Available as of February 2006 from the Texas Review Consortium at 800-826-8911

The Licorice Daughter:

My Year with Ruffian

Winner of the Texas Review Award

Read more about this book.
and the article from the Lexington Herald-Leader

Read two new reviews

Listen to Lyn read from the book (in interview with Grace Cavalieri)

(Portrait of Ruffian shown on cover is in private collection of John Bellucci)

Bio Notes

Lyn Lifshin has written more than 100 books and edited 4 anthologies of women writers. Her poems have appeared in most poetry and literary magazines in the U.S.A., and her work has been included in virtually every major anthology of recent writing by women. She has given more than 700 readings across the U.S.A. and has appeared at Dartmouth and Skidmore colleges, Cornell University, the Shakespeare Library, Whitney Museum, and Huntington Library. Lyn Lifshin has also taught poetry and prose writing for many years at universities, colleges and high schools, and has been Poet in Residence at the University of Rochester, Antioch, and Colorado Mountain College. Winner of numerous awards including the Jack Kerouac Award for her book Kiss The Skin Off, Lyn is the subject of the documentary film Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass. For her absolute dedication to the small presses which first published her, and for managing to survive on her own apart from any major publishing house or academic institution, Lifshin has earned the distinction "Queen of the Small Presses." She has been praised by Robert Frost, Ken Kesey and Richard Eberhart, and Ed Sanders has seen her as "a modern Emily Dickinson."

Lyn Lifshin's recent prizewinning book (Paterson Poetry Award) Before It's Light was published Winter 1999-2000 by Black Sparrow Press, following their publication of Cold Comfort in 1997. The Licorice Daughter was published in February 2006 and Another Woman who Looks Like Me was published by Black Sparrow-David Godine in October 2006. (order@godine.com) Also recently published is A New Film About a Woman in Love with the Dead, March Street Press. She has published more than 100 books of poetry, including Marilyn Monroe and Blue Tatoo, won awards for her non-fiction and edited four anthologies of women's writing including Tangled Vines, Ariadne's Thread and Lips Unsealed. Her poems have appeared in most literary and poetry magazines and she is the subject of an award-winning documentary film, Lyn Lifshin: Not Made of Glass, available from Women Make Movies. Her poem "No More Apologizing" has been called "among the most impressive documents of the women's poetry movement" by Alicia Ostriker. An update to her Gale Research Projects Autobiographical Series, "On the Outside, Lips, Blues, Blue Lace," was published in Spring, 2003. Texas Review Press published her poems about the famous, short-lived, beautiful race horse, Ruffian: The Licorice Daughter: My Year with Ruffian. New books include When a Cat Dies and Another Woman's Story, Barbie Poems and forthcoming books include Mad Girl Poems and The Daughter I Don't Have. She is working on a collection about poets, Poets, (Mostly) Who Have Touched Me, Living and Dead. All True, Especially the Lies which will be published by Arielle Press, and Tsunami which will come from Blue Heron Press In Mirrors from Pressapress came out in May, 2006. She is presently working on a book about the amazing Kentucky Derby winner, Barbaro. For interviews, more bio material, reviews, interviews, prose, samples of work and more, browse this website: www.lynlifshin.com.

     Last Updated: March 3, 2008