Of Poetry Podcast Beth Gilstrap (Of Genre as a Place to Leave & a Place to Come Back to, Finding the River's Flow, and Grief & Healing in Writing)
Read: Four excerpts from There Is News Along the Ohio River at Heavy Feather Review
Purchase: There Is News Along the Ohio River(River River Books, 2026)
Beth Gilstrap (she/her) is a multi-genre author, copywriter, editor, and educator. Her debut hybrid/flash CNF collection, There Is News Along the Ohio River, was released February 2026 from River River Books. She is also the author of two story collections including: Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize, shortlisted for the Stanford Libraries William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, and finalist for the Foreword 2021 Foreword Reviews Awards in Short Fiction; I Am Barbarella: Stories from Twelve Winters Press (2015), and the chapbook No Man’s Wild Laura (2016) from Hyacinth Girl Press. A true southern goth/punk gal at heart, she is the Publisher & Editor-in-chief of the goth/punk zine, Black Lily (find them on Instagram @blacklilyzine). Her essays, stories, and hybrids have appeared in Poets & Writers, Wigleaf, Craft, Bending Genres, and The Cincinnati Review, among others. She lives with her husband and a bunch of cuddly fur muppets in Charlotte, North Carolina. As a neurodivergent human who lives with c-PTSD, she is open about her struggles and fearlessly vocal about ending the stigma surrounding mental illness.
Recommended Reading
Terese Marie Mailhot, Heart Berries
Terrance Hayes, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin
Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know
Pete Walker - Complex PTSD: from Surviving to Thriving
Tara Westover, Educated
Jen Soriano, Nervous
Rebecca Olander, Singing From the Deep End