Joan Colby

Twenty-two books of poetry include Joyriding to Nightfall, Her Heartsongs, The Seven Heavenly Virtues, Carnival, Ribcage, Broke, Pro Forma, Ah, Clio, The Wingback Chair,Properties of Matter, Bittersweet, Selected Poems, Dead Horses, The Atrocity Book, The Lonely Hearts Killers, How The Sky Begins to Fall, The Boundary Waters, Blue Woman Dancing in the Nerve, Chagall Poems, Dream Tree, Beheading the Children, X1 Poems.

Over 2000 poems in journals such as Poetry, Grand Street, Atlanta Review, New York Quarterly, Gargoyle,The Pedestal, Rattle, Schuylkil Valley Journal, Comstock Review, Main Street Rag, Spillway, The Cape Rock, Little Patuxant Review, etc.

Fellowship in Literature and two Literary Awards from the Illinois Arts Council, honorable mention in James Hearst Poetry Contest (2008),finalist in Nimrod's Pablo Neruda contest (2010 and 2012) poems and short fiction in several anthologies. Winner in the 2014 and 2016 Atlanta Review International Poetry Contest. My books Selected Poems won the 2013 FutureCycle Press Book Prize and Ribcage has won the 2015 Kithara Book Prize.

I was editor of Illinois Racing News, a monthly publication focused on the breeding and racing of Thoroughbreds in the midwest for over 35 years.. I am currently a senior editor of FutureCycle Press and associate editor of Good Works Review. I have three grown children and live with my husband on a small horse farm in northern Illinois.