 Stories from Dallas native, Cynthia C. Sample, have appeared in NumeroCinq, Summerset Review, Sleet, Blue Lake Review, Starlight Literary Journal and others. She holds an M.F.A. in Fiction from Vermont College and a Ph.D. in finance from University of Texas at Dallas.
Ellie White has been over-dramatic since 1986. She holds a BA in English from The Ohio State University, and an MFA from Old Dominion University. Ellie writes nonfiction and poetry. She is also the creator of the comic strip “Uterus & Ellie.” Her work has been published in Foundry, Slant, and The Columbia Review, as well as many other journals. Ellie’s first poetry chapbook, Requiem for a Doll, won the ELJ Publications Poetry Mini-Collection Contest was released in June 2015. Her second chapbook, Drift, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in Fall 2019. This is her first full-length collection. Ellie’s work has won an Academy of American Poets College Poetry Prize, a Best of the Net nomination, and several Pushcart Prize nominations. Ellie served as a poetry editor at Barely South Review for three years. She also served as a nonfiction and poetry editor for Four Ties Literary Review for two years. Ellie is currently a social media editor and reader at Muzzle Magazine. She lives in Charlottesville, Virginia and works full-time in the insurance industry. Head to the Events calendar to join the reading. It's free and fun! If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Oooh, I would host a garden party and invite my favorite authors from everywhere in the world: Anna Akhmatova, Sylvia Plath, Charles Simic, Tomas Tranströmer, Andrei Codrescu, Sharon Mesmer, Mircea Cartarescu, Ioan Es. Pop, Cristian Popescu, Walt Whitman, James Wright, Stanley Kunitz, William Carlos Williams, Anne Sexton, Peter Balakian, Mircea Eliade, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Milan Kundera, Vladimir Nabokov, Herta Muller. My husband would make pomegranate cocktails and beautiful steaks. We’d serve some delicious Romanian appetizers as well, icre, zacusca, salata de vinete, crumbly telemea with fresh bread and gorgeous ripe tomatoes. The red wine would flow, and we’d get drunk, that’s for sure. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? A lot of things scare me and get in the way: The lack of time to write or edit. The fear of commitment to produce longer pieces, or to write prose. How long it takes to publish a book and losing the initial enthusiasm for a project along the way. Impostor syndrome. I don’t have solutions for these fears. My answer is to progress slower, to let time resolve some of these problems. Sometimes just a slower pace helps, or just to take a break, do some gardening, watch the dahlias bloom. Who is your biggest literary crush, author, or character? Hmm, not a crush, but someone I admire greatly is Charles Simic. I read almost everything he wrote and didn’t find one book that didn’t speak to me. But my favorite of all time is The World Never Ends, the book that opened my eyes to prose poetry, to surrealism, weirdness, and dark humor, and how these devices can help to come to terms with history, oppression, and all the horrors invented by humans. We share the same Eastern European dark soul, that’s why. What books are on your nightstand? My favorite books this year: In the Lateness of the World by Carolyn Forché; Jane Hirshfield’s Ledger; Music for the Dead and Resurrected by Valzhyna Mort; Rules for Rearrangement by Julie Babcock; Carnation and Tenebrae Candle by Marosa Di Giorgio, next to an old favorite, Sad Days of Light by Peter Balakian. Next to a few collections by Romanian poets I got in Bucharest this year: new books by Svetlana Carstean, Nora Iuga, and Mihail Vakulovski. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? It has to be the comma because it signifies the pause when you take a breath. Everyone should know when they can breathe, right? I read aloud my poems to find out where the line breaks and commas should be, a technique I learned from William Carlos Williams and my poetry workshop teacher, Jim Klein, who is a big fan and enforcer of commas. Sometimes I get a little crazy about commas, too, lol. Especially the serial comma. It’s a really important punctuation mark. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I went to high school in Romania under the communist regime, and I read everything I could, required and not required. I exhausted my city’s central library and the very nice librarian who used to put books aside for me and allow me to check out unlimited stacks of books. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I would like to thank the New Jersey Transit Bus 190 where I wrote most of my poems. I used to commute daily between Rutherford, New Jersey, and New York City, 1 hour each way. It was my only time to read and write poems, my writing routine for 18 years before the pandemic. I never thought I would say this, but I miss my commute. I miss that time dedicated to thinking, daydreaming, and writing without interruptions. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Don’t write for anyone else but for yourself. The crazier, the better. Does writing energizes or exhausts you? Writing is exhilarating—but editing is exhausting. I work in bursts, short periods of energy and inspiration, followed by long, procrastinating periods of revising. It’s cyclical, but I always crave to write more and care less about editing or style. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Too much learning about poetry and not enough honest writing. Chasing trends in topics, form, or techniques, instead of just letting go on the page. Trying too hard instead of using a light touch. What is your writing Kryptonite? Being at home during the pandemic. Like I said, I used to write on my bus commute, and I was so productive and focused, churning out new work every week at a high pace for years. The pandemic changed that, and I’m still trying to get into a new writing routine, but it doesn’t work the same way. I haven’t been able to focus any longer from home. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? No. I always have exciting things to read. I have writer’s block many times, that’s another story. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Yes, there are clever ways to plan, structure, and develop your piece around a concept that can be very interesting, new, or exciting. If it’s done well, it’s possible. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I belong to the group The Red Wheelbarrow Poets, a terrific group of poets from Northern New Jersey who hold a poetry workshop every week. It’s very valuable to workshop a poem or piece to see what works and what doesn’t, and frankly just to keep writing something new every week. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? I don’t want to bore my readers, so I always strive to make each book different, stronger, and better than the last one. I love surprises, so I hide some inside each book. There are, of course, common themes, like history, immigration, and family—but each book tells a different story. I don’t want to be one of those poets who write the same poem or book all their life. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? My first collection was the chapbook Eternity’s Orthography published by Finishing Line Press in 2007. It encouraged me tremendously. I had just started to write poems in English, and I was timid, with a minimalistic style that reflected my apprehension towards the language. When that tiny chapbook got published, it told me that I could do this. I felt that I conquered language, I conquered English, ladies and gentlemen! It was a great victory. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? On poetry books! I usually get poetry books for Christmas and for my birthday. I’m addicted to poetry books. There are so many great poets living and writing today, and it’s so exciting to discover them. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? James Joyce comes to mind. Emily Dickinson and her m-dashes that I found pretentious. Even William Carlos Williams—I didn’t get his poetry at first, but then I felt so lucky to have moved to his hometown in NJ and encountered this group of poets who carry on his legacy. It just happened by accident. How lucky to immigrate from Romania and stumble into so much great poetry in Rutherford, NJ, of all places. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I started to write poems in high school, and no one read them but my best friend, Ioana. In my first year of college, I read my poems for the first time to my roommates in the girls’ dorm. One of the girls, Florina, liked them so much that she wrote my poems by hand in black marker all over our cupboards, effectively defacing them with love poems. A few days later, the guy I liked visited me in that dorm room, read my poems on the cupboards, and fell in love with me. We are still together and married today. I tell this story in the title poem of Writing on the Walls at Night. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. It’s one of my favorite movies, too. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? I’d like to be a bird, maybe a mockingbird that has gray feathers but sings beautifully. I would also like to be a tree, not an animal, but I really connect to trees. My daughter once said if I were a tree, I’d be a yellow maple, glowing in the fall. