 PORTLAND, OR; March 2, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the debut of A CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF THE SOUTHWEST by Connor M. Bjotvedt.
A CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF THE SOUTHWEST is a love letter to the Southwest. The collection follows the journey of a man named John Whenn who, after accepting his position as an adjunct faculty member at Central Arizona Community College, investigates the Southwest and produces a politically charged collection of op-eds which describe in vivid and lurid detail the landscape, people, and history of the region. Connor M. Bjotvedt received his Master of Fine Arts in Writing from Spalding University. He was awarded the Charles E. Bull Creative Writing Scholarship for Poetry by Northern Arizona University where he received his Bachelor of Arts in English, Literature, and Creative Writing. Connor was a 2018 Pushcart Prize nominee and his work has appeared in Rain Taxi, the Santa Fe Literary Review, the Haiku Journal, Three Line Poetry, catheXis Northwest Press, and The Wayfarer, among others. 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. A CONTEMPORARY PORTRAIT OF THE SOUTHWEST is available on March 2, 2021 as a paperback and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
James Baldwin. As a gag dish, I’d present him with hominy grits, which he hated. Then I’d bust out the steak and fixings. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? I often fear that the data I’m using may be inaccurate or inadequate. To overcome it, I end up obsessively rechecking everything. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? I so wanted to meet and spend time with Toni Morrison. She would have been a great mentor to me. What books are on your nightstand? Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward; Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel; and Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I keep asking myself why all of the time. So, yes, it’s the question mark. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Probably “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Catcher in the Rye.” What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My trusty reclinable office chair. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? I’d quote Lydia Davis: “Do what you want to do, and don’t worry if it’s a little odd or doesn’t fit the market.” Does writing energize or exhaust you? Writing memoir content is draining, while sci-fi or speculative writing is thrilling. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Believing that the quality of their work and even their self worth are defined by the number of rejections from writing contests. What is your writing Kryptonite? I’m not sure what this question means. What weakens or undermines my writing? I guess I tend to go too fast, making lots of little typos that cost me dearly during the proofing process. I must slow down and perhaps follow Hemingway’s advice by writing and rewriting each sentence dozens of times, one at a time, until I’m absolutely sure that it is correct. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. When I become bored with an author’s extensive treatment of the mundane or pornographic violence, I lose the ability to power through and simply put the book aside. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Absolutely, especially when writing nonfiction instructional or technical material. Whoever wrote the dictionary on my bookshelf was probably braindead by the time it was done. Lol. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I’m a longtime friend of Marita Golden. Her prose is smooth like Agatha Christie’s. The work of both writers, as different as they are, have validated my own tendency to lean toward an elegant style. 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? Each book must live his or her own life, although all them may have similarities in terms of values and style! How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? I learned to maintain orderly records and an index as I’m writing. This allows me to easily check the authorities that I’m working on. I also learned to save discarded text, which may find new life somewhere else in the narrative, or in another book or story. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Attending writing conferences that featured published writers on panels that shared their experiences and entertained questions from attendees. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Charles Bukowski and Junot Diaz. I almost threw away their books. I’m sure I discarded Oscar Wao. I still haven’t finished that book but I eventually came to appreciate Diaz’s other work. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? After a LIFE Magazine photojournalist published the frame-by-frame police killing of Billie Furr (an in-law cousin of mine) in the summer of 1967, I began writing protest essays in high school that distrubed my teachers but inspired my classmates. I was only 17 but discovered the power of my written expression. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Spoiler alert, imminent shameless promotion ahead: My own first novel, Brotherhood of the Gods, was not accepted by numerous agents and publishers--perhaps a dozen. I then published it myself. I probably should have continued to pitch it but I didn’t know the business. At any rate, the people who read it loved it. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? A moose, a bull moose with huge antlers. Solitary, quiet, but strong. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Their gawdawful racism, bigotry, and foul behavior have provided some wonderful storylines that are filled with conflict and drama. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? OMG! I must have several partially completed stories and about three books. What does literary success look like to you? When a friend genuinely likes an unpublished story I’ve shared. That feels like love. After much consideration, we have decided to participiate in the SMOL Fair. SMOL Fair is an alternative, virtual book fair that will be 'live' from March 3-7, 2021. Many of our books will be on sale during the book festival because we want everyone to have access to the book discounts we'd normally offer at an in-person book fair. Several of our authors will be hosting live readings throughout the duration of the book fair. You can find the events schedule for the SMOL Fair here. You can also learn about each author and event directly below. NOTE: Not all readings are listed here. Some authors may have opted to give a reading after the deadline for this post. Please check the SMOL Fair's Events Calendar for the most up-to-date schedule.  The Messiah's Customary Diner Booth Reading with Marion Deal Time: Mar 5, 2021, 06:30 PM Central Time (US and Canada) Sit. The Messiah's Customary Diner Booth welcomes you. Yes, you: no matter what truth you're spinning, so long as you're spinning it earnestly. You've got a place with these poems cast as an intellectual fossil record of shit and summoners and something that Rimbaud would probably like, poems as a gathering ground for Soviet spies and child prophets, disaffected professors and radiant spinsters. Share a soggy grilled cheese with drifters who could just as easily show up enshrined on a tablet of Sumerian pictograms as lounge in a 50s diner. We're open all night Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84461815184?pwd=ajZHZzZEK0tFU3F5VFZ0OTd1Q3VxUT09 Meeting ID: 844 6181 5184 Passcode: CuQWk6  A Reading with Christopher G. Bremicker Day & Time: Wednesday, March 3rd at 7:00 PM Eastern Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84859950320?pwd=Mlp3dVpuTnpaRmJVYlV4R1ZUSVJSUT09 Eagle Claw and Other Stories is a work of great variety. The title story is fiction about the aborted mission of the U.S. Army’s Special Forces to free the hostages held in Tehran under the Carter administration.  A Reading with Cameron Miller Day & Time: Friday, March 5th at 5:00 PM Eastern A reading of poems paired with photographs from the 2020 publication, “Cairn, poems and essays.” Email rcammiller@gmail to receive a zoom invitation to the reading. Readers looking for an engaging and spiritual journey will find comfort in CAIRN: POEMS AND ESSAYS. After decades of reading and ogling poetry, Miller made room among the novels, newspaper columns, and preaching to hone poems amidst the wild beauty of northernmost Vermont and the pastoral beauty of the Finger Lakes. The elements of nature are this poet's paint but he also paddles a gondola through the dark channels of the mind while lighting the way.  Reading from The Vigilance of Stars with Patricia O’Donnell Day & Time: Mar 4, 2021 01:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Synopsis: Four characters’ lives intertwine in this novel, spanning the 1950’s through the present. Kiya, a young hair stylist, is taken in by her former boyfriend’s mother as she struggles through a difficult pregnancy, and grief over her brother’s suicide. The book moves toward a confrontation with both life and death on an isolated island in rural Maine. Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://maine.zoom.us/j/82185283100?pwd=cXh3UmhtMEwwbXVvOVV3dEhibXJFQT09 Password: 296597 Or Telephone: US: +1 312 626 6799 or +1 646 876 9923 or +1 301 715 8592 or +1 253 215 8782 or +1 346 248 7799 or +1 408 638 0968 or +1 669 900 6833 Meeting ID: 821 8528 3100 From a Polycom or other H.323 room system that is not a member of a video conference, click call on the remote and dial one of the following IP addresses followed by # the meeting ID and # again: 162.255.36.11 (US East) 162.255.37.11 (US West) Meeting ID: 821 8528 3100 Password: 296597  A Reading with Joseph Allen Costa Day & Time: Thursday, March 4th 6:00 PM Eastern Built on stunning character development, plot, and unflinching emotion, Joseph Allen Costa delivers stunning prose perfect for the times. The settings, both personal and universal, are not only tangible in the imagination, but they invite the reader in to experience stories from the heart.The twelve-story, linked collection, COMETS, follows through-line protagonist, Roberto, as he grows from a working teenager influenced by the men in his father’s cabinet shop, to a disillusioned 42, unwittingly trying to fill his father’s shoes, while searching for a deeper understanding of himself and his life. Set in Ybor City, Tampa’s Latin Quarter, the stories capture a microcosm of blue collar problems, with implications that go beyond racial, economic and cultural boundaries, illuminating a greater understanding of the human experiences we all share, while loss of childhood resonates as an overarching theme. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81374267510?pwd=aFpjMFdRWU8rbzQxWFZtWnE0UU9WUT09 Meeting ID: 813 7426 7510 Passcode: 720341  Alli Spotts DeLazzer Reads from MeaningFULL: 23 Life-Changing Stories of Conquering Dieting, Weight, & Body Image Issues Day & Time: Wednesday, March 3, 2021 at 7pm EST/4pm PST Where: Where else? Zoom! THIS MEETING WILL BE RECORDED AND LIKELY SHARED ON SOCIALS https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87145303043 Meeting ID: 871 4530 3043 / Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kvQ9VzEC  A Reading with Rosalia Scalia When: Fri March 5 at 2:30 pm ET (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81219388790?pwd=OHpsTXJnSVE5Ym8rNForaldTRTd3dz09 Meeting ID: 812 1938 8790 Passcode: 790397 One tap mobile Meeting ID: 812 1938 8790 Passcode: 790397 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdsFLs0v9l  Tyler James Russell—SMOL Reading Day & Time: Friday, March 5th 6:00 PM Eastern A reading and QA session as part of the SMOL Book Fair! Please visit TylerJamesRussell.com for more information and a link to the Zoom reading. tylerjamesrussell.com  A Reading from the Forthcoming Book, Pacific, by Trevor J. Houser Day & Time: Friday, March 5th 7:00 PM Eastern A reading from my debut novel, Pacific. Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? Pacific by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son’s life…even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run. Info to follow.  Reading from “The Realm of Blessing" with Wayne Berard-Daniel Day & Time: Friday, March 5th 7:00 PM Eastern Join reading from my book of poetry, “The Realm of Blessing." Visit www.waynedanielberard.com  A Reading with Thomas Calder, Author of The Wind Under the Door Day & Time: March 5th, 2021 08:00 PM Eastern Time Starting over is always easier among strangers. For Ford Carson, the process meant leaving behind the waves of South Florida in order to forge a new life as a visual artist in the mountains of North Carolina. At the peak of his reinvention, he meets Grace Burnett—a young, wealthy Texas transplant in the midst of her own transformation. A mutual infatuation develops. But when Grace’s estranged husband arrives complications ensue. Matters only worsen when Ford’s own estranged son announces plans to visit for his eighteenth birthday. Thomas Calder’s debut novel explores the lasting impact of broken bonds and the unanticipated ways the past haunts those on the run. Join Zoom Meeting https://us04web.zoom.us/j/77985213529?pwd=OGZvSC95K0Qxd1pVMmkwdU5Nd3huQT09 Meeting ID: 779 8521 3529 Passcode: PP4W8V  A Reading from A WINTER NIGHT with Anne Leigh Parrish Day & Time: Saturday, March 6th 3:00 PM Eastern Email to anneleighparrish@comcast for the Zoom link More Info: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/reading-from-a-winter-night-tickets-143390088615?utm_source=eventbrite&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=post_publish&utm_content=shortLinkNewEmail 34-year-old Angie Dugan struggles with many things-anxiety, her career as a social worker in a retirement home, and her difficult family. Her biggest struggle, though, is finding love. When she meets Matt, she's swept away by his attention. As issues from his past come up she wonders if she can trust him...  Jason Graff reads from heckler Day & Time: Saturday, March 6th 7:00 PM EST Author Jason Graff will be reading selected sections from his Pen Faulkner nominated novel heckler Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88903246118?pwd=cFN0MlcxM21tMmVXK3ZlS3dWbDRoUT09  Poetry from Kathmandu by Anuja Ghimire Day & Time: Sunday, 11:30 AM Contact poet on Twitter for more information. @GhimireAnuja Kathmandu is the reflection of an immigrant mother raising her children in America. Memories of the poet's home, Kathmandu, creep into every moment as she attempts to find a place in her new world. Ghimire flails with grace -- her words work to make sense of the new all while trying to reckon with the past.  Author Reading: Even the Milky Way is Undocumented / Amy Shimshon-Santo Sunday, March 7 from 2:00 - 3:00pm PST Poet Amy Shimshon-Santo reads from Even The Milky Way is Undocumented with Maverick writer Gayle Brandeis. Email shimshona4@gmail.com for link, or DM @amyshimshon on Twitter, or @shimshona on Instagram. Streaming link via Streamyard for Broadcast on YouTube and FB: https://streamyard.com/yihhka88s7 Many of these titles will be available at discounted prices on our site from March 3rd-7th.
