Alice Derry

Tremolo is Alice Derry’s fourth full collection of poetry. It was released by Red Hen Press on September 1, 2012. Tess Gallagher writes of the book: “Tremolo is a tour de force of vibratory power that marks Alice Derry as having come into her own as one of our very best poets.” As manuscript, Tremolo was awarded a Washington State GAP grant from Artist Trust in 2011. Strangers to Their Courage (Louisiana State University Press, 2001), was a finalist for the 2002 Washington Book Award. Li-Young Lee writes of Strangers: “This book . . .asks us to surrender our simplistic ideas about race and prejudice, memory and forgetfulness, and begin to uncover a new paradigm for ‘human.’” Stages of Twilight (Breitenbush, 1986), won the King County Publication Award, chosen by Raymond Carver. Clearwater appeared from Blue Begonia Press in 1997. Derry has three chapbooks: Getting Used to the Body (Sagittarius Press, 1989), Not As You Once Imagined (Trask House, 1993), and translations from the German poet Rainer Rilke (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2002). Derry’s M.F.A. is from Goddard College (now Warren Wilson). After twenty-nine years teaching English and German at Peninsula College in Port Angeles on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, she retired in June, 2009. She was a major force in conceiving and directing the college’s Foothills Writers’ Series from 1980 to 2009. Derry was born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in Washington and Montana.