Month: December 2018

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: For Girls Forged by Lightning by Molly Fuller

This selection comes from the collection For Girls Forged by Lightning available from All Nations Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Molly Fuller is a Teaching Fellow in the PhD Literature program at Kent State University.  She holds an MA in English from Ohio University, and an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.  Her prose poems and micro fictions have been published in journals including 94 Creations, 100 Word Story, Blue Earth Review, Crack the Spine, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Hot Metal Bridge, Kestrel, MadHatLit, NANO fiction, The Oklahoma Review, Potomac, Quickly, and Union Station Magazine. Fuller has been recognized as a Finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar Emerging Writer Award and as a Semi-Finalist for The Florida Review’s Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award. The author of full length book of prose poetry, For Girls Forged by Lighting (All Nations Press, 2017), as well as two prose poetry chapbooks, The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press, 2013) and Tender the Body(Spare Change Press, 2013). Her sequence “Hold Your Breath” was included in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (Marie Alexander/White Pine Press, 2016).  An associate editor with The Raymond Carver Review, Fuller is the co-editor of Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers, the inaugural volume in the Transforming Literary Studies Series, (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and she has published on Joy Harjo, Louse Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Raymond Carver, Simon Ortiz, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: For Girls Forged by Lightning by Molly Fuller

This selection comes from the collection For Girls Forged by Lightning available from All Nations Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Molly Fuller is a Teaching Fellow in the PhD Literature program at Kent State University.  She holds an MA in English from Ohio University, and an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College.  Her prose poems and micro fictions have been published in journals including 94 Creations, 100 Word Story, Blue Earth Review, Crack the Spine, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Hot Metal Bridge, Kestrel, MadHatLit, NANO fiction, The Oklahoma Review, Potomac, Quickly, and Union Station Magazine. Fuller has been recognized as a Finalist for the Key West Literary Seminar Emerging Writer Award and as a Semi-Finalist for The Florida Review’s Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award.The author of full length book of prose poetry,For Girls Forged by Lighting (All Nations Press, 2017), as well as two prose poetry chapbooks, The Neighborhood Psycho Dreams of Love (Cutty Wren Press, 2013) and Tender the Body(Spare Change Press, 2013). Her sequence “Hold Your Breath” was included in Nothing to Declare: A Guide to the Flash Sequence (Marie Alexander/White Pine Press, 2016).  An associate editor with The Raymond Carver Review, Fuller is the co-editor of Community Boundaries and Border Crossings: Critical Essays on Ethnic Women Writers, the inaugural volume in the Transforming Literary Studies Series, (Lexington Books/Rowman & Littlefield, 2017) and she has published on Joy Harjo, Louse Erdrich, N. Scott Momaday, Raymond Carver, Simon Ortiz, and Zora Neale Hurston.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

Sundress Picks: Best of 2018

2018 is coming to a close, but before we all start communally harmonizing “Auld Lang Syne,” let’s reflect on our favorite reads from the past year. We’ve asked Sundress authors, staff, and editors to pick their favorite books published in 2018 so that you can ring in the new year with a great list of book recommendations.

Here’s a list of the top picks—and from all of us at Sundress Publications, have a happy new year!

past lives

 

Past Lives, Future Bodies explores sexuality, grief, and racism through the violence of language—”To translate my mother/ I swab her mouth/ with a sword.” Chang’s poems are poignant and visceral, giving shape and meaning to her pain.

Past Lives, Future Bodies by Kristin Chang (Black Lawrence Press)

 

the carrying

 

The Carrying is a collection of grief. Grief for an ability stolen by chronic illness; for a baby you can’t carry; for the America that never existed. Yet, the speaker manages to find hope in the magic of the ordinary.

The Carrying by Ada Limón  (Milkweed Editions)

 

 

because

 

Because is a powerful lyric memoir that recounts the trauma of sexual assault in the author’s childhood and early adolescence. The narrative is crafted by scenes to replicate the quality of memory, its pieced-together nature, finding closure in the act of writing.

Because by Joshua Mensch (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.)

 

Plasma

 

Plasma seeks to understand a person’s connection with the world, how we learn words, how we learn the rules of society, and what our responsibilities are. The University of Pittsburgh Press wrote that the title refers to “all our conceptions of plasma: an infinitely conductive state of matter in which the many disparate parts act collectively to create a single, ever-shifting whole,” and there is no better way to describe it.

Plasma by Bradley Paul (University of Pittsburgh Press)

 

Broken Horizons by Richard Jackson.jpg

 

From the publisher’s website at Press 53, the poet and essayist Gerald Stern said of Jackson’s poems, “I think he is either the god Hermes or a sparrow. He is certainly a messenger. And what he says is contained in a single word, although it comes out as amazement, anger, joy, sadness, in an astounding cascade of images, and a variety of tongues. He is a poet of great sweep and vision.  he is deeply tender. He is a master of music, one of our finest poets.”

Broken Horizons by Richard Jackson (Press 53)

 

 

Bombing The Thinker is told from the point of view of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s copy of Rodin’s The Thinker, which was bombed in 1970. Demaree dissects the intersections of art and politics in this moving collection.

Bombing the Thinker by Darren C. Demaree (Backlash Press)

 

 

 

Eye Level

Eye Level is a poem of wandering, of searching for identity in travel as tourist and immigrant, never quite finding a place to belong—”You could say moving here was a kind of hiding.” Jenny Xie exposes the loneliness of being untethered.