 PORTLAND, OR; March 23, 2021--Unsolicited Press announces the release of HOUSE OF THE SILVERFISH by Elizabeth Vignali, a poetry collection. 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.
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 (Unsolicited 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. HOUSE OF THE SILVERFISH is available on February 28, 2021 as a paperback (132 p.; 978-1-950730-73-5) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. Author is available for virtual media events. 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. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I would like to have the poet Li Bai over for dinner, and talk about swords, calligraphy, and maybe corvids (I think he would very much like the research that has been done on corvid brain function since the Tang dynasty). Because the conversation is the priority, I believe I would make my standby of unsauced pasta and egg, with the potential addition of Dino Buddies microwaveable chicken nuggets. We could sit on the counter and eat. This is optimal dinner, with optimal human. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? The fear of misrepresenting an experience or idea. I don't want to write something in ignorance that contributes to a societal prejudice or that streamlines a complex reality. I try to write, first and foremost, from what I intimately understand. If I'm writing from a perspective, featuring a character, or engaging with an idea that's not coming from my direct experience, I try to do in-depth research so that I'm better able to capture it. I try to continually ask myself whether I'm the best person to tell a given story. I want to be able to create casts of characters that aren't carbon copies of myself. I think that it's important that white writers, especially, research and engage with people and writers of color to write casts that aren't solely white. That might mean cowriting, hiring beta readers, and/or engaging with extensive interview/research processes. But I also understand that there are some experiences and cultural contexts that writers of color, or writers who come from those contexts, are going to be able to capture with an attention that's far richer and more sensitive than I could. While I think it's important for white writers to do better and write better non-white characters, I don't want to try to tell a story that just isn't mine to tell. So I listen and endeavor to seek out non-white perspectives on white people writing characters of color (the Tumblr blog Writing With Color is a really spectacular resource for anyone wanting to write characters of color: featuring mods from a variety of backgrounds talking about ideas ranging from tropes to stay away from to ways of describing skin color/hair texture to accurate representation of non-European cultures). And I'm continually learning from comrades of color who talk about what they, personally, might want to see from white writers -- one opinion does not speak for an entire group of people, but every thought I hear is another piece of data that I can learn from as I put effort into doing better and sharing what I learn with other people in my community. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Ahh. The time-honored & difficult question: life goals or wife goals? It's hard to separate people who are crushes from people who I would like to be, especially considering that many of the people who I thought were crushes before my transition turned out to be gender goals. A combination of both life goals and wife goals is Dominic Seneschal, from Ada Palmer's brilliant sci fi series Terra Ignota. He is a philosopher, genderqueer lad, and swordsman who embodies ideals of quick wit and quick rapier. I also have a crush on Ada Palmer herself -- professor of history? creator of exquisitely detailed fantasy worlds? imaginer of utopian futures? My type entirely. What books are on your nightstand? Looking at my nightstand, I see Alberto Giacometti's "Notes Sur Les Copies" -- a set of journal excerpts and interviews about the artist's views of creative exploration and growth through copying the work of others. I also see a children's edition of Die Beliebtesten Märchen der Gebrüder Grimm with which I'm practicing my German, and a copy of Taliessin Through Logres, a fabulous set of Arthurian epic poems by C.S. Lewis' friend Charles Williams. (The poems are so rich with allusion and labyrinthine stanzas that Lewis published a companion to the work to explain the thick mythological web the text is situated in; certainly the sort of friend I would like to have.) Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Semicolon, hands down. How else can I connect threads of thoughts and associations that extend rhizomically through disciplines when brain go brrrrr and there is the need to convey thematic association and/or refrain from breaking the rhythm and connection of a sentence without adding commas or creating an insufferable, inconceivable run-on? Also, I just like the combination of crispness and fluidity; semicolons look like they would have a good mouth texture were one to eat them like chips. ;;;;;;;;;;;;; What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I was a fool in high school who read every assigned book when it might have been more productive of me to spend that time sketching strip mall architecture or getting into fights behind the bike racks. Liminality, dead people, and lives in paper were home and safety, though; consuming everything in front of me as profligately as I could was a ballast at a time when things were very unstable internally and externally. I've been able to become more productively critical of the media that I consume now that I'm not relying on it so intensely as a survival mechanism, which is positive for myself, my community, and my writing. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? The paper Rimbaud head I cut out and pasted on my first notebook in 2016. It fell unperceived from grace, likely at a Jewel Osco somewhere in the Kenosha, Wisconsin area. It may be floating there still. If you're out there, paper Rimbaud head: I salute you. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? "But motive is a matter of belief; you would not want to do anything unless you believed it possible and meaningful. And belief must be belief in the existence of something; that is to say, it concerns what is real. So ultimately, freedom depends on the real." -- The Outsider, Colin Wilson Does writing energize or exhaust you? It depends on the sort of writing, and the time. Poetry is usually more exhausting for me than prose: if I'm writing a poem, it's a concentrated expression of emotion where every line, juxtaposition of word, and presentation of sound, space, and semantic color on the page is subjected to intense scrutiny. Poetry is where a singular and visceral confrontation with the part of myself that feels -- something which I'm still not comfortable with -- takes place. It's all here, all at once, and all being communicated within the space of a few pages; like how a slow motion camera allows visualization of components and movement that might not be visible at faster speeds. That's exhausting, but in a gratifying way. Though I still care about craft and truth when I'm writing prose of some sort -- whether it's fiction or nonfiction or somewhere between the two -- there's more time for the emotion, idea, or dynamic to unfold when what I'm writing is 12, 25, 200 pages. That prosebound process of meeting characters who emerge like Athena, and watching as they claim space to grow and fail, is energizing. I know I've created a story I can be proud of when just thinking about the characters makes me electrically happy, and when considering the components of plot makes me want to hasten to my keyboard even if external circumstances mean that writing right here, right now isn't possible. It's more energizing to engage with emotion and ideal when it's more diffuse. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I can speak to traps that I've fallen into and that people in my writing community have as well, hoping that they apply on a more universal level. A major one is looking to the outside for reasons and affirmations for art. A community of fellow artists and writers who can challenge you and your work is vital. But developing and inhabiting a rich inner world from which comes conviction, joy, and vision for what you do will increase the efficacy of artistic comrades honing and disrupting your work, because they'll have good material to work with. What is your writing Kryptonite? Being in love? I genuinely think so. Beyond extreme circumstances like chronic illness flare-up and hospitalization, or housing instability, whose impediment to writing is more about their limitation of time and energy I can allocate, being in love is the next greatest culprit. I'm 19, and I don't know jackshit about what a committed, healthy partnership should be. I'm also aromantic, so there's a whole process of 1) getting close to a person, 2) attempting to figure out whether the person is interested in a committed intimate relationship more like a Star Trek t'hy'la bond than conventions of romance or friendship, and 3) realizing that they're not and pining after them until I am able to jam the feeling into a few works of art and move beyond it. That is distracting and inconvenient, to say the least. It's full of emotions I do not particularly understand or want to act upon, but which prove very persistent and frequently lead to interludes of staring out the window longingly and listening to my hanahaki playlist instead of typing or scribbling, which is far more important in the end. It's incredibly troublesome, and I'd rather not have crushes or love interests at all. Dear Ghost Writers In the Sky: please consider taking me out of all romantic plotlines for an indefinite period of time, and instead devote my character solely to plotlines involving revenge, betrayal, ethical use of power, and the temptation towards madness that's been ingrained into our culture's view of creative work. Please? Thank you. I'd like to get more writing done. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. Sometimes. It makes me sad. If I can, I try to find an inspiring bit of library architecture wherever I'm living; architecture built to evoke & house the feelings we have while reading is almost as good as the real thing. Otherwise (and frequently concurrently), I pick up fanfiction about some of the characters I adore most; the themes and tropes of this distinctive cultural world are comforting and I can sink into them even if I can't devote my whole focus to them. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I'm resistant to making statements like this. I've been criticized for how I interact with emotions all my life -- I'm not feeling enough; I'm feeling the wrong things; I'm a robot; I'm unable to dialogue and interact with my emotions. (On one memorable occasion, someone called me a sociopath; in the spirit of Warhol's commercialization and commodification of emotion, I borrowed a button maker from my engineering teacher and made a whole slew of buttons emblazoned with "Marion Deal is my Favorite Sociopath," then handed them out to all the students and teachers I could find at high school.) I'm on the autism spectrum, which modulates and affects how and when I experience emotion; I care a lot about things that many people wouldn't think worthy of anger or tears or going nonverbal, and it's hard for me to figure out the appropriate emotional response to things that people consider intuitive. (Note: it's my responsibility to ensure that my divergence doesn't harm others overmuch, and to understand the people in my community around me such that I might support them if I can.) But all this means that I don't think it's accurate or useful to make statements about what feeling an emotion strongly or weakly looks like. Everybody has different barometers by which they judge what "strong emotion" is relative to context including class, gender presentation, cultural background, and the sort of stimulus one might be responding to. I think that good writing comes less from experiencing emotion in a certain way, but rather from understanding how one, individually, interacts with emotion. So too, it emerges from becoming more comfortable with expression in both self & others by overcoming internalized biases about emotions typically considered "negative" or "irrational" when presented by certain people in certain circumstances. (E.g. stereotypes surrounding race or gender like the Angry Black Woman trope, a discomfort with men expressing emotion, or a judgement of intensity/type of emotion in neurodivergent people.) I think of Spock's character arc through the Star Trek original series and movies: he becomes better able to interact with his emotions and those of others by unlearning Vulcan biases towards his own human heritage and his crewmates. He'd be a better writer by the end of Star Trek IV than he was in the first season of The Original Series, I'd wager. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I'm friends with an absolutely absurd (and absurdist) short story writer, Markus Klimas, who is very discerning and frequently doesn't like, get, or write poetry of his own. Sending poetry to someone who has an active predisposition against poetry is a good challenge. I don't take any dislike of his personally, knowing that I'm shooting predisposed to miss, but it is a delight to have a safe space to have my work completely obliterated. Frequently his criticism, even if I don't wholly agree with his general philosophy towards poetry, helps me get out of a solipsistic isolated system of my own thoughts on the genre and how to articulate through it. Being able to perform at open mics (virtual, these days) with poet friends of mine is also a privilege: seeing words reach and illuminate in real time makes me better because it makes me want to connect to other people with my work, and become more human in the process of doing so. 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? Each book should be able to be read and enjoyed as its own entity, but I am hoping to create a loosely connected extended universe of sorts with my writing. Each book will serve as a raggedy flashlight beam in a surrealist world that contains havens for the dead and haunted, late-nite otherworldly diners at the intersection of traditions and times, languages nonexistent in our world (I am fond of con-langing, the process of constructing my own languages), and wandering artists and ghosts who construct momentary cathedrals with their words and who are forever oscillating between places lit and unlit. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? I feel much more confident that the oddments I write down can engage and matter to other people. The first book I published, Cool Talks, Dead I Guess (Bone and Ink Press, 2020), is... certainly bizarre. It's an amalgam of many of my hyperfixations and research topics: the intersection of ritual, obsession, "Greatness," and linguistic invocation, tied together by the continuous presence of the ghost of Jim Morrison. It also comes from an exceedingly personal place: my hyperfixations and fascinations are things I'm emotionally invested in and are a genuine attempt for me to communicate emotions in a way that makes sense to me, even though an infodump about the use of language in Confucian texts isn't listed in most "acceptable expression of emotion" categories. Seeing that someone could take this microcosm of myself that I put on a page and see enough value in it that they want to invest time and money to print it, and then hearing from people I've never met who reach out to tell me how much the book meant to them, has been heartening for me. Now that there's some concrete data that the things I write truly and deeply can in fact connect with other people -- data added to by the publication of Messiah, whose poems came into being when I was just beginning to write and in one of the worst depressive episodes of my life -- I am more confident in writing things oddly, rawly, and truly. I try to listen to myself more in the process, and care less about whether what I'm doing is something that's going to be "understandable," or "accessible," as long as it's true. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? I bought a cup of hot tea after a frigid outdoor LARP (Live Action Roleplaying event) at a Denny's when I was maybe 13 that ignited my love for all-nite diners and liminal spaces. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? I honestly can't think of one, even though I've returned to this question again and again. I've either liked an author, or I've not, or I've been marginally lukewarm about them. Those states haven't tended to change. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? The Renaissance Faire community that I grew up in has a certain tradition: the Bardic Ring. Rings are passed from generation to generation, along with a title: "the Steadfast," "the Musical," "the Keeper of History." When an artist, storyteller, or performer creates something that truly astonishes and touches another (especially a senior member of the community), the affected party may pass a ring on to the other creator. This might be one that they've worn for generations, or a new ring. When I was 14, I had been performing at the Faire for two years already, as well as writing and performing my art in other locales. A mentor and pillar of the community who I respect immensely stood at an end-of-day meeting, and began talking about a bardic ring she'd worn since she was young: the ring of the Wise Young Storyteller. This ring is traditionally given to someone who displays passion, relative wisdom, and desire to wreak change with creation. She talked about how she'd received it from her mentor, who'd received it from his mentor before him. And then she gave it to me, for the words that I'd been spinning in my performance at the Faire, in my poetry published and performed, and in the dialogues that I'd been sustaining with the community around me. It's a thin circlet of silver -- in her words, "It will bend, but will never break." I wear it proudly every day, a memory of the power my words have, and an impetus to keep the ring and the title in good stewardship until the time comes for me to pass them on. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? The Last Days of New Paris, by China Miéville. Surrealist artists and their sentient works of art joining forces to fight Nazis and demons in an alternate WWII-torn Paris? Brilliant, ravishing, labyrinthine. Precisely the sort of absurdity, worldbuilding, and stylistic boldness I crave. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? As a person, I think I am a flock of monstrous, many-eyed crows flapping around in a human suit, but as a writer I'm the fishman from Guillermo del Toro's film "The Shape of Water." What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? I don't think I owe them anything. I consider it a personal imperative to treat every character with compassion, even if they're despicable. But that obligation towards compassion and the attempt to illustrate truth extends to anyone I would meet: human, nonhuman, fictional, or otherwise. This isn't a compassion that means nonviolence or a mandate to avoid harm at all costs. Sometimes harm is necessary: both to humans and characters. Sometimes truth is about what's needed for the character, not what directly mirrors the person/people who the character is based on. I've not heard of a valid construct of absolute truth yet, so though I'm bound by my own experience and biases, I'm doing my best to write characters that are true to themselves, or my view of them, whose accuracy is rooted in my compassion for both the characters and the people they're based on. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? I have three major unpublished longform books: a surrealist novel set in a Paris of the Dead, a memoir/fever dream/treatise on language and philosophy, and a poetry book which attempts to capture the architecture and layout of a cathedral in poetic form. The surrealist novel delves into legacy, history, and perceptions of Greatness through prose, poetry, and maps, documents, and security footage of a meticulously mapped otherworld. The memoir is comprised of a constructed language (created by me), prose-poems, thoughts on philosophy of language, and photography. Another fantastical novel exploring what it means to be coming of age during a time of revolution is in the works. If you, dear reader, know anyone who'd be interested in the interdisciplinary amalgams above... send them to me! What does literary success look like to you? I want to be able to write every day, engage with the study and creation of words as my mode of making a living, and know -- at least every once and a while -- that my work has reflected, challenged, touched, or engaged with people, individually, or a People, structurally, in a fashion that makes things better. What’s the best way to market your books? I'm grateful to have a supportive artistic community ranging from my fellow actors at the Bristol Renaissance Faire to a set of poets in Paris. I promote through my social media accounts -- there's a lot of great people and artists in the indie lit scene who have a presence on Instagram, and being able to connect with them and their goodness of spirit is not only professionally positive, but personally fantastic. Having a central website -- as I do, www.mariondeal.com -- is also a fabulous place to refer people after readings, via business cards, or after other associated artistic events like performance art. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? My first thought about this question is... *shrug, error 404, gender not found* I'm genderfluid, masculine leaning. I grew up socially presenting and being responded to as a young woman, so that's the degree of social response to gender that I have the most experience with. My experience in the past year and a half, though, has included being responded to either as a man (with masks and presentation cues, I can "pass" as "male," though that's not always my goal), gender = ???? (a response of what-the-fuck in everyday life that I prize), or a transmasculine/gender-non-conforming person in queer spaces. The idea of "the opposite sex" really doesn't apply here, but I do try to represent characters like me -- people who occupy spaces between the binary masculine and feminine, trans men, butch women -- alongside people who don’t occupy those gender spaces. When I write people who don't necessarily conform to my gender identity or identities that I've been perceived as (like trans women, or cis men), I try to rely upon the experience of my close friends and chosen family who've shared some of their inner worlds and experiences/experiments with how they're perceived in various scenarios. Trying to take that data into account, and sharing my work with people I trust who can challenge or suggest details to make those characters richer and more accurate, is a different process than writing from my own gender experience. It involves methodical listening and research, collecting and collating vast amounts of data, and asking people questions about their stories and experience, all things which are among my favorite pursuits. I'd say that's the most important thing about writing characters from gender identities who don't align with mine. It is difficult, but it doesn't feel draining most of the time. What did you edit out of this book? These are all poems I wrote in high school. They are some of the first poems I wrote, and some of the first poems I workshopped with enough positive response that I felt confident in being "Someone Who Writes." That being said, these poems came from a whole fray of paper and herd of notebooks. There are a lot of truly heinous pieces in those notebooks; mournful self-indulgent poems about loneliness and prairie flora, me experimenting with center-justified text (gasp!) and forms that patently did not work, me writing poems that were cheap Rimbaud, Morrison, and Neruda knock-offs. I don't begrudge myself those poems. They were necessary for me to grow as a poet and to get the confidence in my work as a vector for emotion that's kept me writing three years later. Sometimes I find a line or a stanza in the flotsam of that time that I can cannibalize and use in a poem even now. But I am certainly not going to air the outtakes for public consumption. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I'd be an academic -- which is something I'm working towards, though I'm still an undergraduate. I'm hoping to be able to knit a golden braid of psycholinguistics, poetics, translation, and Buddhist philosophy. My research, at least right now, focuses on emergent systems and the use of language in ritual and revolution; specifically the use of poetry in 19th-century French anarchism & queer spaces.  PORTLAND, OR; February 23, 2021 — Unsolicited Press announces the immediate release of The Messiah’s Customary Diner Booth, a poetry collection, by Marion Deal. Sit. The Messiah’s Customary Diner Booth welcomes you. Yes, you: no matter what truth you’re spinning, so long as you’re spinning it earnestly. You’ve got a place with these poems cast as an intellectual fossil record of shit and summoners and something that Rimbaud would probably like, poems as a gathering ground for Soviet spies and child prophets, disaffected professors and radiant spinsters. Share a soggy grilled cheese with drifters who could just as easily show up enshrined on a tablet of Sumerian pictograms as lounge in a 50s diner. We’re open all night.
