Charlie Bondhus’ Divining Bones Now Available!

**Charlie Bondhus’ Divining Bones Now Available!**

Sundress Publications is pleased to announce the publication of Charlie Bondhus’ new book, Divining Bones.

Boys become crones; baked bread becomes a baby; electricity turns out to be Jesus; a first grade class stages Oedipus Rex. At the center of it all stands Baba Yaga, the child-eating forest witch and earth goddess of Russian folklore. Under her tutelage, Charlie Bondhus uses the occult and the magical to explore the fluidity of age, gender, and self-perception in this radical and playful book.

CAConrad, author of While Standing in Line for Death, had this to say about Bondhus’ book:

“Where divination meets poetry in extraordinary fashion! After awhile you can look to this book for answers, opening and closing it nine times with a question in mind, the poet Charlie Bondhus leading the way. Magic spells and paranormal experiences abound among beautifully written lines by a poet we will all want to share and know. I love this book!”

Charlie Bondhus is the author of All the Heat We Could Carry, winner of the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Missouri Review, Columbia Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Nimrod, and Copper Nickel. He has received fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, the Sundress Academy for the Arts, and the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers. He is associate professor of English at Raritan Valley Community College (NJ).

Order your copy today: https://squareup.com/store/sundress-publications/item/divining-bones-by-charlie-bondus

Passing Through Humansville Now Available for Pre-order!

Karen Craigo’s Passing Through Humansville
Now Available for Pre-Order

Sundress Publications is excited to announce Karen Craigo’s new full-length poetry collection Passing Through Humansville is available for pre-order.

Tania Runyan, author of What Will Soon Take Place, had this to say about Craigo’s book:

“I’ve been reading Passing Through Humansville during a time of despair, and they are among the few written words that have comforted me. Emboldened me. Spoken. These poems explore marriage and family, nature and politics, and faith and doubt from a wellspring of compassionate wisdom and grace—a still, small (but not timid) voice of a life lived and loved with intention. ‘There are so many / ways to move across Earth’s face and I / would just as gladly move or sit with you,’ Craigo writes. I feel the same way about this book. It’s a companion whose side I won’t leave for long.”

Karen Craigo is the author of two Sundress titles, No More Milk (2016), and Passing Through Humansville (2018). She is also the author of Escaped Housewife Tries Hard to Blend In (forthcoming from Tolson Books, 2018), and three chapbooks. She is the editor of a weekly newspaper, The Marshfield (Missouri) Mail, and she maintains Better View of the Moon, a blog on writing and creativity. She lives in Springfield, Missouri.

Pre-order your copy here! And now through August 15th, your pre-order also allows you to submit a manuscript to our open reading period for free!

Passing Through Humansville Now Available for Pre-Order!

Karen Craigo’s Passing Through Humansville Now Available for Pre-Order

Sundress Publications is excited to announce Karen Craigo’s new full-length poetry collection Passing Through Humansville is available for pre-order.

Tania Runyan, author of What Will Soon Take Place had this to say about Craigo’s book:

“I’ve been reading Passing Through Humansville during a time of despair, and they are among the few written words that have comforted me. Emboldened me. Spoken. These poems explore marriage and family, nature and politics, and faith and doubt from a wellspring of compassionate wisdom and grace—a still, small (but not timid) voice of a life lived and loved with intention. ‘There are so many / ways to move across Earth’s face and I / would just as gladly move or sit with you,’ Craigo writes. I feel the same way about this book, it’s a companion whose side I won’t leave for long.

Other advance readers include Sarah Freligh, author of Sad Math, who said:

“In Passing Through Humansville, Karen Craigo is the best kind of tour guide—wise, tender, funny and keenly observant of the moments life serves up however large or small. Who among us cannot identify with the weary speaker in “Advent” who finds herself siding with the innkeeper who turned away Mary and Joseph: ‘Damn / but a hard day’s work / should earn us a little rest, / not crisis after crisis.’ I don’t know of another poet who is able to balance feminism, faith, and motherhood as deftly as Craigo does in these poems. These are wonderful meditations on the fierceness of love and the meaning of the word “humankind.”

Karen Craigo is the author of two Sundress Publications titles, No More Milk (2016) and Passing Through Humansville (2018). She is also the author of Escaped Housewife Tries Hard to Blend In (forthcoming from Tolson Books, 2018), and three chapbooks. She is the editor of a weekly newspaper, The Marshfield (Missouri) Mail, and she maintains Better View of the Moon, a blog on writing and creativity. She lives in Springfield, Missouri.

