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David B. Prather

Poet / Author

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About Me.

David B. Prather’s collections of poetry include We Were Birds from Main Street Rag in 2019 and Shouting at an Empty House from Sheila-Na-Gig Editions in 2023.  He has another full-length poetry collection, Bending Light with Bare Hands, forthcoming from Fernwood Press in 2024. A past president of West Virginia Writers, Inc., a statewide non-profit organization, he taught English Composition, American Literature, and Creative Writing at West Virginia University at Parkersburg and English Comp at Marietta College in Marietta, Ohio. Prather also served as poetry editor for Confluence Literary Journal and for Tantra Press, and he hosted the Blennerhassett Reading Series. He currently serves as a reader for Suburbia Journal. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many journals, including Colorado Review, Seneca Review, Prairie Schooner, The American Journal of Poetry, The Literary Review, Poet Lore, and others, as well as having garnered nominations for both Best of the Net and Pushcart Prizes.  His work has also appeared in many anthologies, including Voices From the Fierce Intangible World (from South Florida Poetry Journal) and Endlessly Rocking: Poems in Honor of Walt Whitman’s 200th Birthday (Unbound Content, Englewood, NJ). Prather studied acting at the National Shakespeare Conservatory in New York, and he appeared in a couple of local (West Virginia/Ohio) independent movies. He received his MFA from Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, and he was recently included in the West Virginia Literary Hall of Recognition. He lives in the town where he was born—Parkersburg, West Virginia.

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POETS & WRITERS AUTHOR PAGE: 

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BOOKS

2019

WE WERE BIRDS - $14.00

Main Street Rag Publishing

2023

SHOUTING AT AN EMPTY HOUSE - $16.00

Sheila-Na-Gig Editions

2024

BENDING LIGHT WITH BARE HANDS -

Fernwood Press

FORTHCOMING

sample poems online

Why I Break the Dishes

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3 Poems

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Just as Depression

Starts to Let Up

3 Poems

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2 Poems

2 Poems

2 Poems

Katydid

17 Year Cicada

Sometimes I Don't Know

What My Autistic Nephew

Means

2 Poems

Sasquatch

Things of the Earth

Steal a Grape

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Rainbow Grasshopper

A Woman from the Past

My Father's Land

2 Poems

Still Not Stopping

4 Poems

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Brahminy Starling

N E W S

We Were Birds

     Release

Shouting at an Empty House

     Release

Actor in 2 Movies

Backstory of the Poem

Review of DAYS OF OUR LIVES

by Joan Aleshire

West Virginia Writers, Inc.

2024 Contest Juror

National Poetry Month 2024

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Anthologies

Sharing this Delicate Bread

Pandemic Evolution

I Thought I Heard a Cardinal Sing

Cutleaf Reader: Vol. 1

Cutleaf Reader: Vol. 3

The Power of the Feminine I: Volume I

The Power of the Feminine I: Volume II

Endlessly Rocking: Poems

in Honor of Walt Whitman's

200th Birthday

Northern Appalachia Review: Voume 5, Number 1

Voices from the Fierce

Intangible World

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