 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. ### 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  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. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I would choose Parijaat, a Nepali author (Blue Mimosa). I would make aloo paratha (potato stuffed roti). What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Not saying something important in an original, crystal clear way. I also feel like anytime I am not writing, I am thinking about writing again while being scared of the process at the same time. I read good poems, edit my poems that have been rejected, and most often, I look for submission calls and one theme or another triggers me to write. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Currently, Francie Nolan of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is my most favorite character. Her flaws, strength, ordinariness and endurance moves me. What books are on your nightstand? Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet” and Layli Long Soldier’s “Whereas” Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? I think the sources of inspiration keep changing yet remaining the same for me. Politics, life events, (after motherhood) big questions about raising children, and some signs from the universe give me ideas for poems. Sometimes, it is as clear as a conversation with a neighbor about her recently deceased mother, a mute man in the grocery store begging for cash, or a news headline about a pedophile abusing children in Nepal. Listening to the universe inspires me. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I like commas because they can link the unexpected together sometimes. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I don’t have one. But, I was told everyone cries upon reading this lyric book Gauri and my tears didn’t come. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My Macbook. My husband gave it to me as a gift after our second child was born. I have composed, edited, and submitted most of my poems while having it on my lap. My corner in the couch where I sit with my Mac are definitely on my acknowledgement list. Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. To feel and record life If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? The way you remember the world matters.  KATHMANDU is available for preorder on August 1, 2020 and releases on September 8, 2020. Copies are available directly through the publisher or wherever books are sold. An ebook is available directly from Amazon.
 If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I would begin by preparing brunch for Maya Angelou. I have eaten her quiche lorraine, and I would like to return her kindness. When I was a girl, my parents brought me with them to an epic loft party in San Francisco that lasted for three days with musicians, poets, artists, and activists. We celebrated all day, slept at night, and it would kick off again the next morning like a train with different stops. During the party she read from And Still I Rise. I should say, she sang it. Witnessing her recite, dance, and cook made me believe that growing up to be a woman could be a phenomenal thing. She danced with me, and whispered “If I was still teaching dance, I would teach you for free!” The words we say to each other can do tremendous good. Their ripple effect can go on, long beyond the living. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Writing is a practice. I write everyday, and am not afraid to do it. Turning writing into something for other humans to read is more challenging. That’s when fear can creep in. I can be afraid of how my writing might be received. Do I want people to know this about me? Is it something that should be shared? I can’t reason with fear. Fear would always win. Instead, I tell myself that fear may, or may not, be accurate. Avoiding taking risks would prevent me from experiencing the unknown. Write anyway, I tell myself, even if you are afraid. Especially if you are afraid. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Crush is exactly the word. When it comes to writers, my crushability is polyamorous. I don’t always know how to act around writers I’ve crushed on literarily. I kissed Sonia Sanchez’s hair once at a book signing. Inappropriate. I’ve taken selfies with Eileen Myles and Patricia Smith because it turned out we had friends in common. Not so bad. When Donika Kelly complimented my shoes after a reading I swooned right in front of her partner. Relax. I almost levitated during a reading by Terrance Hayes, Ocean Vuong, and Rita Dove. Pure enthusiasm. When Nikky Finney and Natalie Diaz read at AWP I positioned myself in front of the podium. Face the music. I hugged Naomi Shihab Nye after one of her readings. Necessary. How to deal with a literary crush? Remind yourself — just because you’ve read someone does not mean you know them. It just means that a total stranger was able to reach you in a very personal way. What books are on your nightstand? Toni Morrison’s The Source of Self Regard has been a kind of torah for me. I’ve dreamed many nights with Adrienne Rich’s Collected Poems, Lucille Clifton’s Collected Poems, Eileen Myles’ I Must be Living Twice, and Mary Oliver’s Devotions close at hand. I like to read different things simultaneously. Poetry and prose. The current stack is Camille Dungy’s Black Nature, Arecelis Girmay’s Teeth, Billy Ray Belcourt’s NDN Coping Mechanisms, and Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste. The books are mixed with notebooks, one arm’s distance from my pillow. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? I love this question. It makes me think of Aracelis Girmay and the ampersand. It belongs to her. She also used dots like bullet holes in The Black Maria which was painful and visceral. Girmay made me reconsider what punctuation can do emotionally, and, also, graphically. I love the hand-slash-space-making-movement of a good em dash. S.A. Sukop turned me on to em dashes. An em dash is a gesture that the Orisha Ogun would make while dancing. It slices the line without stopping the flow. It is more assertive than a comma. If I had to choose just one, I’d settle on the simplicity of the period for its finality. It is a hole, a circle, and the end. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? In high school I learned that literature was the materia prima for theater, music, and social change. My English teacher, Peter Sawaya, was also my Theater teacher. Once he taught a rock poetry class where we analyzed lyrics. John Prince asked us to blow up our TVs and eat peaches. Find the simple pleasures. Create a home to nourish your family on things that you all make. That’s what I did with my kids. Home became an antidote to the world outside where women and children were not often taken seriously, and where racism and patriarchy were consistently troubling. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Blue ink. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? “Write. I want to read you.” Does writing energize or exhaust you? Writing humbles and excites me. Stepping up to the page is like accepting a dance with the eldest salsero on the dance floor, and knowing you have to fully commit to keep up. Listen in 360 degrees. Flow. Editing is more laborious, and can be exhausting. When the work is finally done, and it reaches readers, it re-energizes me again. Re-energizes sounds too mechanical. It feels more like glow. Writing is the glow left inside my body after the words come through. What are common traps for aspiring writers? There are myriad traps. Self sabotage. Lack of time. When I was a young artist, I made a bonfire and burned a stack of diaries as tall as my body. I turned my voice into ash. This event inspired the last poem in the collection “esh.” At the time, I was afraid that writing was distracting me from being a serious dancer. I’d bought into the limiting notion that I could not do more than one thing. The burning was an act of violence against my creative self. I burnt the languages and collages I’d made on the train riding from home to rehearsal and back again. Now, I know better. Don’t start fires, especially not inside yourself. Many years later, a friend taught me a new word. “You are a polymath,” he said. Over time, I have relaxed into my multiplicity. What I could not burn out of me became a defining trait. What is your writing Kryptonite? That would be time. The pull between living and making a living. My creative life has always had to coexist with the responsibilities of being independent, and heading a household. I’ve been the trunk of the tree. This next phase of my life will include more time to write, and more of my sustainability derived from writing related pursuits. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. I will put a book down and leave it, but I’m learning to give books a chance. Be patient with them. Once I set down Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things until my daughter told me it was one of her favorites. My daughter is a bibliophile, and one of my favorite writers. I trust her opinion, so I picked it up again and read it with new eyes. The icky orangedrink lemondrink man made the book one of my all time favorites. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Emotions are powerful, disobedient things. Strong feelings can make for empathy, care, and good storytelling. Like many writers and artists, I have a rich emotional life. Writing and performance have given me an outlet to express strong emotions in a fruitful way. Meditation practice has also been centering for me. I was raised in an immigrant household where you were supposed to be strong and not let anything stop you, much less feelings. My friend Michelle Talley taught me that one can’t rationalize emotions into submission. They are what they are. Feel them. Find the message. They are important information. I’ve learned how to move around inside them, and let them flow through me. Your emotions are there for a reason, and can help guide you toward a more fulfilling life. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? Glenis Redmond had a catalytic effect on my writing life. I met her in the state capitol when I was doing advocacy work. I don’t know how a poet wound up at an arts advocacy conference, but there she was. She had us harvesting words from gemstones and trees in her workshop. She wanted to make us rich with language. After class, she came over to me and said, “so, you are a poet.” I always had been, but I was undercover. She saw me, and said something. That sparked a pivot in my life, and we’ve stayed in contact ever since. Gayle Brandeis has been a catalytic force in my writing life. I worked with her during my MFA studies. After graduation, she pushed me into the ring and published my work. She is an outstanding teacher. As an educator myself, I know great teachers when I see them. I have learned a tremendous amount from her as a writer, activist, mother, and a mentor. Adrian Cepeda has been my poetry buddy for the past five years. We read and provide editorial support for each other, and are in each other’s writing corner. Deena Metzger is a writer, and auntie, who reminds me of the bigger picture of writing and living. I sit in her writing circle each month with writers who are my elders. This helps me imagine a life in writing over time, and how I can grow into myself as a small elder. In her presence, I feel I am sitting at her feet and learning how to age as a writer and facilitator. Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? My mother is a visual artist who worked in series, so I know what that looks like. You knead the materials for years until you have had enough, or you get excited by something else, and then you shift. I pay attention to what wants to come through me. I’ve written about family and parenting, teaching and learning, immigration and migration, polylingualism and diaspora. My imagination wants to trouble overly simplistic narratives about family, identity, nationalism, and belonging that never fit me or mine. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? Putting together this poetry collection placed a microscope on a specific period of my life. Selecting and sequencing the work was an existential process that revealed a larger journey. Each poem is its own experience, but, together, I noticed the story of a single mother raising her kids, and herself, in an intercultural, multifaith, transnational family. My daughter told me she saw the book as a story of radical truth and self acceptance. I can see that. It is a book I needed to get out of me to welcome the next phase of living. Dance and writing use different materials, but they are similar. The process of choreographing a full length concert resembles the making of a book. You take what you have been making, and spread it out. You listen to what the different works might want to say to each other. In dance, a standard mainstage performance lasts 90 minutes. You have two 45 minute acts to fill with work with an intermission in between. In the book, I divided the collection into sections. In performance, you experience the journey of the story with the audience at the same time. In writing, it’s a delayed response from readers that is spread out geographically. Different times. Different spaces. In dance, the art object is your body and you remake the work anew every performance. You can’t hold it and reread it, like you can a book. There are no flipping of pages back and forth. There are no margins to write notes in. I did try something that resembles performance publishing once. It lasted seven days. Placeholder Press published a flashbulb chapbook I made during the pandemic called Endless Bowls of Sky. It was available in print internationally for one week only. People posted photographs of the chapbook on social media, and I got to see the chapbook travel all over the world like I wished I could. It was fun watching people receive their special editions in the mail during quarantine. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? The best money I’ve ever spent as a writer has been every tax dollar invested in our public library system. Public libraries made it possible for me to raise my kids to become literate and curious. They made it possible for me to keep studying and learning. I do daily walking meditations listening to audiobooks on the LA Public Library App. I appreciate the added benefit of hearing writers read their own work. Toni Morrison. Thich Naht Hahn. Kiese Laymon. Sandra Cisneros. Louise Erdrich. Amazing. My son is a musician and an audio engineer. He was able to turn Even the Milky Way is Undocumented into a sound object — an audiobook. I hope that listeners enjoy the print and audio versions, and I’m happy that the audiobook will make the work more accessible. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? Participating in theater taught me that language has power. Once I was cast as Alice in a school production of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. I remember looking out across the checkerboard stage at a boy pretending to be a Caterpillar smoking a hookah. “Who are you?” he asked. My voice left my body and floated out into the space. The audience was listening. Rows and rows of blue plastic chairs with human beings inside them, listening. That was my first memory of ever feeling like I was heard as a child. It is so important to listen to kids. The arts can do that. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? I am a dragon. It chose me. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Their forgiveness. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? I try to finish what I begin. I have a list of book ideas written in blue light on the inside of my skull. I keep track of them in my sleep. I’m slow, but persistent. The next one up is a collection of essays that is nearly done. I can’t wait for them to live next to each other inside of one book. What does literary success look like to you? Literary success means living a life nourished by reading and writing, and being able to participate in the world of publishing and performance as a creator and collaborator. It means having writing in the center of my creative process, what I do for a living, and my activism and public service. Literary success means being able to speak to these times and be heard, to help other people find and use their own voices, and to generate better futures for our children, grandchildren, and the planet. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? I don’t see genders as opposites. I prefer the notion of gender identity as personally inscribed along a spectrum. Do it your own way. That is true to my experience. I have never felt that I quite performed my gender correctly. I learned this at six when I was called a tom boy because I wanted to play ball during recess. Once a grandfather gave me a Barbie. I cried. I exchanged it for a football and was happy again. Gender norms have always seemed a bit absurd to me. I am the kind of woman who likes to move, sweat, think, and play. I aim to write compassionately about all living things. My writing has focused on the worlds of women and children. My son appears as a male character in Milky Way. I write about his sound. His form. He is depicted as a possibility, as beloved, as a loving brother, as a person in danger of racist violence, and as an inventor of music. My father also has a cameo in the book. He walks across the page with a granny smith apple. There are male spectres in the book. They have ghostly presence. I don’t like corruption and our future depends on disrupting dominant hierarchies. In “Naked Congress” I ask the senate to undress. I use a similar approach in an essay about my paternal grandmother where I introduce the dead members of the House Un-American Activities Committee in a courtroom scene. I wanted to dispel the negative spectre that McCarthyism and xenophobia staged around my family, and countless innocent people. I wrote about their bodies, their pencils, their coffee, and their XY chromosomes. These white men were empowered by Jim Crow, and were not held accountable for the damage they did through any process of reconciliation. In this case, I didn’t care much what the characters might think of my depictions of them. I did hope that my grandma would find it funny. I laughed while I typed. It was a kind of literary vengeance. What did you edit out of this book?” The seed prayers and meditations I wrote to myself to help me keep going, and grant my imagination permission to continue. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? Not writing isn’t an option for me, at least not now. I wrote quietly. Now I write publicly. I will keep on writing, and creating spaces for more people to do so. 
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. ###  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.  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.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I think I’d be embarrassed to cook for anyone, actually. I’m not a terrible cook, but my cooking isn’t usually Instagrammable. I guess, though, I’d make coffee and some sort of baked good for Walt Whitman. For some reason, I feel like Walt might like strong coffee and biscuits? What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? I write a lot of things that belong in the political realm that I am way too afraid to even move from my journal to Google Docs. I almost view these journal entries as just me venting… but I wonder if I’ll ever get serious about revising these fragments into something. For now, I’m a little afraid of that process. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Oh, 100% Carl Phillips. His poems got me into poetry. What books are on your nightstand? Poetry and the Anthropocene by Sam Solnick Why Poetry by Matthew Zapruder Real Life by Brandon Taylor Homie by Danez Smith Paradise Rot by Jenny Hval The Museum of Disappearing Sounds by Zoë Skoulding Heaven’s Thieves by Sue Sinclair Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Em dash is my favorite. I was often called out in Grad School for overusing it. I also fell for that rumor that the Em dash was named after Emily Dickenson… I think I even told my comp students that! Then my comp instructor told us that it’s simply the width of an “M.” Let’s see: “M” “—” To my eyes, the Em Dash looks a bit wider than the M. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I didn’t read much of anything in high school. I didn’t go to class much either… I dropped out. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I would thank the serpentine stone I keep in my pocket, which is worn with worry. I found it on the beach near where I live. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? “Roll your cart and plow over the bones of the dead” — William Blake, from “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” Does writing energize or exhaust you? Energize. What are common traps for aspiring writers? As an aspiring writer, I’m sure I don’t know… maybe worrying too much about acceptances? Or perhaps not reading enough? Probably not writing enough... What is your writing Kryptonite? My phone. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes - and that’s when I know it’s time to switch to something else, or just take a break. My conception of what “reading” is, is not limited to traditional texts like books; I think we are always reading the world, and we get tired of it! Meditation helps. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? Yes, I think plenty of people are. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I have some poet friends… at lots of different levels. The best thing is sharing work and having the sort of relationship where you can be completely honest in the comments. My cousin Lucretia and I swap poems regularly (she is an undergrad at Columbia College in Chicago) and my friend Josh, who is in the MFA at Oregon State also work on each other's work. It’s very important to me to have some people I trust to work with; and I find working with them to be very generative as well. 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 the former. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? This is my first chapbook and I’m very happy that Unsolicited Press thought it was worthy of publication. It’s given me a bit of confidence, just like each acceptance has. One way my process is evolving is that I’m learning to trust my instincts more; sometimes the first idea is the best idea. Sometimes workshopping gets in the way. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? On books. Buy all the books. Subscribe to some journals. It’s never money wasted. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Some of the older poets… 19th century stuff (mostly) took a very good teacher in grad school to get me to appreciate. I love the British romantics now, and definitely wouldn’t have bothered if not for studying literature with a good teacher. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I understood from a young age that one way to get ahead was to read and write well. I grew up in a poor family who wasn’t very book-oriented, but I could see that the successful adults around me all had one thing in common: a love of books and writing. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? I really love a novel called “Remainder” by Tom McCarthy. I never hear anyone talk about it. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? My spirit animal is 100% my dog, Millie. She is my luck dragon. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Honesty— or a beautiful lie. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? I have a lot of poems. I have a lot of fragments of poems. Not sure how that translates in to books... What does literary success look like to you? Being read and understood. What did you edit out of this book?” The lunes in my chapbook are comprised of fragments from perhaps a dozen longer poems about the same subject. So, I suppose a lot got erased, but I think of each stanza as an excavated piece of the story. Caleb Nichols is the author of 22 Lunes, a poetry chapbook.
