2010 Harriss Poetry Prize Winner

“Laura’s background in drama and television, journalism and teaching, childhood education and parenting, all clearly inform her poetry with an acute and dramatic attention to the details of everyday life. In her workshops with children and adults, she asks them ‘to stop and pay attention’ because she feels that poetry begins with attentiveness and observation.

“In her winning manuscript, Mountain, Log, Salt, and Stone, Laura enlivens her quotidian subjects… with a shrewd and powerful use of metaphor, a critical strategy all too often neglected in contemporary work… This is the word-surgeon’s sure anatomical magic.” —~ Michael Salcman, 2009 Contest Judge, neurological surgeon, poet, and art critic. Author of The Clock Made of Confetti (Orchises Press, 2007), The Enemy of Good Is Better (Orchises, 2011), and editor of the anthology, Poetry in Medicine.

“It is understatement to say Shovan paints with words, for she achieves in blending image and narrative in such a way as to leave the reader edified by and transported into the world of the poem.” ~ author Til Turner

“Laura spreads her love for poetry to children as a mother and teacher, but also to any adults who care.” ~ children’s verse novelist Jeaninne Atkins

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