News Archives

Sean performed at the international conference Poetry by the Sea and participated in a panel for the anthology Alongside We Travel (2019 NYQ Books). Poetry by the Sea: A Global Conference, May 21 to  May 24th 2019 at The Mercy by the Sea Center, Madison, Connecticut.

The Answer Is Not Here by Sean Thomas Dougherty & Lisa M. Dougherty, a collaborative chapbook, has been released  by Dianne Borsenik’s NightBallet Press. A dual reading  was held on Saturday May 18th at 2 PM at Main Street Books, 104 N Main St. Mansfield, Ohio, hosted by Mark Sebastian Jordan

Matt Borczon, Sean Thomas Dougherty and Lisa M. Dougherty will perform poems from Alongside We Travel on Tuesday, April 30th in Erie.

Alongside We Travel, Contemporary Poets on Autism, edited by Sean Thomas Dougherty, published by New York Quarterly Books, was released on April 2nd, 2019.  Autism  Awareness Day. All contributor royalties earned on sales will be donated to Sharing the Weight, a small nonprofit out of Iowa doing a simple amazing thing: gathering people together to hand sew and make weighted blankets for autistic children . For more info  Download Press Release

Sean’s poem, Why Bother, which went viral in 2019, has been translated into Korean and is included in Poems of Mindfulness, published by Suo Books in the Republic of Korea.

Sean (along with Patricia Smith, Rita Dove and Grace Paley among others) is included in the  Anniversary issue of Hunger Mountain, edited by Erin Stalcup, from two decades of issues. Order the print edition of #25 and get the anniversary edition as a digital download

A new poem by Sean is included in the just released anthology  from Lily Press: Voices Amidst the Virus: Poets Respond to the Pandemic 

Sean has accepted a position as writing mentor with the MFA program in creative writing at Western Connecticut State University. 

Sean’s hybrid poem, What Little Hobbies for the Dead, the Card Players and the Eclipse, has been chosen for the 2020 Best Small Fictions Anthology to be published by Sonder Press in the Fall, 2020.

Not All Saints  won The Bitter Oleander Press Library of Poetry Award (BOPLOPA) for 2019.  Patty Dickson Pieczka judged this year’s competition and had this to say about her choice:

“Sean Thomas Dougherty’s “Not All Saints” leads us through grit-strewn passageways to a realm of insight. These strong and beautiful poems are unafraid to open their interiors to explore secret depths of emotion and reach into the darkest recesses of grief, love or the musings of a stillborn child. The reader will visit the “Ghost Roads” to see the lynched, Indian graves, chicken bones and spent bullet casings and will delve into the unexplored and sometimes breathtaking terrain of “invisible scars” where the poet searches for more than “all this suffering, the long stroll to become nothing.” This collection seeks to find salvation and to balance the divine with the damaged until “the wafer of moon dissolves into the mouth of the dark.” From Bitter Oleander Press

All My People Are Elegies, Essays, Prose Poems and other Epistolary Oddities, by Sean Thomas Dougherty published by New York Quarterly Books has been released.  After a series of rejections from literary magazines,  Dougherty crafted responses on Facebook that began Dear Editor. The edited result is this book. Download Press Release.  Sean will read from the new book at Calimaris Poetry Tuesdays in Erie, PA November 19th, 2019 6:30 PM. Titled, This Town’s Full of Losers,  A Reading on the Art of Rejection, the reading will be followed by Open mic on rejections .

Alongside We Travel, Contemporary Poets on Autism, edited by Sean Thomas Dougherty, published by New York Quarterly Books, was released on April 2nd, 2019. Autism  Awareness Day. All contributor royalties earned on sales will be donated to Sharing the Weight, a small nonprofit out of Iowa doing a simple amazing thing: gathering people together to hand sew and make weighted blankets for autistic children .

The Second Of Sorrow (Boa Editions, LTd 2018) has been awarded the 2019 Paterson Poetry Prize.

Sean’s poems from The Second O of Sorrow added to Poetry Foundation Website.

The Second O of Sorrow on New Books to Look For in 2018 Lists

Book Launch for Double Kiss set for Saturday, September 23, 2017

Sean’s chapbook, the Starlight Motel, included in Punk Series due October, 2017

Sean’s new chapbook, part of the Russell Atkins Poetry Series  has been released 2016

Sean wins  The 2015 Betsy Colquitt Poetry Prize November, 2015