Sting and Nest by Barbara Rockman received the 2012 National Press Women Poetry Book Prize and the 2012 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award.
I’ve attended two day-long AROHO conferences and two summer retreats at Ghost Ranch. At every event I found myself held in a community of women who became my sister writers, friends, inspiration and teachers. AROHO gives me refuge and courage to write my bravest poems. It offers the confidence to believe my work has an eager audience. I return to my life as poet and teacher fueled by the risk-taking, spirited, generous women who’ve shared their words and hearts. When I organized a fund-raising reading in Santa Fe, I had the dual pleasure of drawing the community closer to the infectious creative energy that is AROHO and being able to offer a retreat scholarship to a young writer. This unique organization and its belief in me hovers beneath each new poem I write and spills into each workshop of women writers I lead.
–Barbara Rockman
