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The Buzz

Wisconsin Poet Releases THE ANIMAL WITHIN

1/12/2021

 
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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.

Boston-Based Poet Releases Books Tackling Trauma in an Apathetic World

1/12/2021

 
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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.

Unsolicited Press Launches a Teaser Novella Ahead of the Release of S.B. Borgersen's Flash Fiction Collection in Spring 2021

1/1/2021

 
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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.

Just in Time for the Holidays: Announcing the Release of THE TIN CAN AND OTHER STORIES by Susan Pepper Robbins

12/15/2020

 
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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. 

Announcing the Release of Ayendy Bonifacio's Debut Bilingual Poetry Collection TO THE RIVER, WE ARE MIGRANTS

12/8/2020

 
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.

Gift Cards for the Holidays

12/4/2020

 
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. 
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Honoring the Late Wendell Mayo: Unsolicited Press Releases His Final Collection with All Proceeds Going to Lorain County Animal Shelter

11/24/2020

 
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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. 

Texan Who Sailed Around Cape Horn with a Veteran Releases Debut Short Story Collection

11/17/2020

 
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Portland, OR— November 17, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of From the Land of Genesis by Stephen J. O'Shea, documentarian and explorer. From the Land of Genesis is literature at its best. Crafted in short story form to achieve a number of vivid slices of life, this collection accurately illustrates the hardships of normal life after living wartime experiences.

O’Shea traveled the globe interviewing veterans and taking special care to authentically portray the veteran experience at home. The result is a literary fiction / narrative nonfiction hybrid, with fictional characters and settings, but references and experiences of war that are drawn explicitly from interviews, transcripts, and source materials.
 
Any one of these stories contributes so much on its own and is unique in its own respects, and yet the overlapping characters and themes flow more like a novel than a short story collection. O’Shea writes on a number of widely varying lifestyles of veterans who all carry the burden of war into their new lives, wherever they have ended up. He demonstrates expert control of conveying emotions, individually and interactively, which plays to his theme of depicting the reality of post-traumatic stress syndrome. To name a few, he emphasizes feelings of alienation, depression, paranoia, confusion, and regret. However, the stories also feature glimpses of hope amidst the despairing truths, making a beautiful literary medium for readers to experience vicariously the extremes of the human condition.

Stephen J. O’Shea is a writer, documentarian, and (now) sailor, who tells stories to stay alive. His research for From the Land of Genesis was the catalyst for a sailing expedition around Cape Horn to raise awareness about veteran suicide rates. Having miraculously survived that feat (and transformed that journey into the feature documentary, Hell or High Seas) he's now writing and producing stories through a number of mediums, including literature and film.

From the Land of Genesis (978-1-950730-58-2) is available as a paperback ($17.00; 302p.) and ebook, and can be purchased from all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. Mr. O'Shea is open to scheduling events, speaking with the press, and getting involved in literary panels. Both publisher and author have active social media presences, and have developed a robust marketing plan. ​

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. 

Announcing the Release of WHAT NELL DREAMS by ANNE LEIGH PARRISH

11/3/2020

 
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Readers and reviewers are smitten with Anne Leigh Parrish's latest book. Kirkus Reviews says “these tales are also wonderfully worthwhile, courtesy of an indelible voice that leaves a lasting impression.”

In sixteen short stories and a novella, award-winning author Anne Leigh Parrish explores the magic of life, love, and the soft boundary between fact and fantasy. Here is fiction that lifts off from reality and startles us into recognition. The wife of an artist disappears under mysterious circumstances; a woman has the gift of taking away sorrow; another finds inner strength through writing poetry; and a great-grandmother spends the day sitting on a folding chair in a grocery store parking lot, contemplating the nature of the human heart. Women are the foundation of this collection, and it’s their unique issues that hold sway. Marriages gone bad, violent men, and children who disappoint weave through settings and scenes with fine dramatic tension. Loneliness, often a thing to be avoided at the cost of one’s self-esteem, becomes embraced as a source of strength. Quiet souls make themselves heard, and the timid prevail. The underdog doesn’t always win, and more often than not learns to accept what cannot be changed. Literary fiction at its best, What Nell Dreams is Parrish’s eight book of fiction.

