In her first book of poetry, Canadian poet Debbie Okun Hill leaps from the bleachers into the light and shadow of the sports world. Mixed with the poetic portraits of sweat…the thirst for first…and the juicy taste of orange victory are the metaphorical snapshots of tarnished men and women, the unrewarded failures, and the need to reflect. Tarnished Trophies wrestles the athletic soul: this essence of winning and losing, loving and changing, growing and shaping.

Debbie Okun Hill is Past President of The Ontario Poetry Society, an Associate Member of The League of Canadian Poets, and for eight years has been a co-host of a monthly open mic event in southwestern Ontario. From her first assignments in rural Manitoba as editor of her high school newspaper/yearbook to her work as a journalist for several rural newspapers and later as a communications specialist with The Winnipeg Art Gallery, Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and Fanshawe College in London, Debbie has accumulated many publishing credits. Since turning to poetry in 2003, over 270 of her poems have been published in over 105 different publications/websites including Descant, Existere, Vallum, The Windsor Review, and Other Voices in Canada plus Mobius, The Binnacle and Still Point Arts Quarterly in the United States. She has read her work throughout Ontario including the Fringe Stage of the 2011 Eden Mills Writers' Festival and during the 2012 PoeTrain Express/Spring Pulse Poetry Festival in Cobalt. This is her first full collection of poems by a trade publisher.

Debbie Okun Hill's profile page