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If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I’d cook for Haruki Murakami, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, Tommy Orange, Karen Tei Yamashita, or Sandra Cisneros. I’d probably make oko toast with avocado, homemade ramen, or kimchi jjigae because those things are hard to fuck up if you know what you’re doing and they also make you look more talented than you actually are in the kitchen. We all need shortcuts to greatness. Also, those foods can be so deeply satisfying on an emotional level and I’d want my fave author to experience joy so they know how I feel when I read their books. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Not being able to write anything, or anything that feels good to me when I read it again later on. I’m also afraid of people using my vulnerability in my writing against me. People can be such assholes when they’re trying to flex their moral education on you. When I’m afraid of something, I head right towards it because I know it’s not going to get easier by avoiding it, even though negative reinforcement is the most understandable defense mechanism there is. I guess I’d rather try and fail then not try at all. I don’t want to have regrets in my life. Also, I feel like we can always learn from our failures, but we can’t learn from the failures we didn’t make (because we were too afraid to make them). Fucking up is part of our agency I think. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? I have language crushes on Junot Diaz, Zadie Smith, Milan Kundera, Lydia Davis, Toni Morrison, Carole Maso, Sandra Cisneros, JM Coetzee, Kali Fajardo-Anstine, and WG Sebald. I have idea crushes on Haruki Murakami, Karen Tei Yamashita, Jorge Luis Borges, Ted Chiang, Octavia Butler, David Mitchell, Aimee Bender, Natsuo Kirino, and Italo Calvino. And I have story crushes on Yiyun Li, Adrian Tomine, Dostoevsky, JD Salinger, Alison Bechdel, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Tayeb Salih. What books are on your nightstand? Right now, I’ve just got Bryan Washington’s Lot on my nightstand because I’m a monogamous reader. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? It’s a toss up between a period and a colon. I like the openness of the colon, the way it opens up the sentence but also insists on a forced pause. I admire the closure and the definiteness of the period. I fucking detest the semicolon, though. If a pushy editor tries to replace my punctuation with a semicolon, I do a search and destroy mission immediately. What book were you supposed to read in college, but never did? James Joyce Ulysses. I still feel guilty about it to this day. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? The sun for feeding the world, for always coming after leaving us in the dark, for its endless energy, devotion, and circularity. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Get out while you can! Does writing energize or exhaust you? Both. In the initial creation phase, so unbelievably energizing I can barely sleep sometimes. But in the subsequent revision and editing stage, which is the other 80% of the writing process for me that usually takes years and years to finish, it starts to wear you down. It can feel futile, monotonous, repetitive, and unrewarding at times. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Undervaluing your work ethic and overestimating your talent. Not knowing how to revise a draft a million times until it sparkles. Forcing your workshop to clean up the shit in your draft. Not knowing how to critically and objectively evaluate your own manuscript (and then fix the issues you discovered along the way). Comparing yourself to other writers, many of them with completely different circumstances. Believing that the only way to “make it” is to get an agent, a six-figure advance from a Big-5 press, and a story published in the New Yorker. By all means, fight for that shit, but just remember that there are so many different streets that lead to Midtown (and some of them are closed for construction). What is your writing Kryptonite? Work & love for totally different reasons. At least love inspires me to write better and harder whereas work just makes me daydream about taking a bath, listening to Lana Del Rey, and playing Mass Effect on my PS4 in my bathrobe as I sip guava kombucha and snack on midnight nachos. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yeah and I try as hard as I can not to feel bad about it (especially during this goddamn pandemic). There are times I just don’t want to read at all, whether it’s my writing or someone else’s. Most of the time, though, I’m only adverse to reading when I’m hella absorbed about the manuscript I’m working on at that moment. Also, sometimes I get scared about the possibility of idea leakage between another book I’m reading and my own draft. Sometimes, I just don’t have the head space to cohabitate two different literary worlds at the same time. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Yes, unfortunately. There are some amazing writers who don’t seem to feel a damn thing but technically, they’re fantastic writers. I’m not hating, I’m just saying. Writers are allowed to write their books however they want and I don’t have to agree or understand either. But I will say this: most of my favorite writers seem to feel very deeply, which is probably why I love their writing so much (& also, I’d imagine, why they feel called to write out their lives in some way). What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I have friends who are writers and then I have writer friends (most of whom I’ve never met IRL) and then there’s everyone in between. I’ve been writing for a while, so I’m friends with a lot of writers, both completely unknown ones with insane talent and literary rockstars, but there’s too many to list here without doing someone a major disservice. Also, I know that I’ll obsess about who to (not) include, so I’m gonna peace out of this question before I overthink it! 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? Both. I’m not aiming for thematic, stylistic, or generic continuity in my body of work, I just want each book I write to stand tall and glimmer on its own because I’m vain, industrious, perfectionistic, and crazy ambitious like that. At the same time, I hope there is overlap in content, in voice, in imagination, and in stylization. My hope is that despite the huge differences between my books, readers will be able to open up to a random page and then say, “That shit’s Blissian!” or whatever. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Well, Counterfactual Love Stories & Other Experiments came out about two and half months ago and the longer it’s out there, the more I think about a conversation I had with my friend and mentor, Aimee Bender, who said that just knowing your work is OUT THERE for the world to read changes everything in a small but profound way, and I think she’s absolutely right. Until you publish a book, all your creative work is atomized into occasional literary journal publications at best and hiding in your hard drive at worst. But when your book is out there for readers to consider, read, and engage with, it kinda makes you feel like your art is finally real in a material sense. It feels legit, like your work can now speak for itself. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? You mean money I got from my writing, specifically, or the best money I spent in my writing life? I did a reading last month from my short story collection and when they paid me, I bought a pair of dope kicks that I probably couldn’t have afforded otherwise. That felt good, not gonna lie! What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? At first, I wasn’t really into Toni Morrison, at least not Song of Solomon. In retrospect, I kinda hijacked my reading by putting the book down over and over again, forgetting the plot structure, then rereading the parts I’d forgotten, only to put the book down again. But by the time I got to Beloved and The Bluest Eye, I was completely sold. Not only are those better novels in my opinion, but I was more patient as a reader and just in a better place, emotionally speaking, to approach the novels on their own terms. Now, I’m a huge Toni Morrison fan. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? There’s an essay in Dream Pop Origami that answers this question way better than I’m going to RN called “When Words Make You Free.” It’s about the time I translated for a Mauritanian refugee at his asylum interview with INS. Shit was intense! What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen is a quiet masterpiece, but for some reason, people always forget about it. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? My wifi network is “LanaDelReyIsMySpiritAnimal,” which is all you need to know, I think. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Well, every person I write about in Dream Pop Origami is real since it’s a memoir, so I guess I owe them a lot of gratitude for their authenticity, individuality, struggle, and hard work to exist in this cruel world and never give up. I’m indebted to them for giving me so much to write about. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Okay, I’m triggered! Seriously, though, I have two completed books that I’m trying to sell RN: a racial bildungsroman called Ninjas of My Greater Self about a mixed-race protagonist who falls in love with a suicidal movie star and later discovers that’s he part of an ancient ninja clan and a second short story collection called All the Places We Were Broken about mixed-race/hapa protagonists who get their hearts broken (and sometimes mended) all over the world that’s been longlisted at YesYes Books. I also have two early drafts of several other novels I won’t even think about touching until after Dream Pop Origami comes out in July 2022: an untitled novel about a family of mixed-race/hapa prodigies from Chicago and a second novel called We Ate Stars for Brunch that intersects with Ninjas as a counterfactual narrative exploring what happens if the protagonist makes a different major life decision. What does literary success look like to you? For me, the definition of literary success HAS to change at every stage in my writing career, otherwise I’d plateau. In the beginning, success meant publishing a piece in a literary journal. Then it meant publishing pieces in my fave literary journals like Fiction, ZYZZYVA, Guernica, Triquarterly, Boston Review, Longreads, etc., etc. Later it meant getting something in The New York Times. After that, success for me meant selling a book with a press. I was never picky about whether it was a Big-5 press or a small press, I only asked that the editors publish my book because of who I was as a writer, not despite it. In that regard, I’ve been hella lucky. Now, my new definition of success is selling my second short story collection with a readership that is already familiar with my writing, finding the perfect agent who is passionate about advocating for and selling books by BIPOC writers & getting them the kind of advance they deserve, and lastly, selling a bunch of screenplays that deal with mixed-race love, identity, and experimental forms of storytelling that center non-white characters. What’s the best way to market your books? If you can afford it, hire a freelance publicist! My other advice since I couldn't afford to hire a publicist for my first two books is this: You gotta bust the move to promote your own work because no one else is gonna do that work for you but you if you publish with a small press. No matter how good your book is, your book is not going to speak for itself if no one knows it exists and no one knows where to buy it. Those are just facts. I remember sending out hundreds of emails to literary journals, newspapers, editors, writing conferences, and bookstores just to get a couple interviews and several remote readings for Counterfactual Love Stories. It was a long slog, but what else can I do except try? What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? I don’t know what this says about my gender identity (and to be honest, I don’t care how people read my gender since it’s never been completely stable or static anyway), but almost all of my fave characters in my fiction are female characters. I’ve been told by quite a few women readers that I write female characters well, maybe because I can relate with them or because I care about them so much or because many of the most important people in my life are women. Either way, I feel like if you’re devoted to creating and developing characters that are complex, multidimensional, nuanced, surprising, defiant, and profoundly human and if you give those characters agency, backstory, and vocalization, more times than not, they should be pretty damn good and fairly complex. My trick is to give characters the freedom to act in ways I don’t always understand. What did you edit out of this book? Other travel essays, other personal essays, other lists that repeated many of the same things I’d already written about in this memoir. Also, I sometimes scaled down certain essays in Dream Pop Origami since their length really affected the overall pacing and narrative flow when read collectively even if separately, the length of that particular piece was fine. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I’ve tried not writing so many times and I just don’t know how to do it. That’s the goddamn truth. So, not writing isn’t an option for me since like many poets I know, I identify with my own language and I can’t survive without it. OTOH, if someone devised a cruel neurosurgery tool that could erase the part of my brain that needs to write, that knows how to write, and that seeks companionship in language while still leaving all the other parts of my brain intact, I suppose I would probably make a living traveling and taking pictures and writing music. I think it might actually be time to start my second post-rock/downtempo EP.