MORE ADVANCE PRAISE
 “Anne Leigh Parrish’s collection, What Nell Dreams, lets readers peer into lives at that precious moment of transition and discovery.” — PAM MCGAFFIN, author of The Leaving Year
 
“Parrish is a master at creating strong and authentic female characters.” — CHRISSI SEPE, author of Iggy Gorgess and Bliss, Bliss, Bliss

​About Anne Leigh Parrish

Anne Leigh Parrish is the author of seven previously published books: Maggie’s Ruse, a novel (Unsolicited Press, 2019); The Amendment, a novel (Unsolicited Press, 2018); 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). 

Where to Buy WHAT NELL DREAMS
WHAT NELL DREAMS 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.

Los Angeles Poet Chuck Harp Launches Another Successful Poetry Collection This Fall

11/2/2020

 
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Unsolicited Press announces the long-awaited release of WORKING TITLE, a poetry collection by Chuck Harp. Set to release on November 10, 2020,  Working Title investigates a spectrum of emotions: disillusionment, fatigue, anger, frustration, and indifference, and others through a series of poems that honor the Everyman. The speakers of the poems share the same face but not always the same uniform. They are workers from the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. What emerges is a painting illustrating the consequences of spending more time in an office than out in the world. The numbing nine-to-fives. The blinding blue light of computer screens. Working Title is a portrait of the mundane everyday of modern civilization in the western world.

Chuck is a writer of various forms who currently resides in Los Angeles. He published
Before I Forget with Black Rose Writing, What Must Go On with Unsolicited Press, and Blooming Insanity with Dostoyevsky Wannabe.


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. 

WORKING TITLE (978-1-950730-67-4) is available (paperback, ebook) directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. 

Unsolicited Press Releases FERAL GIRL MEETS BOY by William Jablonsky

10/27/2020

 
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Adventurous, magical, and often dark, the stories that comprise Feral Boy Meets Girl are about outsiders in their own communities, homes, and even intimate relationships.

Feral Boy Meets Girl blends literary fiction with elements of science fiction, fantasy, and horror to tell stories of outsiders within their communities, their homes, and even their intimate relationships. In “The Death And Life Of Bob,” a collective of textbook sales reps watches in amazement as their marginalized coworker returns from the dead with a new zest for life—but one sees something far darker in his new beginning. In the title story, “Feral Boy Meets Girl,” a young teenager, raised in the wild by a cougar until his adoption by human parents, is on the cusp of full integration into society, but finds that “civilization” is nothing of the sort.
     In “Static,” an experimental wormhole leads to a father receiving cell phone calls from his son twenty years in the future—and what he learns about himself isn’t pretty. “Minutes of the Pine Valley Residents’ Board” features a depressed, cynical secretary observing his condo board becoming a court of star chamber, but as a non-voting member he can only witness and record, rather than intervene. In “The Sound of His Voice,” a mother goes to near-superhuman lengths to care for her three-year-old son who has been infected by a zombie virus. And “Do Not Break The Heart Of Charles Nelson Bereiter” offers instructions on how to date an emotionally-broken man literally haunted by a spirit from his past.
​

William Jablonsky is originally from Rock Falls, Illinois, and earned an MFA in fiction writing from Bowling Green State University. He is the author of two previous books: The Indestructible Man: Stories (Livingston Press, 2005) and The Clockwork Man (Medallion, 2010). His short fiction has appeared frequently national magazines and journals, including Asimov’s, Shimmer, The Florida Review, Phoebe, and many others. He teaches fiction writing and interdisciplinary humanities at Loras College, and lives in eastern Iowa with his wife and son.

October Book Release: Dunbar’s Folly and Other Stories by Matthew Duffus

10/20/2020

 
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​Portland, Oregon— October 20, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announced immediate availability of Dunbar’s Folly and Other Stories by Matthew Duffus. Dunbar’s Folly and Other Stories paints the stories of Americans from sisters vacationing in Southern California to the kudzu-covered fields of Mississippi. Each story, built on luxurious landscapes, hones in on the turmoil of living in 21st Century America. Readers come face-to-face with the struggles of living off-grid and fighting for artistic credibility in a society that refuses to let freedom ring...all in favor of commerce. 

