About The Author
Former Jazz musician, Martin Willitts Jr retired as a MLS Senior Librarian in upstate New York. He is currently tutoring 4th grade students, evaluates Prior Learning Evaluations for SUNY Empire State, a professional Oral Storyteller telling stories from around the world from memory, and he is a “Science Magician” able to throw playing cards into watermelons and bounce eggs. He is a Quaker, healer, and Organic Gardener. He is a visual artist of Victorian and Chinese paper cutouts. He was nominated for 5 Pushcart and 3 Best Of The Net awards.
Martin Willitts Jr has appeared in over 30 anthologies and has been in hundreds of print and online magazines including A Kind Of A Hurricane Press, Big City Lit, Rattle, Flutter, and others. He presented his poetry workshop “Origami Haiku Jumping Frogs” at the 2012 Massachusetts Poetry Festival. He won the prestigious international John Cotton Dana Award for library programs and publicity, and he won it while working at a library of a service area of less than 10,000 populations.
He has print chapbooks "Falling In and Out of Love" (Pudding House Publications, 2005), “Lowering Nets of Light” (Pudding House Publications, 2007), The Garden of French Horns” (Pudding House Publications, 2008), “Baskets of Tomorrow” (Flutter Press, 2009), “The Girl Who Sang Forth Horses” (Pudding House Publications, 2010), “Van Gogh’s Sunflowers for Cezanne” (Finishing Line Press, 2010), “Why Women Are A Ribbon Around A Bomb” (Last Automat, 2011), “Protest, Petition, Write, Speak: Matilda Joslyn Gage Poems” (Matilda Joslyn Gage Foundation, 2011), “Secrets No One Wants To Talk About” (Dos Madres Press, 2011), “How to Find Peace” (Kattywompus Press, 2012), “Playing The Pauses In The Absence Of Stars” (Main Street Rag, 2012), and “No Special Favors” (Green Fuse Press, 2012).
He has three full length books "The Secret Language of the Universe" (March Street Press, 2006), and “The Hummingbird” (March Street Press, 2009), and “The Heart Knows, Simply, What It Needs: Poems based on Emily Dickinson, her life and poetry” (Aldrich Press, 2012).
His forthcoming poetry books include “Waiting For The Day To Open Its Wings” (UNBOUND Content, 2013), “Art Is the Impression of an Artist” (Edgar and Lenore's Publishing House, 2013), “City Of Tents” (Crisis Chronicles Press, 2013), "A Is for Aorta" (Seven Circles Press, e-book, 2013), "Swimming In the Ladle of Stars" (Kattywompus Press, 2013), and he is the winner of the inaugural Wild Earth Poetry Contest for his full length collection “Searching For What Is Not There” (Hiraeth Press, 2013).