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Nothing. The characters are figments of my imagination. In Writing on the Walls at Night, there are numerous characters I invented, and only a handful are based on real life people who have stories so absurd or unreal, they belong in my poems. I bet the reader couldn’t tell the real people from the fictional ones. I also write a lot about my father and my daughter in general, but I view them as versions of myself. So no, I don’t think I owe anyone anything. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Ah, that’s a good question. I have an almost-finished poetry manuscript I put together during the pandemic and which will probably become my next book; a half-finished collection of poems inspired by children’s games; an ongoing collaboration with my friend the artist Mike Markham, which will become a collection of poetry and photography inspired by New York City at some point; and a pandemic journal which could become a memoir or an autobiographical novel. What does literary success look like to you? It would be great to see my books in stores and know that people read them, which is really improbable since I write mostly poetry. What’s the best way to market your books? I love reading at poetry events. There is so much energy in a room full of people that can fuel me for days and make this entire writing process so exciting. I miss that connection with an audience and hope to get back to in-person events soon. I’m planning some in NYC in the spring. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Getting in their heads and making them funny and believable. It’s much easier to do that with female characters that become my alter egos. What did you edit out of this book? I had some prose poems written in the style of ads on Craig’s List. Funny and surreal, but they didn’t have that personal connection. I didn’t think they belonged in the book. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? In another life, I’d own a flower shop.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
RAE: Neil Gaiman, and I would serve charcuterie and wine, so we could eat slowly and have conversation without a goal in mind. MARK: Adolf Hitler and I would serve death cap mushroom bouillabaisse. Okay, that’s too dark. Actually, let me go with Isaac Newton. And I would serve bangers and mash, with apple pie for dessert. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? RAE: I don’t find the writing process terribly scary… the worst is probably thinking that no one would read it; that it’s no good. That’s when I have to remind myself that I am writing for me, my own joy and my own pleasure! MARK: Finding the time to do it - fear that it will never get done. I am not sure if this is the healthy solution to that problem, but I bully myself into carving out the time and try to block out the world so that I can progress bit by bit. It helps being stubborn. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? RAE: I weirdly love Jack Reacher – I love a serial character and I’ve been getting to know him since high school. But my favorite is probably Calvin, the boy in Frank Schaeffer’s ‘Portofino’. Having grown up in a religious family, I see so much of myself in him, and he is so damn funny. I have read that book a dozen times and Calvin cracks me up! MARK: Chekov. In particular, his short story “The Kiss.” I first read it when I was in highschool, and though it was written a century prior to that, it so perfectly captured the feelings of a boy that age. It made me feel known. What books are on your nightstand? RAE: Lilith’s Brood – Octavia Butler Broken – In the Best Possible Way – Jenny Lawson Me and White Supremacy – Layla F Saad MARK: Infinite Powers: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe - Steven Strogatz Two Kindle readers containing an array of books by Patrick Rothfuss, Ursula Le Guin, MARK Twain, J.F. Lewis, George R.R. Martin, Christopher Moore, and others The Devil’s Dictionary - Ambrose Bierce Favorite punctuation mark? Why? RAE: The ellipsis… it’s how my brain works. Never really a whole thought on it’s own… always a pogo stick jumping from on thing to the next, but always connected… MARK: I wish I could say semicolon, because they seem so sophisticated, but I never know when to use them properly, so I’ll just say comma. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? RAE: I always read what I was supposed to… and then some. Even the driest, worst books … western Canada is full of months where the only thing you can do is stay inside and read books. Add to that a kid who wants to please the teacher, and no page was left unturned. MARK: I know there were some I skipped out on, but I don’t recall what they were. Presumably if I had read them, I’d remember. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? RAE: The internet, 100%. I got to know Mark entirely online – through hundreds of instant messages and emails. We were back and forth close to a hundred times a day, I’m sure, for months and months. It allowed an immediacy and closeness that made Oregon to North Carolina irrelevant. MARK: Rae has a good point on this one, but I would argue that the internet is nearly animate (or will be soon...). For me it would be the [Delete] key. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? RAE: It’s much easier once you start. MARK: Writing is never easy, but is sometimes worth it. Does writing energize or exhaust you? RAE: Writing energizes me, but the activation energy it takes to get started feels exhausting and overwhelming. I start feeling tired, and then get more and more engaged as words hit the page, even if they’re the wrong ones or I need to delete whole chunks. I love it. MARK: Writing energizes me when I have the time for it. Editing is like trying to kill all the ants in your kitchen with a hammer - it is frustrating as hell and often does more damage than good. What are common traps for aspiring writers? MARK: I am going to answer this like an engineer (because that’s what I am, really). The first trap I fall into is starting to tell the story before I have the scenes properly mapped out. I need a completed storyboard before I can start writing the story. Start with the key scenes you want to show and map out the rest before putting pen to paper (or finger to macbook). What is your writing Kryptonite? RAE: The internet, 100%. Instant distraction, time suck, brain numbing and addictive. Sigh. MARK: Anxiety. Anxiety about anything and everything. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? RAE: Reader’s block? Like where I can’t finish a book? Sometimes… not often. Even if I skim the ending, I like to know how things end. I rarely go long periods without a book on the go. MARK: All the time. My reading time is at the end of the day usually, and when work demands are too much I just don’t have the mental energy for reading. Especially if I don’t have my teeth into something good. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? RAE: Actually, I think do, particularly maybe with fiction? The pure imaginative creativity to weave and unravel a story… I think you could write an amazing story with vast imagination, without necessarily feeling passionate. It would depend on the type of writing, I think. MARK: What about people who bury their emotions behind an analytical wall of science and reason? What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? RAE: Just Mark... and he makes me a better writer because he reminds me to do it! MARK: My biological brother Vinny, and a dear friend Amanda. Neither of whom are exactly published (at least the way they would like). Both of whom are better writers than I, and both of whom directly helped me with the editing of this book! What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? RAE: I have a very clear memory of sitting at the dinner table and my dad teaching us “p” words – propitious and pulchritude. That’s when I realized how specific and strange and exotic words could be! What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? RAE: Probably The Princess Bride, which was written into a novel after the movie. It’s so fully realized, and has so much in it! I love that book – I have given away and lent more copies of it than I can count, and always replace it. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? MARK: Just one - a YA book I started writing with and for my daughters. What does literary success look like to you? RAE: To have someone read my writing and feel it, have it raise questions or conversations, not to just have it skimmed over. What did you edit out of this book?” RAE: Nothing. MARK: Many letters and several chapters written by Vinny, my biological brother. Those chapters were beautifully written, but distractions from the main theme of the book.  Carla Sarett is a poet, essayist and fiction writer based in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Thimble, Blue Unicorn, San Pedro River Review, Naugatuck River Review, ONE Art, Hobart Pulp, Across the Margins, Prole and elsewhere; her essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best American Essays. THE LOOKING GLASS, a novella, (Propertius Press) was published in October, 2021. Carla has a Ph.D. from University of Pennsylvania. A CLOSET FEMINIST is her debut novel.
Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, a “CEDS” Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, a CEDS Supervisor, and a person on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food battles and body dislike. Alli has presented educational workshops at conferences, graduate schools, and hospitals; published articles in academic journals, trade magazines, and online information hubs; and appeared as an eating disorders expert on local news. Her professional-related volunteerism includes co-chairing committees for both the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals and the Academy for Eating Disorders and creating #ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance!®, a series of public events sparking conversations about self-acceptance through fun, motivating messages. She was named the 2017 iaedp Member of the Year, and Mayor Garcetti recognized July 13, 2017 as “#ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance! Day” in the City of Los Angeles. Alli feels fortunate to share MeaningFULL with readers. She regards it as, “the book I needed years ago. I hope it helps.” Kendra Preston Leonard is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. She is especially interested in addressing issues of social justice, the environment, and disability through poetry. Her first chapbook, Making Mythology, was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her work appears in numerous publications including vox poetica, lunch, These Fragile Lilacs, and Upstart: Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on works for voice including new operas and song cycles. Her lyrics and libretti have been set by composers including Jessica Rudman, Rosśa Crean, and Allyssa Jones. The author of numerous scholarly books and articles, Leonard is also a musicologist and music theorist, and her academic work focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; music and the early modern; and music and screen history. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD or visit her site at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/. Head to the events calendar to login to the reading.  (c) Photo by Dean Davis If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? If I could cook dinner for any author, I’d cook for Albert Einstein. I’d slow cook a couple of racks of St. Louis style ribs, I’d make my own rub and my own sauce to finish off those ribs. I’d make my mother’s mustard/egg potato salad and roast some asparagus. For dessert I’d make a tart Granny Smith apple pie, which is the first pie my grandmother taught me. I’d whip some cream for the topping. And we’d either have Earl Grey Supreme iced tea or some Peet’s Sumatra coffee. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Nothing really scares me about the whole writing process. I can move left brain to right brain activities pretty quickly. And, if I’m not writing I’m concentrating on the business of writing. Sending out poems or manuscripts, updating my websites, editing. That is my rule. I have to be doing one or the other but never nothing. If I fear I’ve run out of ideas to write about well then I certainly can submit and visa versa. Once I’m in either sphere then either creativity or process creeps back in so that I am always in a state of forward motion with my writing career. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Margaret Atwood is my biggest author crush. I love how she weaves different writing worlds together seamlessly. Science fiction (my first love) and poetry (my true love). She believes in her readers, is fearless in the subjects she tackles and how she writes them. Her writing is layered perfection. Quirky. What books are on your nightstand? The Army of Darkness, Smoke, Shadow, and Raven, who appeared as wee black kittens underneath my office window on Halloween, control what is on my nightstand. There are no books on my nightstand; only a sleeping device and its requisite accessories. And a light. Finally, there is a facedown remote (see cats) for my bed. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? My very favorite punctuation mark is the pipe | . It is a variable symbol, depending on what you are doing or saying and is used in mathematics, computing, and typography. It allows me to have several layered tropes within a poem. Some might read it as an end stop like a period, or a pause like a comma, or for the mathematically inclined the placement of the pipe might read as conditional or as a variable. It allows people to enter the poem in a variety of ways. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Sadly, I was that geeky girl who read everything she was supposed to read in high school and then a bunch more that she wasn’t supposed to read at all. I was the girl reading the dictionary for fun. I was the girl ecstatic to miss gym, in order to read. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following inanimate object(s) that have sustained and inspired me over the years while this book took shape:
If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Aspiring writers should take advice from these words uttered by Mathesar from the film Galaxy Quest “never give up, never surrender.” Writing is all about learning the craft which means trying a zillion different things and learning by them. You won’t know if you don’t try. Go outside your normal routine, try a short line, a long line, a fractalated poem. It’s about getting muscle memory in your brain. It’s about taking chances. Never giving in, even in the face of negative feedback from critique groups or a mountain of rejections. It’s about honing your craft and then putting it out there. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Writing both energizes and exhausts me. If I am in the writing zone, nothing else matters and sleep is for the weak. Though, sleep does eventually have to catch up. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Writing is a business. Writers need to act like that. Go to the job, do the work, do some extra, have the correct equipment/tools to do the job. Common traps for aspiring writers are:
What is your writing Kryptonite? My Kryptonite is research. I would love nothing more than to research well anything, everything, the tangents I can go off on when looking up something particular, the further dive for more information, better details. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Reader’s block, is an interesting question. I find it harder to read after cataract surgery. I have to have lots of light, dark enough print. Sometimes it's exhausting to find the pinnacle way to read. Still I manage just fine, it’s just more time consuming. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Sure a person could be a writer if they don’t have strong emotions. Their work will come out fluffy and one dimensional but there are plenty of markets for that, it’s just not something I’d personally like to read or to write. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? When I first started writing my friends were 75% from tech and 25% authors and artists. Now that I’ve been writing for ~20 years my friends are 75% authors and artists and 25% tech. Author friends include poets, essayists, fiction, science fiction, fantasy, murder mystery, noir, script writers, and musicians. This breadth of writer friends bleeds into my work all the time, it affords me opportunities to have someone to read and comment on what I am writing and to offer up suggestions or kudos. And, by reading their work I learn by what they are doing. I can ask why they did a particular thing like their line breaks or or why they didn’t make the poem into a short fiction. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? The intertwining of life and death, fairy tales, math and science, dementia and alcoholism, abuse, murder/noir myteries. Each of my books stand on its own.Within each book there is ultimately a thread connecting the books so that they could have well gone into another, different book. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Publishing my first book didn’t change my writing process. Publishing my 5th book I began to see conjure whole books published rather than each poem published. I began slowing down to figure the arc. Still writing what needs to be written but also visioning how it fits into the next book(s). What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? No doubt about it the best money I ever spent as a writer was to get my MFA. For the most part I have a poem in my head, title, form, words when I go to write it. Going to Grad School taught me how to write the smaller poem, the one not formed in my head. It taught me to read my poetry out loud and it taught me form. My second best thing I ever spent money on is residency fees to get a residency. Residencies freed me up to organize without interruption my manuscripts that are floating in my head. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? This will be a very unpopular answer. Originally, I never liked Mary Oliver. To me her work was so quiet. Too quiet. It made me impatient. I hated that everyone insisted she was the one author I was missing out on. I tried and tried and tried. So many people gifted me her books. People I love and respect. Eventually, though, the books she wrote after her partner died resonated with me and I was able to grok Mary Oliver. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? When I was in 7th grade my mother drove by and caught me smoking cigarettes on the corner with my girlfriends. She rolled down her window and said “do you really think that that is the smart thing to do, to smoke?” She rolled up her window, drove home and never said another word to me about it. It was in that instant when I realized a-my mother was right, it wasn’t a smart thing to do and b-my mother used words to get the action she wanted. I never smoked again. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? I would love to say China Mieville’s The City and the City because it is vastly underappreciated but it receives a lot of press and book groups seem to love to discuss it. I love it because it's both literary and science fiction and the two don’t often collide. That said the book I come back to and re-read, is Tea with the Black Dragon by R.A. MacAvoy, it’s philosophical, it’s funny, it's charming. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? You don’t get to choose a spirit animal any more than you get to choose a cat, they just show up. Hawk. It has been guiding me my whole life. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? I owe the real people I’ve based poems on a real truth. Telling their story but edited, perhaps, to keep the heart of the story real. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Currently I have 1 unpublished, completed manuscripts that I am seeking a publisher for. I also have 2 half-finished books, possibly they are really chapbooks that I am still working on. What does literary success look like to you? I’ll see it when I believe it. What’s the best way to market your books? Readings. Readings. Readings. But also workshops and networking. Talking about it on social media. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Staying in that POV and then double checking with my partner to be sure that my character is correct. What did you edit out of this book? The odd poems that didn’t really work. The ones I still like but couldn’t connect them internally. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? As a poet I actually do have a job that makes money. I started out in tech a forever ago. In 1997 I founded, with my now ex-husband, Deer Run Associates, Inc. which provides Computer Forensic investigations and Information Security consulting services to select clients across the United States, and throughout the world working with law enforcement and commercial organizations on some of the largest and most high-profile cybercrime cases in recent years.  PORTLAND, OR; January 11, 2022--Protectress is a hybrid poetry-prose novella offering a risky take on the legend of Medusa. With stunning economy of words and a delicate hand, Protectress provokes us to think about the feminist identity and the power of compassion. Readers who fell deeply for Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, Madeleine Miller’s Circe, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation of Beowulf, and Toby Barlow's Sharp Teeth will find themselves enamoured with Protectress.