Advance Praise for Dunbar’s Folly and Other Stories
"Matthew Duffus’ debut collection is a powerful hymn to families—chosen ones, second ones, makeshift ones, loving and fierce, troubled and turbulent. The stories in Dunbar’s Folly unfold like stretches of gentle country road, tracking the signposts of relationships with an unassumingly clear-eyed lucidity. Each story navigates its dips and turns so smoothly that its ultimate destination—a sharp, illuminating crossroads—feels revelatory, every time."--Suzanne Rivecca, author of Death Is Not an Option

"Matthew Duffus is a superb writer, one whose stories I found instantly engaging. In part, that's because he has no time for the trivial. He's exploring the mysteries of the human heart and doing so with both grace and wonder. This is a deeply moving collection, one that I will return to many times."--Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World
 
In an easy and lucid style, Dunbar’s Folly immerses the reader in the conundrums of life—wayward children, divorce, retirement, suicide, and unfettered pride. These insightful stories will absorb you with honest compelling characters. Matthew Duffus has most assuredly written a classic within the pages of this flawless collection.--Russell Helms, author of Fade

Matthew Duffus is the author of the novel Swapping Purples for Yellows and the poetry chapbook Problems of the Soul and Otherwise. He lives in North Carolina and can be found online at matthewduffus.com and on twitter @DuffusMatthew.

Dunbar’s Folly and Other Stories by Matthew Duffus Availability
Dunbar's Folly and Other Stories is available on October 20, 2020 as a paperback (
978-1-950730-54-4) 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.

LA Author’s Timely Debut Book Maps Out the Universe of Single Motherhood and Her Journey to Power, Truth, and Self-Acceptance

9/22/2020

 
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Unsolicited Press announces the long-awaited release of a debut poetry collection by Amy Shimshon-Santo on September 22, 2020. Even the Milky Way is Undocumented is a testament to the lost, the loved, the courageous. The collection includes the viral poems “no (no. 10)” which has been used by educators to teach personal consent to students, and “good fuck poem (a definition)” an erotic testament to affection and the body. 

Shimshon-Santo, who has been widely interviewed by outlets including BBC radio, speaks to a moment in history framed by crises in public health and public culture. “Poetry is designed for the subtle work of liberation,” the author said in an interview with Frontier Poetry. Placeholder Press in the United Kingdom describes her work as having “seemingly effortless mastery that can only come from meticulous and dedicated work" and calls her poems "companions for all of us, lost and afraid in a time of crisis.” 

Shimshon-Santo’s creative career began in dance, and sent her on a journey from Los Angeles to improvisation in New York; revolutionary community theater in Central America; co-directing a transnational performance ensemble rooted in Bahia-Brazil; molding arts education policy in California, and mentoring leaders in higher education. She balanced the responsibilities of public service and single parenthood with the internal introspection that writing provides. 

Even the Milky Way is Undocumented is a unique departure from her other creative and philanthropic works, as she turns her lens inward and focuses on the ongoing pursuit of radical honesty and self-acceptance.

The book spans 25 years of life told through 37 poems, each one carrying us a little bit closer to the heart of the artist. The collection is “a whole life lived,” writes Joshua Roark (Editor, Frontier Poetry). “These poems know deaths and betrayals, police killings and sexual assaults,” writes poet and translator Dan Bellm. Shimshon-Santo finds strength in ritual, music, and family. Author Gayle Brandeis writes that the book “reminds you to listen, to pay attention, to live.”

Writing poetry is “my thermometer for authentic living,” said Shimshon-Santo, who is aware of what it means to be the first woman in one’s family to fill a page and be published. “Poetry helps me know myself, and seek freedom.” 

About Amy Shimshon-Santo
Pushcart Award nominee Amy Shimshon-Santo is a writer and educator from Dogtown, a place in Los Angeles that no longer exists. Her interdisciplinary work connects the arts, education, and urbanism. Her work crosses genres from poetry and creative non-fiction to choreography and social science. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her creative non-fiction (2017), Best of the Net for her poetry (2018), and was recognized on the National Honor Roll for Service Learning. She is the author of the chapbook of erasure poetry Endless Bowls of Sky (Placeholder Press), and the editor of  Arts = Education (UC Press). Her writing has also been published by ArtPlace America, Yes Poetry, Zócalo Public Square, Capsule Stories, Anti-Heroin Chic, Rag Queen Periodical, SAGE Publications, Entropy, Imagining America, Tiferet Journal, and SUNY Press. She is currently an Associate Professor in Arts Management at Claremont Graduate University. To learn more about her work visit www.amyshimshon.com.

About Unsolicited Press
Unsolicited Press was founded in 2012 and is based in Portland, OR. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com. 