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. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? Right now I’d probably say Marilynne Robinson. Of course, if you asked me any other day you’d get any other number of answers: Cormac McCarthy, David Foster Wallace, Michel Faber. But I just read an interview where Marilynne Robinson said something to the effect of, “You have to live with your mind your whole life, so you ought to make it a good place to be,” and I find that such a profound and beautiful and necessary thing. I feel like I would benefit from that. As far as what I’m cooking, I think I know myself well enough to admit I’d fall back on grilling something, steak tacos maybe, or doing that awful thing where I tried to pass off whatever I’d made as something I “just threw together,” even though I hate that. Religieuse for dessert, maybe, though it would probably take me three tries. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? There’s definitely a fear of finality, and the inevitable disappointing reality that what ends up on the page falls short of what began in your soul. In response to this, I’m a devotee of what Anne Lamotte calls “shitty first drafts,” where I’ll do dozens and dozens of passes over a given piece, which more or less tricks my brain into always believing there will be another opportunity to make it less lame. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? There’s a character I’m working on right now who seems to keep echoing my wife. I keep discovering facets of her in the way this character behaves. She’s a fire, for sure. What books are on your nightstand? Right now, The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell (no relation) and Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mendel. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road seems to always be there, and The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence isn’t, but ought to be. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? Madeleine L’Engle likened the creative process to a pregnancy, and that rings true for me (at least I imagine, having never been pregnant). I’m not sure the point of genesis for any ideas, but I often feel it as something within that gradually takes on size and shape until it’s ready to take its place in the world. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The em dash—it feels clean, and more organically similar to our natural speech and thought patterns. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Frankenstein, which I now teach, ironically. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? The author would like to thank the barstool at his kitchen island, whose backlessness prevented him from getting comfortable to the point of sleepiness while writing and editing these pieces. Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. Because art shapes our lives. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? “Make a place to sit down. Sit down.” From “How to be a Poet” by Wendell Berry Tyler James Russell is the author of TO DROWN A MAN, a collection of poetry available on August 4, 2020.
A Joint Interview with Scott Poole and Rob Carney, Co-Authors of THE LAST TIGER IS SOMEWHERE7/15/2020
If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? RC: Anne Sexton and grilled cheese. We’d eat standing up in the kitchen. SP: Emily Dickinson and Hemingway. They both have to be there. I want to see those sparks fly. We’d have Whiskey and White Cheddar Cheez-Its for the appetizer. Then, with a nice Sangiovese, I’d make my Chicken Piccata. For dessert, my wife’s coffee brownies. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? RC: I wouldn’t say “scares” or “fears,” but I can get jumpy and impatient if long stretches go by where I’m not writing anything, and I have no strategy to combat that. It would be nice to have one, but no. SP: I like that I can write on my phone. It’s less intimidating. I dash off a few lines and it’s saved. I can come back to it at a moment’s notice. Later, I'll open it on the computer. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? RC: Not a “crush,” but Mary Shelley’s creature in Frankenstein is vivid as hell and deserved a lot better. SP: Santiago, in The Old Man and the Sea. “I have seen Lions on the beaches.” That’s a badass catch-phrase. What books are on your nightstand? RC: None. They’re on the floor or shelves or my desk or in my bookbag or somewhere I can’t remember, which is driving me nuts. Mostly, they’re books I’m teaching in my lit. classes. But right now there’s Future Home of the Living God by Louise Erdrich and Paradise Earth by Amy Barker too. SP: I’m always reading many things at once, indulging my love of art, literature, comedy, and science. Cezanne by Alex Danchev. Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. Okay Fine Whatever by Courtenay Hameister. Seven Eves by Neal Stephenson. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? RC: The question mark. Because questions are more interesting than ready-made answers. SP: Definitely the m-dash. Nothing is sexier at the end of a line — What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? RC: Are you kidding, I read them all, and I was shocked when other kids said they didn’t do the homework. I lived in a small town, and my dad and mom were both teachers, and every teacher in my high school knew me. College, of course, was a different story. Freshman year, for instance, I thought Madame Bovary was in a contest all by itself for “Sucks the Most” and couldn’t read more than 40 pages. SP: All of them. I hated reading in high school. I was a jackass that was always telling jokes and getting in trouble because of my mouth. My love of reading flipped 180 when I finally got into a creative writing class in college. Everybody seemed to be reading those V.C. Andrews books in high school. I especially didn’t read those. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? RC: I write longhand and type it up later, so “Thanks to all you pens for being so helpful and nearby.” SP: Collections of paper and, by extension, books. I love the smell of it, the possibility of it, where it comes from, how it feels in the hand. Nothing looks better in a room than a stuffed bookshelf. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? RC: “One could do worse than be a swinger of birches” (Robert Frost). SP: “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am” (Henry Miller). Does writing energize or exhaust you? RC: Can I say it does both? SP: It’s absolutely exhausting to think about doing it. I pretend I’ve been hit by a frying pan when I start — just dumb and willing. Once the first few lines are flowing, it energizes like no other activity and it’s hard to break away. What are common traps for aspiring writers? RC: Too much aspiring and not enough writing. And mistakenly thinking that revision is boring or a burden instead of where the real stuff happens. SP: Word salad. Nothing to hang your hat on. Throw a live rattlesnake in your salad! Write your way out of that! What is your writing Kryptonite? RC: Teaching a 4-4 course load and grading 700 papers. SP: Not writing. Writing begets writing. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? RC: Yes, from being sent long policy changes to long university policies, or anything having to do with tech and tech training. That junk wins the Super Bowl of Boring every time. SP: If I read the first line of a poem and there is no tension, no intrigue, no new information, I have a very hard time finishing it. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? RC: Probably, but they’d still have to feel strongly about finishing the work and doing it well. Writers have to be attentive and empathetic, but maybe being strongly emotional can turn your writing into a mess. SP: Sure, look at Henry James and Wallace Stevens. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? RC: Lots, but I’ll stick to just one here: Simmons Buntin. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Terrain.org, and after I won their poetry contest (which got me started on my collection The Book of Sharks), he asked me to write a guest blog. I told him no thanks. I told him I didn’t know what a blog was exactly, or how to go about writing one, but he wouldn’t let me off the hook until I wrote him something, so I gave up and did, and he liked it. He liked it enough, in fact, to have me keep doing it as a regular feature with its own series name: “Old Roads, New Stories.” That’s the material I subsequently drew from, revised, and turned into my book Accidental Gardens. So I hadn’t planned to, as you say, become a better writer; that’s just what happened because Simmons saw something in me--more than I did--and gave me a place for this new prose work to be published, which was very generous of him. Simmons is the man. SP: I am a very lazy writer, as Rob Carney can attest to. However, I’ve never known a more loyal friend and reader. He always pushes me to stay true to my voice. I can’t thank him enough. 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? RC: Stand alone. But then again, maybe not. Or maybe both, because recently I wrote a sequel poem that brought back a woman from my first book (Boasts, Toasts, and Ghosts) named Madame Kafelnikov. The first poem with her was called “If I Hadn’t Drowned in My 30s, She Says, Today I’d Be 73.” And now she’s back after seventeen years in a poem called “Best Healing Witch in Louisiana” (Facts and Figures; Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, 2020). SP: My voice has been my ticket. Without it I’d be sunk. I’m lucky to have discovered it early as a writer. I let the books form as they want, I trust my voice will hold them together. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? RC: Well, it didn’t change my process as much as it changed, I don’t know, my belief. Like yes, a small audience is out there. Which didn’t mean the writing got easier--how magic would that be?--but I did feel a little more certain about it. SP: I began filling up a folder with poems. Whenever I collected over 50 poems, I’d keep replacing the poems with better ones. I’d take the folder to readings and try stuff out. After a year or so, a book of solid poems would emerge. It began a daily process of living as a poet. I finally had license to just live the life of a poet. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? RC: The entry fee for the Robinson Jeffers/Tor House Foundation Award because I love Jeffers, so winning was a huge honor. Plus, it meant I got to do a reading at Tor House. That was somewhere I’d wanted to go just as a pilgrim someday, so to get to read there? Hallelujah. SP: The first money I made off a reading. I think it was twelve dollars. I had been writing for ten years. I had two kids, a wife, and our household income was like $25,000 a year. I went to Wendy’s and bought a six piece Chicken Tenders. What a victory! What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? RC: When I first read Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at age 18, I didn’t see why it was such a big deal. Then I read it again at age 29--at a coffee shop/diner/tavern in Salt Lake City that’s since been razed to make room for this Federal Building that looks like a Star Trek Borg Cube; seriously, it’s the ugliest building in the Mountain West, and not the best message for a democracy to be sending: “Resistance is futile”--anyway, when I read it again a second time, I got it and was laughing so hard I thought I’d drop dead off the bar stool because I was no longer breathing. SP: Shakespeare. I think it will be a life challenge. But I keep returning for more punishment. The writing is so thick, it kicks my ass and leaves me bleeding in the gutter everytime. It’s the only writer where I carefully open the book so it won’t hit me all at once. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? RC: I loved reading. It could make me forget that I was reading. And it took away awareness of time and could even make me cry sometimes (Old Yeller). I’m not sure I thought of that as “power,” but I knew it was amazing. SP: When I wrote my weird thoughts down instead of saying them out loud. Instead of people looking at me like I was a freak, they looked at me with a smile and acceptance. That was absolutely life changing. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? RC: Anything by V.C. Andrews. Just Kidding. A Friend of the Earth by T.C. Boyle. SP: Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? RC: Great White shark. SP: A cinnamon colored micro-poodle. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? RC: Let’s call it three: There’s the book I mentioned earlier, Accidental Gardens. The publisher--Stormbird Press in South Australia--was destroyed (the publisher’s house too) by the continent’s worst-ever wildfires. Total devastation. So many animals dead, ancient rain forests now hanging on precariously. Then add a global pandemic and shutdown, and no wonder the book release is behind schedule. So that’s one. Two is a children’s book with no home yet: What Would You Do with a Mini Canoe? And third--not to jinx it--is I’m working on a collection called Lightning Factories: New and Selected, a hundred poems total. My eighth collection is forthcoming this February, so to think about the big picture after that seems hopefully not too presumptuous. SP: I have two. A novel and a book of poems. The novel was written so I could say I wrote a novel. It was written three years ago, but it’s about a couple stuck inside because it’s too dangerous to go outside. With the current pandemic happening, I didn’t know I’d be living it. If you want to find out how we escape this situation, you’ll have to publish the novel. What does literary success look like to you? RC: Horizontal. And sort of bluish-gray. SP: Not being able to stop rereading a poem I just wrote. What’s the best way to market your books? RC: Maybe this’ll sound too “analog,” but I’m a big believer in radio and think people who listen to NPR are the kind of people who buy books and enjoy hearing authors on the air. SP: Using my public radio connections. Doing readings. Mentioning it on Facebook. Getting a good review in the New York Times Review of Books, Library Journal or one of those. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? RC: I’m not sure there’s a most difficult thing about having women appear in or speak in my poems. I mean, feeling and voice are feeling and voice regardless. Whatever their gender, if their voices and actions and characterizations aren’t convincing and authentic, then you’re cooked. SP: Not talking about my penis. What did you edit out of this book? RC: Well, I didn’t edit out of as much as edit into. What I mean is, Unsolicited asked me if my essay collection was still available, and I had to say no, but then I suggested a different book instead: new work by me and by my friend Scott Poole, both of us together. I hadn’t asked Scott in advance, and then I had to ask him pronto because Unsolicited wrote me back with an immediate yes. How lucky is that!? Very lucky. So Scott said he was in, and I dove like a scuba diver into his uncollected work and came up with a working Table of Contents we could kick back and forth--emailing and changing and shaping--and this went on for a manic three days, and that was the manuscript. Why so fast? Because we were pleasantly stunned to have an acceptance in advance and didn’t want to disappoint. SP: There were a few news poems that I really liked that just didn’t work outside of the context of the news event that birthed them. Save an Author; Buy a BookIf you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