 Author Q&A If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? Well I’m not much of a cook, but I’d love to make pancakes for Hanif Abdurraqib. He’s a beautifully lyrical writer but he’s also got some grit; I think he’d understand that when I was growing up we didn’t have resources–time, money, energy–to spend on gourmet meals. Not much has changed for me. Plus, pancakes are the shit. I mean, c’mon. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Everything about the writing process kind of terrifies me, to be perfectly honest. First there’s the anxiety about your idea: is it interesting to anybody besides me? Am I enough of a writer to do it justice? That kind of thing. Then there’s the act of writing: am I making beautiful sentences? Because that’s my biggest thing, I want to be beautiful on the page. But also I get scared of overwriting. Like, okay now that just reads like somebody trying to write a pretty line. It all scares me. I guess I get past it by just making myself write. I’m also fortunate to have good friends and mentors who keep me going. Especially my girl Ashley Johnson. She won’t let me cop out behind being scared, like at all, ever. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Ada Limon. She is otherworldly. I saw her read at the Dodge Poetry Festival in 2020 and she absolutely floored me. She’s one of those writers who makes you feel like throwing away your pens, pencils, laptop, typewriter, whatever, because you’ll never do it like she does. She’s beautiful, too, which is something else I’ve never been. Yeah, Ada Limon, for sure. What books are on your nightstand? Right now it’s The Limits of Critique by Rita Felski, Subjects in Poetry by Daniel Brown, Ten Windows by Jane Hirschfield, Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, and Heating and Cooling, micro memoirs by Beth Ann Fennelly. I’m just getting hip to Fennelly’s work and she’s amazing. I think I have a crush on her, too. To quote James Tate: hell, I love everybody. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Semicolon. It’s fantastically versatile and it bedevils the hell out of people who try to use it, which makes me giggle. Also, it’s a symbol for suicide prevention which is obviously very dear to me. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Beowulf. Which is funny because I love it now. Seamus Heaney’s translation, especially. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I love this. My wireless headphones. I don’t usually write with music on, but I draft a lot in my head; while that’s going on I’m constantly listening to something. Noise cancellation is a great thing too. Or just giving the illusion that you’re listening to music so people don’t talk to you, like at a coffee shop. Thanks, Bose Quiet Comfort. I love you. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Somebody actually did something like this for me. “It doesn’t need to be perfect, or polished, or published. It needs to be written.” I think that’s from TheWritingManifesto.org, so I want to give them credit. Richard Hugo has a credo that I love too. It goes something like “Don’t try to make music conform to truth, set your truth to music.” Like I said, I want to be beautiful on the page. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Yes. Yes it does. The act is fucking exhausting. Accomplishing something, even as modest as a first paragraph or the scene that’s been fighting you like a pissed off rattlesnake, is invigorating. But especially as a nonficitonist it’s truly taxing to make new work. You’re basically ripping your guts out and turning them into a sculpture. It hurts. I love it, but it hurts. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Oh man. I think a big one in nonfiction is the trope of the shock memoir. Or, to rephrase, the impulse to “be brave”. Take my first book, for example. It’s about my father’s suicide. For a lot of folks who want to write, there’s an expectation that just because you have this awful thing that happened you have a memoir. And you do, but it isn’t going to be good just because you have a traumatic event to write about. If you read enough reviews of memoirs, you’ll see what I mean. Stuff like “this book is so courageous” or “the writer shares their tragic story”. That’s part of it, sure, being gutsy enough to confront the hard things in your life. But it’s a trap to think that just because you write down the painful moments you’ve lived through that you’ve done them, or yourself, justice. A companion to this is the trope of the victorious recovery memoir, or the survival narrative. Something like this: the writer had X bad thing happen; they were severely affected in Y ways; Z is that they survived it. That’s a base formula for what could be a successful piece of nonfiction, but it can’t just be that. I think that’s especially true for writing about addiction or illness. If someone wants to write about getting sober, there has to be some compelling narrative beyond successfully doing so. Our truest stories are always about more than the surface truths. Aspiring writers should be willing–scratch that–should be eager to find the inner narratives, however tangential they seem. That’s often where the real substance of a good memoir lives. Start with your personal tragedy, but look beyond it. There’s so much more out there. What is your writing Kryptonite? Self-doubt. I struggle with crippling depression. Always have. Sometimes my mental health deteriorates to the point where I just don’t work. Writers have famously fragile egos and I’m certainly not exempt from that. Convincing myself I can do this thing and do it reasonably well is my lifelong fight. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Oh hell yes. I think I’m weird on this one, but I sometimes can’t read books that are really good because their goodness makes me feel inadequate. I can’t tell you how many tries it took for me to get through Joy Harjo’s memoir Crazy Brave. It’s so fucking good. Heartbreakingly, astonishingly, make me curse under my breath good. So a lot of times, especially when I’m having trouble writing, I’ll also have trouble reading. It’s vicious. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Hard no. I think it’s necessary to be able to remove yourself from the rawness of your emotions to some degree in order to make your experiences into art, but I’ll die with Wordsworth’s credo in my heart: Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings. Philip Gerard wrote one of my favorite essays of all time, “What They Don’t Tell You About Hurricanes.” I read somewhere that he worked on that piece for like five years because it took him that long to write past his anger. While he finally managed to get some perspective and write beyond visceral rage, that anger is still very much a part of the essay. Without the original emotion he couldn’t have gotten to the final product. No one can. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? Anne-Marie Oomen, a memoirist and poet from Michigan. She is the best teacher and mentor I’ve ever had. She’s an expert at knowing what each project needs and helping me calm down when I can’t find my through the drafting/outlining process. She’s also just a wonderful friend. She understands me when I don’t. Randall Horton, poet and memoirist. The only full professor in America with seven felony convictions. Randall’s always there to remind me that it’s not enough to write for other writers; you have to write for regular folks. Because when we strip off the armor of our writerly persona, that’s all we are: folks. He’s also a genius at identifying spots where you can get lyrical and poetical and whimsical. “Make it sing,” he always says. He also has an eye for what hat to wear to a reading. He’s made me cooler than I am several times. Mark Jednaszewski, fiction writer from Tampa. Mark and I write in different modes or styles and he’s never the kind of reader/editor to overly impose his own sensibilities on my work. He’s someone I can send a messy draft to and say “What the hell is this?” and he’ll come back with a smart, compassionate answer. One of his many strengths is concision, so he is a great help at trimming the fat; one of my weaknesses is being verbose in pursuit of being lyrical or beautiful. But he’s also preternaturally gifted at seeing a piece’s “aboutness”, helping me figure out what I’m really writing about and stripping away the protective membrane around it to make my stuff more poignant. And he can work a hockey metaphor into anything, which is surprisingly useful. I also owe him a giant debt of gratitude for sponsoring me during my struggles with sobriety. Ashley Johnson, my best good friend from my CNF cohort at Solstice. She loves to get wild and experimental. One of my favorite things to do is use blind juxtaposition in my work, try to make readers take logical leaps and make connections without transitions. Ashley is like that too and she’s the best reader and writer I’ve ever known at knowing when a jump is too much to ask from a reader. Contrastingly, she’s also totally unafraid to say I’m holding the reader’s hand too much. When I need to know how my structure is holding, she’s my go-to. She’s also a sincere and gifted sensitivity reader with regard to race and gender. And hip-hop lyrics; she can find the right quote for any occasion. You know the expression “the world is too much with us”? She can find the sweet spot for being in the world and also keeping artistic distance. Robert Lopez, fiction writer from Brooklyn. “The Lopez”, as I affectionately call him, is just a good dude. He’s always encouraging other writers to be fearless. He’s very commercially successful and his work is well-received by critics, but he’s not a slave to that success. He loves funky, genre-bending, and occasionally bizarre stuff. If there’s a convention I truly need to buck in order to make the art I’m trying to make, he’s all for it. I also treasure his advice on what to read. He’s possibly the most intuitive reader out there and I appreciate his reading recommendations. Steve Kuusisto, poet and memoirist from New York by way of Finland. Steve is blind, physically, but his work sees everything. Like Lopez, Steve is fearless when it comes to language. One of my favorite quotes of his: “If there’s no metaphor for what I see in my mind, I make shit up. What is blindness? I see fine.” He also gave me a piece of advice that I’ll cherish forever: lyrical prose will take whatever you throw at it. You can take two—or more–disparate things and make them do whatever you want. What else is writing but destroying the barriers between worlds? Lastly, Jericho Brown. I can’t rightly call him a friend since I only met him once, but that encounter left me breathless and undyingly grateful. The biggest thing Jericho taught me in the few minutes we spent together on the bookfair floor at AWP in Portland was this: be kind. Be generous. Be gracious with what you know and what you do. He took the time to sign a couple books and have a chat with me, a guy he didn’t know from a crack in the sidewalk. And it was beautiful, just like his work. I try to embody that same attitude and pass on my own riff on his energy: don’t be an asshole. We’re all in this lunatic world together so let’s be together. 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? All writers have preoccupations that show up over the course of their careers. My dad’s suicide–and suicide in general–is one of mine. So that’ll always have a presence and an impact on my stuff. But I want each book to be its own achievement, have a life of its own. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Honestly I’m not sure it did. Maybe in imperceptible ways. But my projects tend to be different enough from one another that I necessarily have to change my process to fit each one. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? My MFA. There are a lot of fully-funded programs out there and if you get into one of those: congratulations. But I think there’s a toxic shaming of people who take on student loans in order to pursue their education, especially for an advanced degree in the arts. Obviously getting an MFA isn’t going to make you a good writer automatically. And not all good writers have one. But I got so much out of my time in grad school: time to write, a community of people to share and discuss work with, new experiences with language and forms. It was more than worth it. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Sad story, but I’m kind of impossible to convert. If I’m not into someone or something, I’m probably just not going to be. I was really hesitant about fragmentation as a form, though, and I’ve completely reversed myself on that. Well, not completely, but I’ve embraced it much more openly. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? When I was growing up, cable TV was brand new and the internet didn’t exist. What we saw and heard on television was pretty bland, linguistically. Images could be risque but the verbiage was pretty tightly controlled. Radio was a little different. Howard Stern came around when I was in elementary school, I think, and the way he terrified people with his raunchiness and irreverence just fascinated me. I think that really tipped me off that words were a big deal–that you could weaponize them in a lot of ways. Trying to figure out why certain words scared the hell out of people was fun. It still is. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Gustav Hasford’s The Short Timers. It’s the novel Full Metal Jacket is based on. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? A blue horse. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Everything. Literally. As a memoirist, even though I take some liberties and conflate or camouflage individuals, I’m always writing about real people. It’s a minefield or a gold mine, depending on how you walk it. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Not many, surprisingly. Unless you want to talk about my poems. Dear lord I’ve got a lot of disembodied poems and abandoned drafts thereof floating around in my cloud storage. You know when a writer dies and their “Previously Uncollected Poems” comes out? How it’s always like the size of a phonebook? Yeah, I totally understand that. What does literary success look like to you? Ha. It changes every time I accomplish something. First it was getting published. Anything, anywhere, just once. If I could do that, I thought I would be happy and satisfied. So I got an unremarkable story published in a now-defunct online mag and, to my dismay, I was not overly happy or content. And it keeps up like that ad nauseum. I’m delighted to be ushering my first book into the world and I consider it a great success. But there’s more to it. What that is, unfortunately, I’ll just have to find out as I go. Maybe to be a successful writer you just have to keep writing as true and hard as you can until your time is up. My old teacher Michael Steinberg did that and I don’t think anybody could argue that he wasn’t hugely successful. What’s the best way to market your books? I think it depends on the writer, the book, the target audience, the circumstances. For instance, I think–and this has historically held true especially for poets–that doing readings is a great way to do PR. But right now is obviously a challenging time to try to do that kind of thing; Zoom is great and all but it’s not going to sell as many books as the old fashioned way. I think having an agent is probably a really good idea from a marketing standpoint. Those folks are pros at reading the literary landscape and trying to situate your work within it. A lot of people are big on social media, too, and maybe that works well for them. That’s not my favorite place to be, so I couldn’t say for sure. What did you edit out of this book?” All direct quotes from Full Metal Jacket. Never, ever, under any circumstances, use copyrighted material without getting permissions first. Rewriting a whole book after the fact is unfun. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? Well writing doesn’t pay my bills, as least not yet. I work in hospitality. It’s almost as much of a lunatic profession as being a writer, so I fit right in. Don't Forget to Get Your Copy If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I know this is a little on the nose, but I’d make chicken and sausage gumbo. And I would make it for Toni Morrison. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? It’s important to me to include many different identities and voices in my stories. I live with fear that I will write in a way that leads to silencing someone with an identity different from my own. I combat it by reading other authors with the identity of the character I want to portray and talking to friends with that identity. I’ve learned if I broaden my own understanding and continually chip away at my biases, my characters become more authentic and realistic. I get to be a better person in the process. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? My literary crush is Jesmin Ward. How she is able to create so much life, loving, and sadness wrapped in earth shattering metaphors is beyond my comprehension (but not my awe). What books are on your nightstand? So… I’m not going to tell you all of them. And not because I’m ashamed or anything. There’s just too many to name and you have a life to live. I’m currently reading New World Coming from Torrey House Press. Also adorning my obscene stack is Whiteness of a Different Color, Native Son, and Where All the Light Tends to Go. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Semi-colon. It’s so rogue. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? The Great Gatsby. Never read it after high school either. And from what I’ve heard, I didn’t miss much. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I’d like to thank trees for always listening to me when I was a lonely kid. Oh, and thanks for the oxygen and shade, too. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? I’d say the same thing I tell my kids in the acknowledgments of Dark Roux: Lache pas la patate. Never give up. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Most days it energizes me. When I treat writing as the joy it is (the way it is supposed to be treated, my wife reminds me) it is wonderful. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I think “aspiring” is a trap. As I write this I am still aspiring. On one hand it keeps me in this insecure place, believing I will always be becoming and will never arrive. On the other hand it keeps me growing, improving, and digging deeper until I reach my truth and the words in which to dress it. To me that is a trap because one inevitably and endlessly leads to the other and I stay stuck in that cycle. As I see-saw between them I can lose track of the “writer” in me. What is your writing Kryptonite? I overthink things way too much. I lose the story, the characters, everything. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. I didn’t know that’s what it was (and am now so glad there is a term for it). It happened recently. In hindsight it always happens to me when I’m doing a lot of living but not enough processing. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? My therapist self says this is not possible. I think how we’ve been taught to treat our emotions determines how/how much we express and understand that emotion. Writing is one of the best ways I’ve found to access those feelings. The more I write, the more I feel, and the more I understand. So I guess I’m saying writing is one of the keys to accessing the power of our emotions and to feel them more fully. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? Maria Timm (another “aspiring” writer) is a constant source of inspiration. She does so naturally what I have to work for. Her writing is a constant inspiration and challenge to improve my work. I got to meet Johnnie Bernard early in this process. She, too, inspires me to push harder and make good work. Johnnie has also made what all goes into being an author much clearer. Lastly, Aurora Whittet has been such a wonderful beta reader and critique partner. Our writing and our audiences are so different that it always makes me look at characters and scenes in a completely different light. 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? Both? I have thoughts for a follow up to Dark Roux. I have a finished short story collection based in the future after climate change intensifies that I’ve also been considering expanding on in a whole other collection. However, I have a couple of other novels cooking that are definitely standalone. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Before publishing my audience was very much myself. I’ve heard some writers say that is who you’re supposed to write for. But publishing made writing much more of a relationship with a reader. It feels like a conversation now. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? I joined the Writer’s League of Texas ten years ago. They offer amazing classes that might make some MFA programs blush (or at least I imagine so since I don’t have a MFA). It is my pleasure to renew my membership every year. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Eudora Welty and Cormac McCarthy. Though I’ve fallen a bit out of love with the latter. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I remember saying certain things in Cajun French as a kid that would hit completely different than the English translation. One conveyed meaning. While the other conveyed meaning and feeling. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? I recently read Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. It intertwined anthropology with philosophy, all laid over a story. I love books that do many things like that. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? I choose a vulture. First, I was obsessed with them as a kid and would watch a recorded nature special about them over and over. Second, I think they live a writer’s life. They are always riding above things, taking in the whole picture. They are the first to see where something has happened; something most people are afraid of and don’t want to touch. The role they play is to digest it so it does not spoil the community and instead restores it. On my best day I think I am a writing vulture. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Surely everything. I owe them my respect and abiding love. I owe them my sense of justice, but also my anger because of it. I owe them continued curiosity. Then there is the disappointment they’ve left me with. Their legacy creates many contradictions, but the turbulence of those always facilitates depth in me as well as my characters. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Four currently. What does literary success look like to you? I love this question. In my wildest dreams literary success looks like conversations with readers who are as excited about these stories as I am. Then we’d have coffee. Or whiskey. Or coffee and whiskey. It would make us talk a lot about the stories but our conversations would make less and less sense. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? There are always the different large life experiences between genders: childbirth, prostate problems, discrimation from sexism, toxic masculinity (even though they are part of their respective coins), etc. With enough imagination, propped up by lots of very vulnerable conversations with people of a differing gender identity and reading writers with that identity, I think those experiences can be written about respectfully and realistically. But it’s the little things that are harder to get. Or the things we do in secret. I’ve never had to think deeply about what I would wear based on how people with power might perceive me, except for the very occasional suit. I’ve never soaked my feet after hours in heels (though I think I may have just created a challenge for myself). On the flip side, I’ve never been a woman expressing negative emotion to other women without the fear they would not think I’m man enough. What did you edit out of this book?” I may have edited out an entire book’s worth. There were several scenes which did not serve the plot despite how they were representative of the characters or the culture they are a part of. I edited out speech which was superfluous or perhaps too painful. Because the book is in very close first person, the characters would often get lost in their head and lose their purpose and reasoning. All of that had to be taken out. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? If we are taking my current work as a Licensed Professional Counselor off of the table, I think I’d end up a farmer. My internal clock gets me up early every day. The satisfaction I feel from working outside is pretty epic. That gene from my ancestors doesn’t go away easily, I guess.  Toby LeBlanc is a mental health therapist in Austin, TX. Writing is a way his own tales can have life alongside the countless stories of courage and strength of his clients. While he and his family sleep under the Texas stars, he will always say he's from Louisiana. He enjoys wearing period-specific pirate costumes and fishing. His dream is to one day do both at the same time.
His book, DARK ROUX, releases on August 9, 2022. Order it today.  This week we are happy to host a reading wit Jason Fisk and Joshua Roark. The reading is held on Zoom at 5:30PM Pac Time. You can access the event on our calendar.  Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He currently teaches language arts to eighth graders. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last few decades in the Chicago area. He recently had a collection of poetry published by Kelsay Books: Sub Urbane. He also had a number of books and chapbooks published: Sadly Beautiful, essays, poems, and short stories published by Leaf Garden Press; Salt Creek Anthology, a collection of micro-fiction published by Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; the fierce crackle of fragile wings, a collection of poetry published by Six Gallery Press; and two poetry chapbooks: The Sagging: Spirits and Skin, and Decay, both published by Propaganda Press.  In The Craigslist Incident, Edna Barrett takes an advertisement out on Craigslist: I'm an 18-year-old female and I want to take a hit out on myself. Joe Dolsen, a 20-year-old who has suffered from periodic blackouts his whole life, answers the ad. What would bring two people to such ominous points at such young ages, and will they actually go through with it?  Joshua Roark is the author of Put One Hand Up, Lean Back (Unsolicited Press), a chapbook of sonnets recollecting and investigating his experience as a middle school teacher in the Mississippi Delta. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Frontier Poetry, a magazine for new voices in poetry. He and his wife live happily in the desert of Joshua Tree, CA.  Joshua Roark's poetry is crisp and refreshing -- a book of freshly squeezed lemons -- poems that reach out and grab you. Make you laugh. Fill you up. "Buy Your Own Classroom Supplies" Your classroom binder should be big, beefy, yellow maybe, or red, easy for spotting, smudged with something like chocolate, coffee splashed across the pages and set in the rings. Your pens should be sunset colored, show that you mean business, even from your pocket or dry, chapped hands—oh, and don’t forget the bottle of sanitizer. It’ll sit fatlike a trophy at the edge of your desk. Your closet should hold four white button-up shirts, two pairs of heavy polyester pants, black, creased, and a single ink-black clip-on-tie, bought at an army surplus store. Trust me, full length ties are not worth the risk.
