Herndon High School graduate Sarah Kain Gutowski has published her first chapbook of poetry, "Fabulous Beast: The Sow," a cycle of 19 poems in the form of a fable. Published by Hyacinth Girl Press (available for $6 plus shipping at hyacinthgirlpress.com), Gutowski’s poems explore the subjects of motherhood and post-partum depression, through the eyes of a sow.
A 1994 graduate of Herndon, Gutowski’s poetry has been published in Verse Daily, The Gettysburg Review, The Southern Review, Epiphany, as well as past issues of The Threepenny Review and So to Speak: A Feminist Journal of Language and Art. Today, she is an associate professor of English at Suffolk County Community College in Long Island, N.Y., as well as a loving wife and mother of three.
"The Sow" follows the life of a sow with the ability to shift her shape into different animal forms, and the discoveries she makes as she changes--at first unintentionally, and then deliberately -- from pig to human and back again.
Gutowski received a Bachelor of Arts degree from James Madison University in 1998 and a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from New York University in 2002. In 2004, she was a semi-finalist in the Discovery/The Nation contest, and over the past 10 years, has been a featured reader at multiple venues in the New York City area, from Manhattan to Sag Harbor on Long Island. She keeps a record of her writing life, experience in academia and parenthood on her blog: www.mimsyandoutgrabe.blogspot.com.