Tough choice… Let’s assume it’s a dinner party, and seated at the table are Virginia Woolf, Flannery O’Connor, Elizabeth Bishop, and Elfriede Jelinek. Let’s also assume they like vegetables, since I’ll be serving my specialty, a casserole of onion, broccoli, squash, white cabbage, chickpeas, rice, barely, shredded coconut, dried mango, dried plums, middle-eastern spices, grated ginger--delicious! What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? The fear I share with most writers is the fear of not being good enough, or not going deep enough, and the only way to combat such fears is going over the manuscript and revising, not once, not twice, but as many times as it takes. Faulkner, one of my most favorite authors, revised and rewrote The Sound and the Fury fifteen times. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Thomas Bernhardt. What books are on your nightstand? Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tiina Nunnally God on the Rocks by Jane Gardam Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston Oroonoko by Aphra Behn Yosef Haim Brenner—a Life by Anita Shapira Anatole France Himself--a Boswellian Record by His Secretary Jean Jacques Brousson translated by John Pollock Esau & Jacob by Machado de Assis, translated by Helen Caldwell Diary of an Unknown by Jean Cocteau, translated by Jesse Browner Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? I don’t actually like the word “inspiration”; same with “muse”--another term I don’t find helpful. Concentration is the word that works for me. When you sit and concentrate, ideas come. An incidental image or phrase, or something that nags at you, may trigger something in your brain and get you going. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The comma. Used properly, it allows you to go on and on... What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I was raised in Tel Aviv, and the books we were assigned were all Hebrew authors, and I read them… In English class we were assigned Macbeth, and I loved the teacher (a small British woman in her sixties with beautiful gray braids) who obviously loved teaching, loved Shakespeare and made Macbeth fun and accessible, especially so when we read the play in class, playing all the parts. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? A pencil. Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. Writing engages my brain. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? READ! Unsolicited Press Announces the Availability of THE REALM OF BLESSING by Wayne-Daniel Berard7/14/2020
 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.  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.  If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? Having just written a book that centers around the lives of men in a cabinet shop, I’m fascinated with the changing depictions of masculinity in literary fiction. Not the aggrandizement or lionization of masculine stereotypes, but rather, the illumination of masculine depictions as a reflection of our society — as we move toward acceptance and understanding. With that, I’d have dinner with Hemingway. I’d make carne asada with a spicy chimichurri and we’d drink a good bottle of bourbon. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Writing is about making choices; and when you stare at a blank page that first sentence is the hardest—even if you have an idea of what your story is about. The first sentence is so important. To combat this, I sometimes write not knowing where I’m going, perhaps not even knowing exactly what the real story is. It’s a leap of faith. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? This goes way back to my late teens or early twenties, but one of my favorite characters is Ned Beaumont from Dashiell Hammett’s book, The Glass Key. He’s a wonderfully flawed character that lives by a rigid moral code of his own making. What books are on your nightstand? Rock Springs, by Richard Ford, Jesus’ Son, by Denis Johnson, Knockemstiff, by Donald Ray Pollock, and Tinkers by Paul Harding. (I often revisit some of my favorite short stories). Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The period is powerful. Anytime you can make someone stop and think, you’ve accomplished something. (When it comes to punctuation, I’m a huge Cormac McCarthy fan.) What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? Ethan Frome. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Having pecked my first stories as a teen on an Underwood typewriter, I’d have to thank my Macbook Pro. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Tell the story of a world you know. It’s your voice that will make it uniquely yours. Does writing energize or exhaust you? Once I’m writing, I’m energized and time doesn’t exist. I’m a binge writer. What are common traps for aspiring writers? When I first started writing, I’d struggled to write about a world I really didn’t understand in a voice that wasn’t my own. Don’t get caught in the trap of writing fan fiction or trying to mimic a writer whose style you love. Work on finding your own voice. What is your writing Kryptonite? Questioning my ability to produce something new and fresh. It stops me. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? No! There is always something great to read or re-read. The hardest part is making the time to do it. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I can only speak for myself. When I’m writing a novel or a short story, it’s like falling in love. I am passionate about the story and the characters and the language and I think about it all constantly. Even when I’m not staring at my computer screen working, I’m solving problems in my head. If I’m not in love with the “idea” of what I’m struggling to achieve, I flounder. I don’t believe it is the same for every writer. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I am friends with other authors, and what helps is their understanding of what every writer goes through to birth a story. What also helps is to know what they are reading. 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 of my books stands on its own. I am driven by a creative restlessness that forces me to seek new challenges and to develop new stories and unique characters. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? The short answer is this: what truly changed my process was going through the Low Residency MFA Program at the University of Tampa and having some amazingly talented writers shepherd my work. Here’s the longer story. In 2015, I self-published a middle-grade fiction novel, and through some mind-boggling good fortune, sold the screen rights to a producer. (I was also hired to adapt the book to a screenplay, which I did. Writers also need to eat.) That same year, I enrolled at the University of Tampa with the idea that I would write a similar novel. But, as I started to write short stories, Brock Clarke (author of An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England and many other books), read one of my stories and said, this is where you need to be. It was a story about cabinetmakers in Ybor City, set in the gritty, blue-collar world in which I was raised. That was the start of Comets. (Thanks Brock!) What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Paying tuition for my MFA in Creative Writing What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Here are a few writers and their books. All great reads! Jennifer Egan, A Visit From the Goon Squad, Saul Bellow, Henderson the Rain King, Don Delillo, White Noise, Paul Beatty, The Sellout. What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? I had two older brothers and a younger sister; we were all between three and four years apart. My eldest brother was studious and never got in trouble. He was “the smart one.” My other brother was “the athlete.” He was captain of the wrestling team, captain of the swim team, played football and so on. My younger sister was “the girl.” She had her own bedroom and got lots of attention. I was the skinny, smartass, creative kid, and didn’t know where I fit in. When I was about eight years old, we drove down to Key West from Tampa. On the long drive back, I had a pad and started writing about our trip. When I finished, it was five pages long and it all rhymed badly. When I read it aloud, the family laughed, hysterically. They thought it was brilliant. I’d found my place, and that was powerful. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? I don’t know if it is unappreciated, but Wasp Box by Jason Ockert is a fantastic novel. What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? My characters are amalgamations of numerous people, along with their various tics and peccadillos. They’re never exactly that person who initially inspired the character. With that, I owe them all anonymity. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? One novel and more than a few short stories. What does literary success look like to you? On the “success” scale, getting a book published through Unsolicited Press is certainly one measure of literary success. It means that someone besides my wife, sister and mother think the book has merit What’s the best way to market your books? I’m going to have to get out from behind my computer and put myself out there. What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Like any other character, I try to find their flaws and write them in a truthful way. What did you edit out of this book?” Comets is a collection of short fiction – a dozen stories. I pulled two stories out and replaced them with two new stories with different characters and with different themes. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? Recently, I started teaching English at a community college. It keeps me close to the language and the literature that I love. I guess I could go back to building cabinet Read COMETSIf you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? I would ask first, of course, but I sense Anne Sexton was a red meat kind of gal (a term at home and allowed in the 1960’s). After marinating a flank steak for 24 hours with a teriyaki base marinade, it would be grilled and left cool and red in the middle. Surely this is how Anne preferred her meat. I would slowly saute mushrooms in butter until they were black. I suspect Anne turned up her nose at green vegetables, just guessing. So, mashed new potatoes with the skins on with lots of butter and cream, and maybe some garlic added in. She would have to pick the wine, and I would need to acquire lots of it. Then something chocolate for dessert - as with the wine, I fear she may be a snob about this. Mohr im hempd might work, but I better practice in advance. Candle light, but not too cheesy; and jazz, not too avant garde. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Poetry is surrounded by a host of parental voices gathered like a cloud of mosquitoes with high pitched screeds, and they suck blood and spread infection in addition to being insanely annoying. Those voices are in my head but I heard them spoken first. Some pronounce judgment, issued from rolling eyes and cast down long noses. Others issue rules for the boundaries of good and awful, most of which I cannot understand. While I have long loved poetry, I also feared those voices. They were louder than my own voice, lost underneath them. There are some things I can do to mitigate against the primacy of those voices,, like asking for feedback and reading my poems aloud to others - I watch their eyes. But mostly, most importantly, it is a matter of acting in spite of my fears. In spite of, because the fears never truly leave. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Author? Anne Sexton. Character, Miss Love Simpson in “Cold Sassy Tree.” What books are on your nightstand? The Overstory, by Richard Powers and The Plague, by Albert Camus Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Always the dash - it lets me go on. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? So many! What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? Mountains and lakes, both of which are crawling with life. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? An inspiration or muse is no substitute for truly seeing and feeling the ordinary life in the world around you. Does writing energize or exhaust you? It satiates me - more completely than just about anything. What are common traps for aspiring writers? I wouldn’t know, I continue to be aspiring. I suppose getting demoralized by how difficult it is to get published, and then how awful it is to sell. What is your writing Kryptonite? The desire for approval. Have you ever gotten reader’s block? Yes. Do you think someone could be a writer if they don’t feel emotions strongly? I suspect everyone feels emotions strongly but some people find ways to numb themselves precisely because of how strongly they otherwise feel them. The writer will write differently when in tune with him or herself. What other authors are you friends with, and how do they help you become a better writer? I now live a fair distance from most of the people I know who write and feel poorer for it. I am only in the beginning of ferreting out the writers in my region and look forward to being part of another writer’s group. 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? That’s a fascinating question. I bet the readers of my works see connections I am not aware of but the body of work, regardless of genre, will point to the sacred hiding in plain sight. How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? It kept me going. I was on the verge of giving up and wham, the road opened up. What was the best money you ever spent as a writer? Probably for the production and maintenance of my website. What authors did you dislike at first but grew into? Ken Follett and Niko Kazantsakis What was an early experience where you learned that language had power? At a retreat with my first congregation, the facilitator asked those present what my preaching themes were. I was stunned that so many had an answer, and a sermon they could point to that meant something to them. From then on, I took preaching seriously and got the best training I could find. What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel? Cold Sassy Tree As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? Crow What do you owe the real people upon whom you base your characters? Everything. I don’t just write about them, I write about what I learned from them. While it is less apparent in my poetry, it is no less true. How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have? Ooh, half a dozen or more. What does literary success look like to you? An independent publisher, not self-publishing, producing my work and people reading it. What’s the best way to market your books? To my own network, and interconnecting networks What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex? Facing the inevitable critique from the opposite sex, in addition to a bunch of research that is otherwise unnecessary and second nature when writing from within your own frame of reference. What did you edit out of this book?” A whole bunch of poems that didn’t seem ready for prime time. If you didn’t write, what would you do for work? I’m doing it, preaching and pastoring. It supports my writing habit among other things. Cameron Miller is the author of CAIRN: POEMS AND ESSAYS and THOUGHTWALL CAFE. Both book are available through our website and through all major retailers.
