 Are you ready for some super deals on our books? This year we are taking part in the American Booksellers Association's holiday promotion: October is the New December. With the book industry's massive issues in the supply chain, we are asking readers and those looking for gifts for their favorite readers to buy our books in October so we can guarantee that the books get to the right place just in time. Recently, we were told by our distributor that all book orders should be placed no later than November 5, 2021 to ensure delivery before Christmas Eve.
To encourage early holiday shopping, we've decided to discount EVERYTHING. All of our books are marked down. The print books. The ebooks. All of it! You can find all of our print books on sale in our bookstore, and our ebooks are discounted on Smashwords and most other ebook retailers. This is our way to say thank you for purchasing books earlier than later. Our October is the New December promotion with go through the end of October. Tell your friends.  We are proud to announce that Ayendy Bonifacio's To the River, We Are Migrants Has Been Nominated for the 2022 Ohioana Book Award in Poetry.
To the River, We Are Migrants is Ayendy Bonifacio’s debut collection. 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. 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.”  Continuing the Dugan Family Saga, A Winter Night focuses on eldest daughter, Angie, and her issues with self-acceptance, love, and learning to trust. Angie’s been unlucky with men. Three awkward relationships have left her leery of commitment. When she meets Matt, a friend of her brother’s, she is instantly attracted to him. The attraction seems mutual, yet Angie can’t quiet her inner doubts. Is his interest sincere? Is he just using her for sex? Does he really not care that she carries a bit of extra weight? Angie is good at reading people, a skill that serves her well in her job as a social worker for a retirement community, but can’t read Matt at all. When Angie hears that a waitress at the bar where Matt works is arrested for selling cocaine, she soon learns that she and Matt were more than co-workers. Matt says the relationship is over, but Angie has trouble believing that, especially because he talks to her whenever she calls, and she calls all the time. Then there’s Matt’s history of drug use, which may not be as behind him as he says. His answers to Angie’s frustrated questions are plausible, reasonable, and ring of truth, but Angie’s suspicions remain. Is she being played for a fool? Or is she just scared of getting hurt again? A Winter Night is Parrish’s ninth book of fiction. Earlier Dugan books are Maggie’s Ruse, The Amendment, and Our Love Could Light The World.  On the windswept plains of Far West Texas, the town of Rosadero sits at the crossroads of many worlds. Renowned as a capital of postmodern art, the ruins of the Zaldos Pueblo haunt the edge of town with the mystery of a vanished people. In the evenings, unexplained balls of light streak across the prairie, inspiring the imaginations of residents and visitors alike. Home to rancher dynasties and descendants of the Mexican Revolution, the modern realities of the border sweep up all who find themselves in Rosadero. Outlaw drifters with romantic dreams, border agents at war with their consciences, refugees seeking sanctuary, and the family risking everything to provide it—this is where their stories meet. Into this unlikeliest of settings, Anna Tatevyan travels in search of her missing brother, Jakob. A graduate student obsessed with the relationship between a sitting U.S. Congressman and an international crime syndicate, Jakob has vanished into the high desert without a trace. On her journey for the truth, Anna tries to help another woman also searching for a missing brother: Mariazul Bautista, a woman whose encounter with Anna leads to her arrest by the Border Patrol, an arrest that turns out to be a kidnapping. An anti-Western about the American origins of global violence, Light in Rosadero is a reckoning with the dark legacy of the frontier.  Through this timely collection of seven short stories for older teens and adults, Irshad Abdal-Haqq unveils the legacy of oppression that countless generations of black Americans have endured. The first story, involving a girl and her tribe who are running for their lives from an evil army that forces female captives into sexual slavery, is reminiscent of a modern-day humanitarian refugee crisis in the Middle East, Africa, or South Asia. In a coming-of-age narrative, a teenaged boy defies law enforcement by fleeing from his rural home in the dark of night after his parents are lynched for seeking fair labor treatment. A third story is the tale of a multiethnic gang of teens who would rather live as a family of outlaws rather than endure the humiliation of racism and poverty. And in yet another, a long-time resident of a gentrifying neighborhood enlists the aid of a newcomer in her quest to fight off eviction for another month. Action-packed and eloquently expressed, these mesmerizing stories of desperation, hope, resilience, and human frailty, will spark the imagination and touch the heart of readers of all backgrounds. And most importantly, they highlight the need for intercultural cooperation against systemic injustices that discount the value of black lives. Distinctive notes at the end of the book provide ample support for educational activities, reading group discussions, and academic study.  Sometimes we try to connect to others, especially people we love but end up missing each other for a variety of reasons. The stories in STUMBLING TOWARD GRACE explore instances of imperfect people trying to connect to loved ones and others despite fractured relationships and personal flaws. These are ordinary people striving to survive and thrive in situations reflective of today’s challenges. A wife can no longer deal with her husband's recent paralysis. A husband desperately wants his wife to reconsider separating. A terminally ill man seeks to reconnect with his estranged daughter after cutting ties over an interracial marriage. A freelancing nun attempts to "save" a single mother from the perils of society. Rosalia Scalia vigorously examines people at their best and their worst. We are invited to witness how people who love each other struggle to reconnect their fractured relationships in the face of traumas, personal flaws, and unspoken hurts. STUMBLING TOWARD GRACE combines loss and grief with humor and grace as characters navigate their unwise decisions, unexpected deaths, or their resentments polished into gems.  