Flower Conroy
Photo courtesy of Flower Conroy
Bio
LGBTQ+ writer and former Key West Poet Laureate, Flower Conroy’s first full-length collection Snake Breaking Medusa Disorder was chosen as the winner of the NFSPS’ Stevens Manuscript Competition; her second collection, A Sentimental Hairpin, is forthcoming from Tolsun Books. Conroy has received scholarships to attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and the Key West Literary Seminar. Her poetry, alongside her assemblage-art, was showcased at the Studios of Key West in an exhibit called Insects & Angels. Her poetry will/has appeared in American Poetry Review, American Literary Review, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, Michigan Quarterly Review, Menacing Hedge, and others.
Disbelief and elation. Shock and hope. Gratitude and lifeblood. No, not simply gratitude—full-on gratefulness. Grateful(for)ness. Echo: forgiveness. (Hadn’t I lost too many years after my father’s coma, so as not to face myself on the page?) Reading Tarfia Faizullah’s tweet offering a gentle reminder at self-acceptance, my breath caught, I stilled: “be patient w/ your path. it’s Yours.” This wrought year. These wrought years. This gift. Indebted wholeheartedly to my mentors and peers. And my family. Incomprehensibility and humility. Inspirited and encouraged. “Do you come from on high or out of the abyss,/ O Beauty?” (Baudelaire). Surreal, still. And somehow—grounding? Still shaking, dream-walking in the wake of. Of having been listened to, having been heard—the cup against the wall becoming the hand abridging mouth to ear, a warm sound. I promised myself not to be too weird writing this but I can’t separate the weird from the self—nor can I fully express how deeply honored I am to be named a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow—thank you, unbelievably and truly, thank you.