EVEN THE MILKY WAY IS UNDOCUMENTED (978-1-950730-29-2) is available (paperback, ebook, and audio) directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. 
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Press only, Unsolicited Press
Eric Rancino
619.354.8005 
marketing@unsolicitedpress.com 

For artist interviews, readings, and podcasts:
Amy Shimshon-Santo
shimshona4@gmail.com


ADVANCE PRAISE FOR EVEN THE MILKY WAY IS UNDOCUMENTED

“Amy Shimshon-Santo’s poems are the words of a survivor, a warrior, and a creator. Time and time again, across borders and languages, her writing takes us into sensuous and deeply emotional places, finding beauty and rootedness and meaning in everyday moment and extraordinary landscapes.” 
— Héctor Tobar, Author of Deep Down Dark

“My imagination/is ambidextrous,” writes Amy Shimshon-Santo; so is this stunning collection. These poems are deeply rooted in the body and reach for the stars; they are spacious enough to hold the pain of police brutality and the beauty of an apricot tree, to both interrogate and celebrate, to hold a yes on their lips and a no in their pocket. The poet calls the reader “beloved” in the very first poem, and each page of this collection is suffused with love, with “a grammar/made of kindness”—the kind of love that is unafraid to show you the truth; the kind of love that reminds you to listen, to pay attention, to live. A beautiful and stirring achievement.”  
— Gayle Brandeis, Author of The Art of Misdiagnosis

“I’ve decided to dress my body / in blessings,” a poem called “grace” announces, toward the end of this wonderful collection by Amy Shimshon-Santo. Which does not mean that blessings come easy: these poems know deaths and betrayals, police killings and sexual assaults, and a parent’s everyday fears for her children’s lives, but on the power of ritual and music they emerge into strength and grace.  A couple of the poems – “no (no. 10)” and “a good fuck poem (definition),” maybe others – are already underground anthems being passed from hand to hand.  The body and the natural world are one in Amy’s work; languages and lives are “borderless,” ever crossing and re-crossing; and words from her pen are “strings of indigo light.” — Dan Bellm, Author of Deep Well

“Shimshon-Santo's debut collection rings with music—we need more men like these poems, more women, more human beings with "shark teeth grinning / at the spools of happiness / stored inside." The poetry of Even The Milky Way Is Undocumented devours a whole life lived, leaving bare Shimshon-Santo's vulnerable bones: the work breathes simultaneously political, maternal, erotic and furious. The world hungers for more books like this." — Joshua Roark, Editor of Frontier Poetry
 
“Amy Shimshon-Santo is “a true poet. the kind that breaks the old language and reconstructs the new from shards and visions. I am grateful for her as we always are when the artist appears just at the nick of time.”   — Deena Metzger, Author of A Rain of Night Birds

“I urge you to discover the poetic beauty of Los Angeles’ very own Amy Shimshon-Santo. Her voz magnífica will leave you breathlessly glowing in the dark. Amy’s rhymes are alive and connect with your cuerpo, your body, your mind, and every desire in between. Her voice and verses will satisfy your poetic cravings. Embrace the gift of these poems.”
— Adrian Ernesto Cepeda, Author of Flashes and Verses


Unsolicited Press Proudly Releases KATHMANDU by Nepal-Born Anuja Ghimire

9/8/2020

 
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Portland, OR— September 8, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of KATHMANDU by Anuja Ghimire, a poet based in Dallas, TX.  “Kathmandu” contains reflections of an immigrant mother raising two young children in America. In the backdrop of her memories of Kathmandu, Anuja Ghimire is trying to find her place in the world and trying to make sense of it. Through a journey of political violence from her first home to her new home, she finds enduring love and hope in the first sightings of spring and in the blossoming of her children. “Kathmandu” poems speak of being a neighbor while still feeling out of place, speaking a foreign tongue while finding it to be a lifeline, all the while readjusting the conclusion of what home is.

Ghimire’s poems reflect the incomplete circularity of returning and moving forward. To understand her children, she returns to her first years and to her mother. To comprehend maddening gun-violence in America while her children begin attending elementary school, she returns to the bombing of Rajiv Gandhi in India when she was a child and the Royal family massacre in Nepal when she was a teen. To satisfy her immigrant hunger, she returns to semolina pudding, the first comfort food she made as a ten-year-old for her little brother. To persevere through headlines fraught with political calamities, Ghimire remembers surviving, as a child, India’s blockades of oil and sugar. To poetize while being lost in transit, she makes art in Walmart. In the twenty-one poems that span a decade, Anuja Ghimire writes about the complexity of never leaving home while moving “to keep things whole.” 

Anuja Ghimire was born in Kathmandu, Nepal and came to America to attend college. She began seriously writing and publishing since 2008. A Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee, she has published poetry, creative nonfiction and flash fiction in the U.S., Canada, Nepal, and the U.K. Most recently, her work appeared in Finished Creatures (UK), Glass: A journal of poetry, Medusa’s Laughs Press Microanthology, and EcoTheo Review. She works as a senior publisher in an education-based company near Dallas, Texas. She lives with her husband and two young daughters near Dallas.

KATHMANDU (978-1-950730-51-3) is available as a paperback and ebook, and can be purchased from all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. Ms. Ghimire is open to scheduling events, speaking with the press, and getting involved in literary panels. 

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. 

Poets from Vancouver, WA and Salt Lake City, UT Partner Together in Latest Poetry Collection from Unsolicited Press

8/7/2020

 
​Portland, OR— August 7, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of The Last Tiger Is Somewhere by Scott Poole and Rob Carney, authors based in Vancouver, WA and Salt Lake City, Utah. In The Last Tiger Is Somewhere, two poets from the West bring their work together and take apart the news. Recent history gets jigsawed. Current events get skewered. The result is thirty praise songs, fairy tales, guilty verdicts, and mathematical equations. There are prayers here, and new commandments. There are portraits and photographic negatives. 

Rob Carney and Scott Poole turn the news on its head in The Last Tiger Somewhere, a poetry collection that brings to together the best of both poets. The poets jigsaw recent history and skewer current events. What results is a series of prayers, praise songs, fairy tales, commandments, guilty verdicts, and mathematical equations. 

Scott Poole is best known for his 11 year stint as the "House Poet" of Public Radio International's Live Wire! radio program.  He is the author of 3 previous books of poetry and Vacancy, an art chapbook of paintings and poems. In his spare time, he's a painter and software developer.  He lives in Vancouver, Washington with his wife and family.

Rob Carney is the author of six previous collections of poems, most recently Facts and Figures (Hoot ’n’ Waddle) and The Book of Sharks (Black Lawrence Press), which was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and won the 2019 Artists of Utah Magazine (15 BYTES) Book Award for Poetry. Accidental Gardens—a collection of 42 flash essays about the environment, politics, and poetics—is forthcoming from Stormbird Press. He is a Professor of English and Literature at Utah Valley University and lives in Salt Lake City.

THE LAST TIGER IS SOMEWHERE (978-1-950730-50-6) is available as a paperback ($16.00; 108p.) and ebook, and can be purchased from all major retailers. 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. Learn more at www.unsolicitedpress.com. 

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August 2020 Release: Announcing the availability of AND YES SHE WAS by TSIPI KELLER

8/4/2020

 
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Portland, OR— August 5, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announced immediate availability of And Yes She Was, a striking novel by Tsipi Keller.

Annette, soon to turn thirty, has been transplanted from New York City to a small college town where her husband has been hired to teach rich girls "the basic tenets of History and Culture." The girls have arrived from all over the country with their horses, and Annette wonders how the seemingly spoiled girls manage their busy daily schedules, but they do, they seem to thrive in the fresh air of intellectual and physical pursuits, while Annette, not much older than the girls, feels she has become something she never imagined was possible. One morning, reaching for the notebook where she writes down emergency numbers and To Do lists, Annette, as if compelled, begins to write two diaries, one she titles Squabble Diary, and the other, Love Diary, or, more precisely, Sex Diary, in which she will dutifully record the times her husband (whom she names "Monsieur") deigns to acknowledge her and her needs.  At some point, the two diaries become one, and what began as an exercise in futility, and as an uncertainty—will she keep at it—becomes a habit, and "this notebook is filled with words, feelings, stories, historical events, and me."  Back in New York and on her own, Annette, adjusting to her new situation, summons the Arabic proverb: yom asal, yom basal—one day honey, one day onion—telling herself she must be strong and keep in mind E. Graham Howe's wise advice: "It is better, if we can, to stand alone and to feel quite normal about our abnormality."