The nineties have just come to a close when newly married twenty-somethings Ana and Paul abandon their deep-set roots in Jersey and move out west to Portland, Oregon. Soon after they settle into the sleepy, new city, Ana starts hanging out with Drew, her new boss, a mellow, long-haired skateboarder from So-Cal and the complete opposite in temperament to feisty Paul. Drew and Ana become fast friends. And it’s not long before everything that Ana thought she was building from scratch in a sluggish but thriving new city washes away with the relentless Northwest rains. Salad Days vacillates between mid-nineties era Jersey and early aughts Portland, as we witness Ana trying desperately to be an adult, all the while attempting to repair a broken moral compass without an owner’s manual.  Would you be willing to kidnap your child to save his life and set sail in search of a doctor that may hold the key to his survival when everyone else has given up? When it means you may lose everything regardless of the outcome? Pacific by Trevor J. Houser discovers what a desperate father is willing to do to save his son’s life...even if it means braving deadly storms at home and on the run.  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.
 In 2012 a small group of writers and editors living in the California Central Valley complained about how large publishers ignored experimental writers, writers with little platform, and most of all, writers who deserved to be heard but were denied a voice. What was a conversation about Draconian gatekeeping morphed into an all-nighter figuring out how to produce a book.
Within six months, a book was compiled, edited, and ready for print. It wouldn’t sell many copies, but it was the first step in a journey to figuring out how to build a small press. Even more importantly, that book launched a never-ending discussion on what a small press should be and do. Ultimately, a mission statement was drafted, and it was decided that Unsolicited Press would be a voice for the underdogs, for the award-winners, and for the underserved. The press would be different but not for the sake of being so—it would cooperate with the industry but raise a voice against archaic norms that continue to keep the writer and publisher last on the list of folks getting paid. It would argue against bookstores expecting full returnability of books in any condition without doing their part to effectively sell a book. It would market and promote authors to the best of its ability as a way of advocating for the author’s place in the book world. It would be a publishing company that uses all the profit to continue the focus of the mission. During the first few years, it was rocky. We had no money to pay anyone. Everyone involved didn’t step into the mess expecting payment; work was fueled by passion for the craft. From day one, we knew money wasn’t the goal and thus it was decided that the press would be a volunteer-operated outfit. Any money we could pay to editors, designers, marketers, etc. would come after the authors were paid, the bills covered, and the coffers were filled for future publications. It’s still that way. There were lulls of time between 2012 and 2016 where the team was acquiring books, figuring out how to deliver books to the market, learning the dirty secrets of the industry, and subsequently deciding to forge our own path that used only the best aspects of the publishing world. Many blunders were made, but one thing is true: we always got back up and we always corrected our errors. As a team we found ways to use distributors and wholesalers to reach readers and bookstores, while sticking to our mission. That meant reaching out to independent stores to cultivate real relationships, the kind a distributor’s sales rep could never manage to create. The team decided that remote work would be most beneficial, both in terms of cost and in permitting staff to work wherever they needed to be. After all, a shiny office isn’t what makes a publisher superb; it’s the people and the relationships between people that matter most. Unsolicited Press made Portland, Oregon home base in 2016 given its outstanding support for the arts. Around 2018, we hit our stride, and that momentum has and will continue to keep this bad ass publishing program moving forward for as long as we can. Of course, we’d love to buy a farm-slash-bookstore-slash-office on the outskirts of town to hold readings, writing workshops, and residencies, but have you seen the cost of real estate here? Of the original people who started Unsolicited Press, three remain. But the team is so much bigger than that: we have dedicated editors and designers who have been working with the team for years and while they may not have founded the company, they are members of this family—Jay, Kristen, Kathryn, Bekah, Taylor, Robin, and Nathan—thank you. Same goes for the authors who have been with us since the beginning: Mick Bennett, Anne Leigh Parrish, Emily Kiernan, Bill Alton, Nicholas Kriefall, David M. Harris, and Pamela Herron. These authors trusted us with their work during a time when we were little and had no idea what we were doing. We know what we are doing now…but every day offers something new to learn…every year a trend or technology disrupts what we thought we knew about the book industry. It’s been eight years since Unsolicited Press was born. April is a month for rebirth and rejuvenation. What better month could there be for a business’s anniversary. Do you love Unsolicited Press? Want to support us and sport a pretty awesome shirt? Look at our new merchandise. The t-shirt is available directly from our store and the sweatshirt is available through Amazon.
