editions, 2021), was included in the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses’ 2022 Reading List for Women’s History Month. She is a Beloit Poetry Journal Foundation Board Member, a National Book Critics Circle Member, a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee.
Review: Cait O’Kane’s A Brief History of Burning
Review: Caroline M. Mar’s Special Education
Review: Indran Amirthanayagam’s The Migrant States & Ten Thousand Steps Against the Tyrant
Review: Jennifer Martelli’s The Queen of Queens
Guest Editor: Issue 15: America // Being America
Review: Patricia Spears Jones’ The Beloved Community
Jerome Ellison Murphy earned his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he currently serves as Undergraduate Programs Manager. He co-curates the Bespoke reading series at Bureau of General Services Queer Division bookstore, and serves on the board of The Poetry Well (formerly Emotive Fruition) performance series curated by Thomas Dooley. His critical writing has appeared in The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, Adroit Journal, The Brooklyn Rail, Lambda Literary Review, and elsewhere, while his poetry appears in Narrative Magazine, LitHub, The Awl, NPR's RadioLab, Spunk, Bellevue Literary Review, and on the ceiling as you lie awake at 3 a.m. See more at jemwords.com. He previously served on the board of Lambda Literary Foundation, the
world's foremost non-profit supporting LGBT literature.
Review: Claudia Rankine’s Just Us
Eric Nelson’s most recent poetry collection, Horse Not Zebra, published in 2022 by Terrapin Books, received Honorable Mention in both the Eric Hoffer Awards and in the Brockman-Campbel Award. He taught writing and literature for twenty-six years at Georgia Southern University. In 2015, he and his wife moved to Asheville, NC, where he writes, reads, gardens, and teaches in the Great Smokies Writing Program. Among other journals, his poems have appeared in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review, Southern Poetry Review, The Oxford American, The Sun, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily.
Review: Kathy Nelson’s The Ledger of Mistakes
Frances Phillips is the author of three small press books of poetry published by Kelsey Street Press and Hanging Loose Press. Her poems, nonfiction pieces, and reviews have appeared in such publications as The Hungry Mind Review, The Washington Post, Poetry Flash, and The San Jose Mercury News. She’s an emeritus creative writing instructor at San Francisco State University and retired program director for the arts and Creative Work Fund at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund in San Francisco.
Review: Sarah Heady’s Comfort
Beth Brown Preston is a poet and novelist with two collections of poetry from Broadside Lotus Press and two chapbooks of poetry, including OXYGEN II (Moonstone Press, 2022). She is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Writing Program at Goddard College. She has been a CBS Fellow in Writing at the University of Pennsylvania and a Bread Loaf Scholar.
Review: Major Jackson’s Razzle Dazzle
Ben Rutherfurd is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Georgia, where he was a 2018–2019 Lamar Dodd School of Art Interdisciplinary Fellow. He also serves as an assistant editor at the Georgia Review.
Review: Cole Swensen's Gave
Review: Sylvia Chan's We Remain Traditional
Review: Letters to the Future: Black WOMEN / Radical WRITING (edited by Erica Hunt & Dawn Lundy Martin)
Review: C.D. Wright’s Casting Deep Shade
Review: Deborah Landau’s Soft Targets
Review: Jena Osman’s Motion Studies
Review: Brian Teare’s Doomstead Days
Zach Savich is the author of six collections of poetry, including Daybed (Black Ocean, 2018), and two books of creative nonfiction. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Cleveland Institute of Art and in the PhD in Creativity at the University of the Arts. His new collection, Momently, is forthcoming from Black Ocean.
Review: Manuel Maples Arce’s Stridentist Poems (translated by KM Cascia)
Rachel Shin is a student journalist and writer of creative nonfiction. She studies English at Yale University and calls Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania home.
Review: Ada Limón’s The Hurting Kind
Beatrice Szymkowiak is a French-American writer and scholar. She graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2017 and obtained a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2022. She is the author of RED ZONE (Finishing Line Press, 2018), a poetry chapbook; the winner of the 2017 OmniDawn Single Poem Broadside Contest; and the recipient of the 2022 Agha Shahid Ali Prize in poetry for her full-length collection B/RDS, which will be published by the University of Utah Press in 2023. Her work also has appeared in several poetry magazines including Terrain.org, The Berkeley Review, The Portland Review, OmniVerse, The Southern Humanities Review, and many others.
Review: Sherwin Bitsui’s Dissolve
Review: Santee Frazier’s Aurum
Review: Cheswayo Mphanza’s The Rhinehart Frames
Interview with Brenda Iijima on Bionic Communality
Review: Michael Wasson’s Swallowed Light
Guest Editor, Issue 14: Indigenous Ecopoetry
Lucas Wildner lives in Seattle where he is repairing his relationships to German and English. He is the author of two chapbooks Fluency (Ghost City Review 2022) and [eyes emoji] (Francis House 2023). He is a Pushcart 2022 nominee. See more at lucaswildner.com and twitter, sadly: @wucas_lildner.
Review: Stephen S. Mill's Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution
