First off I want to give a Big Thanks to James M. for your kind donation. It was perfect timing and it really helped out a lot. All of the donations do. Thanks James for taking the time and to all of you who have made a donation to the site 🙂
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Wow and Congrats Rochester! You may be in last place right now in the snow contest but when it comes to humorous poetry authors living in Rochester you are in the lead 😉 Author Melissa Balmain who recently won the Able Muse Book Award for Poetry for her book of humorous poems “Walking in on People” is from Rochester, New York 🙂 If you’re looking for a great Christmas idea for the poetry lover in the family, well here you go…

I met Melissa during last years snow season when she dropped me an email that she was going to mention our fun snow contest in an article she was writing. The article appeared in Success Magazine which she also writes columns for. Just the mention of success and something I’m affiliated with should give you an idea of her witty offbeat sense of humor 🙂 Myself and Success don’t seem to see eye to eye 🙁 That said we became online friends and believe me she is a very down to earth person with a great sense of humor.

Melissa Balmain teaches at the University of Rochester and her book which has gotten great reviews BTW. I haven’t had the chance to read it (Yet) but I will still strongly recommend it (Just pretend I’m Oprah Winfrey) for the fact that I have read several of her articles and columns and I have found them all to be humorous and witty. Below is all the info you need to find out more about Melissa Balmain’s new book of poetry, Walking in on People including reviews and links where to order her book.

Melissa Balmain Walking in on People Poetry

More Information about Melissa Balmain and Walking in on People

Melissa Balmain is a humorist, journalist, and teacher. She recently became editor of Light, the country’s oldest journal of light verse, which she helped revive and bring online after 20 years in print. Balmain’s poems have been published in such anthologies as The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse and Killer Verse, and in American Arts Quarterly, Lighten Up Online, Measure, Mezzo Cammin, Poetry Daily, The Spectator (UK), The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Her prose has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, McSweeney’s, Details, and many other magazines and newspapers. She is a columnist for Success magazine and the author of a memoir, Just Us: Adventures of a Mother and Daughter (Faber and Faber). Balmain has won national journalism honors and been a finalist for the Donald Justice Poetry Prize, the Howard Nemerov Sonnet Award, and the X.J. Kennedy Parody Award. She teaches at the University of Rochester and lives nearby with her husband and two children. Walking in on People, the winner of the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, is her first full-length poetry collection.

Reviews of Walking in on People by Melissa Balmain

In Melissa Balmain’s Walking in on People, the serious is lightened with a generous serving of wit and humor, and the lighthearted is enriched with abundant wisdom. She shows us how poetry can be fun yet grounded in everyday challenges and triumphs, with subjects ranging from the current and hip (Facebook posts, online dating, layoffs, retail therapy, cell-phone apps, trans fat), to the traditional and time-tested (marriage, child-rearing, love, death). Through it all, her craft is masterful, with a formal dexterity deployed with precision in a showcase of forms such as the villanelle, ballad, triolet, nonce, and the sonnet. It is little wonder then that Walking in on People is the winner of the 2013 Able Muse Book Award, as selected by the final judge, X.J. Kennedy. This is a collection that will not only entertain thoroughly, but also enlighten and reward the reader.

Winner of the 2013 Able Muse Book Award

PRAISE FOR WALKING IN ON PEOPLE:
“An infectious, often hilarious blend of the sweet and the lethal, the charming and the acidic.”
~Billy Collins, former United States Poet Laureate
“Poetry these days is rarely so entertaining, so beautifully crafted, so sharp of eye, yet so wise and warm of heart.”
~X.J. Kennedy, final judge, Able Muse Book Award

Resourses:
Melissa’s Balmain’s Website

Have a Great Day Everyone and snow is on the way 🙂