About Marion Deal Marion Deal chases emergent things and poetic beasts from Nepali monasteries to Jim Morrison’s grave, and is currently braiding together psycholinguistics, poetics, and Buddhist scholarship at the University of Rochester to craft an elegant tool of inquiry. Two chapbooks of theirs are forthcoming: Cool Talks, Dead I Guess (Bone & Ink Press, 2019) and The Messiah’s Customary Diner Booth (Unsolicited Press, 2021). Their poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as The Rumpus, The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review, The Seventh Quarry (UK), Chaleur Magazine, Yes Poetry, and FIVE:2:ONE, among others, and have been nationally recognized by the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers and the National YoungArts Foundation. Their translation work was longlisted for the Young Poets Network 2019 translation challenge. They have performed they work in French, Italian, and English at venues from a Shandong Province mountain range to the Baryshnikov Arts Center, and are a proud veteran poetry whore of Paris’ Le Bordel de la Poésie. 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 Messiah’s Customary Diner Booth is available on February 23, 2021 as a paperback (48 p.; 978-1-950730-68-1) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram.  PORTLAND, OR; February 9, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the much-anticipated debut of THE DISTANCE OF MERCY by Shelly Milliron Drancik. A story of human connection across the ethnic aisle, The Distance of Mercy centers on Nicolette, haunted by her mother’s death in postwar Vienna. As a young adult, she betrays her father by accepting money from her grandmother, a former Nazi supporter, to study the violin in Chicago in the late 60s. Nicolette is hired to work with Tillie, an African-American widow who lost her young husband in the war. Through many barriers, an unexpected friendship develops. While Nicolette’s length of stay in America is brief, the impact of her arrival and the decision she must make before returning to Vienna are life-altering for both women.
Told in parallel narratives and against the backdrop of historical events, the story explores the depths of love, loss, and buried grief and uncovers the lingering and terrible effects of war and racial injustice. About Shelly Milliron Drancik Shelly Milliron Drancik earned her MFA in fiction from Queens University of Charlotte. Her short fiction has appeared in various literary journals and her screenplay, based on this novella, has earned a number of awards. She lives with her children in Chicago. 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. Unsolicited Press has social media accounts on Instagram (@unsolicitedpress) and Twitter (@unsolicitedP). THE DISTANCE OF MERCY is available on February 9, 2021 as a paperback (250p.; 978-1-50730-59-9) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I would love to cook dinner for Richard Bruatigan and I think that I would make him dandelion soup. I want to bug him about his book, Please Plant this Book. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Getting started. My biggest fear begins and ends with the words, “is this idea good enough?” How I combat my fear is by looking for other media which aligns to what I’m trying to do; I look for similar pieces and people and then I just start working. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Robert Langden from Dan Brown’s novel series; I have wanted to become Robert my whole life--it’s the closest thing I have to a crush. What books are on your nightstand? Astoria by Malena Morling and The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster by Richard Brautigan. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The semicolon, it is the most aesthetically pleasing piece of punctuation. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? To Kill a Mockingbird. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? South Mountain for being my home for so many months. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? True genius is just hard work. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Energize, I can write for 40 days and 40 nights without stopping to eat or drink. What are common traps for aspiring writers? Thinking that you have nothing to say. Everyone has a voice--learning how to wield it is the hard part. What is your writing Kryptonite? The fear of needing to get everything published. The fear of wasting my time. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes, it took me 9 years to read Jonathon Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. I could never make it past the first chapter. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Yes, writing is not always about sudden inspiration--passion comes in all shapes and sizes. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I had some very influential mentors circle in and out of my life over the years and the best advice they ever gave me was to at least write something that I’m interested in. That helped me form a style and voice that was unique to me and helped shape my later work, especially. 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 think that if I wrote another book in this vein I would want them to be interconnected. I think John may have more to say about his little slice of heaven in the Southwest. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Well, it wasn’t so much the publishing but my commitment to publishing. Turning writing into an actual 9-5 job for the course of 6-8 months really helped me change the way that I think about creative writing and the art of writing. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? The $8 it cost me to get Malena Morling’s Astoria at bookmans--her book changed my understanding of what lyric and descriptive poetry could be. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Jonathon Safran Foer What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? The first time I cussed in school. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Beasts of No Nation As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? An agave plant What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Well, I based my character off myself and James Woods in the movie Salvador; so, I guess I owe myself a beer and James Woods a movie ticket. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Three, and three that will never see the light of day. What does literary success look like to you? Finding the perfect home for your work. What’s the best way to market your books? Readings and alumni networks. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Getting the motivation right. Understanding their needs in relation to their desires. What did you edit out of this book?” Jeez, half the poems maybe. I found myself writing better versions of the pieces already in there and decided to go with the new work instead. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? Well, I’m a teacher so there’s that.  Andrew Brenza’s Spool is a reckoning of our diminished natural world through the register of a disjointed, smeared, and unraveling poetics. Consisting of a series of breathless lyrical and concrete poems, Spool strives to represent both nature’s beauty as well as the tragedy of its destruction, a destruction which is, ultimately, the destruction of ourselves. But the book does not descend entirely into despair, for the author’s novel approaches to poetic expression suggest an alternative way that humanity might imagine its place in the world, a way that fundamentally incorporates and enacts humanity’s vital connection to nature. It is through this alternative poetics that Brenza offers hope, albeit a difficult one, since it asks us not just to change the way we think about nature, but the way we think about and within language itself.
About Andrew Brenza Andrew Brenza is an American experimental poet and librarian. His recent chapbooks include Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), Bitter Almonds & Mown Grass (Shirt Pocket Press), Waterlight (Simulacrum Press), and Excerpt from Alphabeticon (No Press). His full-length collections of visual poetry include Gossamer Lid (Trembling Pillow Press), Automatic Souls (Timglaset Editions), Album, in Concrete (Alien Buddha Press) and Alphabeticon & Other Poems (RedFoxPress). Where to Buy SPOOL SPOOL is available directly from the publisher and all major retailers such as Amazon. Readers who prefer to shop at independent bookstores can buy a copy through Indiebound. An ebook is also available through Amazon's Kindle program.  PORTLAND, OR; JANUARY 26, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the much-anticipated debut of MeaningFULL: 23 Life-Changing Stories of Conquering Dieting, Weight, & Body Image Issues by Alli Spotts-De Lazzer, a nonfiction collaboration that takes on the normalized rhetoric of eating and body image.
A $702 billion global diet/nutrition and weight loss industry shows that people worldwide are devoted to achieving maximum health and their desired bodies. Yet mainstream approaches are failing these individuals, and sadly, science proves this. Intent on gaining the “health” and “happiness” that diets promise, consumers keep trying. They become sad and frustrated, believing they’re failing when they’re not. They simply need a legitimate, alternative path. Spotts-Delazzer’s book offers a new path. The inspiring book is a blend of motivational self-help, memoir, psychology, and health and wellness. Through the contributors’ diverse, real-life mini-memoirs followed by Spotts-De Lazzer’s commentaries, readers will learn about themselves and discover their unique, unconventional formulas for conquering their issues. Along the way, MeaningFULL will also guide them towards more self-appreciation, wellness, and fulfillment. About Alli Spotts-De Lazzer Alli Spotts-De Lazzer is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor, a “CEDS” Certified Eating Disorders Specialist, a CEDS Supervisor, and a person on the other side of her own decades-long struggle with food battles and body dislike. Alli has presented educational workshops at conferences, graduate schools, and hospitals; published articles in academic journals, trade magazines, and online information hubs; and appeared as an eating disorders expert on local news. Her professional-related volunteerism includes co-chairing committees for both the International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals and the Academy for Eating Disorders and creating #ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance!®, a series of public events sparking conversations about self-acceptance through fun, motivating messages. She was named the 2017 iaedp Member of the Year, and Mayor Garcetti declared July 13, 2017 “#ShakeIt for Self-Acceptance! Day” in the City of Los Angeles. 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. Unsolicited Press has social media accounts on Instagram (@unsolicitedpress) and Twitter (@unsolicitedP). MEANINGFULL: 23 LIFE-CHANGING STORIES OF CONQUERING DIETING, WEIGHT, & BODY IMAGE ISSUES is available on January 26, 2021 as a paperback (282 p.; 978-1-950730-69-8), audiobook (ACX), and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. ### Press only, Unsolicited Press Eric Rancino 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Alli Spotts-De Lazzer MeaningFULLread@gmail.com  Portland, OR— January 26, 2021 — Unsolicited Press Announces Availability of "The Omnipotent Sorcerer" By Roger Aplon. The Omnipotent Sorcerer by Roger Aplon is a poetry collection to be reckoned with -- touching on themes such as relationships, grief, politics, and other provoking topics.
Roger Aplon was a founder and managing editor of Chicago’s CHOICE Magazine with John Logan and Aaron Siskind. He has thirteen books published, twelve of which are poetry (most recently Mustering What’s Left Selected and New Poems 1976-2017). Intimacies (2006) is a book of prose. Aplon has received many awards and fellowships including an arts fellowship from the Helen Wurlitzer Foundation in Taos, New Mexico. Learn more at www.rogeraplon.com. THE OMNIPOTENT SORCEROR (978-1-950730-66-7) is available (paperback and ebook) directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. The author is available for media appearances, interviews, and readings. Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com.  Unsolicited Press announces a light-hearted and intellectual fireside chat featuring Raki Kopernik, Anne Leigh Parrish, and Lizz Schumer on January 30th, 2021 at 5 PM PST using Zoom. Kopernik, Parrish, and Schumer are known for their queer and feminist tones, often working to dismantle stereotypes often ascribed to men and women. Readers, writers, and the media are invited to watch the event. The authors will discuss a variety of topics and briefly read from one of their books. Details for how to join the discussion are listed at the end of this announcement. About the Authors Raki Kopernik is a queer, Jewish fiction and poetry writer. Her collection THE THINGS YOU LEFT contains thirty-seven stories built on magical realism and seemingly inconsequential moments between sweet and strange loners that meet in the space between the heart and the mind. She is also the author of The Memory House (The Muriel Press 2019) which was a finalist for both the Red Hen Press Nonfiction Award and the Minnesota Book Award, and The Other Body (Dancing Girl Press 2017). Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for fiction. She lives in Minneapolis. Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of eight previously published books: What Nell Dreams, a novella & stories (Unsolicited Press, 2020); Maggie’s Ruse, a novel, (Unsolicited Press, 2017); The Amendment, a novel (Unsolicited Press, 2017); Women Within, a novel (Black Rose Writing, 2017); By the Wayside, stories (Unsolicited Press, 2017); What Is Found, What Is Lost, a novel (She Writes Press, 2014); Our Love Could Light The World, stories (She Writes Press, 2013); and All The Roads That Lead From Home, stories (Press 53, 2011). Lizz Schumer penned BIOGRAPHY OF A BODY, a lyrical meander through what it means to be a messy, flawed, imperfect human. In personal essays and snippets of verse, it probes the influence of religion on a person’s psyche, how the legacy of traditional femininity work their way under the skin, and the many pitfalls of living in a female body. Schumer is the senior staff writer for Good Housekeeping, Prevention, and Woman’s Day and her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPo, Bon Appetit, The Spruce, VinePair, SELF, and others. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goddard College and is also the author of Buffalo Steel (Black Rose Writing 2013). Her essays, poetry, fiction, and hybrid text have appeared in Punchnel’s, Wordgathering, Ploughshares.com, Ghost City Review, Entropy Mag, and elsewhere. She teaches journalism and communications courses as an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Professional Studies and as a writing consultant at the NYC Writer’s Room. 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. Join Zoom Meeting Link: https://zoom.us/j/98832797405?pwd=TDFDQ09DU3J4UHZaVXQ5UlZveFlTQT09 Meeting ID: 988 3279 7405 Passcode: q9ket5  PORTLAND, OR; JANUARY 19, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the much-anticipated debut of Biography of a Body by Lizz Schumer. BIOGRAPHY OF A BODY is a lyrical meander through the development of a messy, flawed, imperfect human and what it means to live in a society that both pulls a person into itself and fiercely pushes back. In personal essays and snippets of verse that shift back and forth through time and place, it fidgets with the puzzle pieces of a life that are at once starkly unique and glaringly obvious.