Novelist and translator and the author of fourteen books, Tsipi Keller is the recipient of several literary awards, including New York Foundation for the Arts Fiction Grants, and National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships. Her latest novel, Nadja on Nadja, was published by Underground Voices.

AND YES SHE WAS (978-1-950730-48-3) 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.

Announcing the Exciting Release of Tyler James Russell's TO DROWN A MAN

8/4/2020

 
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 At once delicate and visceral, the poems in To Drown a Man chronicle the long gauntlet from a life of secrets to a life of intimacy. “The only difference between imprisonment and hiding,” Russell writes, “is who shuts the door.” Exploring the meaning of redemption and shame as related to the personal, the marital, and the spiritual, these are the poems of a soul at war with itself. They read like chunks of ore being burned of their dross. 

Tyler James Russell lives in Pennsylvania with Cat, his wife, and their children. He teaches English and Creative Writing, and is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of British Columbia. His work has appeared in Riddle Fence, Apiary, and Inwood Indiana, among other publications, and was a nominee for the 2011 Rhysling Award. You can find him at Tylerjamesrussell.com.

TO DROWN A MAN is available on August 4, 2020 as a paperback (978-1-950730-47-6) 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. 

Announcing the Release of CAIRN: POEMS AND ESSAYS by Cameron Miller

7/21/2020

 
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​Portland, OR— July 22, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of Cairn: Poems and Essays by Cameron Miller. ​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.
​​Both poems and essays work on the reader from two directions, the brain down and the ground up. Poems like “I want to be Mary Oliver” seem whimsical at first but quickly instigate a new look at an old subject.​ ​The words ​themselves​ are cairns guiding readers on an inward journey​ to a deeper plane of understanding our relationships with everything, seen and unseen​. Many will find the poems worthy of weddings, funerals, and letters to dear friends. ​​​Poems that immediately jump into deep water like “Depression,” offer a sense of liberation via blunt and unvarnished authenticity. ​​Cairn speaks from these two hemispheres of the human experience in a way that aids those who start out with discomfort around poetry. It quickly demonstrates that poetry need not be a strange or inaccessible medium after all. ​​Intertwined with the poems are essays that echo back to the poems in images of nature, human nature, and the sacred.​​

Cameron Miller is a writer and preacher exploring the sacred hiding in plain sight. He writes fiction, poetry, and a weekly newspaper column for the Finger Lakes Times (NY). Miller’s website (www.subversivepreacher.org) includes some of his work and is devoted to navigating the ordinary sacred as a spiritual practice. He has two novels in print:​​ Steam Room Diaries (DAOwen Press, Canada, 2015); and ​​Thoughtwall Café: Espresso in the Third Season of Life​ ​(Unsolicited Press, 2018). As an emerging poet with single poems published in print anthologies – ​​Poetry Quarterly​ ​(Summer 2015); ​​The Poet’s Quest for God​ ​(Eyewear Press, UK, 2016); ​​Crossroads(2016); and ​​Inwood Indiana Press​ ​(2016), as well as online at ​​Silver Birch Press(January and February 2016). 

​​​​​​​Cairn: Poems and Essays by Cameron Miller is ​a paperback ​distributed through Ingram; an ebook is also available.​ ​Mr. Miller open to scheduling events, speaking with the press, and getting involved in literary panels.

​Unsolicited Press is a small publishing house based in Portland, Oregon that publishes titles from award-winning authors. The press strives to produce exceptional works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry from award-winning authors. 

Unsolicited Press Announces the Availability of THE REALM OF BLESSING by Wayne-Daniel Berard

7/14/2020

 
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Portland, OR— July 14, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of THE REALM OF BLESSING by Wayne-Daniel Berard. The Realm of Blessing is an ethereal poetry collection by Wayne-Daniel Berard. Berard's poetry sings in images and revels in the atmosphere of perfectly executed acoustics.

Here is a sample of the work found inside the poetry collection:

FIRST

I know the sound
the sun makes 
as it rises 
I know the note 
the soul strikes
as g*d draws
it like a bow
returning to its
violin, the body
I know the stage
whisper with which
everything is
cued each morning.
(I lean across 
the bed, kiss
your hair before
going). "Know
your way home
to me"
you sigh,
you day unbreak,
you night sans fall.
 