 The poems in this generous collection mirror the chosen title. One after another they engage our not-so-secret foibles, desires, rants & ravages. & they leap around, which keeps us slightly off-balance but engaged & curious, what will the poet come up with next? Douglas Cole’s latest collection of poems titled The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God is a challenge from beginning to end, where the outcome varies, as it does in all good poetry, according to what the reader brings to it or fashions from it while reading. Cole is unusually adept at leaving enough unsaid to require the reader to enter what Gaston Bachelard calls a reverie of will, in this case interpreted as “I will puzzle this out.” Zbigniew Herbert once said, “It is vanity to think that one can influence the course of history by writing poetry. It is not the barometer that changes the weather.” And yet the barometer is an essential tool for translating the pressure of the atmosphere to help us forecast what weather is headed our way. In The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God, Douglas Cole has provided readers with a precise collection of atmospheric readings for the weather systems of human relationships and struggles. The poems in the collection blow and rumble, rage and grow still. After finishing the collection I felt tousled and sunburnt and invigorated. There is much beauty to behold in Douglas Cole’s compulsively readable poetry collection The Gold Tooth in the Crooked Smile of God. As a whole, these poems leave the reader with the feeling of movement in depictions of gritty landscapes and the people whose dreams and failures inhabit them. These places are filled with memorable characters who the poet presents to the reader without judgment, and often with an open-eyed wonder. The reader winds up feeling like a witness and a friend. Douglas Cole is a poet that America needs right now. The country is having a loud argument with itself; so loud, you almost forget that the majority of Americans aren’t shouting at anyone, they’re just trying to get by. Cole writes poetry for this America - for the man who sits down in a reading room out of the rain who “knows someone’s coming / to try and kick him out, / so he lowers his head / and sets up for a siege”, people “watching the world die wishing it weren’t”, and the hanged man who consoles himself with the thought that “I’ll never regret again / I’ll never choose badly again / I’ll never wait in line again”. 
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. 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.  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.  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. If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make? Ernest Hemingway. Ruffed grouse with asparagus. What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? Running out of ideas. Writer’s block. From experience, I know the urge to write will always return. I plan to write on my deathbed. Right now, I am in a lull and welcome filling out this form. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Lady Brett Ashley in The Sun Also Rises. She is aristocratic, beautiful, a lush, and, according to some critics, a nymphomaniac. What books are on your nightstand? Islands in the Stream, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Huckleberry Finn. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? Life. I was called a student of life. My autobiographical stuff is instructional. My fiction reveals more of me than my creative nonfiction. I like to sit at a table in the community room of my hi-rise and drink water. This elevates my mind to a spiritual level and gets me thinking along literary lines. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? Exclamation mark. It works. Like expletives,I use them sparingly. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? History, world history, and geometry. I hated all my classes except English, where I studied and did well. I did well in chemistry, too, only because I liked my teacher. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? My laptop. Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. I can’t help it. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? Write every day, even if it stinks.
If you could cook dinner for any author, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you make?
I would like to have dinner with Mary Oliver -- one where we go to the nearest farmer’s market together to buy fruit, vegetables, and meat we wished to eat. Then we would cook something delicious together, such as a thick stew with mushrooms, lamb, and beans. For dessert, perhaps we might have blackberries drizzled with coconut milk and honey. I would want Mary to be very happy, so I base the bulk this menu off a poem; how better to determine what meal to serve a beloved poet? What scares you the most about the writing process? How do you combat your fears? I write drafts of poems in a Mead composition notebooks. After I fill a notebook, I read through it to look for poems I want to develop further. I am always afraid to read through my notebooks, perhaps because I worry I will not find anything I value. My fear embarrasses me, but it is real and powerful. I compel myself to work through it somehow, but it never leaves me. Who is your biggest literary crush, author or character? Since I already mentioned Mary Oliver, I will say Sylvia Plath for her imagery and craft. What books are on your nightstand? I was reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry collection Book of Hours (Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy) and Maurice Manning’s collection Bucolics nearly every day that I was working on this manuscript. Both collections are still on my night-stand for regular reference along with Hafiz, Elizabeth Bishop, Mary Oliver, Sylvia Plath, as well as whatever novel my book club is reading, psychology text-books, the Bible, and probably some Brene Brown and Louise Hay. When on vacation, I will read fantasy novels. I am currently obsessed with NK Jemisin. Since my night-stand is a shelf on the headboard just above our pillows, my husband often worries my book stack is becoming too tall and might fall on our heads while we sleep. I thin out the stack occasionally, but many of the same books migrate back again eventually. Where do you get your ideas? What inspires you? People inspire me with their messy, mean, and gorgeous lives. Complicated feelings inspire me. Pain inspires me. I suppose I am deeply influenced by the romantic poets, whether I acknowledge it consciously or not, in that the external world tends to reflect my internal state of being. Sometimes the prospect of an audience inspires me, but that can terrify me as well. Favorite punctuation mark? Why? The dash may be my favorite punctuation mark because of Emily Dickinson, my first poetic love. Although, I also have a deep love for the semi-colon. What book were you supposed to read in high school, but never did? I rarely read my any of my text books for classes in high school. (except the English literature text books -- I read all of those.) I’d rather tell you what book I wasn’t supposed to read, which was Sibyl. It was the only book that I recall my parents banned me from reading in high school. I promptly found it on my grandmother’s basement bookshelf and read it one afternoon after school. I tended to be a fairly compliant daughter in most areas of life, but apparently not when it came to books. What inanimate object would you thank in your acknowledgements? I would like to thank my tea pot, which may have held more green tea than all the lakes in Minnesota. Why do you write? The first 5 words that come to mind. Go. To understand my existence. If you could write an inspirational quote on the mirrors of aspiring writers, what would you write? “What I can do -- I will -- / Though it be little as a Daffodil -- / That I cannot -- must be / Unknown to possibility --” -- Emily Dickinson  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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