The narrator probes the influence of religion on a person’s psychological development, how the legacy of traditional femininity works their way under her skin, and the many pitfalls of living in a body that doesn’t always conform to expectations, both from within and the world pressing on it. Follow the narrator as she grapples with an eating disorder that threatens to consume her body and soul, undergoes a sexual awakening that reverberates through her social structure and understanding of herself, tries to find her place in a world where the rules are always changing, and fumbles to understand how much of her personhood is a compilation of outside influences she can barely pinpoint, and how much is wholly her own. This is less a narrative than a trail of breadcrumbs through an experience, where strange things whisper from the shadows and draw the reader into the dappled darkness. Readers will find themselves wandering along with her, grasping onto vivid insights and suggestions of feelings that will stay with them until long after the last page is turned. About Lizz Schumer Lizz Schumer is the senior staff writer for Good Housekeeping, Prevention, and Woman’s Day and her freelance work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPo, Bon Appetit, The Spruce, VinePair, SELF, and others. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Goddard College and is also the author of Buffalo Steel (Black Rose Writing 2013). Her essays, poetry, fiction, and hybrid text have appeared in Punchnel’s, Wordgathering, Ploughshares.com, Ghost City Review, Entropy Mag, and elsewhere. She teaches journalism and communications courses as an adjunct professor at the New York University School of Professional Studies and as a writing consultant at the NYC Writer’s Room. 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. Unsolicited Press has social media accounts on Instagram (@unsolicitedpress) and Twitter (@unsolicitedP). BIOGRAPHY OF A BODY is available on January19, 2021 as a paperback (212 p.; 978-1-950730-70-4 ) and e-book. The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. An e-galley can be provided to those interested in partnering with us to promote the title. ### Press only, Unsolicited Press Eric Rancino 619.354.8005 marketing@unsolicitedpress.com For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts: Lizz Schumer schumeea@gmail.com If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I’d love to cook for Flannery O’Connor, though would worry about her dry comments regarding my lack of skill. Cornbread, sweet potatoes and chicken. Coconut cream pie, my Grandma Rose’s recipe. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? The fear of time. Nothing about my writing process is linear or structured, so it takes great amounts of time to complete a story or project. The only way to combat this fear is to accept it and to keep writing. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Chekhov What books are on your nightstand? Blue Nights by Joan Didion; Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout; Love Poems by Pablo Neruda; The Little Virtues by Natalia Ginzburg Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The question mark; literature and stories should ask us questions about ourselves and lives. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Ha! I don’t remember. If it was assigned, I most likely read it. Was one of those students. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My many little notebooks that I kept with me with jotted down observations, odd thoughts, and some of my children’s notes and drawings when they were younger. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? I write to discover what I know. Flannery O’Connor Does writing energize or exhaust you? Mostly it exhausts me. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I believe the most common one is the grand one that also trapped me - wanting to publish before your work is ready. What is your writing Kryptonite? When I allow the outside world’s opinion of what life should look like to come before my own. Have you ever gotten writer’s block? I’m not sure if it’s writer’s block or writer’s doubt, but I’ve certainly had those moments. My remedy is to get something on the page, even if it’s a few sentences or thoughts, or to work on edits. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I met Kelly Simmons, author of Wives of Billie’s Mountain and a number of short stories, at Queens University of Charlotte when we were earning our MFA’s. Kelly’s insight and tireless eye have been a constant part of my writing process. Kelly’s continuous support was crucial to the publication of this novella, and she’s a kick-ass kind of friend. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? My first writing class. It was a general fiction class, an eight week course, a couple hundred dollars. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? W.G. Sebald and Richard Yates. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? When I was young, we’d go to my father’s softball games (he was on three teams). I had been playing with a black kid around my age and I remember an adult, not sure who he was, telling me I shouldn’t be playing with him. This adult was trying to use language to influence a child. But that didn’t make sense to me and I kept on playing. We don’t have to let other people’s language have power over us. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? The Third Man by Graham Greene As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? A bird, one that soars high and can see the view from far above, capturing the full picture. What does literary success look like to you? Readers taking something of emotional value from what I have written. What’s the best way to market your books? In a perfect world hire a publicist! What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Many authors write authentically and beautifully about characters of their opposite sex. I find most everything about it quite difficult. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I’d be a dress designer or a therapist.  PORTLAND, OR; JANUARY 12, 2021--Unsolicited Press announces the much-anticipated debut of The Animal Within by Kathrine Yets. The Animal Within is filled with poems that want to swim together, focusing on animal and human nature. A few are ekphrastic, based on photography by Jaimie Huycke and Dennis Liddell. Dive in and readers find a world where horses speak their minds, crawdaddies sing, and mermaids find lust. Wolves howl “ahwoo at the full strawberry harvest moon in June,” and birds do more than flap their wings, but rather create a voice for the oppressed. Humans step in, personas based off the author, and consider loss, depression, and love— inner-self mixed with creature habits— scratching down a lover’s back or crying in a zoo. One persona connects with water, skinny-dipping her way into a galaxy reflection, “as quiet as you would expect it to be [she] sends a ripple through the moon.” Hawaiian Goddesses tell their story about how the Yoni Crater came to be with a crash. Nature takes note and gets noticed, exploring transcendental and organic aspects. “The stream has no objection” as the poet takes liberty in playing with ideas of what it might be saying. A divine devotion to creatures large and small— flora and fauna finding a voice among calm and chaos, depending on the scene created. Each poem cups a piece of life— ideas not too far fetched— mundane and supernatural. With sounds all around, the author uses anaphora, alliteration, assonance, and other devices to give these animals and personas personality of their own. This chapbook implores readers to take a hiatus, step outside of themselves, and experience the animal within.
About Kathrine Yets Kathrine Yets lives and teaches in Wisconsin. Her works can be found in various literary magazines. She has two published chapbooks: The Animal Within and So I Can Write. In 2017, she won the Jade Ring Award and wears the ring proudly on her right hand each and every day. When she is not writing or teaching, she can be found at the park swinging on swings or taking a nap under a tree. She loves spending time with her Brad at home or running around the city. Her worlds right now are her nephews, Sweet Baby James and Cameron. 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. Unsolicited Press has social media accounts on Instagram (@unsolicitedp) and Twitter (@unsolicitedP). The Animal Within is available on January 12, 2021 as a paperback (978-1-950730-98-8) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram.  PORTLAND, OR; JANUARY 12, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the much-anticipated debut of Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple by Laura Kiesel. Kiesel plumbs the depths of familial dysfunction, and the wretched inheritance of addiction, thoroughly and with impressive nuance in Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple, combining integrity and personal grit that’s interwoven throughout her lyrical style. She writes beautifully about her fractured relationship with her mother, and the ripple effect it has had throughout the rest of her life. Her work is an unflinching examination of the erotic implications of romantic relationships and filled with visually exhilarating metaphors and analogies.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Kiesel describes religious rituals and makes use of Christian symbols, while referencing Biblical figures and stories, in ways that are simultaneously subversive and familiar. Illness and death are common themes in her work, whom Kiesel often personifies and treats as old friends--more accurately, rivals or frenemies--competing for her time and attention and that of her loved ones. Instead of keeping them at arm’s length, Kiesel embraces them and the macabre reminders her daily life offers her of her own and others’ shared mortality and finiteness. Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple does not demur in its assessment of the self and society but instead navigates the trials and tribulations of the human condition with visceral astuteness. About Laura Kiesel 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. 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. Unsolicited Press has social media accounts on Instagram (@unsolicitedpress) and Twitter (@unsolicitedP). Swallowing the Stem of Adam’s Apple is available on January 12, 2021 as a paperback (48p.; 978-1-950730-72-8) and e-book (all major retailers). The title is distributed to the trade by Ingram. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I’d roast a chicken for Guillaume Apollinaire. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? It used to be the blank page. Now, I enjoy the creative act too much to be afraid of it. If the result sucks, then so be it, I’ll try again. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? The brilliant Mary Ellen Solt. What books are on your nightstand? Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The hyphen, because it can break as well as unite. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? The Catcher in the Rye: Too whiny! What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? The stars. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Get over yourself and write! Does writing energize or exhaust you? Definitely, energizes. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I wish I knew! What is your writing Kryptonite? The myriad little responsibilities and obligations of adult life. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? I can’t say that I have. There’s just too much good stuff out there. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I don’t think writers are any more or less sensitive than anyone else. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? The validation from wonderful poets such as Michael Sikkema, Megan Burns, and Derek Beaulieu, who have all published my work at one time or another, has been invaluable to me. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? It relaxed me a bit and gave me confidence to continue to try new things in my writing. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? The money I spent to purchase a copy of Emmett Williams’ Anthology of Concrete Poetry. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? I struggled with Pound for a while when I was young. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I remember reading The Hobbit as a boy one summer evening. Dusk was falling. I was outside on the patio and utterly transported. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Fiasco by Lem As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? The firefly, for sure. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? As a poet focused on issues of language, I don't really create characters.do this. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Too many! What does literary success look like to you? For me, literary success is simply being able to contribute to the world of literature. I am honored and humbled to have been given the opportunity to publish a number of poetry collections. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? As a poet focused on issues of language, I don't really do this. What did you edit out of this book?” The bad poems, I hope.  PORTLAND, OR; January 1, 2021—Unsolicited Press announces the ebook release of FISHERMEN;S FINGERS by S.B. Borgersen as a teaser to her upcoming flash fiction collection. Fishermen’s Fingers peeks into the underbelly of a remote coastal community, revealing how poverty, an unwanted pregnancy, and a bad start in life can lead to a precarious adulthood for those who are different, like Lenny.