About Kendra Preston Leonard Kendra Preston Leonard is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. She is especially interested in addressing issues of social justice, the environment, and disability through poetry. Her first chapbook, Making Mythology, was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her work appears in numerous publications including vox poetica, lunch, These Fragile Lilacs, and Upstart: Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on works for voice including new operas and song cycles. Her lyrics and libretti have been set by composers including Jessica Rudman, Rosśa Crean, and Allyssa Jones. The author of numerous scholarly books and articles, Leonard is also a musicologist and music theorist, and her academic work focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; music and the early modern; and music and screen history. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD or visit her site at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/. ABOUT UNSOLICITED PRESS Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. PROTECTRESS is available on January 11, 2022 as a paperback (208 p.; 978-1-950730-63-6) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. The author is actively seeking to book readings and speaking opportunities with the media.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Nicola Griffih and P. Djèlí Clark. We could talk about using history in our writing, and the stories we’ve found while doing research for our work. I think I’d find some kind of interesting menu or recipes from historical sources to try--maybe using The Historical Cooking Project (http://www.historicalcookingproject.com/). What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Losing files or ideas. Lots of backups and lots of making notes as I go through the day. I keep a notebook on my nightstand for those late-night or dream-source ideas, of which I have a fair number. I think I’m often working out ideas in my subconscious as I sleep. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? I’ve been going through my library trying to come up with a good answer to this, but...plenty of characters and authors I love, but none I could say I had a crush on. I would, though, happily spend time with the Rabbi’s Cat from the books of the same name, or the Disreputable Dog from Garth NIx’s Old Kingdom series. What books are on your nightstand? I always have a bunch of to-read books on my Kindle because I review for NetGalley. Recent favorites have included Binnie Kirshenbaum’s Rabbits for Food; Michael Zapata’s The Lost Book of Adana Moreau; Orlando Ortega-Medina’s The Death of Baseball; and Charlotte Nicole Davis’s The Good Luck Girls. I read widely in terms of genre. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I love the semi-colon; it lets me join together all sorts of things and create clarity at the same time. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I was That Student in school, who not only read everything assigned but often read different editions or translations and critical commentary so I could be a plague and/or delight to my teachers, depending on the teacher. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Coca-Cola. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Just write. It doesn’t have to be good or polished or pretty, but in order to get there you have to commit some time--even tiny amounts will do--and write. I used to call this the Put Ass in Chair (PAIC) method of writing, but I’m looking for more elegant phrasing. See? It’s a continual process. ;) Does writing energize or exhaust you? I enjoy writing, not just having written. On good days, when my hands are cooperative or the dictation software is working well, it energizes me to put the right words on the page. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Not reading enough because of the fear of imitating other writers. We learn through imitation and thinking about what other writers do; reading is essential for writing. What is your writing Kryptonite? Nothing, really: I always have projects to work on and sometimes moving from scholarly work to creative work or vice versa let s my brain work on one thing in the background while I do another more consciously. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? What is that? No. I’m always reading. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? This is a really interesting question, and there is an easy answer in that a lot of writing is the craft of passing--as an expert, as a person of a different race or gender or sexuality or religion, as someone writing about lived experience. But there is a more complex answer if you read this question as one that is asking about autism and the fact that autism is framed (wrongly) as a lack or deficit of emotional capability compared to neurotypical people. As an autistic writer, I think I engage with language in ways that neurotypical writers don’t, but I don’t lack an understanding emotion or what society deems appropriate emotional responses to situations; rather, I simply write about emotion or from a point of emotion differently. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? Elizabeth Keenan (Rebel Girls) has offered me good advice about the writing world, and making the jump from scholarly writing to fiction, and has been a great role model for how things are done. Michelle Lee has also offered me insight into balancing scholarly work and fiction. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? My work will always be interconnected--as the sole author, how can it not? I think it would be very difficult for a writer to create such disparate works that they would not have any connections at all. From the perspective of creating deliberate connections, I think that the themes and issues that concern me and figure in my writing are consistent, and I’d certainly like readers to read my work with the idea of connectedness in mind, but I’m not developing writing projects that are connected to the point that readers can’t understand later books or pieces without having read earlier ones. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? My first book was scholarly. From going through the publishing process with it I learned about being very clear about audiences and approaches, creating a framework and explaining it (if necessary) at the beginning, and reifying that structure throughout without being tedious. I’ve also worked in publishing and had been a developmental editor before I began publishing my own work, both scholarly and creative, and that helped me create processes of working through difficult or complex text and ideas. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Possibly my first typewriter, an Underwood No. 5 manual, which I took to boarding school at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. When I was very young, I could never write as quickly as I thought, and often became frustrated by having trouble getting my words down fast enough. The manual typewriter--which cost $10--gave me the ability to write much more quickly than I could with handwriting, allowing me to write more fluidly. More recently, dictation software has been a good investment. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Kate Atkinson. I just wasn’t a fan until I read her non-Jackson Brodie novels and was utterly transfixed. I went back and have been enjoying the Brodie books much more. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I remember the sweetness of learning to read and, as a child, using that to gain knowledge no one else among my friends or family had, and that was power. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Cassandra Clarke’s Our Lady of the Ice is a stellar novel that asks essential questions about humanity, family, and loyalty in a beautifully developed and fascinating alternate Earth. Megan Campisi’s Sin Eater goes beyond creating an altered early modern period that loosely mirrors our own and is a thriller that is also an examination of women’s labor and relationships. I also want there to be more love for Michael Zapata’s The Lost Book of Adana Moreau, a gorgeous celebration of Latinx SFF writers and traditions. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? My spouse says my daemon (a la Philip Pullman) is a raven: curious, determined, attracted to shiny things--meaning always finding new things to be interested in--and always collecting new information and ideas. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Friendship, good music, pride. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? I two and a half chapters of a novel that I doubt I’ll ever finish. I might be able to use sections of it in future project, though. What does literary success look like to you? Does my work move the reader? Does it give them reason to laugh or cry or think or relate? If it does, that’s success. When I’m writing lyrics or libretti, success is when a performer tells me that they enjoyed singing my words, that the words I chose were good ones for the scene or emotion, and I think it’s similar for Protectress and my other work as well--I chose good words. What’s the best way to market your books? I’m still learning about this! Digital and print promotions to indie bookstores, co-ops, feminist bookstores, women-owned bookstore, and book clubs; to local libraries and poetry and fiction organizations, like Lone Star Literary Life; ads/sponsorship on podcasts involved with books, poetry, mythology, and so on; Goodreads giveaways, maybe. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Gender isn’t binary, but a spectrum. I try to avoid gender essentialism and stereotyped concepts of gender. It can be painful and enraging, though, to write about the power of toxic masculinity and to consider how characters infected with it might think and act. What did you edit out of this book? A song about Athena and Pallas written in the style of Lucinda Williams and sung by Aphrodite. It was fun to write and I could hear it as a nice ballad, but ultimately it wasn’t necessary for the story or character development/explication. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? This is hard, because so many of the careers I’d be drawn to require writing in some way. But if I really couldn’t write, I think I’d be an interpreter. I’d learn lots of languages and get to study a wide variety of topics so that I could serve as an interpreter in fields that interested me. We work really hard to get our books out into the world using all the tools we have available to us. But some authors want to play an active role in the marketing and PR of their books, but they just don't know how. To help authors out, whether you are working with us or not, here is an easy PR blueprint that can help jumpstart the launch of a book.
**Already launched a book? You can still do this. Tailor the timeframe to your needs. 9 Months Prior to Publication
6 Months Prior to Publication
3-4 Months Prior to Publication
Upon Publication
 Emily Kiernan is the author of a novel, Great Divide (Unsolicited Press). Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Pank, The Collagist, Redivider, JMWW, The Conium Review, Unstuck, and numerous other journals. She has received support from The MacDowell Colony, The Ucross Foundation, The Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, among other organizations. She holds an MFA in Writing and Critical Studies from The California Institute of the Arts, and is a prose editor at Noemi Press and a fiction editor at Rivet: The Journal of Writing that Risks.