 Remember digging your toes into the sand, the grains squished between those ten little digits, grasping for warmth as the river rushes past the tops of your feet; the cool feeling of water that seems to sate the thirst of the soul in need of refreshment? Giggles ensued between you and your friends--happy memories created that you can go back to time and time again during not so happy days. You can’t help but relax when you hear the indecipherable but comforting babbles of the river.
Revisit the river once again with Janice Keck Literary Award winner Sandy Coomer in her new poetry collection, Rivers Within Us. Sandy Coomer uses the river as the central image in her collection to help convey a theme that “There are rivers within us -- galloping herds of horses, hummingbirds that beat their tiny hearts millions of times between the bee balm and the sage.” Coomer’s collection is saturated with natural imagery that does an excellent job of showing aspects of ourselves that we may embrace, shun in embarrassment, or never realized existed in the first place. In other words, her collection is about what makes us human. Coomer’s symbolic river comes alive and pervades the text and your entire being, even where no rivers exist, as if the narration is told by the river. This intense look into how dreams, death, and the connections we make are all aspects of our humanity that we have to learn how to navigate. Next time you’re digging your toes into the sand, you’ll listen to the sounds of the river with a new appreciation. Be on the lookout for Rivers Within Us in December, which you can buy from unsolictedpress.com!
 (Want to see what Unsolicited Press is up to in the coming months? Grab a copy of our January 2017 magazine that provides lengthy excerpts of recently published and forthcoming books.
This edition features excerpts from Timothy O'Leary's "Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face", Gemma Cooper-Novack's "We Might As Well Be Underwater", and many many more. Not to mention some delicious writerly advice and a master study. Get it exclusively on Amazon Kindle. Free copies will be available for download for a limited time(from January 17-21 on Amazon Only). Click this link here. In this series, we will be highlighting one of some of the great work from our authors. Our first book is Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria be Eleanor Levine  Artificial Limbs"for sweetie" Artificial limbs are more than the synthetic joints and toes sightable apparitions that permit the live skeleton to indulge in his existence it is the infrared eyesight the eschewed reality of a Danish psychiatrist believing there is sunlight in Winter or a born-again Southerner acknowledging that God is a bathroom seat or a dog believing that a tissue is food or a man thinking his mistress walks glibly down the shopping aisle that Allen Ginsberg was a misogynist because he had several affairs with women or that Kurt Cobain died for our sins or that red nail polish will hide your dirty nails or that mice droppings can kill people and artificial limbs dangle from New Zealand trees where a daughter cries for love from your heart and another wraps those limbs from the pavement because she’s afraid or your friend, when he tells you, he can get it up for 20 minutes or the sister who needs a psychiatrist tells everyone else they need one or that Michael Jackson was really a woman taking piano lessons artificial limbs are our girlfriends who never kiss us the homeless man who smells of urine and wants to be our friend the dead fish, which, when thrown back into the water, doesn’t come to life and the snarled reflections of a dead prostitute who thinks he’s literary the quaky sound of an old British queen who wittily tells you “crossword puzzles are the aerobics of the soul” or that Henry Miller has a stop sign between clauses and Norman Mailer was a literary genius and Susan Sontag’s language is more visual than Leni Riefenstahl and that amusing intellectual conversation will redeem a thousand wounds that by placing limbs in the arms of someone or painting their house you have given them a heart it dies when you leave them up a tree. unsolicited questionsWhat kind of images did this poem evoke? What kind of person would you describe the narrator? Who would you recommend this poem to? Why? Who were the people mentioned in the poem? Take some time to research them and share your results. What smells does this poem evoke? about the bookIn Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria, Eleanor Levine has crafted a collection of poetry that will challenge her readers to view their pasts through a new lens: one that is untainted by regret, shame, or fear. She invites her readers to reflect on the honesty in the desire, love, and pain that have driven their lives by following the journeys of narrators using the same lens to view their own lives. A daughter worries about her father buried deep in the ground, alone except for the cicadas that cover the ground every seventeen years. A mother attends Wagnerian acupuncture lessons and struggles to maintain the sanctity of her children’s Jewish heritage even as it slips into the cracks of passing time. A sister laments the monotony of her brother’s chosen lifestyle but wonders if the commotion of her own life merits any higher worth. A woman faces rejection and acceptance from the women she desires as sexual and emotional companions. The quiet moments of life are on display in this collection that refuses to accept that the past is something to be ashamed of. Deeply personal and joyfully candid, Waitress at the Red Moon Pizzeria is an invitation to look beyond the mistakes and missteps that lead us to believe our histories might be nightmares. - See more at: http://www.unsolicitedpress.com/store/p92/waitress#sthash.7HTChrdU.dpuf  The swing to eBooks, online newspapers, and textbook PDFs is impossible to ignore. Across the country there has been a shift away from physical products that you can store on your shelf and towards texts that you can access from any mobile device. The ease of access and lowered price point is making eBooks not only convenient to the reader, but also a necessity for the modern author.