Wayne-Daniel Berard teaches English and Humanities at Nichols College in Dudley, MA. Wayne-Daniel is a Peace Chaplain, an interfaith clergy person, and a member of B'nai Or of Boston. He has published widely in both poetry and prose, and is the co-founding editor of Soul-Lit, an online journal of spiritual poetry. He lives in Mansfield, MA with his wife, The Lovely Christine.

THE REALM OF BLESSING (978-1-950730-49-0) is available directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. An ebook is available through Amazon.

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. ​

Announcing the Immediate Release of Ron Singer's GRAVY

7/7/2020

 
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Portland, OR— July 7, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announced immediate availability of GRAVY, a multi-genre collection of writings about life after 70 by New York author Ron Singer.

GRAVY is a multi-genre collection covering life after seventy. Divided into five sections, Ron Singer writes on the preoccupations of the elderly: accountancy, books, activism, and family (surrogate and real). 
​
The tone of the book follows this dictum, quoted from A VOICE FOR MY GRANDMOTHER, a memoir of my maternal family that is included in GRAVY: “There are few things I hate more than stories about lonely, impoverished oldsters sitting by their windows feeling bored and bereft. I don’t even like these characters when they turn up in English murder novels as the neighborly snoops who peep through the curtains for twenty years until one fatal day they see something which solves the whole case. They, and the writers, for that matter, should get a life. Anyway, they, the writers, need better plots.”

Ron Singer, b.1941, has been both a lifelong resident of New York City, and one who has traveled to, lived in, and written about the wider world. For forty-four years, Singer was a teacher and writer. Singer’s life and writing have both featured political activism. For instance, while he was in South Africa working on a book, he was invited to read poetry at a memorial for activist/poet Dennis Brutus. The book is Uhuru Revisited: Interviews with Pro-Democracy Leaders (Africa World Press, Red Sea Press, 2015). It can be found in libraries around the world. Singer is also the author of THE PROMISED END.

GRAVY is available as a paperback and ebook from all major retailers.

Announcing the Availability of THE THINGS YOU LEFT as a Audiobook Format

6/30/2020

 
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We are happy to announce the immediate availability of Raki Kopernik's short story collection THE THINGS YOU LEFT as an audiobook on Audible. You can use this link to sign up for Audible and you'll get the first two audiobooks free of charge.

The Things You Left is a 37-story collection built on magical realism and seemingly inconsequential moments between sweet and strange loners that meet in the space between the heart and the mind. A couple throw plates at each other for therapy, a cat shape shifts into a woman, a man is obsessed with canned tuna, a woman relives time with her lover through objects left behind. Sometimes humorous, sometimes sad, The Things You Left explores love, addiction, relationships, and loss.

Raki is a Jewish, queer, experimental fiction and poetry writer. She is the author of The Other Body chapbook (Dancing Girl Press) and The Memory House (The Muriel Press). Her work has been published in New Flash Review Fiction, Blue Lyra Review, El Balazo, Duende, and others. It has also been shortlisted and nominated for several awards, including the Pushcart Prize for fiction. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University and lives in Minneapolis.


Announcing the Release of LETTERS TO MINNEHAHA CREEK by VICTORIA LIN

6/30/2020

 
Portland, OR— June 2, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of Letters to Minnehaha Creek by Victoria Lin, an author based in Minneapolis. Letters to Minnehaha Creek is a poetry collection that travels through the passing seasons. In many of the poems, the narrator addresses Minnehaha Creek directly, reminiscing about her deceased friend, Dorothy, as she walks the same neighborhood routes they once traveled together. 

The tone of the poems reflects the seasons. ‘Fall’ takes place in the aftermath of Dorothy’s death and explores the narrator’s longing for her friend. ‘Winter’ highlights the narrator’s sadness and acceptance that Dorothy is truly gone. ‘Spring’ follows, with a lighter tone as the narrator embraces life after the loss of her friend. ‘Summer’ offers a sense of renewal, with poems that are letters written from the creek, rather than to it.  

The setting and symbolism portrayed in Letters to Minnehaha Creek complement the writingstyle. For example, the speaker says, “A pair of mallards swim by / as I find my way up the stairs. // A female cardinal / in scalloped flight moves // across the sky alone, surprised / at times her partner is gone.” These vivid images of scenery surrounding the narrator also reflect the speaker’s emotional state. The symbolism of the pair of mallards and the female cardinal flying alone contrasts the speaker’s loneliness with the companionship she once had.

