Mark Turpin
Encyclopedia
Life
He is the son of a Presbyterian minister. He has spent 25 years working construction and building houses.He graduated from Boston University
Boston University
Boston University is a private research university located in Boston, Massachusetts. With more than 4,000 faculty members and more than 31,000 students, Boston University is one of the largest private universities in the United States and one of Boston's largest employers...
at age 47, with a Masters Degree.
He lives and works in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
.
His work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares
Ploughshares
Ploughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
, and Slate.
Awards
- 1997 Whiting Writers' AwardWhiting Writers' AwardThe Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...
- 2004 PloughsharesPloughsharesPloughshares is an American literary magazine founded in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, Ploughshares has been based at Emerson College in the heart of Boston...
John C. Zacharis First Book AwardJohn C. Zacharis First Book AwardThe John C. Zacharis First Book Award honors the best first book of poetry or fiction by a Ploughshares writer. The award carries a cash prize of $1,500, and feature publication in the "Postscripts" section of the Winter issue. It was started in 1991....
for Hammer
Works
- "Jobsite Wind", Slate
- "Waiting for Lumber", Slate, July 16, 2002
- "The Furrow", Tarpaulin Sky, Winter 2002
- "The Box"; "Pickwork"; "Shithouse"; "In Winter"; "Will Turpin b. 1987"; "Photograph From Antietam", Boston Review, 19.1
- "The Box", Online News Hour, September 2, 2002
Ploughshares
Reviews
"Dear god / one needs to be an expert now," according to one in "A Carpenter's Body" from Mark Turpin's debut collection, Hammer. That explicit need—for intuitive expertise, for intimate knowledge, for skill which ennobles human activity—is central to the author's poetics, and appears to be his answer to Stevens' charge that the modern poem find what will suffice; this is an engaging, lucid and textured book, and one whose novelty (Turpin himself is a carpenter by trade) is far outweighed by its ambition.