 PORTLAND, OR; JUNE 28, 2022--Rook is based on the true story of Al Nussbaum. To his unsuspecting wife, Lolly, Al is a loving, chess playing, family man. To J. Edgar Hoover, he is the most cunning fugitive alive. Al is the mastermind behind a string of east coast robberies that has stumped law enforcement. After his partner, one-eyed Bobby Wilcoxson, kills a bank guard and wounds a New York City patrolman, Al is identified as one of the robbers and lands on top of the FBI’s most wanted list. He is forced to flee his hometown of Buffalo, New York as the FBI closes in and Lolly learns of her husband’s secret life. One million wanted posters are printed and The Reader’s Digest offers a ten-thousand-dollar reward for Al’s capture. While Al assumes another identity and attempts to elude the police, Lolly is left alone to care for their infant daughter and adjust to her new life as ‘The Bank Robber’s Wife’. Friends, family, and federal agents all pressure Lolly to betray Al. While Lolly struggles at home financially, with unrelenting FBI agents, and her conscious, Al and Bobby continue to rob banks, even as Bobby grows more mentally unstable and dangerous. Al has only two goals: avoid capture and steal enough money to start a new life with his family. Returning to gather his wife and baby is suicidal, but as Al said, he’d only stick his neck in the Buffalo noose for Lolly.
About Stephen G. Eoannou Stephen G. Eoannou holds an MFA from Queens University of Charlotte and an MA from Miami University. His short story collection, Muscle Cars, was published by the Santa Fe Writers Project. He has been awarded an Honor Certificate from The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, and won the Best Short Screenplay Award at the 36th Starz Denver Film Festival. He lives and writes in his hometown of Buffalo, New York, the setting and inspiration for much of his work. Rook is his first novel. 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp ROOK is available on June 28, 2022 as a paperback (298 p.; 978-1-956692-04-4) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Mindbuck Media jess@mindbuckmedia.com  Unsolicited Press is inviting you to a reading and conversation with Francis Daulerio and Kelli Russell Agodon. This virtual event is to celebrate the launch of JOY by Francis Daulerio. Joy is the new full-length collection of poetry by Francis Daulerio, author of If & When We Wake, Please Plant This Book, and With a Difference. Beginning with one pregnancy and ending with another, Joy examines the ways in which we keep ourselves alive, centering around the birth of Daulerio’s first child while coping with the loss of friend and collaborator, Scott Hutchison. With a foreword by acclaimed author Maggie Smith (Good Bones, Keep Moving), and cover art by UK artist Helen Ahpornsiri, this life-affirming collection highlights what Bon Iver’s Sean Carey describes as “Daulerio’s relentless hope and love,” encouraging readers to push through hardships to find their own sense of meaning. The event is on Zoom on 6/23/2022 at 5:30PM Pacific Time. Join the reading by clicking on the event on the calendar: https://www.unsolicitedpress.com/events.html  Francis Daulerio is a poet and teacher from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University in 2014 before releasing If & When We Wake (Unsolicited Press 2015) and Please Plant This Book (The Head & The Hand Press 2018), both with illustrations by Scottish artist, Scott Hutchison. Francis has also released All Is Not Lost, a collaborative vinyl EP of poetry-infused music to benefit the Tiny Changes charity organization, and With a Difference (Trident Boulder 2020), a split book of ‘covers’ with Philadelphia author Nick Gregorio. Francis is a mental health awareness advocate, and has performed across the United States and abroad to raise money for suicide prevention. He lives in the woods with his wife and children. He finds a good bit of joy there.  Kelli Russell Agodon's (she/her) is the author of four collection of poems, including the award-winning Dialogues with Rising Tides, which was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2021. She is the cofounder of Two Sylvias Press as well as the Co-Director of Poets on the Coast: A Weekend Retreat for Women. Agodon lives in a sleepy seaside town in Washington State on traditional land of the Chimacum, Coast Salish, S'Klallam, and Suquamish people. She is an avid paddleboarder and hiker. She teaches at Pacific Lutheran University’s low-res MFA program, the Rainier Writing Workshop. Get Your Copy  PORTLAND, OR; June 21, 2022-- Summer solstice is here and at last we can crack the spine on Joy to celebrate. Joy is the new full-length collection of poetry by Francis Daulerio, author of If & When We Wake, Please Plant This Book, and With a Difference. Beginning with one pregnancy and ending with another, Joy examines the ways in which we keep ourselves alive and hold each other up. It covers the highs and lows of looking for happiness while living with depression and anxiety, frequently settling in the mundanity of normal life, hunting for beauty in the plain and celebrating each bit of it. While the title may suggest a lighthearted read, the book is more about the seeking than the finding, centering around the birth of Daulerio’s first child while coping with the loss of friend and collaborator, Scott Hutchison. Though painful at times, it is a life-affirming book that encourages readers to push through hardships to find their own sense of meaning. Somewhat of a departure from his earlier work, Joy sees Daulerio expanding the short bursts of imagery found in his first books into longer narratives laced with humor and optimism. As Bon Iver’s Sean Carey explains, “Daulerio’s relentless hope and love…is a much needed message in today’s world.” Joy is packed tight with fifty-four poems, some of which have previously appeared in magazines, but most of which are brand new. It also has a foreword by acclaimed author Maggie Smith (Good Bones, Keep Moving), and cover art by UK artist Helen Ahpornsiri. To celebrate the beauty that is embodied in Francis Daulerio's JOY, a book tour across the East Coast is taking place. Francis will be visiting Philadelphia, Boston, and Brooklyn. More can be learned here. PRAISE FOR FRANCIS DAULERIO “If there is a book you need to read because you’ve misplaced your joy over the last few years, this is it. In Joy, despite grief and struggles, Francis Daulerio celebrates what went right—the friend who climbs out through the downstairs window / of my house so not to disturb those gypsy wrens / who built their nest in the Valentine’s wreath on our front door, little white flowers / my wife calls starlight / bloom sideways, birds after rain—Yes! And many! Daulerio is my favorite kind of poet—an engaging storyteller who sees the world with a wink and a sideways smile, who keeps track of the moments we’ve forgotten. How lucky we are he wrote these extraordinary poems to remind us of what we’ve neglected to notice—the bees / sucking life into every clover flower / low enough for the mower blade to spare, tinny music of an ice cream truck, those fat gray clouds. Joy is full of heart and beauty, and is a book I didn’t want to end. And how could I? Daulerio’s poems compassionately bring us to a place where we ask ourselves—How do we become the people we’d love? How do we do better? This book is a gift to all and especially those of us who want to be delighted—this is truly a recommended addition to any bookcase.” ~ Kelli Russell Agodon, author of Dialogues with Rising Tides (Copper Canyon Press 2021) "I often forget that poems can heal, poems can teach, and poems can breathe life into the way you see your world. In these pages, Francis Daulerio’s gratitude and celebration of life is palpable. The only thing to do after sitting with these poems is to go outside and sink your hands into the dirt and feel the earth’s quiet hum. Even while facing grief, fear, uncertainty, Daulerio’s relentless hope and love for his surroundings - his yard, his family, the power of nature - is a much needed message in today’s world." ~ Sean Carey (S. Carey / Bon Iver) "A beautiful collection, bursting with life and detail, which takes you to places old and new and, like the best poetry, teaches you something you didn't know you needed to know.” ~ Frank Turner  About Francis Daulerio Francis Daulerio is a poet and teacher from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Arcadia University in 2014 before releasing If & When We Wake (Unsolicited Press 2015) and Please Plant This Book (The Head & The Hand Press 2018), both with illustrations by Scottish artist, Scott Hutchison. Francis has also released All Is Not Lost, a collaborative vinyl EP of poetry-infused music to benefit the Tiny Changes charity organization, and With a Difference (Trident Boulder 2020), a split book of ‘covers’ with Philadelphia author Nick Gregorio. Francis is a mental health awareness advocate, and has performed across the United States and abroad to raise money for suicide prevention. He lives in the woods with his wife and children. He finds a good bit of joy there. About Unsolicited Press
Unsolicited Press, based out of Portland, Oregon, strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning and emerging authors such as Shann Ray, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Brook Bhagat, Kris Amos, and John W. Bateman. We believe in championing the books of the unsung and underrepresented. As a womxn-owned, all-volunteer small publisher, we focus on exceptional writing, not profits. We have the privilege of partnering with authors skirting the fringes of the lit world. Learn more at unsolicitedpress.com. Find us on Twitter and Instagram: @unsolicitedp. JOY is available as a paperback (132 p.; 978-1-956692-21-1) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Francis Daulerio Minnesota Writer Matthew Cole Levine Delivers an Occult Masterpiece the Must Be on Your TBR List6/21/2022
PORTLAND, OR; June 21, 2022— In the desolate woods of northern Wisconsin, there is a cabin. Inside the cabin is a figure of evil, a witch performing an unknown ritual. There is also a young boy, Ryan Amherst, who is part of this strange ceremony: a pattern of sacrifice and resurrection known only to the residents of the tiny town of Grange.
Nearby in the village, a man named Nathan Amherst - Ryan’s father - meets with a middleman named John Linden. Nathan asks when his side of the “contract” will be fulfilled. John can only assure Nathan that he will be compensated for his troubles. Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, a police officer named Ben Dmitrovich has a tense confrontation with his superiors. After beating a suspect in a domestic violence case, Ben is placed on a mandatory suspension - another in a long line of heinous police scandals. Ben, who is struggling to overcome his own personal demons, decides to retreat to his family’s cabin up north. By coincidence or a morbid twist of fate, he ends up in Grange and meets a woman named Maria Amherst - Nathan’s wife, who apparently died seven months ago. As he unlocks the mystery of Maria’s reappearance, Ben discovers a shocking pattern of child disappearances and strange resurrections. A young piano prodigy named Amy Dorian may be the town’s next victim, but Ben races to rescue her before it’s too late. Hurtling towards a cosmic judgment, Ben has a final shot at redemption or damnation. About Matthew Cole Levine Matthew Cole Levine is an author, film critic, and screenwriter based in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and grew up near Milwaukee, making him well-versed in a particular brand of Midwestern horror. He has written for the British Film Institute, Walker Art Center, and other publications, and continues to serve as Assistant Editor and Contributing Writer for the Barcelona-based Found Footage Magazine. Hollow is his first novel. About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Unsolicited Press based out of Portland, Oregon and focuses on the works of the unsung and underrepresented. As a womxn-owned, all-volunteer small publisher that doesn’t worry about profits as much as championing exceptional literature, we have the privilege of partnering with authors skirting the fringes of the lit world. We’ve worked with emerging and award-winning authors such as Shann Ray, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Brook Bhagat, Kris Amos, and John W. Bateman. Learn more at unsolicitedpress.com. Find us on twitter and Instagram, @unsolicitedp. Hollow is available on June 21, 2022 as a paperback (304 p.; 978-1-956692-20-4) and e-book (all major retailers). Retailers, schools, and libraries can order copies through Ingram. The author is open to speaking with the media, holding readings, and engaging in other author opportunities. ### Press only, Unsolicited Press 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Matthew Cole Levine  PORTLAND, OR; June 15, 2022—In The Craigslist Incident, Edna Barrett takes an advertisement out on Craigslist: I’m an 18-year-old female and I want to take a hit out on myself. Joe Dolsen, a 20-year-old who has suffered from periodic blackouts his whole life, answers the ad. What would bring two people to such ominous points at such young ages, and will they actually go through with it?
