Sundress Releases Blood Stripes by Aaron Dylan Graham

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Sundress Releases Blood Stripes by Aaron Dylan Graham

Blood Stripes CoverSundress Publications announces the release of Blood Stripes, the debut full-length poetry collection from Aaron Graham. Blood Stripes is a haunting, unprecedented example of contemporary trench poetry.

Set in Iraq during the mid-2000’s, Blood Stripes delves into the complexity and trauma of modern conflict. Through the eyes of a marine, these poems illustrate the intimacy of violence with candid brutality. Beyond the innate bonds formed between comrades, a strange communion develops across enemy lines as those charged with destroying each other do so with a kind of tenderness. Through inflicting atrocities, the speaker forges human connection—connections that cannot be replicated outside the battle.

In these poems, violence is a new creature, one that is concurrently loathsome yet addictive and sensual. Amid the shrapnel and the sand wet with bits of lung, this violence is perhaps born of a love of the struggle. While the marine unwittingly volunteers to be a harbinger of death, it is a role of eternal confinement. These poems reveal the moral ambiguity of the causal sequence of war, as at home the marine is haunted by trauma while still craving it. The side effects of conflict cannot be outlived—despite quickclot being applied to a ruptured artery—some bleeding cannot be stopped.

“In Aaron Graham’s searing debut, poetry emerges as a full-blooded form of counterintelligence. WWI novelist Henri Barbusse called soldiers ‘forgetting machines,’ built to suppress and deny the trauma they experience in themselves and produce in others. Marine veteran of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Graham trains every fiber of his uncompromising attention on the sacred and obscene task of remembering what, strictly speaking, cannot be known. PTSD tendrils between every line—’all my nows murder all my / vowels – // all my nows justify / the violence’—as the poet reaches through and beyond realism. Deploying his formidable intelligence as linguist, translator, and philosopher, Graham isolates ‘the moment before an explosion / breaks, the word shrapnel becomes / the beginning of the reality shrapnel.’ Under the poet’s targeted pressure, ‘the whole structure of propriety delaminates,’ including the fiction of the reader’s innocence. The poems in this collection sear me, stain me, push me to the point of slamming the book shut until I’m ready to pry the pages open again, to see in Graham’s language what I cannot see.”
-Cassandra Cleghorn

Aaron Graham hails from Glenrock, Wyoming, population 1159, which boasts seven Aaron Grahambars, six churches, a single 4-way stop sign, and no stoplights. He served as the editor-in-chief for the Squaw Valley Review, is an alumnus of Squaw Valley Writers Workshop and The Ashbury Home School, and the Cambridge Writer’s Workshop. Aaron is currently attending UCNG’s MFA program in poetry and finishing his Ph.D. at Emory University. He currently resides in Greensboro, NC with this wife, Alana, and their three daughters, Alexi, Nora, and Naomi.

Pre-order Blood Stripes here.

 

Hannah V. Warren Wins Sundress Publications 2019 Chapbook Competition

Hannah V. Warren Wins 2019 Chapbook Contest

 

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce that Hannah V. Warren with her chapbook, [re]construction of the necromancer, was selected by Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello as the winner of Sundress Publications’ eighth annual chapbook competition.

Hannah V. Warren is an MFA graduate of the University of Kansas and, currently, a creative writing Ph.D. student at the University of Georgia where she studies fairytales and other speculative narratives. Her poetry has recently appeared in Prism Review, Whiskey Island, Bear Review, and Room Magazine.

Angela Narciso Torres’ chapbook To the Bone was chosen as this year’s runner-up and will also receive publication.

Angela Narciso Torres is the author of Blood Orange, winner of the Willow Book Literature Awards for Poetry. Recently, her work has appeared or is forthcoming in POETRY, Missouri Review, Quarterly West, and PANK. She is an MFA graduate of Warren Wilson College’s Program for Writers and Harvard Graduate School of Education and has received fellowships from Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Illinois Arts Council, and Ragdale Foundation. She currently resides in South Florida where she is faculty for the Palm Beach Poetry Festival as a manuscript consultant.

Congratulations, also, to this year’s finalists and semifinalists!

