Happy New Year to our readers! We are celebrating the end of 2015 and the start of 2016 with the writing of Amanda Beekhuizen. Her prose poem, A Hug From a Large Man for a Long Time, part VI, will be up and running on January 4th at the H.I. Chicago Hostel.

Amanda Beekhuizen is an artist, bookmaker, and educator based in Tucson, Arizona. She earned an MFA in Craft at the Oregon College of Art and Craft in Portland, Oregon, in 2015, and a BFA in Studio Art and a BA in English at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona, in 2010. She has taught at Yavapai College, the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and at the Tucson Community Print Shop.

While she primarily works in the form of the book, she is equally concerned with the content of the books and their physical form. The content is generated through writing (mostly short vignettes about everyday occurrences that gather meaning when grouped together), action and documentation of that action (engaging in repeated action or building sculpture and interacting with it to make photographs and videos that later turn up in books), and a craft-based creative practice (an example of this: How would I embed a rock into a book? What would it mean?). Ultimately, her process is one of creating meaning through making.

Congratulations, Amanda!