Unsolicited Press Announces the Immediate Availability of When Story Stops, the Leak Begins by John Sullivan.

Portland, OR— April 21, 2020 — Unsolicited Press announces immediate availability of When Story Stops, the Leak Begins by John Sullivan. WHEN STORY STOPS, THE LEAK BEGINS is the story of accidental pilgrims on a journey through eerie, uncharted territory, having only each other as foils and resources, while they search for the key to their ultimate destination.  Along the way, they meet a grifter, an archetypal character and a spooky digital presence, who might possibly be an ally. In Hollywood parlance, this tale could be described as a spiritual adventure story in which Six Characters in Search of an Author jump headlong with no net into a Canterbury Tales style quest across a dreamscape merging scenography from Waiting for Godot with digital shards of Bladerunner in a rowdy and irreverent Voyage to Arcturus.  

The key to meaning, style and emotional resonances in WHEN STORY STOPS, THE LEAK BEGINS, is the poem-script, a hybrid form that combines poetic dialogue, a performance script format and a narrator – imbedded in what would normally be called stage directions – who speculates, comments and reports on feelings and thought processes in each character’s head. This storytelling format grew from the author’s experiences making non-traditional theatre where speech conveys its usual content but also works as a form of gestural action.  A series of routines weave through the poems-scripts and serve as armatures for developing character relationships. These routines also animate the pulse and cadences of the text. The dialogue derives from skaz, a Russian literary technique using singular dialect and speech rhythms to reveal motivations, intentions, even reliability as a narrator.  

John Sullivan was an American College Theatre Festival Playwriting finalist, received the 'Jack Kerouac Literary Prize,' 'Writers Voice: New Voices of the West' Award, AZ Arts Fellowships (Poetry & Playwriting), Artists Studio Center Fellowship, WESTAF Fellowship, was a featured playwright at Denver's Changing Scene Summer Play, and an Eco-Arts Performance Fellow from Earth Matters On Stage (University of Oregon). He was Artistic / Producing Director of Theater Degree Zero, collaborated with the Bi-National Theatre Project (Instituto Tecnológico de Nogales-Sonora, Mexico / Cochise College, Douglas AZ) and directed the Augusto Boal / Theatre of the Oppressed focused applied theatre wing at Seattle Public Theater. 

For the past decade, he has used Theatre of the Oppressed with vulnerable communities to promote dialogue on toxic exposures-cumulative risk / environmental justice issues with NIEHS environmental health scientists. He was a writer for the online journal, Community Arts Network / Art in the Public Interest and has published articles on Community-Based Participatory Research in scientific journals such as New Solutions, Environmental Health Insights and Local Environment: the International Journal of Justice & Sustainability.

His work has been published in a variety of print and online journals including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Black Bear Review, Argy-Bargy, Prose Kitchen, California Quarterly, The Lucid Stone, Oddball, OVS, Scarlet Leaf Review, Steel Toe Review, Squawk Back, Razor: a Literary Magazine, BeZine, Pudding Magazine, Birds Piled Loosely, Madness Muse Press, Harbinger Asylum, Anti-Heroin Chic, Tumblewords: Writers Reading the West, and the Houston Poetry Festival Anthology. 

WHEN STORY STOPS, THE LEAK BEGINS (978-1-950730-38-4) is available directly from the publisher (www.unsolicitedpress.com) and 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. 

---