Upcoming Special Calls for The Wardrobe

The Wardrobe Seeks Manuscripts for Upcoming Special Calls

As a part of Sundress Publications’ ongoing commitment to providing a platform for marginalized voices, Sundress Publications is accepting submissions of previously published books by women and nonbinary authors that honor the following holidays: 

  • November 1: National Authors Day
  • November 20: Transgender Day of Remembrance
  • November 25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women
  • December 1: World AIDS Day
  • December 3: National Disability Day

We at Sundress hope to champion writers whose work highlights human struggle and challenges misconceptions. We are looking for work to shed some light on the various topics encompassed above. 

Authors or publishers of books published 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 wardrobe@sundresspublications.com with the holiday of your choosing in the subject line.  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 our “Best Dressed” selection for one year. Hard copies will become a permanent part of the Sundress Academy for the Arts library. 

For the complete details and rules, please see The Wardrobe website at:
http://sundresspublications.wordpress.com/the-wardrobe/ 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Same-Sexy Marriage by Julie Marie Wade

This selection comes from Julie Marie Wade’s book Same-Sexy Marriage, available from A Midsummer Night’s Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Julie Marie Wade (Seattle, 1979) completed a Master of Arts in English at Western Washington University in 2003, a Master of Fine Arts in Poetry at the University of Pittsburgh in 2006, and a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities at the University of Louisville in 2012. She is the author of Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Colgate University Press, 2010; Bywater Books, 2014), winner of the Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir; Without: Poems (Finishing Line Press, 2010), selected for the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Series; Small Fires: Essays (Sarabande Books, 2011), selected for the Linda Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature; Postage Due: Poems & Prose Poems (White Pine Press, 2013), winner of the Marie Alexander Poetry Series; Tremolo: An Essay (Bloom Books, 2013), winner of the Bloom Nonfiction Chapbook Prize; When I Was Straight: Poems (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014); Catechism: A Love Story (Noctuary Press, 2016), and SIX: Poems (Red Hen Press, 2016), winner of the AROHO/To the Lighthouse Poetry Prize selected by C.D. Wright. Wade is a member of the creative writing faculty at Florida International University in Miami and a regular book review for Lambda Literary Review and The Rumpus. She is married to Angie Griffin and lives on Hollywood Beach.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Season of Dares by Leah Silvieus

 

 

 

 

This selection comes from Leah Silvieus’s book Season of Dares, available from BullCity Press.  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Leah Silvieus was born in South Korea and adopted to the U.S. at three-months old. She spent her early childhood and adolescence in small towns in Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and western Colorado. She is the author of two chapbooks, Anemochory (Hyacinth Girl Press) and Season of Dares (forthcoming from Bull City Press in fall 2018). Her full-length book of poetry was a finalist for the Kundiman, Orison Books, and Agape Editions book prizes and is forthcoming from Sundress Publications in 2019. Her recent poetry and criticism have appeared in Harvard Review Online, The Collagist, and Boxcar Poetry Review among others. She is a recipient of awards and fellowships from The Academy of American Poets and Fulbright and serves on Kundiman’s Junior Board and as a mentor on The Brooklyn Poets Bridge. She received her bachelor’s degree in literature from Whitworth University and holds an MFA from the University of Miami. She currently travels between New York and Florida as a yacht Chief Stewardess and serves as a Books Editor at Hyphen magazine.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girasol by Vianney Casas

This selection comes from Vianney Casas’s chapbook Girasol, available from Foglifter Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Vianney Harelly Casas Espinoza was born in San Diego California but lived 18 years of her life in Tijuana, México, crossing the border for six years to attend school. She realized she wanted to write for the rest of her life when she won her first writing contest, in 2007. Since then she has been published in Canto, Cipatli, Bossy, Gentromancer, Chevere, Yerba Mala and Foglifter. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in creative writing and hopes to continue writing poetry that will heal her traumas, as well as eventually running her own magazine and becoming the next Mexican Anna Wintour. You can find her in Twitter as @vianneyfriducha and Foglifter’s @foglifterpress.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Girasol by Vianney Casas

This selection comes from Vianney Casas’s chapbook Girasol, available from Foglifter Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Vianney Harelly Casas Espinoza was born in San Diego California but lived 18 years of her life in Tijuana, México, crossing the border for six years to attend school. She realized she wanted to write for the rest of her life when she won her first writing contest, in 2007. Since then she has been published in Canto, Cipatli, Bossy, Gentromancer, Chevere, Yerba Mala and Foglifter. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in creative writing and hopes to continue writing poetry that will heal her traumas, as well as eventually running her own magazine and becoming the next Mexican Anna Wintour. You can find her in Twitter as @vianneyfriducha and Foglifter’s @foglifterpress.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Kat Giordano, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost

 

 

 

 

 

This selection comes from Kat Giordano’s book The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, available from Philosophical Idiot  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Kat Giordano is a poet (1%) and massive millennial crybaby (99%) from Pennsylvania. She co-edits Philosophical Idiot and works for a law firm somehow. She is also the author of many highly embarrassing social media meltdowns. Her poems have appeared in OcculumGhost City ReviewAwkward MermaidThe Cincinnati ReviewCLASH Magazine, and others. Her debut full-length poetry collection, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, is available now.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Kat Giordano, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost

 

ARS POETICA II

after a long night of crying,
you wake up with an entire durian in your throat
and retch it onto the empty half of your bed.
it won’t open, no matter how much you squeeze, and your life
becomes a blur of cold ramen and calling in sick
to spend the whole day icing your purpled knuckles alone.
so when you feel that first warm trickle down your wrist,
it almost doesn’t matter that what you’re feeling is blood
or that it’s your own or that the fruit is still closed
and mocking you from on top of your desk,
only that it makes those friends who have never seen fruit
stop sighing like that, confuse pride with relief.
before you know it, there’s this boy begging
to lap what he thinks is wet sugar from your wrists
and you let him, pray to yourself it’s not poison,
then pray to yourself he never finds out that it is.
you fall asleep on a still-empty stomach, Googling
how to bleach that red ring from around his mouth.
you blink, and now you’re stowing vials in your bra
at parties, selling shots to people with durians
tattooed on their ribs. you watch them weep
and dance on each other, and then you slip out
before anyone gets sober. at home, you kick
a sack of durians from your front door and admire
how the TV’s blue backlight makes your thin skin shine
like a Ziploc you can stare right through to your bones.