There are no real worries in small communities where houses are not locked and children are sent alone to the store for a loaf of bread, but when 10-year-old Betty isn’t in her usual seat at school, her teacher, Miss Watson, has to explain to students the perils of talking to strangers. Like most aftermaths, this becomes a story of ‘if-onlys,’ where naivety and trust blind those who should have seen, should have known. But where strong bonds of friendship, love and caring are never far away. 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. She is a loyal member of The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and an enthusiastic member of the international online writers' group for expats, Writers Abroad. Sue lives in a crumbling old house on the shores of Nova Scotia with her patient husband and a clutch of lovable rowdy dogs. She has two middle-aged children. 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. FISHERMEN'S FINGERS is available on January 1, 2021 as an ebook through all major ebook retailers and the publisher. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I’d like to make homemade pasta for Joan Didion. I can see her influence in my meandering sentences, my sense of place, and the way I want my readers to feel my words as much as read them. I don’t know if she likes pasta, but the alchemy of making dough out of flour, oil, and egg, then the meditative repetition of rolling and cutting it is the sort of zen prep work that would feel appropriate for the moment. I’d serve it in a cacio e pepe style with a big, bold red wine because everything’s better with a glass of assertive Bordeaux. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Like many authors, the blank page is my biggest enemy. Getting started is always the hardest part for me, especially when I don’t have an external deadline to hit. My writing group is a great antidote to that. For the past three years or so, a group of five women and I have met every other week (virtually, lately) to read and critique each other’s work. The impetus to have something to share with them gets me past that blank page barrier, and their supportive feedback keeps me going. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? This changes constantly! It seems that every time I read a new book, I fall briefly in love with that author and those characters. But one writer I’ve admired since grad school is Lidia Yuknavitch. Her book, The Chronology of Water, was the first non-traditional narrative I’d ever read and I immediately felt at home there. Before I read her work, I was pursuing a poetry concentration, but reading Yuknavitch showed me that there didn’t have to be firm lines, or any lines at all, between poetry and prose. It broke open those false boundaries in my own work, and it’s never been the same. What books are on your nightstand? Ask me on any given week and that’ll change! Because I cover books for Good Housekeeping, I’m always reading something new and exciting. But these are my 2020 favorites (so far!): “Every Bone A Prayer” by Ashley Bloom “The Death of Vivek Oji” by Akwaeke Emezi “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman “Deacon King Kong” by James McBride “True Story” by Kate Reed Petty” “Memorial” by Bryan Washington “Luster” by Raven Leilani “The Disaster Tourist” by Yun Ko-eun Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I love the em dash. I tend to write very long, meandering sentences and I daisy chain clauses together in precisely the way that would drive my high school English teacher up a wall sideways. The em dash lets me write like I think: circuitously. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I was a big nerd in high school (still am!) and would never have skipped a reading assignment. I went to a very small Catholic all-girls high school, and there weren’t many options for different classes. My senior year, I actually took both AP and regular English, because I just couldn’t get enough. That said, I absolutely hated A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce. I did read it, because we had to, but I could never think of anything incisive to say about it because I couldn’t get my brain into it. I tried to read it again a few years ago, and still can’t. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I’d thank the field behind my parents’ house, as it existed in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, before the developers came and started building cul de sacs there. Back then, you could look out from the little concrete patio and stare all the way to the treeline, easily a half-mile away. That field was my oasis as a child. I spent weeks of hours wandering through the buttercups that seemed to grow shoulder-high, picking Queen Anne’s lace flowers and coming home coated in pollen that made my eyes swell into golf balls. When I think of solitude, I remember how I could escape my child-sized problems, the ones that took over my entire insular world, by losing myself in a place where I never saw anyone but me. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? The same quote I have on one of my favorite notebooks, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” So many of us are stymied by fear, and we only create our best work when we push past it or work through it. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Both! I tend to do my creative work in spurts; I won’t write for ages and ages, and then it all pours out of me at once. That burst is like its own adrenaline, but I’m always completely spent when it’s over. I liken it to mania: You’re on top of the world while it’s happening, but the crash from that height is a hard one. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I think a lot of starting writers misinterpret the old adage, “Write what you know.” Because of the way our education system is structured, most of us are only exposed to a very narrow canon, and it’s overwhelmingly white, cis, straight, and male. I think that’s beginning to change, but it wasn’t until my MFA that I began to read more widely and deeply about experiences that weren’t my own and that led me to think more broadly about what my writing could be, and could tackle. That lack of exposure leads to a lot of early writers’ books being very homogenous, with characters, narrative structures, settings, and even plot points that don’t step outside the realm of the expected. Many of my students also just don’t know where to start. It’s daunting, first getting started in the literary world and the way the system works just isn’t taught. That leads to a lot of confusion and a lot of missteps, especially for writers who don’t come from traditional MFA or creative writing education backgrounds. What is your writing Kryptonite? That little voice inside my head that says, “You shouldn’t be sharing this.” I write a lot of deeply personal narratives, and share a lot of very intimate details that can be scary to put out into the world. If I think too much about what my readers will think, I can’t get as honest or as raw as that sort of story requires. I have to cast off my natural inclination toward shame and realize that my story is as worthy of stepping into the sunlight as anyone else’s. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? If you mean have I ever had a hard time reading, I have not. There are times when I’m only inclined to read memoir, or fiction, or certain genres. But because reading is part of my job, I don’t have the luxury of not being able to read. Even if I’m having a hard time getting into a book, I owe it to the author and to my own readers to push through it and interrogate why I’m having that experience and whether it’s a fault in the writing itself or an internal problem. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Yes, of course. I think anyone can be a writer who wants to be. I’m not in the business of gatekeeping who has “what it takes” to be a writer. If you’re inclined to write, you’re a writer. Period. I know lots of writers who consider themselves highly emotive people, and I know writers who are deeply pragmatic, logic-driven people who would consider themselves more thinkers than feelers. I think those who are more logic-driven than emotive write different kinds of books than those of us who are deeply in our feelings, but I think the only “requirement” for being a writer, if there is such a thing, is the drive to do so. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I have so many writer friends, and like all of my friends, they all challenge me to be the best version of myself, both on and off the page. Kira Jane Buxton, Lisa Konoplisky, and Rebecca Wallwork are three amazing women who I met at Vortext, a writing retreat at Hedgebrook. They challenge me to think outside the box and write fearlessly. Keisha Thorpe, Brianna Johnson, Adina Zerwig, Jess Jarin, and Lisa Lutwyche were members of my MFA cohort at Goddard College who helped lift me up as I established my voice, and continue to be vital parts of my support system. Megan Giller, Elizabeth Michaelson, Kate Knowles, and Julia Evanczuk are my writing group warriors who keep me honest and accountable to my writing, even when I’m inclined to let it take a backseat. And Kenny Fries, Reiko Rizzuto, Douglas Martin, and Nicola Morris all helped me develop and refine my first book when it was in its infancy at Goddard College, and I’m forever grateful for their guidance, as well. There are so many others, but those are the ones that come most readily to mind. 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 think each of my books, and my creative work that’s appeared elsewhere, all live independently, but that readers can get a more cohesive picture of who I am as a writer by reading more of it. There are common themes that emerge within all of my creative work, like the impact of organized religion, family dynamics, geography and culture, and socioeconomic strictures on a person’s development, as well as body politics, mental health, and the unreliability of memory. I do think much of my work has a lot in common stylistically, as well, but everything I write more or less stands alone. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? I wouldn’t say publishing it changed the process of writing, but it did open my eyes to how the business of publishing works and what I wanted out of my publishing team. I think I approached the pitching process more intentionally with my second book, and looked for different things in my second publisher than I did with my first. That’s not to say that publishing my first book was a bad experience, far from it. But now that I cover books and the publishing industry as a journalist, my eyes were more open about my options than they were when I had less information to work with. This time, I wanted a more collaborative, mission-driven process and I think I was more cognizant of the type of publisher that would best serve a book of this style, now that I know more about the avenues I could have taken. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? I started bullet journaling a couple of years ago, and it’s been a game-changer for my workflow and organization. I’ve always been a big list-maker, but bullet journaling helps me keep track of tasks, events, and notes in a way that’s really effective for the way my brain works. I’m a very competitive person, even with myself, so having a method to track my progress in everything from writing, to reading, to exercising and meditating, keeps me on track. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? I don’t know that I’ve ever disliked an author, whole-cloth. I will say, it took me some time to appreciate deep fantasy and sci-fi, since I naturally gravitate more toward realism and literary fiction. But the more I read genre fiction, the more I appreciated it. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I was bullied a lot as a kid, and some of the words the “mean girls” tossed off at me have seared themselves into my brain and significantly influenced the way I move through the world, even as an adult. Kids can be unspeakably cruel because they don’t yet have the ability to grasp just how much of an impact their words can have, so they don’t temper themselves the same way adults do (or should). I was a very shy, very anxious kid, and I both yearned to be seen and considered by my peers and to disappear into the background entirely. So when bullies showed me that not only did they see me, but they took issue with it, that made an indelible mark. I remember one incident in particular, in which I overheard a gaggle of my fellow cheerleaders whispering about me. I remember pacing the hallway afterward, my heart in my throat, thinking to myself, “I’ll never be able to forget this.” It felt like something had irrevocably changed, not only in my relationship with these girls, but in the way I thought about myself. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Aren’t most of them? I think “Every Bone a Prayer” by Ashley Bloom deserves more buzz than it’s getting, at least at the time I’m writing this. Her language is so searing and her story so imaginative and, at the same time, disturbingly familiar that it’s stuck with me even months after reading it. Sarah Manguso’s “The Two Kinds of Decay” also broke me open when I first read it in 2011, and helped me recognize aberrations in my own body and tendencies in my writing that I hadn’t previously been able to name, so hers is another one that I think should be more universally beloved. It’s hard to say what’s under-appreciated, because I suspect the book-loving circles I move in are talking about books and authors that the wider world wouldn’t recognize. We’re all so siloed in our own little echo chambers, that it’s almost impossible to break out of our own and into others’. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? I think I’d be a fox; a little wiley, rather shy, and more comfortable scampering through the underbrush than strutting out in the open air. I’m a bit of scavenger, often a redhead, and only occasionally domesticated. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Insight into the human condition, I think. Every person in my life, and person I’ve come across even briefly, for that matter, has taught me something about how people live and breathe and move through the world. I’m constantly observing others for what drives them, what breaks them, what makes them cry or laugh, what makes them tick. What they’re hungry for, and what happens they don’t get it. I find mannerisms, physical and mental quirks, personality aberrations, even storylines in the people I come across, like we all do. We all create the world for one another, and I wouldn’t be able to turn that into story without them. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? More than I can count! Every year, I participate in National Novel-Writing Month, and have for the past 10 years. So right there, that’s at least 10 manuscripts I’ve powered through and (for the most part) never looked at again. I always take November as a chance to experiment on the page, with genres, forms, and styles that I wouldn’t normally attempt. Because those novels aren’t necessarily aiming for publication, there isn’t as much pressure to make them, well, readable. But I am about ⅔ of the way through my third book that I do want to publish eventually, and I probably have at least 50 pieces in various draft stages, too. What does literary success look like to you? Success is a marker that’s always moving, and one I’ve actively tried to stop measuring for myself. It’s such a false idol for me, because I’ve found that every time I achieve a new career milestone, there’s another one right over the next crest. I could say that I want to write a book that appears on the NYT bestseller list, that I’d like a starred Kirkus review, or an excerpt in the New Yorker, but would I be satisfied if I hit those goals? Probably not. For right now, continuing to produce creative work that finds a home on someone’s shelf is success to me. What’s the best way to market your books? My work is generally a hybrid of poetry and personal essay, so I think readers who enjoy memoir and disjointed poetic narratives will likely find something to resonate in my work, too. The most recent comp authors would probably be Carmen Maria Machado, Juliana Spahr, Jeannie Vanasco, and perhaps Sophie Mackintosh. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? I think writing any character who has lived experience that’s different from my own is challenging, because it requires me to step outside my own skin and imagine what it must feel like in someone else’s. I don’t believe that gender is a binary, and I think there are very few aspects of a character that are necessarily tied to their gender. I try to approach all characters with two central questions: What do they want and what do they need? Once I find those, I try to stay very honest to those motivations, regardless of where they fall on the gender spectrum. What did you edit out of this book? Typos, I hope! This book came together in fits and starts, and those weren’t at all linear. It was sort of like putting together a puzzle, where I had all of the pieces there on the floor and had to determine where they fit best. And because it was a nonlinear process, there were a few times where character descriptions, anecdotes, or inconsistencies appeared that had to be resolved. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I ask myself that question all the time, given the instability of media. I’d always be a writer, since it’s both my career and my hobby, but I’m also an educator. I spent some time as a full-time professor at Canisius College and currently teach as an adjunct professor at New York University’s School of Professional Studies, and teaching innervates my writing in a way that nothing else does. Seeing my students’ work evolve, sharing the ins and outs of the media and writing world with them, and talking about writing and reporting gives me such life. It feels like a responsibility in a way, as someone who has found some degree of success in it, to pass on the lessons I’ve learned to those who will come after me. I’d love to get back to teaching full-time someday. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I would want to cook dinner for James Baldwin and it would be baked ziti since that is a speciality of mine. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears?For me, it’s really about time and energy and how to harness both for writing project and I often fear I never have enough of either to complete the projects I have in mind. I have both chronic pain and illness and as a result, my bandwidth is limited. I do also have to work, and so sometimes there is little motivation or ability leftover for my own independent projects. I know sometimes writers feel a lot of pressure to not only “write everyday” by dedicate X hours and create X amount of words on the page by the end of that time block and to stick to a schedule. I just don’t have that privilege between my health issues and other needs. So, I have liberated myself by carving out time when it works for me to write and not pressuring myself to keep up with what society tells me I need to do and be. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Right now, I am crushing big time on Baldwin. But I’ve been enamored with Audre Lorde for the better part of two decades. She not only gives me glimpses of what I would strive to be as a poet and essayists, but as a better human being. What books are on your nightstand? Currently I am reading Another Country, which is a novel by James Baldwin, a book of short stories by Anne Beatie, and a book of collected poems by Mary Ruefle (Trances of the Blast) Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Without a doubt, the em dash. Admittedly I don’t use it very often in most of my poetry, but I use it frequently in my prose and especially in my personal essays. I like it because I like it it allows me to form long and complex sentences that are not run-ons and how it lets me make side notes and observations within a given sentence. People who are familiar with my work definitely note it as a characteristic of my literary “style.” What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I did not read Crime and Punishment all the way through as at the time the topic was so dark and disturbing for me and it gave me nightmares. So I skimmed it and used the Cliff Notes to fill in what I needed. However, I did read it on my own shortly after I completed college in my early twenties and I list it among my favorite all-time novels. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I think it would be a tie between my bed and my bathtub. I am not the most Zen person, but being able to have a good night’s sleep or take a deep nap can be amazingly restorative. But more than that, once the weather cools down, I love taking long Epsom salt baths once a week. I light candles and play some of my favorite music and just soak, think and allow myself to feel my feelings. It’s a cheap and easy way to pamper and I find it helps clear my head and relax me in a way few things can. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? I would borrow from George Eliot: “It is never too late to be what you could have been.” I don’t think that actually applies to everything, but I think it can for writing. Does writing energize or exhaust you?I think it can do either (or both simultaneously) depending on the type of writing I am doing, the circumstances under which I am writing and what else is going on in my life. If I am writing something for work or school that does not speak to my soul or inspire me, it can sometimes be like pulling teeth to put words on the page. It becomes a slog. Also, if I am having a pain flare, writing under tedious circumstances or in forms or about subjects that do not interest me, can exacerbate my fatigue. But if I am writing about something I love or in the form that I love (in other words, creatively), it can completely energize me. In fact, writing freely about the things I care about and in the forms that matter most to me or are most natural to me, act like an elixir for me. What are common traps for aspiring writers?I think a common trap is that people get caught up in the sexiness or romantic view of what it means to be a writer, and also sometimes have impractical perceptions of how it will pan out. The truth is, writing is hard work and a lot of it isn’t sexy or romantic. It is lonely and publishing can be an uphill battle full of rejections. While some people can and do find wild success with it, the vast majority do not. I make my income writing, but it took a long time and my income is extremely modest. If you are serious about being a writer, you need to understand that it really needs to be about loving it and doing it because you need to, and not because you have illusions of wealth and granduer. Because that rarely happens. What is your writing Kryptonite?I definitely tend to write very long, sometimes meandering sentences (hence my love for the em dash). While I can appreciate my own proclivities, I realize I can get carried away. My editors will often spend most of their time cutting up my long sentences into shorter ones. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes, and I get it quite often nowadays. I often find that after I finish a book--particularly one that I really loved--it’s hard for me to switch gears and take up another book right away. I seem to still want to live in the world of the book I just left behind. Sometimes if a book doesn’t immediately capture my attention in the first few pages, I find that I am more reluctant to pick it up again until it hits its stride with me. However, I make a point of persisting until I am absorbed in that book as well. Or, if it still doesn’t appeal to me, I look for one that does. I used to force myself through books even if I couldn’t stand them. But I rarely do that anymore. Luckily, it’s very rare that a book I am reading doesn’t eventually pique my interest by the time I am a quarter of a way into 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? I write in many different genres and so not everything I write is connected except by a greater thread that underscores my interest in justice. My poems do seem to follow similar themes: love, sex and illness/death tend to be their primary concerns. Many of my essays also explore a lot of the same topics: my family, my own past traumas and conflicts, and how to try to create a brighter future for myself and others. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer?While I am an admitted Luddite, I have to admit getting my first laptop in college really catapulted my writing to another level, even in just the way it enabled me to write more--so I’d have to say that was my best buy. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?While I thought Hemingway was just okay, I grew to appreciate him more as I read more of him. When I read the “Fire Next Time” my freshman year of college, I couldn’t get into it (I think I was too young/immature to appreciate it), but now I adore Baldwin, having become acquainted with his work later on in life through his shorter essays and fiction. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?If you had asked me this question a couple of years ago, I might have said a wolf, simply because I love their loyalty and sense of wildness while still being relatable. However, I now think it would be my black cat Cokey. He’s been with me almost all my adult life and so has been nearby as I’ve created almost all of my writings. He’s been a constant source of support and compassion, of love and loyalty. Many times, he’s laying next to me while I write. I also like the subversion of the stereotype of the black cat as bad luck: he’s brought me nothing but love. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? I have four unfinished books right now that have yet to be published but I hope will be one day. What does literary success look like to you?To some extent I feel like I have already achieved what I considered my baseline for literary success in that I support myself solely through either my writing or teaching writing. I have a long list of publication credentials in reputable online media outlets, literary journals and other publications. I mostly happy with what I am doing with my life and stood by my principles. However, I would love to have some of my books published to completely fulfill my ideas of success. What’s the best way to market your books?I think identifying audiences that my book would appeal to and approaching them is an especially effective method, such as finding those who like similar works. I am big about interfacing with the media--conducting interviews and guest posts on blogs and journals--as well as putting myself out there with the public. This doesn’t just include formal readings at bookstores, but book clubs, etc. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?I think whenever writing a character that is of a demographic one is not a part of, that one needs to be very careful about that and sensitive to the fact that one cannot appropriate firsthand experiences that aren’t one’s own. However, I do think that is more critical when depicting demographics that have been historically marginalized--so women, people of color and the disabled, etc. As a woman, I have less qualms about depicting white (cis) male characters due to this power disparity. That being said, I tend to write my fiction mainly through the lens of female characters. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? Thomas Wolfe—often confused with Tom Wolfe. I used to work at the Wolfe Memorial in Asheville. Admittedly, I’ve read more biographies on Wolfe than I have his fiction. He had a voracious appetite. I would love to cook him three New York strips, ten pounds of potatoes and a basket of cornbread and just watch him go to work.
What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears?Not writing causes a lot of anxiety. I combat it by writing. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Lady Brett Ashley What books are on your nightstand? Currently, Jeni McFarland’s The House of Deep Water, A. Scott Berg’s Wilson, Kevin Young’s Dear Darkness, Frances Justine Post’s Beast and T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The semicolon is my favorite punctuation mark; Michael Parker’s essay “Catch and Release: What We Can Learn From the Semicolon (Even If We Choose Never to Use it In a Sentence),” changed everything for me. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I played by the rules. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? All the coffee mugs that joined me during my writing sessions. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? As long as you’re writing, you’re doing it right. Does writing energize or exhaust you?Energize What are common traps for aspiring writers?Everyone’s unique in their delusions. What is your writing Kryptonite?When my 2-year-old daughter refuses to sleep. And the NBA playoffs. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly?Absolutely; but emotions help. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer?Most of my writer buddies come from my time in grad school at the University of Houston, but I’ve also kept in touch with a few writers I met at summer workshops. Zach Powers, Aja Gabel and JP Gritton are a few friends that recently celebrated their debut novels. I’ve also got plenty of folks who are working toward publication. All the writers I’m friends with know how to sit down and write. That’s admirable. 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?Stand alone. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing?It confirmed that I have no idea where commas go. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Ha! What authors did you dislike at first but grew into?In the 11th grade I read The Great Gatsby. I hated The Great Gatsby. And so by extension I hated Fitzgerald. Then as an English major at the University of Florida I had to revisit the novel a few times for a few different classes. And it came up again in graduate school and now I pretty much read the novel every few years because if I don’t I start to miss it. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power?My love for language began with music. When I was around ten or eleven, I started writing down the lyrics of my favorite songs and taping them to my bedroom door. And soon thereafter I started writing new lyrics to the songs’ music. This would have been in the mid-90s. So the bands I was listening to were The Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, Rancid, Green Day and Bush. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?John Williams’ Stoner is pretty damn great. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal?My 16-year-old dog, Patapouf. He’s some kind of spitz-mix that my wife rescued from the pound. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters?Every character I create probably has traits from at least three or four different people I know or have met. I’m not sure what I owe them. Maybe a beer? How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?Three. In my freshman year of college I wrote a knock-off version of Catch-22. After college I wrote this strange book that was kind of like The Sopranos meets Catch-22. By graduate school I let go of Catch-22 as an influence and wrote a novel that I may have workshopped to death. I think I wrote about 20 drafts of that thing. By the end, I could hardly recognize it. What does literary success look like to you?Being able to continue to write and publish novels. What’s the best way to market your books?This is my first novel, so I’m still trying to figure that out. In college I played in a band and we learned early on if you didn’t promote your shows you’d play to empty rooms...or to your one buddy and die-hard fan Chase. (Thank you Chase for coming to all our shows!) Most people are busy, so reading an unknown author might not be on the top of their wish list. Meaning, as awkward and strange as it is you’ve got to find as many ways to get your book out there. For me that’s been through writing essays, working on a book trailer and doing some visual art projects that I plan to release before the book comes out. Hell, I might even kick it old school and hand out flyers like we did before shows. Otherwise you’re just playing to an empty room. And God does that suck. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?I don’t know. I’ve always had a lot of female friends and I’ve always read female authors. That’s not to say I understand what it’s like to live in this world as a woman. I kind of just think of all of my characters as lonely, complicated people trying to connect wherever and however they can. It also helps to share your work with members of the opposite sex. They’ll let you know if something you wrote is way off. What did you edit out of this book?”About 25,000 words. There was a subplot about a mailman at one point. The Lenny character had a much more prominent role in earlier drafts. I explored the Burnett family in greater detail in a previous round. Oh, and I let Uncle Al and Bethany ramble for far too long in past versions. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?I’d like to be next Ken Burns, though I suppose that too involves writing. Oh well!  Portland, OR— December 15, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of The Tin Can House and Other Stories by Susan Pepper Robbins. The Tin Can House and Other Stories is a remarkable short story collection by renowned Virginia author Susan Pepper Robbins. Featuring some of her best short stories, the collection delivers powerful, gritty characters full of heart and spirit. Ranging from longer stories to one-page hitters, Robbins masters the pen and sprays ink economically.
