Questions for the Palmist

David Olsen's second poetry chapbook, New World Elegies, is new from Finishing Line Press. His Greatest Hits 1983-2000 is among the volumes in the Greatest Hits invitational series of poetry chapbooks published by Pudding House.

A full-length collection manuscript, Mnemonics, was a finalist in the 2010 Bright Hill Press and 2011 White Pine Press competitions. A successor volume, What Remains, was a semifinalist in the Crab Orchard Series First Book Award competition in 2011. A 10-page sampler from the chapbook manuscript Requiescat was a finalist in the 2009 poetry collection competition of The New Writer magazine, and 10-page samplers from the chapbook manuscript Sailing to Atlantis were long-listed for the two most recent Cinnamon Press Poetry Awards.

David’s poems, plays and stories have earned recognition in more than 50 literary competitions in North America and UK, and his work has appeared in dozens of British and American journals. In UK since 2008 his poems have appeared in Acumen, Envoi, Orbis, Assent, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Oxford Magazine, Writing Magazine,ASH, The Nail, Countryside Tales, and competition anthologies.  David appears often at charity benefits and other readings.

In 1990 David became the fourth recipient (in 11 years) of the Daly City Arts Commission trophy for excellence in poetry. A member of the Dramatists Guild, the Poetry Society, Oxford Stanza, Back Room Poets, and Oxford Playwrights, David is listed in The International Who's Who in Poetry, and as a poet and fiction writer in The Directory of Writers.