Finalists
“Dispatches re: Year One,” Sarah B. Boyle
“A Field Guide to the Natural Disasters of Southern California,” Charles Jensen

“Counting Softly the Seconds,” John LaPine
“Backstory,” Lisa Mase

“Unerase,” Fargo Tbakhi

Semifinalists
“our lady of deciduous teeth,” Chelsea Bodnar

“Breadcrumbs,” Lois Marie Harrod
“If You Had Left Your Brain Alone,” David James
“Church of the Unnamed Subdivision,” Jennifer Schomburg Kanke

“Tumbling After,” Sara Wagner

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A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

Website: www.sundresspublications.com      Facebook: sundresspublications
Email: sundresspublications@gmail.com          Twitter: @SundressPub

The Wardrobe is Looking for Books that Honor National Suicide Prevention Week

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As a part of Sundress’s ongoing commitment to providing a platform for marginalized voices, Sundress Publications is accepting submissions in honor of National Suicide Prevention Week (September 8–14).

We at Sundress hope to champion writers whose work helps to break the stigma of mental health issues and highlights the very human struggles that can lead to thoughts of suicide, suicide attempts, and suicide survivors. We are looking for submissions that challenge the misconceptions surrounding suicide and that work to shed some light the silent struggle.

Authors or publishers of books published in any genre in the past twelve months may submit to The Wardrobe. To do so, please forward an electronic copy of the book (PDFs preferred), author bio, photo of the cover, and a link to the publisher’s website to The Wardrobe’s email with the subject line “Suicide Prevention.” In addition, we request that one print copy be mailed to Sundress Academy for the Arts, ATTN: The Wardrobe, 195 Tobby Hollow Lane, Knoxville, TN 37931.

Submissions to The Wardrobe will remain eligible for this “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library and be made available for review by our editors and/or affiliate journals.

For the complete details and rules, please see The Wardrobe website.

 

Call for Submissions: Full-Length Poetry Manuscripts

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unnamed Sundress Publications is open for submissions of full-length poetry manuscripts. All authors are welcome to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period of May 15 to August 15, 2019.

We’re looking for manuscripts of forty-eight to eighty (48-80) single-spaced pages; front matter is excluded from page count. Individual pieces or selections may have been previously published in anthologies, chapbooks, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Single-author and collaborative author manuscripts will be considered. Manuscripts translated from another language will not be accepted. Simultaneous submissions are fine, but we ask that authors notify us immediately if their work has been accepted elsewhere.

The reading fee is $13 per manuscript, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title or broadside. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pays the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many manuscripts as they would like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store.

All manuscripts will be read by members of our editorial board, and we will choose at least two manuscripts for publication. We strive to further our commitment to diversity and seek to encounter as many unique and important voices as possible. We are actively seeking collections from writers of color, trans and nonbinary writers, writers with disabilities, and others whose voices are underrepresented in literary publishing. Selected manuscripts will be offered a standard publication contract, which includes 25 copies of the published book, as well as any additional copies at cost.

This year our top selection from the reading period also will receive a free one-week writing residency at the Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN.

To submit, email your Sundress store receipt for submission fee or book purchase, along with your manuscript (DOC, DOCX, or PDF), to sundresspublications@gmail.com. Be sure to note both your name and the title of the manuscript in your email header. For those nominating others for our reading period, please include the name of nominee as well as an email address; we will solicit the manuscript directly.

Although we are conscious of the lack of representation by women writers in literary publishing, we are a non-discriminatory publishing group focused on the creativity of all artists, regardless of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, education, etc.

A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

 

Call for Submissions: Stirring through the Years

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Stirring is excited to announce our fifth annual themed issue: Stirring Through the Years. We are calling on all past contributors of poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, reviews, and art to send us their new work. Stirring was proud to publish your work then, and we want to show the world what you are up to now. This issue is meant to shine the spotlight on the diverse voices we’ve witnessed the past two decades. We celebrated with you in the past, celebrate with us for the future.

