Three of Confessions unsung heroes are my editors: Mickey Appleman (aka Pearlman), Molly Peacock and Baron Wormser. Molly’s been with me for the duration—since NYU graduate school and my master’s thesis (which grew and matured into GlOrious, my first poetry collection)—and understands better than any one what my aesthetic project is and the unconscious detours I sometimes take to circumvent that. I credit Molly for helping me to discover and bring forth my poems—my poems rather than hers or the ones I wished I wrote.

Baron too has been with me forever—twenty years at least; we met at Frost Place where we were both teaching faculty at the annual poetry writing festival. We connected immediately as people, poets and friends. Baron has long been a champion of my poetry—it was he who encouraged me to write long poems and to consider abandoning the left margin in them—and Confessions’ most enthusiastic fan, not to mention the fact that the title was his genius not mine. Editor of all CavanKerry Press books, Baron supported me before, during, and since I founded the press. So too did and does Molly. There are no two people in the world that I depend/count on more in my writing and publishing lives than Molly and Baron. They are truly godparents of CavanKerry Press and me, the writer.

And along came Mickey. Mickey was my first prose editor. She was recommended to me by my poet friend Sondra Gash and her daughter Amy, an editor for Algonquin books. From the beginning, Mickey treated me as a consummate professional rather than as the beginner I was – such a great gift given how anxious I was exposing Confessions to a writer who spent her professional life reading, writing, and editing prose. Her book reviews were expert and incisive, and I was terrified of her. But I wanted to learn. And she was tough, used her red pen liberally – her Trust your reader! command still rings in my head each time I face the page–and thoroughly believed in Confessions and me.

Having reaped the benefits of working so closely with three such literary masters, I cannot thank them enough for their belief in me, for making me the writer that I am, and for helping me husband Confessions safely into the world. Nor can I imagine a committed writer ever not working with an editor. We need them. Our work needs them. At least one. I’m obsessive and self-indulgent, so I worked with three. Lucky me!