About Jason Fisk Jason Fisk lives and writes in the suburbs of Chicago. He has worked in a psychiatric unit, labored in a cabinet factory, and mixed cement for a bricklayer. He currently teaches language arts to eighth graders. He was born in Ohio, raised in Minnesota, and has spent the last few decades in the Chicago area. He recently had a collection of poetry published by Kelsay Books: Sub Urbane. He also had a number of books and chapbooks published: Sadly Beautiful, essays, poems, and short stories published by Leaf Garden Press; Salt Creek Anthology, a collection of micro-fiction published by Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; the fierce crackle of fragile wings, a collection of poetry published by Six Gallery Press; and two poetry chapbooks: The Sagging: Spirits and Skin, and Decay, both published by Propaganda Press. 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp The Craigslist Incident is available on June 15, 2022 as a paperback (218 p.; 978-1-956692-88-4) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com  PORTLAND, OR; June 14, 2022--In this moving, sophisticated, and often humorous novel, Gary M. Almeter artfully crafts a group portrait of several families using the finest of details in seemingly mundane encounters and everyday events.
It’s 1982 and Gloria Winegar, a Brown University librarian, discovers that there aren’t many drawbacks to having an affair with JFK, Jr., a Brown senior. When she learns she’s pregnant with his baby, she tells no one but her best friend who shepherds through childbirth. They leave the baby, a son, on the steps of a convent. The novel chronicles the next few decades of both Gloria and her son, who gets adopted by the most normal family in Massachusetts. How he learns who he is; how he discovers his mother; and what they each should or must do with their new knowledge is masterfully and beautifully written in a story that is a little bit espionage novel; a little bit bildungsroman; and a little bit historical fiction; all culminating in a beautiful literary sketch of a family. The book imagines the pre-public life of JFK Jr. and examines how much we know about him, and people in general, is illusory. It is the story of identity, pedigree, blue collar versus Ivy League sensibilities, celebrity, authenticity, family, and self-care. It’s about how small things evolve into big things. It is a novel about nature versus nurture. It is a modern telling story of Arthurian legend and the mythic doomed (and triumphant) heroes who populate our world. About the Author Gary M. Almeter is a writer and attorney who lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife, three children, and two dogs, Dave and Mixly. He is the author of the memoir The Emperor of Ice-Cream (Unsolicited Press 2019). 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp Kissing the Roadkill Back to Life by Gary M. Almeter is available on June 14, 2022 as a paperback (282 p.;978-1-956692-18-1). The book will be distributed to the trade by Ingram. An e-book version is also available and an audiobook is in the works. The author is open to speaking with the media, holding readings, and engaging in other opportunities.  Join us for a literary reading with Jason Graff and Matthew Cole Levine at 5:30 PM Pacific time. The event is virtual and can be joined by clicking on the event via our Events Calendar. About Jason GraffThe author of numerous published short stories as well as the novella In the Service of the Boyar (Strange Fictions Press, 2016), Jason Graff loves both reading and producing writing that has a strong, clear voice and conveys a deep connection to the characters. In high school, his passion for the written word was well and truly ignited when he took a sucker punch for writing his crush a poem. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Bowling Green State University and later, his MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College. The intense nature of that program allowed him to be mentored by a diverse group of talented writers which included: Sarah Schulman, Richard Panek, Darcey Steinke, and Rachel Pollack. Jason currently lives in Richardson, Texas with his wife, son, and their cat. He is currently working on a science fiction novel about the beginning of the end of the universe and another about a romancing con-man. You can follow him on Twitter at @JasonGraff1 , on Facebook at Author Jason Graff and/or visit his website: www.jasongraff.wordpress.com. About Matthew Cole LevineMatthew Cole Levine is an author, film critic, and screenwriter based in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa and grew up near Milwaukee, making him well-versed in a particular brand of Midwestern horror. He has written for the British Film Institute, Walker Art Center, and other publications, and continues to serve as Assistant Editor and Contributing Writer for the Barcelona-based Found Footage Magazine. Hollow is his first novel.  PORTLAND, OR; June 7, 2022--Glitched collabs from Andrew Brenza and Kristine Snodgrass find a neon outlet in the merging of vispo and digital alteration. This striking book features color-saturated work that enlivens the structural bombast inherent in Snodgrass and Brenza’s stark visual poetry. What is glitched is not superceded nor muted, rather transformed in a true collaborative spirit.
About the Authors Kristine Snodgrass is the author most recently of American Apparell from AlienBuddha Press, Rather, from Contagion Press (2020) and the chapbook, These Burning Fields (Hysterical Books 2019). Kristine’s asemic and vispo work has been published in Utsanga (Italy), Slow Forward, Brave New Word, and Talking About Strawberries. Kristine has collaborated with many poets and artists and is always looking for new projects. Most recent collaborations with Collin J. Rae, BEAST, can be found at kristinesnodgrass.com. Andrew Brenza’s recent chapbooks include Geometric Mantra (above/ground press), Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), and Waterlight (Simulacrum Press). He is also the author of four collections of visual poetry, Automatic Souls (Timglaset), Gossamer Lid (Trembling Pillow Press), Alphabeticon & Other Poems (RedFoxPress), and Spool (Unsolicited Press). His newest book, Smear, was just released from BlazeVOX Books. 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp NEON GALAX by Andrew Brenza and Kristine Snodgrass is available on June 7, 2022 as a paperback (52 p.; 978-1-956692-17-4). Exclusive copies will be made available to the first 100 readers, after which, the book will be distributed to the trade by Ingram. The authors are open to speaking with the media, holding readings, and engaging in other opportunities. ### Press only, Unsolicited Press marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Andrew Brenza Kristine Snodgrass  Guess what's happening on Wednesday? Our weekly literary reading, that's what! This week our managing editor will be hosting Gary M. Almeter and Matt Daly. The reading is free to attend and open to anyone who loves to hear writers read from their books and talk about their processes. You can join the event at 5:30PM Pacific time via Zoom. The link is on our events calendar.
 PORTLAND, OR; May 31, 2022--The Criteria explores unconventional, and at times highly problematic, motherhood. The characters struggle with impossible choices that often lead to heartbreaking behaviors. In the titular story, the main character takes on the burden of breastfeeding infants whose mothers have fallen in while at the same time struggling with the fate of her own infant. Another story imagines a scenario in which the mother/child bond is prohibited, and drastic measures taken to ensure its prevention. The characters are asked to suffer many tragedies, as well as to embrace hope in the most unlikely places.
Praise for Kami Westhoff Poetic and corporeal, The Criteria is a collection steeped in brutality and resilience. Westhoff’s prose is as deeply unsettling as it is starkly beautiful—these stories are complex, haunting, and lush. --Kimberly King Parsons The Criteria is about the complicated work of caring (and sometimes failing to care)—for mothers, for children, for the planet--and the book is itself an act of care. Kami Westhoff welcomes her reader with generosity into quiet, secret spaces of love, longing, pain and, ultimately, connection. —Ramona Ausubel, author of Awayland and Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty The world of Kami Westhoff’s stories is skewed from ours - more visceral, brutal, harder - but also oddly quieter. That the women and children and men there survive what they do is, I guess, a testament to their resilience. But whatever it is, it’s a warning to us to rein in our easy violence, to try to remember love. --Rebecca Brown, author of You Tell the Stories You Need to Believe About Kami Westhoff Kami Westhoff lives in the Pacific Northwest where she teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Sleepwalker, winner of the Minerva Rising Dare to Be Contest; Your Body a Bullet, co-written with Elizabeth Vignali; and Cloud-bound, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry and prose has been published in journals including Booth, Carve, Hippocampus, Fugue, Passages North, Redivider, Waxwing and West Branch. About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press based out of Portland, Oregon and focuses on the works of the unsung and underrepresented. As a womxn-owned, all-volunteer small publisher that doesn’t worry about profits as much as championing exceptional literature, we have the privilege of partnering with authors skirting the fringes of the lit world. We’ve worked with emerging and award-winning authors such as Shann Ray, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Brook Bhagat, Kris Amos, and John W. Bateman. Learn more at unsolicitedpress.com. Find us on twitter and instagram. The Criteria is available on May 31, 2022 as a paperback (180 p.; 978-1-956692-16-7) 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.  PORTLAND, OR; May 26, 2022--Eva Matson was born in 1900 to a rural family in Dorset, England. It was the Victorian age. An age when women needed to use actions to have their voices heard. An age of ancient plumbing, gas lighting, and where unmentionables were never mentioned.