There is no better person to guest edit this issue than our founder, Erin Elizabeth Smith. We would not be able to call ourselves the oldest, continuously published, online literary journal run by women if not for her. Erin Elizabeth Smith is the Creative Director at the Sundress Academy for the Arts and the Managing Editor of Sundress Publications. Her work has appeared in journals including Guernica, Crab Orchard Review, Ecotone, and Mid-American, and her third full-length collection, Down: The Alice Poems, will be released by Agape Editions in 2019.  Smith teaches in the English Department at the University of Tennessee.

Please send up to five poems in the body of an email to Luci Brown at stirring.poetry@gmail.com with the subject line TWENTY YEARS. Send fiction submissions to Shaun Turner at stirring.fiction@gmail.com and nonfiction submissions to Gabe Montesanti at stirring.nonfiction@gmail.com with the subject line TWENTY YEARS. Send art to Stephanie Phillips at stirring.artphoto@gmail.com with the subject line TWENTY YEARS. If you have a book review written for the work of a former Stirring contributor, please send the written review to Katie Culligan at stirring.reviews@gmail.com with the subject line TWENTY YEARS.

When submitting to this issue, we also kindly ask that you let us know when you were published in Stirring (month and year would be ideal) so we can do our best to celebrate your past and present work. You may refer to our general submission guidelines for more specific, technical details here. The deadline for submissions is September 1st, 2019.

Sundress Releases Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess

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Sundress Releases Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess

wind on the moon coverSundress Publications announces the 2019 release of Wind on the Moon by Katie Burgess, our 2018 Chapbook Competition winner. The stories in Wind on the Moon fit together seamlessly, creating a world that’s as real to us readers as it is enchanted with love and grief.

Katie Burgess uses playful form and familiar tales to distill the most complex family dynamics: a daughter reckons with her mother meeting her lover in the language of a math textbook. Adam and Eve become a husband and wife who “always did encourage each other’s bad behavior.” In the final story, the act of writing conflates with the creation of the universe, our narrator critiquing the work of a god: “I liked how in your first draft everything revolved around the Earth. That makes a lot more sense if the people there are going to be important.” And Burgess shows us the importance of all people, encouraging empathy and the desire to get to know every character, every person, no matter how insignificant they may seem at first. Burgess writes with an honesty so clear it aches. Wind on the Moon is one of those chapbooks you can’t wait to share with everyone you love.

Of the work, George Singleton, author of Staff Picks said, “I’ve never read in the literary biographies how Lydia Davis and Donald Barthelme hooked up, but the result is clear: Katie Burgess. Wind on the Moon is an amazing collection of short, jaundice-eyed, hilarious, sly, insightful, intelligent stories that the world needs now. One problem: This collection needs to be about ten times as long. These characters are human, human, human. They navigate in times that are increasingly disconcerting. They triumph and/or fail. I don’t know when I last read a collection of stories that made me think, ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes! Exactly.’”

And Diane Roberts, author of Tribal: College Football and the Secret Heart of America said, “From the guys who faked the moon landing to what really went down in the Garden of Eden back in the day, Katie Burgess’s sly and sharp stories take you on a trip through the secret soul of America. Her prose shines like polished steel and cuts like an obsidian blade. She’s as funny as David Sedaris and twice as bold, giving God editorial advice and taking down the college industrial complex. Burgess is a writer on her way up. Read her now and be cooler than your friends!”Katie Burgess Author Photo

Katie Burgess holds a PhD in creative writing from Florida State and is editor-in-chief of Emrys Journal. Her writing has appeared in The RumpusNew Orleans ReviewSmokeLong Quarterly, and Reductress, among others. Her essay, “Rahab’s Thread,” was listed as “notable” in Best American Essays 2014 and was anthologized in Southern Sin: True Stories of the Sultry South and Women Behaving Badly (In Fact Books).

Download Wind on the Moon for free today!

 

Sundress Academy for the Arts Announces Winners of Summer Residencies

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Sundress Academy for the Arts Announces
Winners of Summer Residencies

The Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA) is pleased to announce Jane Wong, Muriel Leung, Fox Frazier-Foley, and Nicole Shawn Junior as the winners of their four summer residency scholarships. These residencies are designed to give artists time and space to complete their creative projects in a quiet and productive environment.

Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 10.30.44 PMFox Frazier-Foley is the author of two prize-winning poetry collections: The Hydromatic Historics (Bright Hill Press, 2015), which was selected by Vermont Poet Laureate Chard deNiord as the recipient of the Bright Hull Press Poetry Award, and Exodus in X Minor (Sundress Publications, 2014). Her most recent volume of poetry, Like Ash in the Air After Something Has Burned (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2017) was nominated for an Elgin Award. She edited the anthologies Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity (Sundress Publications, 2016) and Among the Margins: Critical and Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics (Ricochet Editions, 2016). Fox was graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Binghamton University, and was honored with merit-based fellowships at Columbia University, where she earned her MFA. She was a Provost’s Fellow at the Univeristy of Southern California, where she earned a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. Fox created and manages Agape Editions. She is currently at work in a long-form journalism project about violent crime in upstate New York, titled Carousel.

Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 10.30.51 PMMuriel Leung is the recipient of the Alternating Current sponsored fellowship. She is the author of Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found or is forthcoming in Gulf Coast, Drunken Boat, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal and co-host of The Blood-Jet Writing Hour podcast. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at University of California. She is from Queens, NY.

Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 10.30.35 PMNicole Shawan Junior (Smith College BA, Pace University MST, Temple University JD) is a storyteller who was born & bred in the bass-heavy beat & scratch of Brooklyn, where the Bed-Stuy cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived the crippling caused by crack cocaine. She is a black, queer and hood-born Womanxst. Nicole puts pen-to-paper to capture the journeys of around-the-block black girls. Nicole’s writing has appeared in For Harriet, Rigorous Magazine and The Feminist Wire. Her work has been supported by The Hurston/Wright Foundation, African Voices and the Black Film & TV Collective, to name a few. She’s currently completing Cracked Concrete, a coming of age memoir, and Block Girls, a play. A filmmaker, Nicole directed and co-produced the documentary short Boundless: A Celebration of Black Women and co-produced the YouTube web series This. That. & the Third. Nicole is currently bringing her short film, To Touch A Moth, to production. When off set, Nicole is also the creator of Roots. Wounds. Words. Writing Workshop. Check her out at www.NicoleShawanJunior.com.

Screen Shot 2019-03-20 at 10.30.56 PMJane Wong’s poems can be found in Best American Poetry 2015, POETRY, American Poetry Review, Third Coast, AGNI, and others. A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from the U.S. Fulbright Program, the Fine Arts Work Center, Hedgebrook, Artist Trust, and Bread Loaf. She is the author of Overpour (Action Books, 2016) and is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University.

SAFTA is an artists’ residency on a 45-acre farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, that hosts workshops, retreats, and residencies for writers of all genres, visual artists, and more. All are guided by experienced, professional instructors from a variety of creative disciplines who are dedicated to cultivating the arts in East Tennessee. Find out more about our residency program and current openings here.

 

2019 Poetry Broadside Contest Winner Announced

Sundress Publications is thrilled to announce the results of the 2019 Poetry Broadside Contest. The winner’s poem will be letterpress-printed and made available for purchase in our online store. Orders for our broadsides will be open later this spring.

Picture1This year’s winner is Lisa Kwong for the poem “Searching for Wonton Soup.”

Born and raised in Radford, Virginia, Lisa Kwong identifies as an AppalAsian, an Asian from Appalachia. She is a distinguished creative writing alumna of Appalachian State University and holds an MFA in poetry from Indiana University (IU). Her poems and creative nonfiction are forthcoming or have appeared in Best New Poets 2014, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia, Anthology of Appalachian Writers, the minnesota review, Banango Street, Still: The Journal, Naugatuck River Review, Appalachian Heritage, Pluck!, The Sleuth, and other publications. Her honors include poetry scholarships and fellowships from Indiana University, The Frost Place, and Sundress Academy for the Arts, where she was the 2017 Appalachian Writer-in-Residence.