This selection comes from Kat Giordano’s book The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, available from Philosophical Idiot  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Kat Giordano is a poet (1%) and massive millennial crybaby (99%) from Pennsylvania. She co-edits Philosophical Idiot and works for a law firm somehow. She is also the author of many highly embarrassing social media meltdowns. Her poems have appeared in OcculumGhost City ReviewAwkward MermaidThe Cincinnati ReviewCLASH Magazine, and others. Her debut full-length poetry collection, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, is available now.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

 

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Kat Giordano, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost

This selection comes from Kat Giordano’s book The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, available from Philosophical Idiot  Purchase your copy here! Our curator for January is Rax King.

Kat Giordano is a poet (1%) and massive millennial crybaby (99%) from Pennsylvania. She co-edits Philosophical Idiot and works for a law firm somehow. She is also the author of many highly embarrassing social media meltdowns. Her poems have appeared in OcculumGhost City ReviewAwkward MermaidThe Cincinnati ReviewCLASH Magazine, and others. Her debut full-length poetry collection, The Poet Confronts Bukowski’s Ghost, is available now.

Rax King is a dog-loving, hedgehog-mothering, beer-swilling, gay and disabled sumbitch who occasionally writes poetry and works as assistant editor for Sundress Publications. She is the author of the collection ‘The People’s Elbow: Thirty Recitatives on Rape and Wrestling’ (Ursus Americanus, 2018). Her work can also be found in Barrelhouse, Glass Poetry, and Dream Pop.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Unremitting Entrance by Janelle Adsit

images

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industry can make pinks now that are 99-100% permanent
pink keychain with my sister’s face etched into it
pink quartzite bench on a grassy Fort Collins hill,
pink tulips the neighbors planted, pink
candles, pink tattoo of a pink last-gift candle, pink
vases, materials as metaphors—the necessary attempt
at conflation, pink bracelets with her
name—color is more symbolic than sensory
every skin fleck and fingernail
gone to an impalpable gray
in May with its hibiscus pink and its leaving
crabapples, soapwart, begonia

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This selection comes from Janelle Adsit’s collection Unremitting Entrance available now from Spuyten Duyvil. Purchase your copy here!

Janelle Adsit‘s poetry has appeared in publications such as Sixth Finch, Confrontation, The Cultural Society, and Lalitamba. She lives in northern California where she teaches creative writing at Humboldt State University. www.janelleadsit.net

Ben McClendon is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He previously studied poetry at Northern Arizona University after teaching high school English for several years. His poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Yemassee, Ceasura, Chariton Review, Redivider, Rattle, and elsewhere. He is currently Assistant Poetry Editor for Grist: The Journal for Writers and a poetry editor for Four Ties Lit Review. Ben lives with his husband in Knoxville.

 

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Alicia Rebecca Myers’ My Seaborgium

My-Seaborgium-500x750

 

Linnet

Birth: radial. Becoming a starfish
growing a spine. Center of a mirror,
tarantella, this line of fire, this
tambourine tearing through. My insides: pain
like a double-handled saw bisecting
my lower back, bringing me back into
rocking. Then rhombic crystallization
of garnet. Gravity. Pressure, torch, or
arroyo (rain-filled promise). Whirligig.
Yaw. Ship carrying pearl ash purified
by kiln, this sea change, this delighting in
red skies, in freight. Glacial channel. Maw of
sliced open nacelle, loved layabout. This
calm, this room, this ohm, this not like being
held together by anything other
than gravity: fatigue song. Percussive.
Train headed into watercourse. Double-
sided psalm. Familiar mastery. Sway.
Turn. My breath fogging the glass
as a distant linnet gathers knotgrass
by the sea, to weave, to build a nest of
salt, of thistledown, to house the hunger
that will feed on flax, tiny seed from which
linen is made, starred cloth we wrap you in.

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This selection comes from Alicia Rebecca Myers’ chapbook My Seaborgium available now from Brain Mill Press. Purchase your copy here!

Alicia Rebecca Myers is a poet and essayist whose work has appeared recently or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, The American Literary Review, Gulf Coast, jubilat, The Carolina Quarterly, The Fairy Tale Review, and Day One. In February of 2014, she was awarded a residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center in Nebraska City. A graduate of NYU’s MFA Program, she currently teaches at Wells College. You can find her online at aliciarebeccamyers.com.

Ben McClendon is a PhD student in creative writing at the University of Tennessee. He previously studied poetry at Northern Arizona University after teaching high school English for several years. His poems have appeared in Indiana Review, Yemassee, Cæsura, Chariton Review, Redivider, Rattle, and elsewhere. He is currently Assistant Poetry Editor for Grist: The Journal for Writers and a poetry editor for Four Ties Lit Review. Ben lives with his husband in Knoxville.