Kendra Preston Leonard is a poet, lyricist, and librettist whose work is inspired by the local, historical, and mythopoeic. She is especially interested in addressing issues of social justice, the environment, and disability through poetry. Her first chapbook, Making Mythology, was published in 2020 by Louisiana Literature Press, and her work appears in numerous publications including vox poetica, lunch, These Fragile Lilacs, and Upstart: Out of Sequence: The Sonnets Remixed. Leonard collaborates regularly with composers on works for voice including new operas and song cycles. Her lyrics and libretti have been set by composers including Jessica Rudman, Rosśa Crean, and Allyssa Jones. The author of numerous scholarly books and articles, Leonard is also a musicologist and music theorist, and her academic work focuses on women and music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries; music and the early modern; and music and screen history. Follow her on Twitter at @K_Leonard_PhD or visit her site at https://kendraprestonleonard.hcommons.org/.  Last year we were privileged to participate in SMOL Fair, a free and virtual bookfair/conference. For many of us, the main conference is AWP, but the major gripe about AWP is the cost. In fact, we've only been to one AWP because the cost is so steep. You're all but guaranteed to walk away in the red (but the EXPOSURE!). But that's just for presses. What about writers and readers who want to get involved in book/writing conferences but can't afford the registration, the travel, etc.??? There just shouldn't be a paywall to great literature. To conversations with some of the quirkiest and brightest minds in the world.
But with the pandemic, a new issue arose: health. Attending AWP amidst a pandemic is the ultimate example of an 'at your own risk' situation. The 2022 AWP is offering virtual events this year, but they are still charging upwards of $215 for roughly 60 prerecorded events and some virtual live events. As a team, we decided that we wouldn't be attending the 2022 AWP Conference (even though our team isn't attending this year, a cohort of our writers is hosting a bookfair table under our name) as many of us have immunocompromised family members, young children, or are just not ready to be in an indoor space with so many people. And, to be frank, we really wanted be involved in the SMOL Fair again. So when the coordinators of SMOL Fair emailed us, we were thrilled. Last year we had a blast and were so grateful to have a bookfair/conference that was virtual. A virtual conference allows those can't, or don't want to, attend an in-person event to participate in the booky things of life. SMOL Fair is an alternative, virtual book fair that will be 'live' from March 19-26, 2022. This year Brian Evenson will be the keynote speaker. Not to mention, plenty of presses are getting involved and events will be happening through the week. Moreover, there will be giveaways! We have a page dedicated to SMOL Fair that will keep you up-to-date on our events and our giveaways. Visit our page and be sure to visit the SMOL Fair website too. You can keep informed here: https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/smolfair2022.html  Unsolicited Press is happy to announce that a group of authors will be heading to AWP 2022 in Philadelphia to run a bookfair table. The team is not attending the conference as we are already committed to another event (SMOL Fair). Novelist and poet Terry Tierney is at the helm of the Unsolicited Press bookfair table (T1354) and we are so grateful for his dedication to the cause.
The 2022 AWP Bookfair is going to be an amazing opportunity for our writers to connect with readers, to meet one another, and to share their work with one of the most vibrant audiences in the industry. The Unsolicited Press bookfair table will be staffed and visited by many writers including: Terry Tierney, Heather Lang-Cassera, Tyler James Russell, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Lara Lillibridge, Ellie White, Maureen Sherbondy, Andy Smart, Matthew Cole Levine, Lisa Badner, Daniel Coshnear, Ron Singer, and many more. Throughout the duration of the conference, our books will be discounted (at the table and online), a few giveaways will happen, ebooks will be practically free, and many readings will be happening (virtual and in-person). Moreover, we welcome readers and writers to come to the table and talk books with our writers. Everyone connected to Unsolicited Press is a gem of a person. BOOK SIGNINGS Several writers will be signing copies of their books at the table too: TERRY TIERNEY (Thursday, 9:30AM - 11:30AM) AMY SHIMSHON-SANTO (Friday, 1:00PM - 3:00PM) TYLER JAMES RUSSELL (Friday, 3:00PM - 5:00PM) HEATHER LANG-CASSERA (Saturday, 1:00PM - 3:00PM) And many other authors will be at the table to sign books. Details to follow. READINGS Two zoom readings with our managing editor will be held on Zoom: 3/23 -- 5:30 PM, Pacific Time Mark MacDonald Joseph Costa 3/24 -- 5:30 PM, Pacific Time Steve Levine Matt LaFreniere In addition to the readings we are holding, a cohort of writers will be reading on stage at the bookfair as well. Details will come at a later time. As more details are carved out, we will update this post in addition to posting notices on Twitter. If you are attending AWP, please stop by and say hi.  Are you ready for the first reading of 2022? We are! Join us on January 5, 2022 with esteemed authors Patricia O' Donnell and Adam Gibbs.
Patricia O’Donnell is a Professor Emerita of Creative Writing at the University of Maine at Farmington. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere; her books include two novels, a memoir, and a collection of short fiction which won the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award. She lives in Wilton, Maine, with her husband. Adam Gibbs is a writer and poet from Grove City, Ohio. His work has appeared in Second Chance Lit and The Mark Literary Review. His novella, Dumb Luck, is available from Unsolicited Press. He lives with his wife Lindsay and their children, Clara and Isaac Our team spent the past summer choosing beyond-fantastic manuscripts. After reviewing thousands of submissions, contracts were offered to authors who exhibited strong, diverse, and fearless voices. These decisions weren't made without a few sacrifices and tears along the way...the pandemic has forced us to take on less -- but we are looking at that as an opportunity to work harder and smarter for the authors we are lucky to collaborate alongside.