Finalists:
“The Inception of Bees,” Trista Edwards
“Columbia Gorge,” Brenda Yates
“Violence of Lush,” Elisabeth von Uhl
“Self-Portrait as Etola,” Itiola Jones
“Aubade Without Ice,” Amelia Gorman
“We Will Take Life After Death,” Ashley Inguanta
“A God Lives in the Amygdala,” Jennifer Martelli

Semifinalists:
“Self-Portrait with Sun God and Charred Bodies,” Jessica Lynn Suchon
“How I Knew She Was Mine Before She Was Born,” Katy Ellis
“This is the Beginning,” Rachel Cloud Adams
“To the Drone All Objects Are Beautiful,” Amy Miller
“Second Story,” Halee Kirkwood

 

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A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.

 

Email: erin@sundresspublications.com                                    Twitter: @SundressPub
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Open Call: 2019 Chapbook Competition

Sundress Publications Opens Submissions for 2019 Chapbook Competition


Sundress Publications announces its sixth annual chapbook contest. Authors of all genres are invited to submit qualifying manuscripts during our reading period of February 1
st to April 30th, 2019.

Poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrids are welcome. Manuscripts must be between twelve to twenty-six (12-26) pages in length, with a page break between individual pieces. Individual pieces may have been previously published in anthologies, print journals, online journals, etc., but cannot have appeared in any full-length collection, including self-published collections. Both single-author and collaborative dual-author manuscripts will be considered. Manuscripts must be primarily in English; translations are not eligible.

The entry fee is $10 per manuscript, though the fee will be waived for entrants who purchase or pre-order any Sundress title. We will also accept nominations for entrants, provided the nominating person either pay the reading fee or makes a qualifying purchase. Authors may submit and/or nominate as many chapbook manuscripts as they like, so long as each is accompanied by a separate reading fee or purchase/pre-order. Entrants and nominators can place book orders or pay submission fees at our store, https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications.

The winner will receive $200, plus publication as a beautiful full-color PDF available exclusively online. Runners-up will also be considered for publication.

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Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello will be judging. Cancio-Bello is the author of Hour of the Ox (University of Pittsburgh, 2016), which won the 2015 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry, the 2016 Florida Book Award bronze medal for poetry, and was a finalist for the 2017 Milt Kessler Award. She has received poetry fellowships from Kundiman, the Knight Foundation, and the American Literary Translators Association. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Best New Poets, The Georgia Review, and more. She serves as a program coordinator for Miami Book Fair.

All manuscripts should include a cover page (with only the title of the manuscript), table of contents, dedication (if applicable), and acknowledgments for previous publications. These pages will not be included in the total page count. Identifying information should not appear in any part of the manuscript. Authors with a significant relationship to the judge (friends, relatives, colleagues, past or present students, etc.) are discouraged from entering.

To submit, attach your manuscript as a DOCX or PDF file along with your order number for either a Sundress title of the entry fee to contest@sundresspublications.com.

Simultaneous submission to other presses is acceptable, but please notify Sundress immediately if the manuscript has been accepted elsewhere. Multiple submissions are allowed, but a separate entry fee must accompany each entry. No revisions will be allowed during the contest judging period. Winners will be announced in Summer 2019.

Subscriber Notice

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2019 Sundress Subscriptions Now Available!

Sundress Publications is excited to announce that our 2019 subscriptions are now available!

This year’s catalog includes full-length poetry collections from Leah Silveus, Amorak Huey, Aaron Graham, Ruth Foley, Zoë Estelle Hitzel, HK Hummel, and syan jay. as well as a copy of our handprinted letterpress broadside!

Subscribers receive all of these upcoming titles, complimentary merch, plus FREE entries into all of our 2019 Sundress competitions, open reading periods, and Sundress Academy for the Arts residency applications for themselves AND a friend.

From now until the end of the February, you’ll receive not only the entire 2019 catalog but also a FREE Sundress title of your choosing!

Subscribe today at: https://squareup.com/market/sundress-publications/item/sundress-subscription

A 501(c)3 non-profit literary press collective founded in 2000, Sundress Publications is an entirely volunteer-run press that publishes chapbooks and full-length collections in both print and digital formats, and hosts numerous literary journals, an online reading series, and the Best of the Net Anthology.