Middle-America's most engaging authors since 1998.
Middle-America's most engaging authors since 1998.
Al Ortolani’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Rattle, New York Quarterly, and Prairie Schooner. His most recent collections are The Taco Boat, published by New York Quarterly Books in 2022, and Swimming Shelter from Spartan Press which was named a Kansas Notable Book for 2021. His novel Bull in the Ring was released by Meadowlark Books in 2023. He is a winner of the Rattle Chapbook Prize and has been featured in Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac and Ted Kooser’s American Life in Poetry. Ortolani recently directed a memoir writing project for Vietnam veterans in association with the Library of Congress and Humanities Kansas. As a retired high school teacher, he enjoys a life without bells and fire drills. He’s a sucker for auctions and garage sales. Ortolani is a husband, father, and grandfather, currently entertaining the idea of becoming a hermit.
By Al Ortolani
Published: 2024
Controlled Burn blazes across the landscape of a poet’s everyday life. Here you find poems about everything from COVID to cabbage soup, pets to Peter Rabbit, grand-parenting to buying boots, and always with the poet’s signature witty, cool, and humane voice. Ortolani’s poems burn with a language so clear, concise, and under control that it makes room for new growth.
~ Clint Margrave, author of Visitor
By Al Ortolani
Published: 2020
The idea for writing one poem a day for 100 days emerged slowly. In March, as we sheltered in place, I discovered that putting poems on Facebook allowed me to communicate with an immediacy that I usually only enjoyed at public readings. It tasted like bacon, like strong coffee. Naively, I thought 30 days would cover the worst of the pandemic.
By Al Ortolani
Published: 2018
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