Pre-order your copy here: https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications/item/passing-through-humansville-by-karen-craigo-pre-order

Summer 2018 Fiction Writing Retreat

Sundress Academy for the Arts Announces
2018 Summer Fiction Writing Retreat

The Sundress Academy for the Arts is thrilled to announce its Summer Fiction Writing Retreat, which runs from Friday, June 15 to 17, 2018. The three-day, two-night camping retreat will be held at SAFTA’s own Firefly Farms in Knoxville, Tennessee. This year’s retreat will focus on generative fiction writing and include two break-out sessions, “Conflict and POV as Perspective” and “Writing the Travel Narrative,” plus discussions on kicking writer’s block, publishing, and more.

A weekend pass includes one-on-one and group instruction, writing supplies, food, drinks, transportation to and from the airport, and all on-site amenities for $250. Tents, sleeping bags, and other camping equipment are available to rent for $25. Payment plans are available if you reserve by April 17, 2018; inquire via email for details.

The event will be open to writers of all backgrounds and provide an opportunity to work with many talented, published fiction writers from around the country, including Mary Miller and Jeanne Thornton.

Mary Miller is the author of two collections of short stories, Big World (Short Flight/Long Drive Books, 2009) and Always Happy Hour (Liveright, 2017), as well as a novel, The Last Days of California (Liveright, 2014), which has been optioned for film by Amazon Studios. Her stories have appeared in the Oxford American, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, McSweeney’s Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Mississippi Review, and many others. She is a former James A. Michener Fellow in Fiction at the University of Texas and John and Renée Grisham Writer-in-Residence at Ole Miss.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of The Black Emerald and The Dream of Doctor Bantam, the latter a Lambda Literary Award finalist for 2012. She is the co-publisher of Instar Books and the creator of the webcomics Bad Mother and The Man Who Hates Fun. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in n+1, WIRED, WSQ, CURA, and other places. She lives in Brooklyn. Find her online at: http://fictioncircus.com/Jeanne.

Space at this workshop is limited to 15 writers, so reserve your place today at:
https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications

***

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is an artists’ residency that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers, actors, filmmakers, and visual artists. All are guided by experienced, professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in East Tennessee.

Web: http://www.sundressacademyforthearts/ Facebook: SundressAcademyfortheArts

Semicolon

It’s tattooed on the base of my neck: a large, black semicolon. I got it in the fall of my senior year of college, after a boy broke my heart by not loving me back, after I self-harmed for the first time in almost ten years, after I was diagnosed with a panic disorder. Truthfully, it was a bit of a rash decision, like many tattoos are for 20-somethings living in college towns, but it has come to mean more to me the longer it has been inked into my body.

A semicolon by definition, is a punctuation mark used to separate two complete clauses. However, a few weeks before I decided to brand myself with a punctuation mark, I heard another way someone looked at it. The Semicolon Project, an organization that aims to bring public awareness to mental health, specifically for those who self-harm, have attempted suicide, have depression, and anxiety says that “asemicolon is used when an author could have ended a sentence, but chose not to. The sentence is your life, and the author is you.”

For me, this definition became a crucial mantra to me. Every day I choose to live, and every day I need to remind myself that my choice is important.

The Semicolon Project started as a small, planned event: on April 16th, 2013 draw a semicolon on your wrist to support mental health awareness. The response was remarkable. Over 700,000 people in 9 different countries participated, showing their support for speaking about mental illness. When I heard about the results, I wanted to leave my mark too, but I didn’t want mine to wash off with a few showers. I wanted my mark to be as permanent as the illness I live with.

I chose my neck because I want to remind myself that while I cannot always see my semicolon, or see a way out of a bad situation, it’s still there, and I’m still there. I will continue to grow and change. I will continue to be sick, but what is important is that I remember that I am still here, living and trying to figure out every wave of my illness. I don’t end here;

Hunter Parsons is a recent graduate from Kalamazoo College with a degree in English with a writing emphasis. She has been published in The Cauldron, Kalamazoo College’s literary magazine, and is being mentored by poet Diane Seuss. When she’s not writing, being a plant mom, or advocating for young women’s self esteem, Hunter is baking and organizing her ever-growing makeup collection.

Category: Contributors

Charlie Bondhus’ Divining Bones Now Available!