Letters to Minnehaha Creek resonates with readers who have lost someone or lived with a loved one suffering from illness as it illustrates a vivid path towards healing and rebirth. 

Victoria Lin lives and writes in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and performs and teaches across the US. Her poems have appeared in literary journals such as Poetry Quarterly, Paper Nautilus, and Apeiron Review. She holds an M.A. in English literature from the University of St. Thomas and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Hamline University. Victoria is currently working toward a doctorate in counseling psychology at the University of St. Thomas, with plans to research and practice poetry therapy. Find her on Instagram @victoria_lin_poetry and Twitter @victorialinph. Find her at https://www.victorialin.org.

LETTERS TO MINNEHAHA CREEK (978-1-950730-43-8) is available as a paperback and ebook, and can be purchased from all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. ​

Unsolicited Press Announces Availability of Dumb Luck By Adam Gibbs

6/21/2020

 
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Portland, OR— June 23, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announced immediate availability of Dumb Luck, a striking novella by Adam Gibbs. Owen Miller: a bookish, single, almost-thirty fellow living in a nondescript Peoria apartment is reminded of how boring his life is every single day. As a travel agent, Owen helps others live life to the fullest -- every trip magnifies the banality of his routine. Fed up with it, he decides to plan an adventure to Vegas for its wild reputation. Owen thinks it’s the perfect destination for someone looking for a fun escape, and it might even be good for his writing. But he has no way of knowing something very dark is lurking there, something inescapable. Dumb Luck is darkly comic, painting a picture of what can happen when you step outside the comfort of your daily routine in search of a thrill.
Adam Gibbs’ writing has been honored by the Tipp City Arts Council and the Hayner Cultural Center, as well as appearing in Fourth & Sycamore and The Mark Literary Review. He lives in Grove City, Ohio, with his wife Lindsay and their daughter Clara.

DUMB LUCK (978-1-950730-32-2) 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.

Unsolicited Press Announces Availability of Song for My Baby and Other Stories By Christopher G. Bremicker

6/16/2020

 
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Portland, OR—June 16, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of SONG FOR MY BABY AND OTHER STORIES by Christopher G. Bremicker, a hybrid memoir that speaks for all voices lost to mental illness, struggle, and the machine that is society. SONG FOR MY BABY AND OTHER STORIES is best described as a work with great variety.  What begins with the sudden demise of a father on a hunting trip transforms into a collection that deals with mental illness, hitting bottom, and an appreciation for those who stick around in the worst of times. Bremicker takes readers for a ride with no degree of certainty: From a high stakes golf game to pay off a son’s cocaine debt, a dating service that results in twelve dates in twelve months, a kidney transplant, a heart attack, a relapse on alcohol, to years in an out of psych wards and veterans’ homes, the book shifts gears from story to story.

Christopher G. Bremicker was a Special Forces medic stationed at Ft. Bragg NC from 1968 to 1970.  He has a Master’s degree in Business Administration and a BA in English Literature, both from the University of Minnesota.  He is a downhill skier, grouse hunter, fisherman, and newspaperman.  He plays handball and reviews theater.  His current job as a sales associate at Walgreens in St. Paul MN is his forty-sixth job since high school.  His hometown is Cable WI. 

SONG FOR MY BABY AND OTHER STORIES (978-1-950730-42-1) is available as a paperback ($18.00) from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. ​

Announcing the Celebrate Release of BROOK THE DIVIDE by Rebecca A. Spears

6/2/2020

 
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Portland, OR— June 2, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of BROOK THE DIVIDE by Rebecca A. Spears, an author based in Texas. Brook the Divide is the result of the poet’s creative meddling in the life of Vincent van Gogh. Her speaker is fascinated not only with Van Gogh’s art, but she is also enamored with him as a man, and a human. In her imaginary friendship, she discovers how difficult it can be to “brook the divide” between everyday life and the creative life. 

Rebecca A. Spears, author of Brook the Divide (Unsolicited Press) and The Bright Obvious (Finishing Line Press), has her work included in TriQuarterly, Calyx, Crazyhorse, Barrow Street, Verse Daily, Ars Medica, and other journals and anthologies. She has received awards from the Taos Writers Workshop, The Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow, and Vermont Studio Center. She is also a recent Pushcart nominee.  

BROOK THE DIVIDE (978-1-950730-26-1) is available as a paperback and ebook, and can be purchased from all major retailers. Ingram Book Group distributes the title to the market. 

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