It is no surprise that eBook sales gained momentum after their introduction, but what may come as a shock is that eBook sales have been slowing since 2013 (Trachtenberg). In fact, in the first five months of 2015 eBook sales have been declining (Kozlowski). Instead paperback sales are seeing a boost. Could this be the end for eBooks? Not likely. EBooks are convenient. Consumers can fit thousands of books into one device and access them anywhere. Authors too have taken to eBooks, signing contracts with big names like Amazon to get their name out or to continue a line of books that publishers are no longer interested in. EBooks have opened up a niche for authors to publish what they want to see in print with less oversight. So, there will be pressure from both authors and readers to continue eBooks. The other side of the written word triad is the publisher, of course. And I think this is where we will begin to see the most change. Publishers have traditionally been the gatekeepers of quality, content and presentation. However, with more sources for authors to put out their product, publishers will have to race to keep up. I expect a shift away from the big publishing houses, back to indie publishers that are willing to work with authors to see the book the author had in mind. These small publishers are already including eBooks as part of the deal. Authors want to write their content, not something diluted by what publishers think will sell, and indie publishers are giving them just that. Authors looking out for their fan bases can publish the next book in a series even if their original publisher isn’t sold on the idea. Smaller publishing houses will be the wave of the future, as authors find they no longer get caught up in the machine. Publishing is one of the oldest industries in the world, but has staunchly refused to grow with each passing decade. The rise of eBooks was the first wave, but it was only a taste of what’s coming next. Authors have seen new outlets for publishing and they’re not willing to give them back. Gone are the days of the author waiting hungrily for their book to hit shelves. Publishing houses that can keep up with new ideas about where, when and what kind of content an author wants to produce will see dividends on the other side. These will be the houses that give us a new face to publishing, one that has been too long in coming. Sources: Kozlowski, Michael. "E-Book Sales Plummet All Over the World in 2015." Good EReader EBook Audiobook and Digital Publishing News. Oakbranch Media Inc., 16 July 2015. Web. 07 Oct. 2015. Trachtenberg, Jeffery. "E-Book Sales Fall After New Amazon Contracts." WSJ. Wall Street Journal, 03 Sept. 2015. Web. 09 Oct. 2015. Poet Francis Daulerio and Frightened Rabbit Singer/SongWriter Scott Hutchison Collaborate Together2/17/2015
 What happens when you pair a poet and a thriving singer-songwriter together? You get the marriage of intellect, artistry and a damn good book in your hands. If & When We Wake is the product of winters and springs. It has been buried under snowpack, thawed, cultivated, scorched by the sun, and buried yet again. The result is a book of poetry and art that shines light on the desperation, helplessness, and loss that everyone feels, and tries to find the beauty of acceptance and growth. It examines the necessity of finding meaning in life after experiencing death. This collection is an attempt to crack back through the ice and rip out a life that emits a light and a heat. It is the woods. It is the grass poking up between toes and tiny bits of soil underneath fingernails. It is alive, and it will sprout and grow. If & When We Wake is the poetry and Francis Daulerio and the art of Scott Hutchison. It will be released this coming April through the Unsolicited Press. We will begin the preorder on March 20, 2015, the first day of Spring. A limited release of SIGNED books will be available to the first 25 buyers. The first set of released books will feature a post script poem written by Daulerio too. We intend to run out of this book. After all Scott's band Frightened Rabbit has way too many followers to count.  Emily Kiernan's book, released today, April 11, 2014 has sold out. While the print run was small, a mere 150 copies, her book whizzed out of here today in a hot fashion. Unsolicited Press has ordered the second run of books (200), but those copies will not be available for shipping until April 20th.
Don't want to wait for your copy? You can order your copy of Emily Kiernan's "Great Divide" through other major retailers. Currently, Amazon is the only retailer to have listed the book. Within the next two weeks, Kiernan's book will be available in all major retailers, including Barnes & Noble, Powell's, AbeBooks, and many other booksellers. Here is a link to her book:We will keep you posted. You may continue to place orders on our website, and you will be notified when the title has shipped to your address. The price of the book includes shipping and handling making it simpler for everybody. We do not charge tax. This a great start for Emily and we hope that you support her by providing book reviews on Amazon or through our website. You can see her Author Page...a great place to start a literary dialogue about her book. |
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