From the collection: "The A-Frame was shingled in flattened tin oil cans on the wrong side so the old names of Esso and Texaco didn’t show. The sun shot a pale greenish light through the oak trees’ April leaves. The tin house gave the right impression of one of the crazy projects thought up by our delicensed doctor, hammering out all those cans after using a can opener to take the round tops and bottoms off. Those he used for decorative trim around the two doorways and four windows. Thousands of shingles nailed, one by one, three nails each, to the beams, in the 1950’s. Some people continued to go to him not in his office, of course, which had to be closed, but at his ranch house where he would invite you in and listen to your symptoms. Not ours. We never went back to him after the sheriff picked him up for walking in the next county dressed as a woman. Who’d want to do that Fred asked me, serious and not meaning anything about my beige and navy outfits." Susan Pepper Robbins lives in rural Virginia where she grew up. Her first novel was published when she was fifty (“One Way Home,” Random House, 1993). Her fiction has won prizes (the Deep South Prize, the Virginia Prize) and has been published in journals. Her collection of stories “Nothing But the Weather” was published by the indie press Unsolicited Press, and her second novel, “There Is Nothing Strange,” was published in England in 2016,. A second collection of stories will be published in 2019. "Local Speed," a novel, came out in 2018 from Unsolicited Press. Her stories focus on the drama of ordinary lives. She teaches writing at Hampden-Sydney College and wrote a dissertation on Jane Austen at the University of Virginia. The Tin Can House and Other Stories by Susan Pepper Robbins. is available as a paperback and ebook. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. 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. Unsolicited Press announces the immediate availability of TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS by Ayendy Bonifacio, an American from the Domican Republic. In this nostalgic volume, the image of the river carries us to and away from home. The river is a timeline that harkens back to Bonifacio’s childhood in the Dominican Republic and ends with the sudden passing of his father.
Through panoramic and time-bending gazes, TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS leads us through the rural foothills of Bonifacio’s birthplace to the streets of East New York, Brooklyn. These lyrical poems, using both English and Spanish, illuminate childhood visions and memories and, in doing so, help us better understand what it means to be a migrant in these turbulent times. Advance Praise for TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS “I’ve learned, unlearned my language too many times,” writes Ayendy Bonifacio in To the River, We Are Migrants. Childhood, exile, faith, grief are all part of the language he shapes into luminous poems that remember in English and in Spanish. His voice is lyrical, direct—he confesses “[t]ime has made us strange” but also transforms a river into a rosary. These poems are exquisite, heartfelt." —Eduardo C. Corral "The actual Dominican river that gives title to Ayendy Bonifacio’s To the River, We Are Migrants is also a river of words, the river of life, the river of death, the river dividing us from our truest selves and the river that delivers us home again. These are poems of immigration, separation and grief, but they are also poems that honor home, family and the enduring powers of language and memory. I am deeply instructed and moved by the mundos of this beautiful book." —Kathy Fagan "Desde Broadway Junction hasta Bao, Ayendy nos lleva en su tren—the one que comienza with a word-dream born in the eyes of his father. Está lloviendo desde adentro, desde que dejó de llamar mundos a los countries. Cada verso estruja la nostalgia, y nos presta un rosario in order to survive here-there and en rotundo futuro que se rompe. Corre el agua con cada metáfora, con el pasaporte que se tragó el campo donde se regresan a descansar las palabras. Este poemario es una corriente encima del cuerpo, un ardor, pain, el recuerdo de su abuelo and the smell del idioma que tuvo que darle rompa en su lengua. To the River, We Are Migrants nos lleva “más allá de líneas de inmigración,” el principio y el final de los días largos cuando la pérdida de un ser querido estruja la mirada, “paper planes when our motherlands liberated us,” es un basement donde reciben los campesino, es la habitación donde su madre hospeda los nuevos recién llegando que parió Quisqueya. Vamos soñando in english and español silenciosamente “para que las nubes no se rompieran.” Leer a Ayendy, es encontrarnos where nos habíamos dejado; en la desembocadura de un río que nos dispersó en alguna parte con una promesa hecha cicatriz." --Fior E. Plasencia About Ayendy Bonifacio Ayendy Bonifacio was born in Santiago De Los Caballeros, Dominican Republic and raised in East New York, Brooklyn. He holds a Ph.D. in English from Ohio State University. His areas of scholarship include American literature and culture, including Latino/a/x studies; digital humanities; public humanities; transamerican poetics, specifically the reprint poem as a form of public discourse; and hemispheric studies. His current book project, Poems Go Viral: Reprint Culture in the US Popular Press (1855-1866), draws examples from over 200 English- and Spanish-language popular dailies and weeklies between January 1855 and December 1866. This book studies what Bonifacio calls the virality of nineteenth-century poems. Akin to the way an image, video, and a piece of information go viral on the internet today, certain popular poems and poets circulated rapidly and widely through newspaper reproduction. His research is published and/or forthcoming in American Periodicals: A Journal of History, Criticism, and Bibliography; Prose Studies: History, Theory, Criticism; Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature; Postcolonial Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Postcolonial Studies; The Journal: A Literary Magazine; and The American Review of Books. He is also the author of Dique Dominican (Floricanto Press, 2017) and To The River, We Are Migrants (Unsolicited Press, 2020). In 2018, The Latino Author named Dique Dominican one of the “top ten best non-fiction books of 2017.” Connect with Bonifacio at www.ayendybonifacio.com. TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS by Ayendy Bonifacio Availability TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS is available on December 8, 2020 as a paperback (978-1-950730-56-8) and e-book. The book is brought to the trade by Ingram. The publisher and author have active publicity and marketing campaigns in place. 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. The pandemic has made shopping for friends and family quite different, so our team would like to make it easier to send gifts to your favorite book lover that reduces in-store contact. For the holidays, we are offering two gift card options that make gift-giving simple and affordable. The Unsolicited Press $25 Gift Card offers a unique experience that connects the recipient with our editors to help them find the perfect book (a book concierge experience). You simply buy the gift card and provide the recipient's information and we will handle the rest. The Unsolicited Press PayPal Gift Card is offered through PayPal and is a more traditional gift card that permits you to select how much you want to send to the recipient. The gift card funds are stored in a PayPal wallet and can be used however and whenever the recipient wants to directly on our website. Both are excellent options. No matter what you choose, our press appreciates your decision to support our small press.
 Portland, OR— November 24, 2020 — Unsolicited Press humbly announces the long-awaited availability of What Is Said About Elephants, a collection of short fiction by the late Wendell Mayo. Unsolicited Press and Wendell Mayo were in the middle of preparing his short story collection for publication when he suddenly passed away. Our team, in coordination with Mr. Mayo's wife decided to publish the collection posthumously to honor his life and support the local animal shelter in Lorian county. All profit from the sale of What Is Said About Elephants will go to the Friendship Animal Protective League in Lorian County.
Mayo begins his new collection with a brief tale and utterance made by an elephant trainer at a zoo: “It’s said,” Beasley says, “an elephant won’t pass by a dead elephant without casting a branch or some dust on the body. A kind of homage, I suppose.” In a variety of ways, the twelve stories that follow are tributes to characters who find themselves on the fringes, at the sides of roads. In “When the Moon Was Ours for the Taking,” a man recalls a brief few days he found himself fishing with his NASA-physicist father who is otherwise preoccupied with the Space Race craze of the 1960s. In “A Mindfulness Becoming Less,” an aging, out-of work Homer Lynch convinces himself he doesn’t need the job and health care he needs. In “Vigil for Ammospiza nigréscens,” a veteran of the Vietnam War searches for an extinct bird in the salt marshes of Florida, haunted by the North Vietnamese soldier he killed. In “Burn Barrel,” Cole, a jobless college graduate, despairing that he can never pay his student loans, begins to burn all his university papers, in a strange effort to erase the debt. In these and other stories, Mayo’s characters are people we think we know, in situations we think we understand—and then realize in flashes of truth we can see them—and ourselves—in new ways. Wendell Mayo (1953-2019) was a native of Corpus Christi, Texas. He authored five collections of short stories, recently, Survival House with SFASU Press in 2018. His other collections are The Cucumber King of Kėdainiai, winner of the Subito Press Award for Innovative Fiction; Centaur of the North (Arte Público Press), winner of the Aztlán Prize; B. Horror and Other Stories (Livingston Press); and a novel-in-stories, In Lithuanian Wood (White Pine Press). Over one-hundred of his short stories have appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, including Yale Review, Harvard Review, Manoa, Missouri Review, Boulevard, New Letters, Threepenny Review, Indiana Review, and Chicago Review. He received the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Fulbright to Lithuania (Vilnius University), two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, and a Master Fellowship from the Indiana Arts Commission. He taught fiction writing in the MFA/BFA programs at Bowling Green State University for over twenty years. WHAT IS SAID ABOUT ELEPHANTS (978-1-950730-55-1) is available (paperback and ebook) directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. The author is available for media appearances, interviews, and readings. 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. |
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