Eye Level by Jenny Xie (Graywolf Press)

 

 

 

 

Rodeo in Reverse dissects familiar American images, historical, domestic, in search for self-discovery through these different lenses, while managing to be humorous and witty.

Rodeo in Reverse by Lindsey Alexander (Hub City Writers Project)

 

 

 

Midden

Midden unearths the dark Maine past of the Malaga interracial community, evicted from the island they called home for generations in 1912. The bodies of the Malaga were exhumed from the cemetery and stuffed into five caskets, buried at the Maine School for the Feeble Minded. Bouwsma interrogates the intersection of generational trauma, land, and identity, as Fordham Press described it.

Midden by Julia Bouwsma (Fordham University Press)

 

 

I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood

I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood investigates identity through mythology,  ancestry, pop culture, religion, and history. Her imagery is powerful, probing the intersections of these to grapple with her own pain in the larger context of race in the American South.

I Can’t Talk About the Trees Without the Blood          by Tiana Clark (University of Pittsburgh Press)

 

 

If You Have to Go

 

If You Have to Go is a haunting collection of sonnets seeking meaning after the dissolution of the speaker’s marriage. The traditional sonnet which is often associated with love is used to rediscover the self.

If You Have to Go by Katie Ford (Graywolf Press)

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: ActivAmerica by Meagan Cass

This selection comes from ActivAmerica, available from UNT Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Meagan Cass‘ first full-length collection, ActivAmerica, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. She is author of the chapbook Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press) and her stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Joyland, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her flash fiction was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 Flash Fictions of 2012, and was selected for SmokeLong Quarterly’s The Best of the First Ten Years anthology. She is founder of the Shelterbelt Reading Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches, and she is assistant editor and board member for Sundress Publications. She lives in St.Louis, MO.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: ActivAmerica by Meagan Cass

This selection comes from ActivAmerica, available from UNT Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Meagan Cass‘ first full-length collection, ActivAmerica, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. She is author of the chapbook Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press) and her stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Joyland, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her flash fiction was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 Flash Fictions of 2012, and was selected for SmokeLong Quarterly’s The Best of the First Ten Years anthology. She is founder of the Shelterbelt Reading Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches, and she is assistant editor and board member for Sundress Publications. She lives in St.Louis, MO.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: ActivAmerica by Meagan Cass

This selection comes from ActivAmerica, available from UNT Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Meagan Cass‘ first full-length collection, ActivAmerica, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. She is author of the chapbook Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press) and her stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Joyland, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her flash fiction was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 Flash Fictions of 2012, and was selected for SmokeLong Quarterly’s The Best of the First Ten Years anthology. She is founder of the Shelterbelt Reading Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches, and she is assistant editor and board member for Sundress Publications. She lives in St.Louis, MO.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: ActivAmerica by Meagan Cass

This selection comes from ActivAmerica, available from UNT Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Meagan Cass‘ first full-length collection, ActivAmerica, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. She is author of the chapbook Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press) and her stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Joyland, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her flash fiction was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 Flash Fictions of 2012, and was selected for SmokeLong Quarterly’s The Best of the First Ten Years anthology. She is founder of the Shelterbelt Reading Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches, and she is assistant editor and board member for Sundress Publications. She lives in St.Louis, MO.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: ActivAmerica by Meagan Cass



This selection comes from ActivAmerica, available from UNT Press. Order your copy here. Our curator for December is Samantha Edmonds.

Meagan Cass‘ first full-length collection, ActivAmerica, won the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction and was published by UNT Press. She is author of the chapbook Range of Motion (Magic Helicopter Press) and her stories have appeared in Hayden’s Ferry Review, The Pinch, DIAGRAM, Joyland, and Puerto del Sol, among others. Her flash fiction was chosen for the Wigleaf Top 50 Flash Fictions of 2012, and was selected for SmokeLong Quarterly’s The Best of the First Ten Years anthology. She is founder of the Shelterbelt Reading Series at the University of Illinois Springfield, where she teaches, and she is assistant editor and board member for Sundress Publications. She lives in St.Louis, MO.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville. Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love & a Loaded Gun by Emily Rose Cole

This selection comes from Love & a Loaded Gun, available from Minerva Rising Press. Order your copy here.

Emily Rose Cole is the author of a chapbook, Love & a Loaded Gun, from Minerva Rising Press. She has received awards from Jabberwock Review, Philadelphia Stories, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2018, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and is pursuing a PhD in Poetry and Disability Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville.Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Love & a Loaded Gun by Emily Rose Cole

This selection comes from Love & a Loaded Gun, available from Minerva Rising Press. Order your copy here.

Emily Rose Cole is the author of a chapbook, Love & a Loaded Gun, from Minerva Rising Press. She has received awards from Jabberwock Review, Philadelphia Stories, and the Academy of American Poets. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets 2018, Spoon River Poetry Review, The Pinch, and Southern Indiana Review, among others. She holds an MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and is pursuing a PhD in Poetry and Disability Studies at the University of Cincinnati.

Samantha Edmonds‘ work appears or is forthcoming in Mississippi Review, Black Warrior Review, Pleiades, The Pinch, and McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. She serves as the Fiction Editor for Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, the Community Outreach Director for Sundress Academy for the Arts, and is an MFA candidate at the University of Tennessee. She currently lives in Knoxville.Visit her online at: www.samanthaedmonds.com