Cemetery Plums

Gerry Sloan is a retired music professor living in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He has been writing poetry since high school, where he was lucky enough to have John Taylor, an inspiring English teacher. An essay won the Preternatural Readers Contest in 1987 from The Missouri Review. In 1990, he received the WORDS Award in Poetry from the Arkansas Literary Society in Little Rock. In 2018, he won First Prize in Poetry from the Gaza Freedom Flotilla Coalition for “Poem for Palestine.” His poetry collections are Paper Lanterns (Half Acre Press, 2011), Crossings: A Memoir in Verse (Rollston Press, 2017), and a selection in the “chapthology” Wild Muse: Ozarks Nature Poetry (Cornerpost Press, 2022). His poems appear in Christian Science Monitor, Kansas Quarterly, The Nebraska Review, North Dakota Quarterly, Midwest Quarterly, Plains Poetry Journal, and Arkansas Review, as well as the Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry (1986–88). Website: www.gerrysloanpoetry.com Paperback: 118 pages Publisher: Kelsay Books (July 24, 2026)