Page 158 Books welcomes Allen Stein in conversation about his first published poetry collection. YOUR FUNERAL IS VERY IMPORTANT TO US, recently published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in Charlotte, was a semi-finalist in the University of Wisconsin’s Brittingham and Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry Competition last year.

The poems in the collection cover a wide range of topics, among them marital conflict, sports, academic life, youth and its questionings and discontents, parent-child relationships, the difficulties and complexities of ageing, and the necessity for courage as one deals with all that life brings our way. The tone varies from somber to wry and ironic and sometimes humorous.

Stein’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in such journals as Poet Lore, The Hudson Review, Willow Springs, Salmagundi, New Ohio Review and The South Carolina Review, among others. His story “The Final Reflections of Malcolm Melville, His Father’s Son” won Second Prize in The Hudson Review’s 2019 Short Fiction Contest.

Allen Stein is originally from the Bronx and lives in Cary, North Carolina. He has a PhD in literature from Duke and has been a professor of American Literature at NC State since 1968.