Through wars, through extreme shifts in public attitude, especially towards the roles of women, Eva experienced many changes in society and extreme changes in living conditions. Eva was a somewhat unconventional woman who drove an ambulance at fifteen. She found her calling as a nurse at an early age. It was this open-minded blend of characteristics that would stand her in good stead for her life to come. A life that included, yes, a beauty contest. It was a life filled with questions and unexpected answers. A life of joys and sadness. Of exhilaration and darkness as Eva hit London with all its risks and pitfalls, relationships, disease, and decisions—turning points in her life. Some of which she might have regretted, but some she wouldn't change for the world. This is a story of strength, of bumps in the road, of family with all its foibles, of the values of longevity in friendship, and of deep love. About S.B. Borgersen S.B. Borgersen is a British/Canadian author, of middle England and Hebridean ancestry, whose favoured genres are flash and micro fiction, and poetry. Her books, Fishermen’s Fingers, While the Kettle Boils, and Of Daisies and Dead Violins are published by Unsolicited Press. 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 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp EVA MATSON is available on May 26, 2022 as an ebook and can be downloaded from all major eboko retailers as well as requested from your local library. Find retailers here: https://books2read.com/u/4ElpDM  On May 25, 2022, we are hosting a wonderful virtual event with authors Elizabeth Vignali and Kami Westhoff. Unsolicited Press has partnered with them as co-authors, and separately for their own collections. Feminist and evocative, this is an evening you will not want to miss. You can login to the event via our events calendar. No RSVP needed.  Elizabeth Vignali is the author of Object Permanence (Finishing Line Press 2015) and Endangered [Animal] (Floating Bridge Press 2019), and coauthor of Your Body A Bullet (Unsolicted Press 2018). Her work has appeared in Willow Springs, Cincinnati Review, Mid-American Review, Tinderbox, The Literary Review, and others. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she works as an optician, coproduces the Bellingham Kitchen Session reading series, and serves as poetry editor of Sweet Tree Review. Her latest book, HOUSE OF THE SILVERFISH, explores the reckoning of inevitable loss on both a personal and global scale, from learning to loosen our hold on children as they grow older to coming to terms with our annihilation of vast swathes of species. The story of an unraveling marriage is interspersed with poems questioning ownership of all kinds—of place, of people, and of time itself.  Kami Westhoff lives in the Pacific Northwest where she teaches creative writing at Western Washington University. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks: Sleepwalker, winner of the Minerva Rising Dare to Be Contest; Your Body a Bullet, co-written with Elizabeth Vignali; and Cloud-bound, forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press. Her poetry and prose has been published in journals including Booth, Carve, Hippocampus, Fugue, Passages North, Redivider, Waxwing and West Branch. The soon-to-be-published book The Criteria explores unconventional, and at times highly problematic, motherhood. The characters struggle with impossible choices that often lead to heartbreaking behaviors. In the titular story, the main character takes on the burden of breastfeeding infants whose mothers have fallen in while at the same time struggling with the fate of her own infant. Another story imagines a scenario in which the mother/child bond is prohibited, and drastic measures taken to ensure its prevention. The characters are asked to suffer many tragedies, as well as to embrace hope in the most unlikely places. HOUSE OF THE SILVERFISH by Elizabeth Vignali
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HOUSE OF THE SILVERFISH explores the reckoning of inevitable loss on both a personal and global scale, from learning to loosen our hold on children as they grow older to coming to terms with our annihilation of vast swathes of species. The story of an unraveling marriage is interspersed with poems questioning ownership of all kinds—of place, of people, and of time itself. Book Details Genre: Poetry ISBN: 978-1-950730-73-5 Publication Date: February 28, 2021 Your Body a Bullet by Kami Westhoff and Elizabeth Vignali
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Mistletoe sinks its tendrils into the oak tree, a cuckoo lays her murderous egg in another mother’s nest, a worm slips into the grasshopper’s gut and convinces it to drown itself. Green leaves unfurl, the warbler feeds her accidental child, and the pond continues to shimmer. From the slick burrow of the snubnosed eel to the human autosite brushing her sister’s teeth, Your Body a Bullet lifts the veil between the ghastly and beautiful relationships of parasites and their hosts. All are given equal measure here, inviting us to face our own extremes and urging us to think about what really drives our behavior. A spider says “I have no questions/about God, just the irrefutable alchemy/of your infant apothecaries.” The female anglerfish “can no longer discern where my body ends/and yours begins.” Where is the line between instinct and decision? What are we willing to do to one another; what are we willing to sacrifice? These poems are an homage to the brutality of survival, the nuances of love, and the exceptional lengths mothers will go to for their children. Details Genre: Poetry ISBN: 978-1-947021-69-3 Publication Date: November 6, 2018 THE CRITERIA by Kami Westhoff
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The Criteria explores unconventional, and at times highly problematic, motherhood. The characters struggle with impossible choices that often lead to heartbreaking behaviors. In the titular story, the main character takes on the burden of breastfeeding infants whose mothers have fallen in while at the same time struggling with the fate of her own infant. Another story imagines a scenario in which the mother/child bond is prohibited, and drastic measures taken to ensure its prevention. The characters are asked to suffer many tragedies, as well as to embrace hope in the most unlikely places. Book Details Genre: Fiction ISBN:978-1-956692-16-7 Publication Date: 5/31/2022 Unsolicited Press Publishes Pushcart Prize Nominee Emily Paige Wilson’s Poetry Collection Jalubí5/24/2022
 PORTLAND, OR; May 24, 2022—In what ways does lineage resemble language, and are there aspects of both which will always feel untranslatable? With Prague as a backdrop, Jalubí explores this question as it attempts to balance on the fraught fulcrum point of what in the speaker’s family history has been accurately preserved and what has been turned into myth by way of intentional and accidental misrepresentations. Set in the shadow of witches, dragons, and a great-grandmother’s ghost, this collection suggests history itself is a haunting.
Like a persistent spirit, history refuses to cast itself in the sepia-toned filter of nostalgia: it’s instead the gold leaf which gilds theaters in Prague; the glinting burgundy of the city’s garnets fashioned into heirloom earrings; the gray of castles and cathedrals; canola fields fawn and flaxen in a small farming village near the Slovakian border. Amidst the colors and customs of Prague, the speaker shares the struggle of trying to understand and be understood across languages. Translation in these poems is both play and performance, invitation and isolation. Framed in sections which mark various arrivals and departures, the collection posits whether a person can ever truly inhabit a place with any degree of fixedness or whether one’s identity must always remain in flux. Through these arrivals and departures, Jalubí chronicles the search for a family’s small farming village of origin and ultimately becomes a search for the self. As the speaker writes in the collection’s closing lines, “Being one person in this lineage is no more/than being one letter of a language:/written yet unaware of words.” Praise for Emily Paige Wilson In this book a keen ear for sound and a powerful love of language combine to create intelligent, lyrical poems that live vibrantly in the borders between nationalities and relationships where understanding truly happens. The result is a lively, rich and deeply felt debut of arrivals and departures that honor Wilson’s family and heritage, as well as language itself. I am duly impressed. —Mark Cox, Author of Readiness and Sorrow Bread, New and Selected Poems: 1984-2015 What is translation? Wilson would answer: alchemy, a snare, to have and halve, or “the space the rain takes as it falls.” Here, language is scrutinized against a blue light. Every facet is up for examination in Jalubí—linguistics, sound, ancestry—and the turning and layering is part method, part spell. This book is a vessel—Wilson, a force of wind. These poems will put a river in your mouth. —Leah Poole Osowski, Author of Hover Over Her and Exceeds Us About Emily Paige Wilson Emily Paige Wilson is the author of Jalubí (Unsolicited Press, 2022) and two chapbooks: Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods (Glass Poetry Press, 2020) and I'll Build Us a Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp Jalubí is available on May 24, 2022 as a paperback (104 p.; 978-1-956692-15-0) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Emily Paige Wilson epw7427@gmail.com We love our authors. That sounds silly, but it's true. We love them so much we like to annoy them by asking questions about their writing lives. Today we bring you an updated interview with Francis Daulerio, one of the most "breath of fresh air" poets you'll ever read. We invite you to read the interview, and if you have a buck or two, support Francis by purchasing his upcoming poetry collection, JOY.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Oh jeez, I’ve been a massive fan of Anthony Bourdain’s work for a good long time. I always admired how easily he was able to navigate the really complicated elements of culture and religion and politics and distill it all down to a palatable examination that didn’t feel like it was being swayed by anything other than reality. I’m absolute shit in the kitchen, but it’d be a real honor to share a bowl of home-grown garlic scape pesto my wife and I make each spring. It’s no culinary masterpiece, but I think he’d like it fine. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? I worry a lot about the headspace I’m creating for my readers. My first book was so sad (too sad, if I’m honest), that I’ve subsequently tried to layer in large helpings of hope wherever possible. It’s important to recognize how difficult life can be, but there’s no sense in wallowing, and I certainly don’t want my writing to take anybody to an unhealthy or even dangerous place. When I write now, I try to remind myself that there is hope to be found, and I try to aim for it whenever I can. What books are on your nightstand? We have books all over the house, so we eventually started turning different rooms into different sections. Philosophy and art in the living room, fiction and poetry in the study. You get it the idea. The nightstand serves as our nonfiction section. Stuff like Matt Haig’s Reasons To Stay Alive, Ross Gay’s Book of Delights, Maggie Smith’s Keep Moving. Good books to grab if you wake up with the scaries. The Buddhism section also lives there along with a few random books on gardening. It’s very zen. All the vibes. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The em dash. I’m a poet ffs. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Many of them, actually. I was a pretty lousy student in high school. I probably could’ve used some meds, but early aughts catholic school wasn’t the place to talk about mental health or medication (imagine that!). What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I’m actually a little mad at myself for not thanking Lexapro in the acknowledgements page of the new book. What a life-saver! I wrote 3/4 of Joy from my typical, unmedicated state of constant anxiety and then finished and edited it feeling like a totally new person. I know medication isn’t for everyone, but it drastically improved my daily life. Does writing energize or exhaust you? The first stages of writing a new poem are totally energizing, and the editing process can be, too, if it’s enlightening or transformative. Generally though I do get exhausted by the tedious nature of editing. Once that spark of creativity is gone and I’m left with a heap of words to move around, things get a bit less exciting. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I think social media makes it easy for an aspiring writer to feel excruciatingly inadequate. You see all these people dropping links to new publications and it can quickly start to feel like you’re the only one striking out, when in reality we’re all getting bombarded with rejections all the time. It can be difficult to learn how to interact in the writing community before you’ve really gotten your feet wet, which is why I think that space has turned into such a shitstorm. The good news is, once you get some publications under your belt, you get to take imposter syndrome for a spin. So there’s that… What is your writing Kryptonite? Any and every other thing. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? I don’t think I’ve gotten traditional reader’s block, but there are definitely long stretches where I simply can’t find time to sit down and read at length. I try to take advantage of gaps between projects and time off work, but life with young children doesn’t make for loads of free time. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? This feels similar to the “do artists need to experience pain to create” question, and while I think the answer is probably no, I can’t help but think that the difficulties I’ve lived through have made me better equipped to write the way I do. Maybe that’s just me trying to make myself feel better. I’ve had panic attacks, and afterwords tried to tell myself that living like this isn’t all bad because it somehow helps me create. I don’t think that’s true, but in the moments I want to feel like I’m earning my spot by suffering. I’m sure there are folks who can do this without feeling intense emotions, but I’m not sure how. I definitely couldn’t. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I couldn’t write anything without my friend Rich Appel. He’s an incredible poet and editor, and he’s the first person I email when I’ve written something new. Honestly there’s not a poem in any of my books that he didn’t help with. I also get a lot of inspiration from my MFA friends Nick Gregorio and Daniel DiFranco, and I’ve learned a lot about how to exist in this community from Maggie Smith. I feel quite lucky to be surrounded by such incredibly creative people. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Books! What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I have a very vivid memory of playing cards with my older cousin in the trunk of my aunt’s Chevy Blazer. Our parents were all in the house, and while he beat me in each game, he taught me how to curse, which words meant what, and how to drop them in at the appropriate times. Looking back, it was a pretty transformative experience (I’m only half kidding). How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Zero. I’ve got some ideas for a few different books, but nothing started yet. I’m thinking about trying out comedic nonfiction essays, but we’ll see where that leads. There also some poem ideas rattling around up there. Who knows. What does literary success look like to you? Mega yachts and piles and piles of cocaine.  You are invited to a literary reading with Emily Paige Wilson and Laura Kiesel. Emily Paige Wilson is the author of Jalubí (Unsolicited Press, 2022) and two chapbooks: Hypochondria, Least Powerful of the Greek Gods (Glass Poetry Press, 2020) and I'll Build Us a Home (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Her work has been nominated for Best New Poets, Best of the Net, and the Pushcart Prize. Laura Kiesel is a longtime poet, essayist and journalist. Her articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic, The Guardian, the Washington Post, Vice, Vox, Ozy, Narratively, Salon, The Manifest-Station and many others. Her poems have been featured in upstreet, Medulla Review. Fox Chase Review, Blue Lake Review, Stone Highway Review, Noctua Review, Naugatuck River Review, Wilderness House Literary Review. Originally from Brooklyn, New York she now lives in the Boston area where she teaches creative nonfiction, literary journalism and poetry at Grub Street and Arlington Center for the Arts. She is the servant of two adorable but demanding cats and has a habit of staying up way too late at night, usually reading. The reading will feature readings by both authors followed by an open Q+A window. You can join the reading by going to our events calendar and joining via Zoom.  PORTLAND, OR; May 17, 2022— Hunting Geese by Sarah Rau Peterson is a short story collection that features characters as multi-layered as Montana herself. The unnamed protagonist in Hunting Geese grapples with life choices and his just out-of-reach family while positioned on the banks of the frigid Yellowstone River awaiting the descent of geese. She Would Have and The Needing Place addresses the dynamics of a complicated father-daughter relationship told from each perspective while skirting the issues of generational gaps and aging. Wednesday’s Child’s narrator wonders what she, as a mother, did to push her daughter away, and Chickens is about, well, it’s about chickens.
From the Book HE’S PARKED ON THE RIVERBANK to get away from the wife, holding his thermos mug and staring out at the decoys. The sky has gone pink, and he’s waiting for the geese to drop for their nightly visit. The shotgun’s loaded but the safety’s on and he can keep it on the seat next to him since Dog died. He sips his coffee-with-brandy, but it’s lukewarm despite the thermos and the bitter taste gives him heartburn. The radio won’t stop blaring talking head commentary about the upcoming presidential election—Jesus, it’s still over a year away—and he wishes he could get a sports show, maybe some rock and roll out here instead. His hands ache from the cold, his old hands that have set hundreds, thousands of decoys into frozen riverbanks, lakeshores crusted with ice, waiting, waiting. He thinks of Freezeout Lake, so cold that winter—what, damn near forty years now—he remembers it was too cold to wait for the birds outside even though the first few were already scoping out his decoys. Scattered cars and pickups around the shorelines puffing clouds from the mufflers. He knew, too, that every one of those vehicles were tuned into the same AM station out of Calgary as he was, and nobody stopped listening even when the geese came down, and all at once the horns and flashing headlights, noise that all but drowned out the sound of the startled birds lifting off and out of range, but they all whooped and hollered, all the hunters like young boys, because they believed in miracles, yes they did, when the Ruskies lost that hockey game. The wife, a few years back he had told her about that cold night in ’80, after they made that movie and everyone was talking about it again, and he teared up and then downright cried over how nobody pulled in any geese that night, but they were all brothers who emerged from warm vehicles to chant USA! USA! together into the frigid air. She wasn’t really listening, he could tell, but he got downright pissed off when she told him she didn’t remember it. Didn’t remember it! Didn’t remember the call? Al Michaels? Beating the freaking USSR, the Red Army guys? Her face was blank, and she’d said—she actually said—that she didn’t follow football. He chuckles to himself, now. That had been a hell of a conversation. He warms his hands against the heater vent, rubs them together, arthritic knuckle against arthritic knuckle. About Sarah Rau Peterson Sarah Rau Peterson is a first-generation Montanan. She lives with her husband and two children near Miles City, where she divides her time between the family’s cattle ranch, her middle school history classroom, and her children’s activities. She publishes occasionally in The Montana Quarterly. About Unsolicited Press Unsolicited Press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Unsolicited Press based out of Portland, Oregon and focuses on the works of the unsung and underrepresented. As a womxn-owned, all-volunteer small publisher that doesn’t worry about profits as much as championing exceptional literature, we have the privilege of partnering with authors skirting the fringes of the lit world. We’ve worked with emerging and award-winning authors such as Shann Ray, Amy Shimshon-Santo, Brook Bhagat, Kris Amos, and John W. Bateman. Learn more at unsolicitedpress.com. Find us on twitter and Instagram, @unsolicitedp. HUNTING GEESE is available on May 17, 2022 as a paperback (66 p.; 978-1-956692-19-8) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Sarah Rau Peterson If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I am a huge fan of Miriam Toews. I would love to have dinner with her and, like a leech, I’d pick her brain about her writing process and ask for advice; however, my cooking is not nearly as awesome as her writing, so I’d ask her what she wanted to eat, and then I’d practice making said meal until it was go time, and, realistically, I’d probably mess the meal up and end up ordering out. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? I think I have a huge case of imposter syndrome. I wish I could say that I combat that by putting my head down and continuing to write despite my insecurities, but sometimes it gets the better of me. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? I love the character Jenny Fields from John Irving’s The World According to Garp. She is a badass who can do it all. What books are on your nightstand? There are two books on my nightstand right now. The first is This Bright River by Patrick Sommerville. I love his work on Station 11 and other shows, so I grabbed his novel to read. The other book on my nightstand is Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. I haven’t read it, and I probably never will. My sister passed away at the age of 36, and it was her favorite book, so by not ever reading it, I feel like there’s something that I can still learn about her, even 10 years later. I find it strangely comforting. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I love the ellipsis. I think it invites engagement from the reader. It kind of forces them to fill in the blanks… What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? The assignment was to independently read a Shakespeare play and do a report on it. I was a lazy high-school student who avoided work whenever possible, so my choice was Shakespeare’s King John. I picked that one because I figured it was one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, and there was a pretty good chance that my teacher had not read it. I was right! If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? "You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it." - Octavia E. Butler Does writing energize or exhaust you? It energizes me. I get in the zone, and I lose track of time when I’m writing. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I think aspiring writers don’t realize how much time and energy it takes to write. Writing is a craft with limitless room for improvement. If you want to write, you’d better be prepared to never be satisfied. What is your writing Kryptonite? I have to be careful of what I read while I am writing fiction because it frequently seeps into my writing, and the writing ends up feeling forced and lifeless. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? I usually do not have reader’s block. I do, sometimes, have difficulty figuring which book to read from my list of to-read books. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I believe that it’s possible, but not the norm. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? Ben Tanzer comes to mind. Through Ben, I have met a lot of other awesome writers from Chicago: Mark Brand, Joseph G. Peterson, Peter Anderson, Giano Cromley, and Jerry Brennan to name a few. For me it’s nice to know that there are like-minded people out there. 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 want each of my books to stand on its own. Honestly, I cringe when I read my past work. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Buying a computer solely for my writing was the best money I’ve ever spent as a writer. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? This is a surprisingly difficult question for me to answer. There are so many more authors who I liked at first, but I’ve grown to dislike over the years than there are authors who I have grown to like. I think Stephan King might be the best answer to go with here. For me, he is so hit or miss that it took a while for me to find something in his repertoire that I liked. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I came home from school one day to find that my younger sister had ratted me out for swearing at school. I got in a lot of trouble for that. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Dave Newman’s Raymond Carver Will Not Raise Our Children is an underappreciated favorite of mine. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? A seagull. They are capable of beauty, but they also spend most of their time fighting for scraps and picking through the trash. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Not all characters in The Craigslist Incident were based on real people (I need some plausible deniability, here), but for those characters who are loosely based on real people, I will defer to Anne Lamont: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” What does literary success look like to you? Every time I achieve a literary goal, I set another one. I just keep plugging away. I don’t think I will ever feel successful. What’s the best way to market your books? I believe that after all has been said and done, the best way to market a book is through word of mouth; therefore, I believe it is important for me to get my book out to as many readers as possible. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? I am petrified that I will get something wrong, and that mistake that will take the reader out of that fragile, magic, fiction bubble that I worked so hard to create. What did you edit out of this book? I think a better question for me would be: What have you edited into your novel? For years, my focus was poetry, so I focused on condensing a narrative into as few words as possible, and, unfortunately, that habit followed me into my prose writing. When I worked with the Unsolicited editing team, I found that I was adding scenes to the plot rather than cutting scenes. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I think I would be working somewhere in the field of psychology. I also love teaching, so I would for sure be teaching.