Unsolicited Press is delighted to announce the acquisitions of: To Daughter a Devil by Megan Mary Moore (poetry) Ventric(L)e by Jerrod E. Bohn (poetry) A Dream of Train and Other Stories by Ron Singer (fiction) The First Hour in Exile by Jamshaid Wasson (poetry) Queen Anne Cowboy by Jay Kristensen Jr. (creative nonfiction) Hold Your Breath by Rana Bitar (poetry) Motel Stories by William Torphy (fiction) if the sky won’t have me by Anne Leigh Parrish (poetry) Night Hag by Amy Baskin (poetry) The Sequence Dance by S.B. Borgersen (fiction) Release Me by Tim DeMarco (fiction) Window Eyes by Philip Jason (fiction) A Sweetness Appears by Mick Bennett (fiction) What Will Outlast Me? by Sarah Lenz (creative nonfiction) Existentialism at the Wheel by Adam Gibbs (poetry) As Far As You Go by Alle Hall (fiction) The Bridge on Beer River by Terry Tierney (fiction) The Present is Past by Josh Rank (fiction) The Beginner's Guide to Minor Gods & Other Small Spirits by Kimberly Ramos (poetry) The Ballad of Two Sisters by Darci Schummer (fiction) Prumont by Trevor J. Houser (fiction) At Length, I Speak by James David Bottoms (fiction) Uncomfortable Ecologies by Elizabeth Joy Levinson (poetry) Cormorant by Elisa Carlsen (poetry) a summer morning by Anne Leigh Parrish (fiction) Songs of Archilochus by Suzanne S. Rancourt (poetry) In the Bodies by Jericho M. Hockett (poetry) A Symmetry of Husbands by Patricia O’Donnell (fiction) The Women by Sommer Schafer (fiction) Pool Parties by Jennifer MacBain-Stephens (poetry) Hurricane Trinity by Nick Rees Gardner (fiction) The Boko Leavening by Rebecca Givens (poetry) The Broom Tree by Gregory Ramkawsky (poetry) Unsettled by Laurie Woodford (creative nonfiction) She Asked Me Where by Katie Holtmeyer (poetry) Wells Time by David Nash(fiction) kiss & release by Anthony DiPetro (poetry) The Truth About Unringing Phones: Essays on Yearning by Lara Lillibridge (creative nonfiction) My Mother Drank Black Coffee by Lisa Mottolo (poetry) Let Evening Come by Yvonne Osbourne (fiction) Lying Down with Dogs by Linda Caradine (creative nonfiction) My Prayer is a Dagger, Yours is the Moon by Chloe Clark (poetry) Gethsemane by Sean Murphy (fiction) How to Do the Greased Wombat Slide by Pamela Miller (poetry) Skull Kingdoms: An Imaginary Omnibus by Matthew Burnside (poetry) All Points of Light Converge by Beth Burgmeyer (poetry) True Stories by Caroliena Cabada (poetry) the hedgerow by Anne Leigh Parrish (fiction) The Gospel According to B. by Benjamin Bagocious (poetry) Shotgun Woman by Beau Bernstein (fiction) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Members of the press, book reviewers, librarians, booksellers, and other members of the bookworld are invited to request an electronic review copy in 2022. All titles will be brought to the trade through Ingram (print editions), Overdrive (ebook library editions), Baker & Taylor (print and ebook), and Audible (audio). We strive to create cooperative relationships with independent bookstores as well as reach readers through a variety of channels. Ultimately, the goal is to produce exceptional pieces of art accessible to readers around the world.  “Lucky Ride is a bang-zoom road trip novel with the queasy high-flying pace of Easy Rider and the breakneck prose of On the Road.” – Douglas Cole, author of The White Field “With Lucky Ride, Terry Tierney has written a classic road novel that captures the spirit of the late sixties the way Kerouac did with the fifties . . . an epic story of loss and redemption.” – Henry Hitz, author of Squirrels in the Wall: A Novel in Stories Terry Tierney’s 2020 debut poetry collection, The Poet’s Garage, was a nominee for the Pushcart Prize, and according to the Midwest Poetry Review, “At once both lyrical and metaphysical, the poems . . . are woven together with a lithe descriptive magic peculiar to Tierney’s work, leaving us wanting more of the poet’s proactive and provocative memories as we turn the last page.” Now, Tierney brings that same lyrical touch to his Vietnam-era debut novel, LUCKY RIDE (Unsolicited Press; on-sale December 28, 2021; ISBN: 978-1-950730-93-3).
This is the story of Patrick “Flash” McCarthy, a young man recently back from the Navy, having been stationed on a remote Aleutian Island called Adak. Though the memories of his time in the service are most notable for the marijuana and LSD he and his fellow Seabees took, Flash remembers them fondly as he struggles to settle back into post-war life in Binghamton, New York with his wife Ronnie. When he learns Ronnie has been having an affair with her boss, the revelation, combined with a general sense of restlessness and malaise he can’t shake, propels him to plan a cross country trip to see an old Navy buddy in California. When another Navy comrade, Rick, shows up in Binghamton with an interstate weed delivery and offers him a ride as far as Fort Worth, the die is cast, and the two men set off, each hoping to quiet their own demons on the speed-fueled road trip of a lifetime. As might be expected of a trip between two old friends sharing a not-insignificant quantity of drugs, things quickly go off the rails, and Flash and Rick find themselves dodging a highway stalker. Relieved by the close call, Flash leaves Rick behind in Fort Worth, and begins to hitchhike to California before narrowly escaping being arrested by a Texas Ranger for any number of offenses he has committed on the trip, He catches rides with an array of colorful characters, including two men fleeing an assault charge in Tennessee and a construction foreman having problems with his son, which leads Flash to reflect on his relationship with his own father. A self-styled guru named Joshua and his band of followers take Flash into their marijuana-filled van, but he declines the invitation to join their group, knowing that his destiny lies elsewhere. As the trip progresses cross-country, with nothing but miles of open road and whatever drugs he’s ingested, Flash has plenty of time to reflect. He remembers the early days with Ronnie, when they were two young, free spirits in love, before the realities of the war and real life intruded. In Phoenix, he hooks up with an old friend named Donna, and recalls the wild night he spent with her, her husband Walter, and Ronnie, before realizing that night is best left a memory. Finally arriving in Ventura, California, Flash meets with his friend, Jack Ferro, and begins to contemplate a life away from the failure of his marriage in Binghamton, filled with the carefree vibes of the Cali sunshine. But reality soon intrudes on his California dreaming, and, out of money and unable to find a job, Flash makes the decision to head back to New York. Ronnie offers reconciliation, and Flash must decide if he still trusts the seductive pull of the irresistible campus radical he married or if he prefers the open road, the chance of a new beginning, and another lucky ride. Terry Tierney was born in South Dakota and raised in Minneapolis and Cleveland. After serving in the Seabees, he received a BA and MA in English from SUNY Binghamton, and a PhD in Victorian Literature from Emory University. He taught college composition and creative writing and later survived a series of Silicon Valley startups as a software engineering manager. His stories have appeared in Fiction Pool, Jersey Devil Press, Blue Lake Review, Eunoia Review, Fictive Dreams, Literally Stories, SPANK the CARP, Big Bridge, and other publications. He is the author of the Pushcart Prize-nominated poetry collection, The Poet’s Garage, Lucky Ride, and a forthcoming second novel, The Bridge on Beer River, which will be published in 2023. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. LUCKY RIDE is now available for purchase wherever books are sold. Paperbacks can be purchased directly from the publisher; ebooks are available through all major ebook retail outlets. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be What would you make? The evil side of me would ask Hemingway and I would serve him raw oysters. I would expect him to explain his choices while he watched the recent documentary about his life. The ambitious streak in me would ask Lydia Davis; I’d ply her with wine, prosciutto and a zillion questions about her writing process while swearing on the life of my grandchildren that I wouldn’t reveal any of it. The spiritual part of me would ask Mary Oliver, to whom I would serve sweet tea and macaroons while hoping beyond hope that she would explain her mystical self. My authentic writer-self would entertain Alice Munro with chicken and dumplings (the only thing I cook really well). I would kiss her ‘pope’s ring’ in gratitude. I would sincerely desire to ask Eudora, but I would be far too nervous. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? The Very Blank Page terrifies and especially if I simultaneously have file cabinets devoid of any recent work that is decent. I fight this situation by piddling and tidying, denying and doing all I can to tell myself: it doesn’t matter. If I gather up courage, I try to sneak up on some phrase/word/idea that’s been niggling. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Good grief: only ONE???? Alice Munro, Marilynne Robinson, Tolstoy (short stories), David Jauss, Mary Oliver …. The list is endless. What books are on your nightstand? Jack by Robinson Music for Hard Times by Clint McGowan Ambition and Survival by C Wimon Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver The Americans, by Robert Frank On Beauty by Zadie Smith (Audible) Mary Sutter by R Oliveria (Audible) People We Meet on Vacation by Henry (Audible) Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The dash – tho I know it isn’t loved by editors much. I like it because I think in tangents and dashes help me insert those musings (before I delete or move them). Also the interabang – because a wonderful Dallas bookstore is named for it. What book were you supposed to read in high school but never did? Actually, I read what I was supposed to back then; I especially gobbled up all the literature and that was when I knew I was addicted to it. In graduate school tho, I avoided Cost Accounting. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My secret office. It is attached to my garage in such a way that no one would ever know it is here unless they were invited and no one is ever invited. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers what would you write? “Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.” Albert Einstein Or this: “Extreme brevity,” from Chekhov in his ‘six principles of a good story.’ Does writing energize or exhaust you? Energize What are common traps for aspiring writers? Paying attention to things outside the page in front of them. Not working on their own soul, thereby projecting too many of their own issues onto the page. Not finding paid work that will not allow enough energy and focus for the page. What is your writing Kryptonite? Over-commitment to energy-sapping activities. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. It is an absolute nightmare. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I believe very much in Holy Detachment – allowing pretty much everything to be what it authentically is on its own and in the present moment. This is especially true of allowing the story on the page to be itself without me making using it for therapy or anything other than what it is, with its own voice. My emotions should therefore be entirely irrelevant …. I cannot judge for any other writers; everyone has their own process and the demands of that process. What other authors are you friends with and how do they help you become a better writer? I’m blessed with some wonderful friends who are writers: Robin Underdahl Gropp, Ben Fountain, Robin Oliveria and all the members of a writing retreat that I lead at my church. So many others – some I see regularly and some seldom. They encourage me to persevere, and they also comfort me when I despair about something I’m working on. When I get to see their works from inception to completion, I know that with some effort, I might make work what is clumsy, inarticulate and unclear. Do you want each book to stand on its own or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? It is probably true that when we look at a writer’s entire body of work, we see connections either with characters or with themes. However, I do not believe I can be deliberate in that regard. Some of my characters appear in multiple stories but overall, each story and certainly each book, are stand alones. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Since I’ve just now sold my first book of stories, I can’t really answer that; I’m just too early in the process. I will say I have an increased respect for the non-writing parts of the process of getting a book from my office to readers. I will say that when I first began having individual stories taken by literary journals, I felt validated in terms of writing skill and sometimes validation of the life in the story. One of my earliest stories was published by a teacher of mine – and that was a ground-breaking validation because when I wrote it, I had zero interest or investment in anyone even liking it. I wrote it my own way and for myself. My realization of the story having its own life changed my work a lot. What is the best money you ever spent as a writer? I paid a writer-friend to send out my stories so that I could remain disconnected from everything in the writing life except what was on the page. This freed me from illusory ambition and fantasy expectations and kept my mind on the page. Also, for many years, I’ve given myself an annual writing retreat away from home and family, always for at least a week. I’ve been many places, but in recent years, I check into Dairy Hollow Writers Colony; they house us, feed us and leave us alone. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? James Joyce Lydia Davis What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I grew up in a ‘high church’ of the Episcopal denomination and we had the King James’ version read to us A LOT every week. The church was small, poor and dark with a formal liturgy. I learned mystery from all that … and the mystery was circumscribed by the language itself even when my finite mind couldn’t understand. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? We all need to study Alice Munro’s stories which are so complex that they certainly rival any novel written. I do believe the Marilynne Robinson’s work will stand the test of time both in literary communities and the general population. I hope too it will be seriously studied among religious people for its theological sophistication and moral confrontation about social issues. David Jauss’ work is under-read in my opinion – he is a writer’s writer and anyone can learn a great from him about the imagination. Plus, despite his knowledge, his stories are fantastic reads. As a writer what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? The Border Collie – herding what is alive and important. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? I’m pretty sure no one will ever recognize themselves. If they do, of course, I am grateful that they let peek out their authentic selves and especially their contradictions. Contradictions make stories come alive. What does literary success to you? Language with its own legs, its own force/energy to connect with readers. What is the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Probably the testosterone factor which I’m supposing is behind thought patterns and consciousness, especially for quite young males. I really love writing from male POV and have done a lot of that, but honestly I never give gender much thought because I believe the POV of a story is demanded by the actual story. What did you edit out of this book? I chose the stories from my stash that seemed to group around an intuitive sense of the human experiences of looking for love, explaining their experiences of that search to themselves, and then making choices about it all. Most of the stories had been revised to death though already. The ones I originally chose are in the book today. I did not use any of the stories I’d written when I was trying to be Eudora. It occurred to me after the book got to final draft that in writing each of them, I had cut out the absolute maximum so as to be left with what was essential to describe what was critical in a particular moment --- as if I was trying to minimize the description of that moment and still have on the page the human experience OF that moment. If you didn’t write what would you do for work? I cannot imagine not writing seriously, but for me, it’s never been about work. Writing is a spiritual journey, a longing toward truth. CYNTHIA C. SAMPLE is a the author of the short story collection Forms of Defiance. Order a Copy Today PORTLAND, OR; December 14, 2021— The stories in DONA NOBIS PACEM are longing for peace. All are told from a female point of view. The stories are divided into three sections: hostility out in the world, domestic difficulties, and a few new takes on fairy tales. Stories out in the world include reflections of a goddess observing a young man dying, Mary Magdalen mourning Jesus, an older German woman wanting to hide away from the world after World War II, and a young girl liking an outsider peace demonstrator while she is part of a right to life demonstration, among others. The domestic stories deal with neglect, child abuse, fear of being pregnant, and similar complications. The fairy tales all mourn a certain loss of magic in our world.
About the Author Beate Sigriddaughter, www.sigriddaughter.net, was poet laureate of Silver City, New Mexico (Land of Enchantment) from 2017 to 2019. Her work has received several poetry awards. Červená Barva Press published her poetry chapbook Dancing in Santa Fe and other poems in 2019 and Unsolicited Press published her poetry chapbook Emily (February 2020). About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com.  Unsolicited Press is inviting you to a reading with S.B. Borgersen and Margaret DeRitter.
S.B. Borgersen is a British/Canadian author, of middle England and Hebridean ancestry, whose favoured genres are flash and micro fiction, and poetry. She had a diverse career path, an analyst in a shoe factory, the same thing for a children’s book publisher, teaching art, and filing for the civil service, but mostly she climbed a precarious ladder in the IT industry culminating in strategy and project management, which, by necessity in those days, included writing writing writing mountains of non-fiction — always allowing herself to be slightly creative with proposals, reports, technical and training documentation. Sue turned her back on industry and commerce in the early nineties, escaping the stressful rat-race and finding the simple life and peaceful place she’d always sought to allow for creativity. That place was Nova Scotia where she returned to her skills from art school and made an uncomplicated living as a visual artist and potter. That is, until she got the creative writing bug. Since 2000 her writing has won prizes, been mentioned in Hansard and published internationally in literary journals and anthologies (print and online). The list of publications is extensive and can be found at www.sueborgersen.com. She is a loyal member of The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and an enthusiastic member of the international online writers' group for expats, Writers Abroad. Sue lives in a crumbling old house on the shores of Nova Scotia with her patient husband and a clutch of lovable rowdy dogs. She has two middle-aged children. ---- Margaret DeRitter is the poetry editor and copy editor of Encore, a regional magazine based in Kalamazoo, Michigan. She was a winner of the 2018 Celery City Chapbook Contest, sponsored by Kalamazoo’s Friends of Poetry, for her chapbook Fly Me to Heaven By Way of New Jersey. Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Surprised By Joy (Wising Up Press) and Queer Around the World (Qommunicate Publishing) and in a number of journals, including The 3288 Review, which nominated her poem “At the top of Sleeping Bear Dunes” for a Pushcart Prize. DeRitter has also written numerous magazine and newspaper articles. She worked for 22 years at the Kalamazoo Gazette and has taught journalism at Western Michigan University and Kalamazoo College. She was born and raised in New Jersey and has lived in Michigan since college. When not writing or editing, she often paddles Michigan lakes and rivers. Access the event on our Events Calendar.  Unsolicited Press is inviting you to a reading with C.M. Chapman and Larry D. Thacker.
