Congratulations to our very own Mistress of Blogs, Devi S. Laskar, for the recent publication of three poems in The Tule Review (Feb. 2012), and for her upcoming author reading on April 9^th in Sacramento, California at the Sacramento Arts Center. All Bay Area BWWers are invited to attend and cheer her on!

Devi, a native of  Chapel Hill, N.C. and mother of three, holds a B.A. in journalism and English from UNC-Chapel Hill; an M.A. in South Asian Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; and an M.F.A. from Columbia University.

She has been writing poems since she was in the fifth grade when her teacher introduced her to the haiku. She likes to write pantoums and sonnets these days when she isn’t doing her job as blog editor for the Book Writing World or posting a new piece of art on Facebook every day as part of the self-imposed 365 Day Art Challenge.

Her poems have been published in The Atlanta Review, The Tule Review, The Squaw Valley Review, Pratichi, & The North American Review in 2009 and 2011, where they were finalists for the James Hearst Prize.

And, by the way, Devi’s novel, Shadow Gardens, is entertaining BWW Workshop members as it unfolds before their eyes.

Leslie Rodd is a member of the Book Writing World and earned an M.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University. Her short story Fiery Night was a finalist for the Bosque Fiction Prize and published in Bosque (the magazine) by the Albuquerque Writers Coop in 2011.