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Well, I’m not a very good cook. I’d eat breakfast with Craig Lancaster as long as he made it. I’d eat leftovers from Mary Karr’s fridge and whatever Alexandra Fuller wanted me to eat! Basically I’d do whatever those women wanted me to! What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? It’s terrifying to just start. It’s terrifying when I’ve gone weeks with no new ideas, and it’s terrifying when I get ALL the ideas at once because I worry that they’ll go away! I think the best thing I do is scribble ideas in a notebook, whether it becomes pages and pages or it’s just a doodle or some sort of outline. I have come to terms with the idea that sometimes my notes just aren’t meant to see the light of day. I have also worked hard to just take a breath and send my work out there. Rejection hurts, but it’s not the end of the world. There’s a great anecdote from Stephen King from his early years in which he uses a railroad spike to tack all the rejection letters to his wall. It happens to, quite literally, the most prolific of them all. We indie authors aren’t alone! Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Janet Fitch is one of my most favorite authors, and her first novel White Oleander really changed the way I viewed characters. They don’t have to have linear or neat, clean growth. They can have an ugliness, a rawness that almost hurts to read. I felt that about her characters in Paint It Black, but I have an absolute obsession with Marina Makarova in The Revolution of Marina M and Chimes of a Lost Cathedral. I can’t find the right adjectives to do her justice. What books are on your nightstand? My dad listens to “books on tape.” (He does use a streaming service but hasn’t broken into modern lingo yet.) He talks a lot about this Louisiana ex-cop called Dave Robicheaux, and he’s so animated and uses this terrible accent when talking about it. He gets so excited about these books, so I’ve been checking out James Lee Burke’s Dave Robicheaux series from the public library. I could lie and say it’s War and Peace on my nightstand, but it’s a stack of good ol’ boy mysteries. A bad guy gets eaten by his own pigs, people! That’s bedtime entertainment! Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I’m an Oxford comma girl. I love a good semicolon; I don’t, however, use it a lot in fiction. But I can’t stop using exclamation points! I just have a ton of excitement! What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I used CliffsNotes (does that date me?!) to get through The Scarlet Letter, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Great Expectations…I read so much that the librarians waived the 3-book maximum, but I couldn’t read anything I was assigned. I didn’t read The Great Gatsby or To Kill a Mockingbird or Catcher in the Rye until I was in college. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Oh, definitely my lifelong companion Brown Bear. I used to call him Winnie the Pooh, even though he’s not the yellow honey fiend. I dropped him in the street when I was about two, and my mom put an ad in the paper: “Lost. Little brown bear.” My earliest memory is of going to a woman’s house to retrieve him. He’s been everywhere with me. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? “If you don’t write it, who will? Just do the damn thing!” Seriously, though. Just write it. If it’s in you, get it out. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Oh, it’s energizing. Sometimes manic. I never feel like I’m “done,” but I’m not exhausted by it. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I think we all have a level of hubris, but it’s important to recognize that. Not everyone’s first book is picked up by, say, Random House. And that’s more than okay. Better than okay! Also, guard your work. Blogs and other easy-to-publish sources don’t protect your work the way it deserves to be protected. Don’t give up. Yes, you may have to work a “real” job. You may not write for three years. You may choose to attend nine thousand writer’s retreats and never come out with a single idea. All of it is okay. Do you write? You’re a writer. Is your grandma your only reader? She’s proud of you. What is your writing Kryptonite? Does this question mean I’m Super Man? I’m so easily distracted by whatever I find on the internet. I’ll take a break, fall into the proverbial rabbit hole, and emerge 2 hours later. Were those cat videos worth it? Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Ooh, good one. Nope. I will read books multiple times until they become part of my soul. I am never not reading something. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Sure. Tell that story!! I guarantee that someone else has a similar experience as that author. Writing should come from every single experience. There’s no “one size fits all” for emotion. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I’m internet friends with several Montana writers, and just seeing them working (and succeeding, and failing sometimes, and living, and feeling) gives me an understanding that we’re all in this together. Not one of us is this hermit who lives on an island of self-importance, rolling around in stacks of cash. It’s a small community of folks who support each other through (often inappropriate) humor and the much-needed encouragement to just keep writing. 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 write short stories, and sometimes one story is connected to another but told through different narrators. The one connection I think I will always have is Montana, but I’m in the stand-alone camp. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? It encouraged me! The thought that other people will see my words in print gives me the motivation to do more. It’s such a dang process though, but I haven’t changed it. I do what works for me, which is long-hand notes and notebook scribbles. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Any money spent at a book store, a book sale, library overdue fines…reading makes a writer, and it’s the one thing that consistently encourages me. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? I always had a hard time with the ones I was “supposed” to read. I eventually came around to Faulkner. I’ve never been into reading just to say I’ve read a certain book or author. I still don’t like Dickens. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? When I was young, my best friend and I said this: “sticks and stones can break my bones but words can really hurt!” I remember being made fun of at the time and realizing that the things that come out of people’s mouths can cut deeply. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Plain Bad Heroines by emily danforth. She had huge success with her first novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post, but her second is just this intense noir/mystery/queer/magical/mystical piece of genius that involves a real Montana woman (Mary MacLane) who was so controversial and outspoken and outrageous in a time when women were decidedly not. The moon, because the writing process certainly follows an ebb and flow. Sometimes it’s full and rich and bright and super, and other times it’s dark and absent (but still spinning around there somewhere). What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?! I owe them the assurance that I am not intentionally basing characters on them, even though they think otherwise. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? A million? What does literary success look like to you? Honestly, I’ve written for so long. I’ve never tried to make it a “career.” Success, for me, is handing a real, bound, published book to my parents and saying “I did it.” Having an actual book. Maybe two. But something that other people read, something that stands alone. That’s success. It’s not the finish line. What’s the best way to market your books? Who likes to toot their own horn? I like the simple “post online” method and hope it spreads like wildfire! Not the most effective. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Bodies. I don’t know how a man settles into his body. I can only guess and observe and put a little of what I know about those around me into male characters. It’s really hard to avoid stereotypes. What did you edit out of this book? A lot of swear words! If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I am currently a librarian and 8th grade teacher. I love working at our middle school. We own a cattle ranch. It’s an amazing privilege to work outside. I’d love to create art full time. Honestly? I’d be pretty good at being a professional nap-taker.  PORTLAND, OR; May 10, 2022--Against a backdrop of newsfeeds and hints of eco-doom, #TheNewCrusades centers on a series of letters to an uncertain deity hovering above and within a particular American madness. These poems are fractured little diaries seeking a wholeness; they track the ways we move back and forth between larger social-political selves and inner-personal selves.
The news here is professed through protests, graffiti, broken mirrors, ambient radio, synchronized fires, and all-night newsfeeds--all of it projecting a cryptic and indefinable set of rules that churn about as permutations of some lost algorithm. They address a tamed violence held barely in check, examining masculinity and fatherhood and the undercurrents of suburban domesticity. In the end, they are a barrage of cries at breaking the boundary between you and I, questions rising into prayers that ask, are we closed or open systems? Can we really know each other at all? Praise for Bill Neumire "As Bill Neumire shows, to tell the truths about America requires a lyricism that is as wily as it is direct, as elegiac as it is exuberant. #TheNewCrusades is a reckoning about the coal-mouthed glow of the American heart and the darkness & us that characterizes the messy promise of our body politic. Well past Whitman’s earnest appraisal of who we were, Neumire instead sees the alarming contradictions of who we really are, made fruitful & rueful by our metastatic news and hungers. Brash and also tender, Neumire’s poems are the honest lullabies we need now to keep from sleep, to open our eyes, to wake up." --Rick Barot "#TheNewCrusades begins “Here I take the box of world…” and the book does just that. It’s a box, and a book, that foretells violence, questions masculinity, mourns the falling away of cities and nations and nature and people. Bill Neumire has an ear for the memorable phrase, an eye for the image that hurts. “Dear hashtagged american morning, / if you promise / everything’s fine I can stand in a pall of crabapple leaves / like an elephant feeling seismic signals,” he writes, not believing it for a second. But these poems believe: in the leaves and the elephant and the hashtagged morning, then undergo them all like a trial. The box of world is recognizably ours: we have all undergone it, but never so eloquently nor with such patient clarity as this book does." --Kathy Ossip About Bill Neumire Author of two chapbooks--Resonance of Kin (PuddingHouse 2013) and Between Worlds (Foothills 2013)—Bill Neumire’s first full-length book, Estrus, was a semi-finalist for the 42 Miles Press Award. He regularly reviews books of contemporary poetry for Vallum, and for Verdad where he works as poetry editor. 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. The publisher can be followed on Instagram and Twitter: @unsolicitedp #TheNewCrusades is available on May 10, 2022 as a paperback (132 p.; 978-1-956692-14-3) 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 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com  In Peripheral Visions and Other Stories, the characters choose to play the best game they can with the cards they’ve received. For some, it’s making the most of the circumstances in which they find themselves, even if it’s not the life they planned. For others, it’s following an unconventional path-not the easiest course or the one that others would take, but the one that’s right for them. But they never lose hope that life will get better if they can just hold on. Peripheral Visions and Other Stories was a finalist in the 2021 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, a finalist and Bronze Award winner in the 2020 Foreword INDIES competition, a finalist in the 2020 N.N. Light Book Awards (short story), and won second place in the Florida Writers Association 2018 Royal Palm Literary Awards (RPLA) competition, with three of the stories having also earned contest placements. Nancy Christie is the author of two award-winning short story collections: Traveling Left of Center and Other Stories and Peripheral Visions and Other Stories—both published by Unsolicited Press. Christie’s third short story collection, Mistletoe Magic and Other Holiday Tales, will be published in 2023 by Unsolicited Press. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Goat’s Milk, Commuter Lit, Ariel Chart, Page & Spine, One Person’s Trash, Two Cities Review, Talking River, Edify Fiction, Toasted Cheese, Wanderings, The Chaffin Journal and Down in the Dirt, among others, with several of her stories earning contest placements. Christie has also authored three non-fiction books: the inspirational/motivational book, The Gifts of Change (Atria/Beyond Words) and two award-winning books for writers: Rut-Busting Book for Writers and Rut-Busting Book for Authors (both by Mill City Press). The founder of the annual “Celebrate Short Fiction” Day, Christie is the host of the Living the Writing Life podcast. A member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA), Women’s Fiction Writers Association (WFWA) and Florida Writers Association (FWA), Christie also teaches writing workshops at conferences, libraries and schools nationwide. May 9th
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