What scares you more? The monster under your bed or the one staring back at you in the mirror? Authors C.M. Chapman and Larry Thacker blur the lines between the kinds of monsters that roam the earth in their latest short story collection, EVERYDAY, MONSTERS. In twenty-one stories, readers encounter monsters ranging from mythological, psychological, maliciously human, and darkly comical. Monsters creep from the deepest parts of humanity, the kind that we are born with, proving that even those with the best senses can overlook shadowy lurking beasts. Chapman and Thacker execute with skill everyday storytelling that leaves readers in a sense of wonder and wondering if what they know is truth or make believe. C.M. Chapman’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Cheat River Review, Limestone, Still: The Journal, Dark Mountain Project in the U.K., and the anthology, So It Goes: A Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. He is the author of the chapbook, Music & Blood, from Latham House Press, and his novel-in-stories, Suicidal Gods, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2019. He is a graduate of the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he served as The McKinney Teaching Fellow for three years and as an adjunct professor. Larry D. Thacker’s stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review, Vandalia Journal, and Grotesque Quarterly. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart and once for a Best of the Net recognition. His poetry can be found in over 170 publications, including Still: The Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, Poetry South, Tower Poetry Society, Spillway, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Town Creek Poetry, and Appalachian Heritage. His books are Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the short story collection, Working it Off in Labor County, and the poetry books, Feasts of Evasion, Grave Robber Confessional, Voice Hunting, Memory Train, and Drifting in Awe. His MFA in poetry and fiction is from West Virginia Wesleyan College. He serves as adjunct instructor at Northeast State Community College. Visit: www.larrydthacker.com To access the event, head over to our Events Calendar.  Unsolicited Press is inviting you to a reading with Richard Krause and Daniel Coshnear.
SEPARATION ANXIETY by Daniel Coshnear is a stunning short story collection that shows how pervasive the disorder can be in everyday lives. In eighteen stories, Coshnear paints separation anxiety as an engine of change while being careful to tend to the delicateness of the disorder's consequences. Readers become intimately acquainted with the captain of a SWAT (team), a mental health case worker who falls deeply in love, an elderly man who is driven to rage when his wife is buried in the wrong hole, and many more. Crawl Space and Other Stories of Limited Maneuverability by Richard Krause addresses how the problems of space reveal disturbing aspects of human nature. It uncovers their realities in city apartments, college campuses, the basements of orphanages, under bridges in Mexico, through miracles in hospital rooms, inside a bullring, at urinals, in the closed world of a Biblical drama, in high chairs, inside the lives of a pearl family, and in the actual crawl space underneath a wood frame house. These are stories that their author had little choice but to write. Everyone is welcome to join. Access the event using our events calendar: https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/events.html  Unsolicited Press is happy to host a reading with Rosalia Scalia and Taylor Garcia.
As your family is bright, so is it dark. Sure, the love and laughter of family lingers in your heart, yet it’s the secrets, pranks, and punishments that haunt your soul. The mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons in Functional Families all seek only love to cure their familial ills, but they often go about it in strange ways. To come to terms with his father’s past and encroaching dementia, Reynold Vasquez takes his father out for one last fancy dinner in “Bird Dog,” while in “Bat Out of Hell,” Margaret abandons her mother at a Tijuana gas station hoping to move on with her life. In “My First War,” young cadet Gilbert Fernandez goes AWOL from a pretend battlefield to be with his pregnant girlfriend on the verge of an abortion, and in “Wheel of Fortune,” Hillary Clinton visits a homegirl fortune teller in Santa Fe, New Mexico. In the end, these disparate souls resolve their desperate actions to return to their nuclei, the only places they can call home. In STUMBLING TOWARD GRACE, Rosalia Scalia explores how people who love each other struggle to reconnect their fractured relationships in the face of traumas, personal flaws, and unspoken hurts. Many of her stories explore loss and grief with humor and grace as characters navigate their unwise decisions, unexpected deaths, or their resentments polished into gems. Overall this collection offers readers stories about ordinary people striving to survive and thrive in situations reflective of today’s challenges. Join us on November 30th via Zoom. Access the free reading on our events calendar: https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/events.html  Unsolicited Press is hosting a joint reading with Washington authors Jay Kristensen Jr. and Trevor J. Houser.
Trevor J. Houser lives with his family in Seattle. He has published stories in Zyzzyva, Story Quarterly and The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, among others. Three of his stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Jay Kristensen Jr. was born and raised in Seattle. He has lived around the country and currently resides in Seattle. Light in Rosadero is his debut novel. Access the event using our events calendar: https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/events.html  PORTLAND, OR; November 23, 2022— What scares you more? The monster under your bed or the one staring back at you in the mirror? Authors C.M. Chapman and Larry Thacker blur the lines between the kinds of monsters that roam the earth in their latest short story collection, EVERYDAY, MONSTERS.
In twenty-one stories, readers encounter monsters ranging from mythological, psychological, maliciously human, and darkly comical. Monsters creep from the deepest parts of humanity, the kind that we are born with, proving that even those with the best senses can overlook shadowy lurking beasts. Chapman and Thacker execute with skill everyday storytelling that leaves readers in a sense of wonder and wondering if what they know is truth or make believe. About the Authors C.M. Chapman’s work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Cheat River Review, Limestone, Still: The Journal, Dark Mountain Project in the U.K., and the anthology, So It Goes: A Tribute to Kurt Vonnegut. He is the author of the chapbook, Music & Blood, from Latham House Press, and his novel-in-stories, Suicidal Gods, was published by Unsolicited Press in 2019. He is a graduate of the low-residency MFA program at West Virginia Wesleyan College, where he served as The McKinney Teaching Fellow for three years and as an adjunct professor. Larry D. Thacker’s stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Fried Chicken and Coffee, Dime Show Review, Vandalia Journal, and Grotesque Quarterly. His stories have been twice nominated for the Pushcart and once for a Best of the Net recognition. His poetry can be found in over 170 publications, including Still: The Journal, The American Journal of Poetry, Poetry South, Tower Poetry Society, Spillway, The Southern Poetry Anthology, Town Creek Poetry, and Appalachian Heritage. His books are Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the short story collection, Working it Off in Labor County, and the poetry books, Feasts of Evasion, Grave Robber Confessional, Voice Hunting, Memory Train, and Drifting in Awe. His MFA in poetry and fiction is from West Virginia Wesleyan College. He serves as adjunct instructor at Northeast State Community College. Visit: www.larrydthacker.com About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com. EVERYDAY, MONSTERS is available on November 23, 2022 as a paperback (284 p.; 978-1-950730-88-9) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram.  PORTLAND, OR; November 23, 2021-- Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? When it means you may lose everything regardless of the outcome? Pacific by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son’s life...even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run.
On a remote Puget Sound island, police chief Bell navigates his job and marriage in the wake of his son’s near-death brain surgery. When his wife no longer wants to tempt the fates of experimental medicine he takes matters into his own hands. With the help of his spaced-out fisherman friend, Bell kidnaps his boy and sets sail for Guatemala in search of the mysterious Dr. Haas. On the way, they’ll brave the seventh biggest storm, befriend two behemoth fly-fishing Nords, and try to outrun the ex-Navy captain hired by his wife to find them. Advance Praise for PACIFIC “Very heartfelt and amazing story, loved it.” – Gus Van Sant “If you are a father, or know one, Trevor Houser’s Pacific, is a wild, quixotic ride that will challenge your understanding of what it is to be a parent.” -Larry Colton, author of Southern League and Counting Coup “Poetic. Suspenseful. And at times darkly comic. Get ready for an adventure in heartbreak.” —Michael Mazza, author of That Crazy Perfect Someday About Trevor J. Houser Trevor J. Houser lives with his family in Seattle. He has published stories in Zyzzyva, Story Quarterly and The Doctor TJ Eckleburg Review, among others. Three of his stories were nominated for the Pushcart Prize. About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com. PACIFIC is available on November 23, 2021 as a paperback (258 p.; 978-1-950730-84-1) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. The author is open to speaking with the media, holding readings, and engaging in other author opportunities. ### Press only, Unsolicited Press Eric Rancino 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Trevor J. Houser trevorhouser11@gmail.com |
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